Flood Fill tool layer erase menu - is this expected behaviour?

[DM1]

If I add a fill layer I can change fill colours with the flood fill tool and they are applied as expected. If however I use the flood fill tool context menu to erase the fill, I can no longer get the full fill colours back. Each colour appears semi opaque. Is this expected behaviour? 
edit - the fill tool fill type appears to override flood fill.

[NotMyFault]

The flood fill tool should be used for pixel layers only, not for fill layers (which are vector).

Use the the fill tool instead.

The reduction of opacity is a bug. Might be related to

 

[DM1]

11 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

The flood fill tool should be used for pixel layers only, not for fill layers (which are vector).

Fair enough but why do Affinity allow it to be active on Fill layers? There’s nothing in Help file to advise against this. I don’t doubt your reply (in fact thank you for identifying this), but shouldn’t the tools functionality be turned off for fill layers to prevent dills like me trying to use it? 😁

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, DM1 said:

If I add a fill layer I can change fill colours with the flood fill tool and they are applied as expected.

Where in your video did you change the fill color using the Flood Fill Tool?

 I know that you changed the color, but it looked like you just did that with the Color studio, not by clicking on the layer to apply the Flood Fill. If you were to click the layer to apply the tool, I think you'd see an immediate color change. I don't understand what's happening, but just wanted to point out that I don't think you started out doing what you thought you were doing.

[NotMyFault]

2 hours ago, DM1 said:

Fair enough but why do Affinity allow it to be active on Fill layers? There’s nothing in Help file to advise against this. I don’t doubt your reply (in fact thank you for identifying this), but shouldn’t the tools functionality be turned off for fill layers to prevent dills like me trying to use it? 😁

Totally agree.  In this case it might be more a bug, but using flood fill on vector shapes seems totally superfluous to me, e.g.

• cant utilize selections on vector layers
• color panel or fill tool provide all you need

Otherwise, could be added to the list:

 

[NotMyFault]

Really interesting phenomena.

After getting hit by "flood fill", the fill layer transform into a kind of zombie state, hybrid of pixel and fill layer: Using the move tool, a kind of (formerly inherent) mask becomes movable. If you reduce its size, the old fill starts reveling.

Using channels, you can see that the alpha channel got changed to a lower opacity, but all color / fill tools become incapacitated to change alpha.

Using spare channels you can.

 

Update:

What happening is quite simple.

• Using flood fill you will impact the inherent mask of the fill layer - and the fill color.
• Based on blend formula and probably the open bug mentioned earlier (afp-4633), the opacity gets reduced. Lets see which formula gets used.
• The new opacity values is stored for every pixel in the mask.
• Further Flood fill will again impact the implicit mask, and further reduce opacity.

PS:

• The (unwanted) impact on alpha happens even if "edit alpha" is disabled in channels panel. This alone is a severe bug.

Edited October 5, 2021 by NotMyFault

[DM1]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

If you were to click the layer to apply the tool, I think you'd see an immediate color change.

You’re right Walt. Tapping Flood fill effects the Alpha fill layer turning it grey. Making the colour somewhat opaque.

54 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

What happening is quite simple.

• Using flood fill you will impact the inherent mask of the fill layer - and the fill color.

In the channel studio the Fill Alpha layer turns grey after tapping the Flood fill tool. Tapping on the Fill Alpha layer menu icon, then selecting Fill option, restores the Alpha, fixing the colour.

[NotMyFault]

To summarize:

• Flood Fill applied to Fill Layer results in erroneous impact to inherent mask / reduction of opacity.
• According to MEB, Flood Fill applied to Fill Layer results in erroneous impact to fill color. Only alpha should be impacted.
• For me this is a bug, probably a consequence of the underlying bug

 

[MEB]

This is working as intended with one caveat which is a side effect/omission of the current implementation: the Flood Fill Tool allows you to select a color from the Colors panel when a Fill Layer is selected where eventually it should only allow you to pick a greyscale value which is then used to set the alpha for the layer as its currently doing (see my last comment/phrase below for details where i compare it with the Paint Brush tool). You don't actually need to click on canvas nor should use the Flood Fill Tool to change the color of a Fill Layer - using the Colour panel with the Fill layer selected is enough. The issue/confusion is coming from the fact that as soon as you try to pick a color to set the alpha for the selected Fill Layer, the color of the Fill layer itself changes automatically which is the undesired effect here.

Raster based tools as the Flood Fill Tool (or the Paint Brush Tool for that matter) can only be used to affect the alpha of the Fill Layers - in this regard Fill Layers behave and work exactly like regular masks or built-in live adjustments/filters masks. Typically if you select a regular mask layer, Affinity Photo displays the greyscale palette - you can still change the colour format if you wish to set the grey value in other way but since it's a mask layer you are only able to change the alpha no matter the colour format you select to do it. The issue comes from the fact that you can't actually choose the color to set for the alpha because it gets automatically applied to the Fill Layer as soon as you pick the color.
 

4 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

...

Using channels, you can see that the alpha channel got changed to a lower opacity, but all color / fill tools become incapacitated to change alpha.

Using spare channels you can.

...

This is not correct. If you want to restore the original alpha value of the Fill layer, make sure the Fill Layer is selected, select the Flood Fill Tool, pick white for the colour and click on the canvas. The white colour will fill the alpha channel and restore the opacity of the fill layer to 100% - of course this process will also change the colour of the Fill Layer itself to white which is the undesired side effect i mentioned above. To avoid this you can use the Paint Brush Tool instead - here you can set the colour to white whiteout affecting the Fill Layer's colour -, then paint the whole layer with it to set the alpha to 100%. This is the behaviour the Flood Fill Tool should also inherit.

I'm logging this to be looked at.

[NotMyFault]

Ah the other way round. Alpha is intended, hue is unwanted.

 

 

[NotMyFault]

2 hours ago, MEB said:

Raster based tools as the Flood Fill Tool (or the Paint Brush Tool for that matter) can only be used to affect the alpha of the Fill Layers - in this regard Fill Layers behave and work exactly like regular masks or built-in live adjustments/filters masks.

Ok, understood.

Follow-up question: It seems they react different to input of channels panel (tested on both iPad windows)

• When you disable edit on red channel (via channels panel), raster based tools do not show any effect to fill layers (alpha channel)
• When you enable edit on red channel (via channels panel), raster based tools fully show effect to fill layers (alpha channel)
• Adjustments and filters ignore channels panel settings completely

1. This is a bit by surprise, normally i would expect that the channels panel alpha edit setting (and not red channel) should influence this.
2. Masks, Adjustments and filters layer do not depend on channels panel (ignores it completely)

 

 

PS: Sorry, can't delete the empty table below