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Hi!  

After 3 years I finally decided to open up Affinity Photo and start to practice (I mainly use Designer and Publisher). There are a couple of road bumps that I cant seem to find the answer too. I am familiar with the brush tool and the basics such as keeping the colours black and white when you are blending to remove or add. 

My issues come when I am trying to add artificial light or highlights using the brush tool. In the example below, I have a Mech in a forest with the city in the back. I was able to blend them in, but I am having troubles adding the highlights from the city onto the edges of the mech and trees. It allows me to paint with any colour but they seem to be very dark. I have no control over the vibrance of the highlight or the contrast. I only have control over colour and opacity. Could it because whatever i am paining on a mech that already has adjustment? I usually add highlights at the end in Photoshop!

Q1: If I wanted to add a very thin or thick glow / highlight on the mech from the city, how would I do that?

Q2: Recolouring seems to have this obvious separation where the blends happened. How to fix?  (blue shows through red)

Q3: When I am changing the exposure, shadows or light on the mech it selects the entire project even though I specifically click the single masked mech. I then have to copy the adjustment and paste to group only the mech. Is there a fast way of only selecting mech and not the forest?

 

Hope someone has an answer! Also, great community and great software. I've been more than satisfied for the last 3 years and I rarely have to come on here to look for solutions. :)

Screen Shot 2022-01-03 at 10.08.46 PM.png

Screen Shot 2022-01-03 at 10.08.29 PM.png

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On 1/4/2022 at 6:31 AM, Nino Šore said:

It allows me to paint with any colour but they seem to be very dark. I have no control over the vibrance of the highlight or the contrast. I only have control over colour and opacity. Could it because whatever i am paining on a mech that already has adjustment?

If I understand correctly, you actually paint your character.
I would do this separately on a new pixel layer.

On 1/4/2022 at 6:31 AM, Nino Šore said:

Q1: If I wanted to add a very thin or thick glow / highlight on the mech from the city, how would I do that?

I think you can add your highlights by adding shadows.

First, make a selection of your character and fill it with any colour on a new pixel layer. It doesn't matter what color you choose as we'll make it invisible. We only need the shape.
Also take note of a colour representing your moon. #C1D5E1 looks good to me.

Second, add a layer fx do make your edge glow.
If there are areas where you don't want glow, just add a mask.

select.jpg.ffea5632b11c2d3dec7b008c7027287b.jpg

I used this settings for the layer fx.

fx_diag.png.1c19a6d001f295b37a60144122d41a47.png

Play with the fx settings. I'm sure you'll do a better job than me.
I dont have enough experience with layer fx.

Hope this helps.

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5 hours ago, Lisbon said:

If I understand correctly, you actually paint your character.
I would do this separately on a new pixel layer.

I think you can add your highlights by adding shadows.

First, make a selection of your character and fill it with any colour on a new pixel layer. It doesn't matter what color you choose as we'll make it invisible. We only need the shape.
Also take note of a colour representing your moon. #C1D5E1 looks good to me.

Second, add a layer fx do make your edge glow.
If there are areas where you don't want glow, just add a mask.

select.jpg.ffea5632b11c2d3dec7b008c7027287b.jpg

I used this settings for the layer fx.

fx_diag.png.1c19a6d001f295b37a60144122d41a47.png

Play with the fx settings. I'm sure you'll do a better job than me.
I dont have enough experience with layer fx.

Hope this helps.

Hey! Thanks for the reply.

The mech was already cut and masked from his original photo. I put him in the forest  (just for more clarification). The blue highlight you see on him reflecting from the city and moon was as bright as it allowed me to make it. Not sure why. I only have control over colour and opacity.

Yes, the FX and adjustment layers do work to an extent but they limit you to the mask.  What I am talking about is manually drawing in the highlights like in photoshop using the brush for more creativity and control. I also want to add the neon blue from the mech illuminating the trees and his surrounding. But I am having the same issue. When I select brush and start painting over, the colours are really dark almost like there is no glow at all. 

Shadows FX work fine!

The photo below is as bright as I am able to go using the brush regardless of what colour I choose... :(

Screen Shot 2022-01-05 at 3.26.24 PM.png

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OK. So if the fx layer works, I suspect there must be a problem with the brush settings.

Open the brush studio (View > Studio > Brushes) and select a "Basic" brush.

BasicBrush.png.f0596be25d120d90a695fb7da50f98ef.png

Check if your Paint Brush Tool is set to normal. Depending on your screen, this option may be hidden at the end.

Normal.png.83d19907ea5f8a060237a21ec1376b8e.png

If this doesn't work, maybe you should upload your file.

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On 1/6/2022 at 9:15 AM, Lisbon said:

OK. So if the fx layer works, I suspect there must be a problem with the brush settings.

Open the brush studio (View > Studio > Brushes) and select a "Basic" brush.

BasicBrush.png.f0596be25d120d90a695fb7da50f98ef.png

Check if your Paint Brush Tool is set to normal. Depending on your screen, this option may be hidden at the end.

Normal.png.83d19907ea5f8a060237a21ec1376b8e.png

If this doesn't work, maybe you should upload your file.

Hi again! So I believe I've figured out the issue but still don't know a work around - (still new at this). The reason the brush colour is dimmed is because I am trying to paint on a mask that has adjustments and filters. Once I remove the adjustments the colour is nice and bright. When the masked mech layer is deselected and I select the forest background, the brush paints perfectly however it only paints the background and not the mech layer. 

Is there a way of creating a layer on top of the mech that wont interfere with adjustments when a brush is used?

 

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Can't you just add a New Pixel Layer above your mesh? I'm assuming the mesh you're referring to is a mesh Layer. Just make sure the mesh layer is selected in the Layers Panel, then press the New Pixel Layer button, and it should be added just above your mesh.

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