Can I separate brush strokes on same layer?

[Fruitbasket]

(I couldn't find this problem discussed - sorry if I missed it.)

I want to fill masks with many differently colored brush strokes. Turns out I can't seem to be able to edit (e.g. recolor) these brush strokes. I can add more strokes at any time, but I can't delete individual previous strokes, nor recolor them later.

For simplicity's sake, here is a screenshot of a basic example: just two brush strokes (without a mask), they always select as ONE item, even when double-clicking. They are on the same layer. Is that the problem? Do I have to paint every single new, differently colored brush stroke on a new layer in order for me to edit them later? That would be insane, as my illustrations are complex with many different strokes overlapping within masks. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions.

 

[Fruitbasket]

PS: I just tried changing the color of a single watercolor brush stroke on one layer. I wasn't able to change its color! Does anyone know how this works? 😨🙏

[firstdefence]

You are painting with pixels so affinity photo will Add additional brush strokes to the same pixel layer. Brushing over an existing brush stroke will overwrite any pixels underneath and the only way to get back from that is to undo.

I’m not at my Mac but take a look at the assistant icon; looks like a butlers tunic, and see if there are any options you can utilise. 
 

Sounds like you would benefit more from affinity designer which applies raster brushes to a vector curve.

[Fruitbasket]

Thank you so much, firstdefence!

But I'm actually coming from vector (Illustrator), I'm new to raster. Just a few days ago I kept having big issues using a texture brush in Illustrator whose sparse application caused the program to freeze every few minutes (I have lots of RAM). I read that for textures, raster is the way to go. So I won't give up yet!

[carl123]

2 hours ago, Fruitbasket said:

For simplicity's sake, here is a screenshot of a basic example: just two brush strokes (without a mask), they always select as ONE item, even when double-clicking. They are on the same layer.

You could try using the Select > Select Sampled Colour command to select a colour you want to change then use an Adjustment Layer such as Recolour, HSL, Selective Colour etc to change the colour.

 

Not exactly sure what you mean by "you are using masks" in your illustrations, so not sure if the above will work for them

 

[firstdefence]

Most apps that utilise pixel brushes will stay on a brush layer (pixel layer) until you manually add another layer, take a look at the likes of Krita and even the mighty Corel Painter.

 

[kaffeeundsalz]

The Assistant Options won't be of much help here because they can only be configured for painting with no layer selected. This means that you would have to do one (and only one!) brush stroke at a time, deselect all layers (which you could at least define a keyboard shortcut for) and then paint again to get the next brush stroke placed on a separate layer. I can't imagine anyone would want to paint like that. The question is: Do you really need to have every single brush stroke editable via its own layer? Or could you not make use of Affinity's selection, masking and erasing features? I've seen many illustrators use separate layers for each color, each shade or for differents parts of an image – but never for each brush stroke. If you really can't live without it, Designer is your only option I'm afraid.

[Fruitbasket]

2 hours ago, kaffeeundsalz said:

The Assistant Options won't be of much help here because they can only be configured for painting with no layer selected. This means that you would have to do one (and only one!) brush stroke at a time, deselect all layers (which you could at least define a keyboard shortcut for) and then paint again to get the next brush stroke placed on a separate layer. I can't imagine anyone would want to paint like that. The question is: Do you really need to have every single brush stroke editable via its own layer? Or could you not make use of Affinity's selection, masking and erasing features? I've seen many illustrators use separate layers for each color, each shade or for differents parts of an image – but never for each brush stroke. If you really can't live without it, Designer is your only option I'm afraid.

Thank you so much for all your replies. Kaffeundsalz, thank you for the thourough answer. Right, I wouldn't want to paint that way. I don't have an iPad Pro to compare it to how Procreate does it (which seems to be a basic asset now). Since Carl123 wasn't sure what I meant by 'masks', here is an example. If I want to change any of the colors inside the mask, I can't because it's all one piece. So I will have to delete that brush layer and redo it. And if I use Affinity Designer, then I must soon be running out of memory as with Illustrator.

[kaffeeundsalz]

9 hours ago, Fruitbasket said:

I don't have an iPad Pro to compare it to how Procreate does it (which seems to be a basic asset now).

Procreate behaves the same as Affinity Photo in this respect (I know because I have it installed on my iPad) – just like every pixel artwork application that I've seem in my life.

9 hours ago, Fruitbasket said:

If I want to change any of the colors inside the mask, I can't because it's all one piece. So I will have to delete that brush layer and redo it.

That's not true. There are numerous ways you could alter the colors of your drawing afterwards, all of which won't require you to have the strokes on individual layers. One thing you could do is place a new Pixel layer above your drawing, change its blend mode to Hue or Color and then with a brush of your choice paint over the desired parts. Also, Affinity Photo has multiple adjustment options to edit colors: Just take a look at the HSL adjustment which is gerat for targeting individual color ranges of your image, or the Color Balance adjustment which you can use to tune colors by tonal range. Granted, the experience will differ from having each brush stroke individually accessible. But if you are not familiar with manipulating color in pixel images, I suggest you take the time to learn the basics, as you'd otherwise miss a ton of great features that can be very useful for vector work as well.

9 hours ago, Fruitbasket said:

And if I use Affinity Designer, then I must soon be running out of memory as with Illustrator.

This is something you should try out yourself by downloading the trial version of Affinity Designer. From my experience, Designer is pretty good at handling huge amounts of layers, but of course, this also depends on the hardware it runs on.

[Fruitbasket]

Thank you very much, kaffeeundsalz! You've given me so much helpful information that I will try out. 💛 I already have Designer, bought it along with Photo. I realize I have tons to learn.

[kaffeeundsalz]

Just for your inspiration, here is a quick edit (done in < 5 min) that I did using the Gradient Map adjustment. Obviously, I did not redraw your image, so the entire thing was done with everything on one layer. Hopefully, you can image how far you could go with a bit more time to spend on this.

[Fruitbasket]

🤩 Oh wow!! This is fantastic! You've been such great help and definitely inspiration! Thank you so much 💛