New pixel layers won't accept brushstrokes

[AJS]

I was trying out a Huion Kamvas 16 with Affinity Photo when I discovered this issue. At first I thought it was related to the tablet, but I have reproduced the bug after a restart with the tablet not plugged in. I'm using Windows 11 on a Dell with an 11th gen Intel i7-11700 @ 2.50 Ghz and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti.

I started a new Photo file to try out brushstrokes. Affinity automatically supplied a pixel layer to draw on. I saw "Add pixel" and then "Paint Brush Tool" show up in the History. No brush strokes appeared on the layer. I created a new pixel layer myself. Again, "Add pixel" and "Paint Brush Tool" showed up in the History when I did those things, but nothing appeared on the new layer. Changing colors and brushes didn't help. The History kept showing each time I used the Paint Brush Tool, but no output appeared in the document.

I then used the Flood Fill tool to fill the layer with white. The brush strokes became visible on the white-filled layer. However, a new empty pixel layer would not show brush strokes.

Again, this happened the first time while using a tablet, but I shut down, unplugged the tablet, restarted and tried again with a mouse, and encountered the same bug behaving exactly the same way.

I'm attaching two files, the first file that had the bug and another bugged document created after eliminating the tablet as a factor.

Another lesser issue which may or may not be related: I changed the Flow of the currently selected brush, and the highlight showing which brush was selected just disappeared. The brush was still selected, the visual indicator was just gone. It doesn't hurt functionality but it is annoying. I'm using Photo in the Dark UI style, if that makes a difference.

 

While I'm at it, the "verify you're a human" reCAPTCHA on the Create New Topic page expires, so it should really be BELOW the input window, so that I don't follow the current order of elements on the page and complete the reCAPTCHA first, start writing my bug report, and then have the thing expire so I have to complete the reCAPTCHA again.

what-is-going-on-with-top-two-layers.afphoto another-buggy-file-no-tablet.afphoto

[walt.farrell]

7 hours ago, AJS said:

Affinity automatically supplied a pixel layer to draw on. I saw "Add pixel" and then "Paint Brush Tool" show up in the History. No brush strokes appeared on the layer. I created a new pixel layer myself. Again, "Add pixel" and "Paint Brush Tool" showed up in the History when I did those things, but nothing appeared on the new layer.

One common cause of that is having the Protect Alpha option enabled in the Context Toolbar.

7 hours ago, AJS said:

Another lesser issue which may or may not be related: I changed the Flow of the currently selected brush, and the highlight showing which brush was selected just disappeared. The brush was still selected, the visual indicator was just gone. It doesn't hurt functionality but it is annoying. I'm using Photo in the Dark UI style, if that makes a difference.

Not related. The Brushes panels basically lets you select a "brush preset", a brush which has a certain set of categories (size, hardness, flow, accumulation, various jitter settings, etc.) The brush preset you've chosen is highlighted. However, as soon as you make any change to the brush's characteristics, you are no longer using that preset. And since you're not using it, the highlight is removed.

Many users have complained about that.

[NathanC]

Hi @AGS,

As Walt mentioned this is likely the 'Protect Alpha' setting enabled on the context toolbar with the brush tool selected, as after i've opened your file with this option enabled i've ran into this issue as the option prevents painting onto a layer's transparent areas.

If you're still having problems with this option unchecked, perhaps you could provide a recording demonstrating your issue.

[AJS]

It does look like Protect Alpha was the issue. Missed that! The Protect Alpha checkbox isn't visible in my UI without an extra click, and I didn't know it could be enabled in a new file by default.

My new files never used to have Protect Alpha enabled by default, that's why this behavior was so confusing. Any idea what causes Protect Alpha to default to enabled/disabled in a newly created file?

Thanks @walt.farrell and @NathanC for the the help!

[NathanC]

10 minutes ago, AJS said:

My new files never used to have Protect Alpha enabled by default, that's why this behavior was so confusing. Any idea what causes Protect Alpha to default to enabled/disabled in a newly created file?

You should be able to globally save your brush settings for future documents by going to edit > defaults > save

[AJS]

Thanks, I'll do that!

While I'm here, completely separate question, but you've been helpful, so you probably know this too: how do I move multiple brushes between categories? I just imported around 150 brushes and they automatically imported into around 25 categories, very inconvenient. I'm trying to organize them all into four categories but I'm having trouble finding out how to select multiple brushes. Or is there a way to import the brushes into the same category to begin with? All I can find in the forums from Serif on this is a dev note from 2019 saying 'For now you have to move brushes one at a time, we hope to fix this soon!'