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How do I edit this mask in Photo?


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How do I edit this mask in Photo (after selecting edit mask), all it does, no matter what I try is add to the mask, ie black, if I want to subtract from the mask with a paintbrush or an eraser, I can't no matter what colour I select, I can't see any setting that will allow me to do this, which seems absolutely mad, I must be missing something, surely you can't only edit a mask one way?

 

1962476829_Screenshot2021-09-30at11_43_24.thumb.png.b97e84636960aacac04380598785990c.png

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Usually it's just a case of having the mask layer selected then with the Paint Brush tool set to black or white to paint on the mask layer to reveal/hide. Without seeing the entire UI and layer structure it's hard to say, but check to see if Protect Alpha is enabled on the brushes Context toolbar.

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Your recent colour icons show no sign of white ever being used

Can you create a new pixel layer at the top of the Layers stack, paint on that to check what colour you are painting with?

 

screenshot2.png

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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13 minutes ago, Barrowman said:

You can see that white is the current selected colour on the toolbar and in the swatches

I see white selected on the toolbar but teal selected in the Swatches panel (and I’m puzzled about all those colours being included in the ‘Greys’ category).

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Haha no idea but people seem to be getting a bit waylaid the vagaries of the swatch panel (should I post that in Bugs?), rather than the masking procedure. One can quite clearly see in the toolbar of the left what colour and tool I'm painting with. I'm not clueless when it comes to selecting a colour, so I'm not trying to pretend there's a problem. I've had to "sort" this by going to Photoshop in the meantime, which is NOT my preferred solution to things that should be straight forward in Designer.

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Color opacity  is set to 0.

Look at the right tip of the red arrow in Carl’s screenshot.

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5

iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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12 minutes ago, Barrowman said:

to things that should be straight forward in Designer.

It's Photo not Designer and as you appear to have a problem with people that are trying to help you...

I'm out!

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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Work instruction in case of painting on pixel layer or masks are not working:

(I will update this post based on you feedback)

  1. check if correct layer is selected
  2. Check layer opacity. Reset to 100% for test.
  3. Check layer blend mode
  4. Check layer blend options. Cycle through all color channels in both source and dest
  5. Check channels panel. Reset to activate show&edit of all channels
  6. check if correct brush is selected. Ha, it’s a joke. You can’t directly. So select a basic round brush. Ha, another joke. Designer doesn’t have basic brushes by default. So either re-import basic brushes, or select any other suitable brush.
  7. Check if protect alpha is activated. Uncheck.
  8. Check if correct color is selected. Check again that it’s the foreground color (not stroke or background).
  9. Check color opacity. Should be 100% for mortals.
  10. Check blend mode. Should be “normal” for mortals.
  11. Check opacity, flow, hardness. Reset all to 100% for test. Could adjust later.
  12. Check layer type is pixel (not image)
  13. Put layer in isolation mode (solo mode on iPad)
  14. Check surrounding layers (groups, filters).
  15. Copy single layer, create new file from clipboard. Inspect if painting works in new document. 
     
  • I’m sure this list is criminally incomplete. Please add missing check points.
Edited by NotMyFault

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5

iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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23 minutes ago, Barrowman said:

people seem to be getting a bit waylaid [by] the vagaries of the swatch panel

The “vagaries” of the Swatches panel are highly relevant, as @NotMyFault has pointed out!

13 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Color opacity  is set to 0.

Look at the right tip of the red arrow in Carl’s screenshot.

 

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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15 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Color opacity  is set to 0.

Look at the right tip of the red arrow in Carl’s screenshot.

Yes that was it, thanks so much, very strange behaviour as when I paint on a layer it paints white, but when I then edit mask it makes the white a "zero" opacity brush which I never noticed.

Excellent - resolved.

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4 minutes ago, Alfred said:

The “vagaries” of the Swatches panel are highly relevant, as @NotMyFault has pointed out!

Not when you're painting with white clearly selected in toolbar and swatches and it's not making a difference. And I was referring to "why there were colours in my grey palette", to which I have no idea and wondered if it was a bug. Wow people seem pretty touchy, did the haha imply something other than mirth. @NotMyFault saw the problem and resolved it with a simple observation, which was great. - Thanks.

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7 minutes ago, Barrowman said:

@NotMyFault saw the problem and resolved it with a simple observation, which was great.

Indeed, and that observation related to a setting in the Swatches panel, hence my comment about its being “highly relevant”. Anyway, I’m glad you’ve got it sorted now. :)

 

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Just now, Alfred said:

Indeed, and that observation related to a setting in the Swatches panel, hence my comment about its being “highly relevant”. Anyway, I’m glad you’ve got it sorted now. :)

 

Hi, haha I'm still not sure why those colours are showing there though, but very glad to have sorted my masking out.  Even though it does feel like the white going 0% opacity seems quite a bizarre behaviour. Thanks all.

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Your UI layout differs from my (Windows). On Windows, there are 3 sliders in close distance easy to confuse:

  1. Color greyness / lightness 
  2. Color opacity / noise 
  3. Layer opacity.

In addition, some of these values can be set (by accident, depending on focus) via keyboard shortcuts.

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5

iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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1 hour ago, Barrowman said:

the vagaries of the swatch panel

Well said.

 

2 hours ago, Alfred said:

I’m puzzled about all those colours being included in the ‘Greys’ category

I imagine this is due to the fact that in any new document created, the default palette in the swatches panel is "Grays." If one does not go through the (IMHO unecessarily necessary) steps of creating a new Document palette, and just clicks the  "Add current fill…" button, it goes into Grays.

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