strutzj Posted November 23, 2021 Posted November 23, 2021 Affinity novice here. I'm having trouble painting on a mask applied to one of a five layer stack. Each image in the stack features different lighting and I want to bring out some, but not all, of the lighting features of one layer. To do this I should be able to apply a mask, invert it, and paint white over the areas I want to feature. But it has no effect. Sorry, I tried twice to upload my .afphoto file but the server failed. Does this have anything to do with the order of the layers in the stack? Thanks for any help. Quote
Old Bruce Posted November 23, 2021 Posted November 23, 2021 Do you have a basic brush chosen? Is it using 100% opacity, flow and hardness? Yes the order of the layers matters. Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 Affinity Designer 2.5.7 | Affinity Photo 2.5.7 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.7 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.
Staff MEB Posted November 23, 2021 Staff Posted November 23, 2021 Hi @strutzj, Welcome to Affinity Forums Also check if you have Protect Alpha ticked in the context toolbar with the Paint Brush Tool selected. If so untick it. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software
walt.farrell Posted November 23, 2021 Posted November 23, 2021 I wonder if it's related to this: Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.3, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1
strutzj Posted November 23, 2021 Author Posted November 23, 2021 Okay, I had the parent layer switched off so any painting had no effect. Sorry, I'm a novice. However, I played around with one, two and five layer stacks while masking individual layers and varying opaqueness, hardness and flow and saw some of the effects that were identified in the linked thread (thank you for that, it helped me understand all this better). With one layer, opaqueness, hardness and flow all worked perfectly except that I could paint in or out only transparency - because there was just one layer. With two and five layers, opaqueness would not work below 100%, and edges were always hard no matter the setting. Unless I'm doing something wrong, which is entirely possible, the software appears to not to be working right in this area. Quote
walt.farrell Posted November 23, 2021 Posted November 23, 2021 13 minutes ago, strutzj said: With two and five layers, opaqueness would not work below 100%, and edges were always hard no matter the setting. Unless I'm doing something wrong, which is entirely possible, the software appears to not to be working right in this area. Isn't that exactly what my linked thread said is "the way it's supposed to work"? Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.3, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1
strutzj Posted November 23, 2021 Author Posted November 23, 2021 The explanation given for this is "Stacks only support hard alpha - ie. on or off.. Partial alpha makes no sense in most stack operators. This is why you are shown a 'hard edge' in this mask". Admittedly, I don't understand this - the term "alpha" or the explanation. Further, it was stated "However, I just went back to the original image and found out that "releasing" the Live Group shows the soft brush. So the mask is actually soft edged but it just won't display it while the live group is active. The workflow would be to right-click and release the group and then continue masking". Okay, I played around with this and discovered that "releasing" a layer separates it from the stack. True enough, I can then apply a mask and the opaqueness, flow and hardness functions all work as expected. But the context to the rest of the stack has been lost and so any adjustments made to the mask is done in isolation. This doesn't seem like a good workaround. In my primitive thinking, a mask is associated with a layer and not the entire stack, so any adjustments made to the mask should work the same in one layer or a stack of layers. Quote
walt.farrell Posted November 23, 2021 Posted November 23, 2021 9 minutes ago, strutzj said: In my primitive thinking, a mask is associated with a layer and not the entire stack, so any adjustments made to the mask should work the same in one layer or a stack of layers. You need to understand and distinguish between: A stack of layers, such as you normally see in the Layers panel, and might get using File > Place or Edit > Paste to add additional images to your project; and A Live Stack Group such as you get using File > New Stack. A stack from (1) works as you expect. A stack from (2) involves additional work to composite the images together, such as shown in this screenshot showing some of the options you have with a Live Stack Group: From that other discussion, masks for layers that are part of a Live Stack Group are hard edged, and are either fully transparent or fully opaque. Any partial transparency (as would be required for softness of the mask) would interfere with those operations (Median, Outlier, etc.) that are the reason for using a Live Stack Group. Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.3, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1
R C-R Posted November 23, 2021 Posted November 23, 2021 2 hours ago, strutzj said: Admittedly, I don't understand this - the term "alpha" or the explanation. In this context "alpha" means transparency, so "hard alpha" means either completely transparent or completely opaque; IOW, on or off with nothing in between. walt.farrell 1 Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.5.7 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 All 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.