Mask not opaque

[RoywithaT]

I just installed Designer on my mid 2015 MacBook Pro running Big Sur.  My masks are not coming through opaque (please see attached screen shot).  I've checked that my brush is 100" hard and opaque, the color is H0 S0 L0.  What am I missing?  Thank you. 

[R C-R]

Without knowing anything about your layer structure I doubt anybody will be able to help you much.

[RoywithaT]

OK. Here's the layers (please see attached screen shot).  Thank you.

[carl123]

1. Change the Blend Mode in your first screenshot from Darken to Normal

2. Check the brush you are using is one of the basic solid brushes

[RoywithaT]

Ok, I changed the blend mode to "Normal" (why would it default to Darken instead of Normal-that doesn't seem logical)?  I've indicated the brush I was using, though I had changed the size.  I "erased" on the mask, using white, so the dog's leg was exposed, then switched to black to hide the leg again.  Same result as before-incomplete masking.  Thank you for your help. (Screen shot attached).

[carl123]

Ok, the quickest way to see what the problem is would be for you to upload the Affinity document to the forum

Can you do that?

[RoywithaT]

Of course.  Thank you, I really appreciate the help.  My head was getting sore from banging it against my laptop 🙂

If it makes any difference, I started this file in Designer on my iPad Pro, then transferred it to my laptop...

 

Life_is_Grruff_2021 copy.afdesign

[carl123]

Your document is CMYK

Goto the colour Tab and switch to the CMYK sliders, then max them out to get full black

Painting on the mask should then work OK

 

Not sure exactly what is going on as I never use CMYK documents

[firstdefence]

Why even use a mask, why not keep it vector and just block it out with a curve

 

[firstdefence]

Is this a project/excercise or a job?

 

 

 

[loukash]

7 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Why even use a mask

Exactly.

@RoywithaT, unless you are going to export only to a pixel format anyway, avoid masks in vector design. Anything affected by a mask layer will be rasterized on export. And since some parts of your design would be unaffected by the mask, some parts would be rasterized, some not, and a printed result might thus end up looking pretty ugly…
Use clipping objects instead.

[RoywithaT]

carl123, thank you, that took in-depth research.  I appreciate the effort you put into this.  After sleeping on the matter, I recalled that I have had similar issues in Designer before this-though previously it has been the white that did not completely provide masking.  I considered the history of this file-I originally created it a few years ago in Designer on this Macbook Pro when it was running Sierra (I would have to research further, but I think the very original file is from long enough ago that I may have made it in Illustrator then coverted to Designer), I moved the file to my 2020 iPad Pro where I did some work, then transferred the file back to the MBP after it was upgraded to Big Sur. So I considered that perhaps the history of this file may have left too many artifacts from the various versions it has traveled through.  I made a clean empty file on the MBP, copied my elements into it and the masking works as it should.  The transition to Big Sur has not been seamless, so part of the challenge is trying to figure out if the problem is within Affinity or with the laptop OS.

 

As for why CMYK-it is a project destined to be printed, and since CMYK colors are more limited than RGB I prefer to work in that color space so I can better judge my end results. (yes,even though I viewing them in a RGB environment).

Thank you again for all you help.

[RoywithaT]

firstdefence, at this phase of design I am noodling options.  For me, masking is faster than fussing with clipping.  I have accepted that I have to make a pass at the end of my design process to make everything delivery ready.  I have to do this anyway because Affinity does not currently offer a way to translate my pixel layers into vector (I do miss Illustrator’s blob brush and vectorize capabilities).  Other than the issues I mention in my response to carl123, this process has worked well for me over the years. Thank you for your assistance,

[RoywithaT]

loukash, yes, please see my response to firstdefense above. Thank you.

[RoywithaT]

firstdefense, responding to your later post, I don’t mind answering your question, but I’d like to see if there are any unforseen results of my answer so I am wondering what prompts you to ask me this? Thx.

[R C-R]

14 hours ago, carl123 said:

Not sure exactly what is going on as I never use CMYK documents

I don't know what is going on either but it seems like setting K to 100 is enough to make painting on the mask 100% opaque in a CMYK document, regardless of the settings for C,M, & Y. 

This assumes all the brush settings are appropriate -- 100% brush hardness & opacity, wet edges not set, a solid untextured brush selected, etc.

[loukash]

1 hour ago, RoywithaT said:

masking is faster than fussing with clipping.

Then invest some time and learn to understand how Affinity vector clipping works. Once you've got a grip on it, you'll be wondering why you'd even wasted so much time and effort on pixel masks…

[firstdefence]

11 hours ago, RoywithaT said:

firstdefense, responding to your later post, I don’t mind answering your question, but I’d like to see if there are any unforseen results of my answer so I am wondering what prompts you to ask me this? Thx.

Curiosity, just being nosey lol!  

[RoywithaT]

firstdefense, lol, fair enough.  Project for a long-term client www.lifeisgrruff.com . Their main logo mascot is a drawing by the owner’s sister-the challenge for me was to create designs that stay somewhat true to her original drawing.  I have done about a dozen t-shirt designs for them over the years.  This set of projects is labels for subscription boxes.

[RoywithaT]

On 5/31/2021 at 2:06 PM, R C-R said:

I don't know what is going on either but it seems like setting K to 100 is enough to make painting on the mask 100% opaque in a CMYK document, regardless of the settings for C,M, & Y. 

This assumes all the brush settings are appropriate -- 100% brush hardness & opacity, wet edges not set, a solid untextured brush selected, etc.

R C-R yes, generally K stands for black.  Here’s an article that explains more https://gearside.com/color-black-represented-k-cmyk/. Puzzles me why out-of-the-box settings for Designer would be anything less than 100% K.  As I explained, this is the first project in a new installation of Designer on a recently upgraded laptop, so the challenge has been sussing out which element (hardware, OS, software) is causing me difficulties.  But I do find Affinity’s mask tools to be somewhat persnickety (or could be it’s something I am regularly doing wrong, lol).  Just yesterday, masking a jpg in Photo (on the iPad Pro) when I changed from black to white the tool didn’t work-instead of revealing that which was masked it continued to cover as if I had not changed colors.  But I’ve been running into this for years, both on the laptop and on the iPad, both Photo and Designer.  It’s annoying, but restarting usually fixes the problem so I’ve never bothered pursuing it until now. Thank you for your time.

[RoywithaT]

Then invest some time and learn to understand how Affinity vector clipping works. Once you've got a grip on it, you'll be wondering why you'd even wasted so much time and effort on pixel masks… 

loukash, yes, ongoing learning is always good and I appreciate the intent of your advice is to be helpful.  But this is a forum for technical support so, in my opinion, your comment is beyond the scope of the thread.  We all work differently, despite using the same software. Thank you for your time and skills.

[loukash]

6 minutes ago, RoywithaT said:

your comment is beyond the scope of the thread

Not at all. Much like you can sometimes repair a wrist watch using a Swiss Army knife and a bit of luck, it is in fact the wrong tool, and many times it simply won't work the way you'd expect. So the correct advise in that case is: Use the right tool for the job.
Same here: If you're working in the vector domain and intend to print, avoid pixel masks whenever you can.

[R C-R]

38 minutes ago, RoywithaT said:

Puzzles me why out-of-the-box settings for Designer would be anything less than 100% K.

Just a guess but probably because a "rich black" is considered more appropriate for everything except text.

But it is a bit surprising that painting on a mask would use a rich black in a CMYK document.

[walt.farrell]

19 minutes ago, R C-R said:

But it is a bit surprising that painting on a mask would use a rich black in a CMYK document.

It seems to me that the program is just using the Black that the user chose from the color wheel.

[RoywithaT]

@walt.farrell, on the color wheel, the HSL sliders were all at 0 with 100% opacity (you can see this in the first screen shot I posted).  I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect the results of using this color on a mask to be complete coverage.  Having to dive over to cmyk setting to check the k seems like an overly fussy step. But I dunno, haven’t heard from anyone at Affinity on this thread (not that you-all aren’t awesome ;-).