All brushes have hard edges and low opacity centres. Unsure how to change?

[Tim Proctor]

I turned on my pc today and found that all my brushes do as per what is in the photo. Does anyone know how to change this back to just normal opacity? I can't draw using this as it ruins the colour.

[Komatös]

Hi, @Tim Proctorand welcome to the forums.

Click on the  to show more options and untick "Wet edges"

[h_d]

Also check the blend mode of the brush.

 

Resetting it to Normal may help.

[iconoclast]

And also check the "Hardness": "100%" means "hard edge".

But hard edges and low opacity centers normally are caused by "Wet Edges". I'm not sure if it is the way it should be, but I noticed that after I worked with a brush that has wet edges as standard setting, also other brushes start with wet edges, even if they don't have this as standard setting. Possibly a bug, but I'm not sure.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, iconoclast said:

but I noticed that after I worked with a brush that has wet edges as standard setting, also other brushes start with wet edges, even if they don't have this as standard setting. Possibly a bug

Probably not a bug.

Brushes have 3 settings for Wet Edges (and some other settings). Specifically for Wet Edges, a brush designer can specify:

1. Set Wet Edges off.
2. Set Wet Edges on.
3. Leave Wet Edges as it was last set, by another brush or by the user.

#3 often surprises users, but it is the brush designer's choice.

There is also a "brush sharing" setting in the Assistant Manager that can be set to allow different Brush-based tools to share some settings, and Wet Edges is one of them. That lets settings be shared when you switch from, say, the Brush Tool to the Erase Brush Tool, and some others. You can set that to do "smart" sharing of the settings, full sharing, or no sharing, and sometimes that will help clear up issues related to Wet Edges.

[iconoclast]

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Probably not a bug.

Brushes have 3 settings for Wet Edges (and some other settings). Specifically for Wet Edges, a brush designer can specify:

1. Set Wet Edges off.
2. Set Wet Edges on.
3. Leave Wet Edges as it was last set, by another brush or by the user.

#3 often surprises users, but it is the brush designer's choice.

There is also a "brush sharing" setting in the Assistant Manager that can be set to allow different Brush-based tools to share some settings, and Wet Edges is one of them. That lets settings be shared when you switch from, say, the Brush Tool to the Erase Brush Tool, and some others. You can set that to do "smart" sharing of the settings, full sharing, or no sharing, and sometimes that will help clear up issues related to Wet Edges.

Hi Walt!

Yes, I saw those three options. But the difference between 1. and 3. wasn't clear to me. So as far as I understand, if you change the brush to one where 1. is activated in the brush editor, the wet edges setting (or not) of the brush you used before will be inherited. On first start the brush will have no wet edges. If you choose a brush with 3. activated, the wet edges will always be deactivated for that certain brush, unless you activate it actively. That makes sense. And also this options in the Assistent Manager... Thanks for your explanations! Very helpfull.

 

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

So as far as I understand, if you change the brush to one where 1. is activated in the brush editor, the wet edges setting (or not) of the brush you used before will be inherited.

No. If you change to a brush which sets Wet Edges off, they are off. What you described there is setting 3, "don't set Wet Edges".

 

4 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

On first start the brush will have no wet edges.

Yes, because the setting is "off".

5 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

If you choose a brush with 3. activated, the wet edges will always be deactivated for that certain brush, unless you activate it actively.

No. Setting 3 will not touch the Wet Edges setting at all. If it was on when you chose the brush, it will remain on. If it was off when you chose the brush, it will remain off.

[carl123]

19 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

On first start the brush will have no wet edges

The last brush used will be remembered whenever you restart APhoto

So, it depends on whether that brush had specifically set wet edges on or off 

and/or if you had changed the wet edges setting manually

[iconoclast]

32 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

No. If you change to a brush which sets Wet Edges off, they are off. What you described there is setting 3, "don't set Wet Edges".

Hm, 1. is the standard setting ("Keine nassen Kanten festlegen" in german, 3. is "Nasse Kanten deaktivieren"). I didn't change these settings until today, but it often happened that brushes, even my own ones (that used the standard setting), kept the wet edges of the brushes I used before. So if I change from a brush with wet edges to a brush with 1. activated, the wet edges should be deactivated? In my case it doesn't. But I will keep an eye on it in the future. Maybe I'm somehow wrong.

[walt.farrell]

11 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

Maybe I'm somehow wrong

No, probably I've confused you. My 1-3 were not meant to show the actual order of the settings you see in Affinity Photo, just the functions that are available. Here's the actual settings from the brush-editing dialog:

So, the actual order is: Don't set, turn on, and turn off (basically the reverse order from my list above). Sorry.

[iconoclast]

9 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

No, probably I've confused you. My 1-3 were not meant to show the actual order of the settings you see in Affinity Photo, just the functions that are available. Here's the actual settings from the brush-editing dialog:

So, the actual order is: Don't set, turn on, and turn off (basically the reverse order from my list above). Sorry.

No problem. I tested it a minute ago and in fact, if I change from a brush with wet edges on to a brush with "Don't set wet edges" (Keine nassen Kanten festlegen) on, the wet edges remain. "Set wet edges off" (Nasse Kanten deaktivieren) deactivates the edges. So no doubt about it, also the german designations of this functions are correct.

Thanks again, you helped me understand. Will help me in the future.