Children of Mask-Layer Not Accessible

[Jakob Winter 0]

Hey everyone,

I am experiencing this pretty annoying bug, where the children of a layer that is being used as a mask layer are not accessible anymore. When for example I want to dynamically feather a mask by using a Gaussian Blur live filter, I can only set the live filter as a child, if I move the mask to the top layer of the hierarchy. There I can drop the live filter onto the mask (to make it a child). When I then drop that mask onto an image, it behaves as it is supposed to, even dynamically blurring the mask if I change it. BUT I cannot access or change the settings of the Gaussian Blur (for that I'd have to move the mask back out again).

See attached GIF for clarification.

Is this a know bug? Quite a few of my students seem to suffer from it.

[Jakob Winter 0]

By the way, in today's course I did a quick poll. 80% of them suffered from the above issue. So it seems its rather widespread...

[walt.farrell 5,057]

I guess I don't understand why it's a problem to have to Release Mask before you can access the Gaussian Blur settings again. It's easy enough to put it back when you're done.

[MEB 8,893]

Hi @Jakob Winter,
This is a known limitation in the app (which i believe is already logged). As an alternative you can apply a Gaussian Blur FX to the shape then nest it to the pixel layer. To adjust the Gaussian Blur (while nested) click the FX icon in the Shape Layer to open the Layer Effects panel/adjust the radius.

[Jakob Winter 0]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

I guess I don't understand why it's a problem to have to Release Mask before you can access the Gaussian Blur settings again

Efficiency. Its several unnecessary steps I'd rather avoid. And always remember, Affinity is jumping into the water with an extremely large fish (Photoshop). It'll always have to stand that comparisson if it wants to compete in a professional market. In some areas Affinity is doing an awesome job. In others, there's room for improvement

56 minutes ago, MEB said:

As an alternative you can apply a Gaussian Blur FX to the shape

Wow, it even works with pixel images (not just with shapes). This is even more convenient for me than using a live filter. One layer less in my stack. Thanks so much. I'll use and teach that approach in the future 👍
 

Maybe it would be a good idea to add a feature request to enable the same for native Mask objects as well... its done!

[NotMyFault 142]

And currently, blur by layer FX does not work for masks.

[Medical Officer Bones 443]

I agree that this is awkward. It was one of the first things I encountered when I first opened and began to explore Affinity Photo, and it is also one (of quite a few basic workflow) issues which keeps me from adopting Affinity Photo in my daily workflow.

Let's hope this will be fixed at some point. The fact that 80% of your students experienced this as a major workflow issue means it needs to be addressed.