Certain things sometimes do nothing in Affinity Photo

[Steve Bishop]

I'm having trouble making certain functions work in Affinity Photo.  Sometimes they work.  Sometimes they don't.

I'm using an M1 MacBook Pro, and there are occasions when I'll invoke a command or a brush or try to do something, and the image is unaffected.

For example, I can select the Stamp tool, and mark the stamp source with the crosshair.  But then, sometimes the brush shows a preview and works fine; and sometimes I just get the outline of the brush with nothing inside.  Same with the healing brush.  Sometimes it works the way its described in the documentation, and sometimes I just get no response from the software.

Or sometimes I'll open an ARW raw file, and while developing, changing the contrast or the brightness or whatever has no effect at all.  Not at 0%, not at 100%.  The solution there is to quit Affinity Photo and open the file again.  That helps with that one file.  But it's obnoxious to get through 15 different adjustments only to have the 16th fail to respond and I have to start all over again.

I've attached a screen recording where you can see that I select the Stamp tool, place the source crosshair, but then all I get is an empty cursor.

I suspect (hope) I'm just doing something wrong, and someone here can tell me that I'm just forgetting to push a certain button.  But I've tried everything I can in the app, and all of the online help assumes that everything works as expected.  There is no thought to "What if this doesn't happen?"  

Any thoughts?

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Only one thought at this time: What brush did you choose? You're using the Clone Brush Tool, so the characteristics of the current brush (chosen in the Brushes panel) are important to the results.

[kaffeeundsalz]

I assume with Stamp tool you mean the Clone Brush Tool because that's what you use in your screen recording. At least in your video, the reason why the Clone Brush doesn't work is because you have no active layer so Affinity Photo doesn't know what pixel information to use as a source (and target). You need to select the Background layer in the Layers panel first to get this working.

[Lem3]

For the new user:  "Select the Background layer" means just click the Background layer so it turns blue.  That indicates the active layer.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Lem3 said:

For the new user:  "Select the Background layer" means just click the Background layer so it turns blue.  That indicates the active layer.

Specifically, click on the layer in the Layers panel.

[Steve Bishop]

Thanks, everyone.  The key was to select the layer.  I've been used to Photoshop since the 90's, so it's taking me some time to adjust to a new way of doing things.  (I bet you hear that a lot on this forum.)

My recollection from Photoshop days is that it would automatically select the layer if there was only one.  I think that supposition was the problem.

Still doesn't solve the no-changes-on-load problem.  When that happens again, I'll take another screen video and post a follow-up.

Thanks again.