Brushes and History are not saved when I close a document in Affinity Photo 2

[SusB]

I love the fact that the brushes now appear with the layers, but why are they gone when I save the document and reopen it? How can I make them stay? The same happens with History. Everytime I repopen a document, the history starts anew. Help!

[walt.farrell]

For the History: You need to enable File > Save History with Document before you perform the Save operation.

But unfortunately, that will not help with your Brush question. It seems that the information about which brushes were used on a layer is not kept with the document when it's closed and reopened. Perhaps that will come later as an improvement, but it's tricky to implement because between the time you Save/Close the document, and you reopen it, the brush(es) you used might have been deleted or renamed or their definitions might have changed. So for each brush stroke it would need to save the complete brush information to the file. This would, of course, significantly increase the file size.

(By the way, that significant increase in file size is also true if you save the History with the file. So you may want to be aware of that if you choose to enable that option.)

[SusB]

Thanks so much, Walt. Do I need to "Save History with Document" just once for a document or do I need to do it every time I save?

Darn about the brushes! I really use that fuction. Do you have a trick for keeping track of which brushes you use with the various layers?

[walt.farrell]

11 hours ago, SusB said:

Do I need to "Save History with Document" just once for a document or do I need to do it every time I save?

Every time you Open or create the document, I think.

11 hours ago, SusB said:

Do you have a trick for keeping track of which brushes you use with the various layers?

Take notes somewhere?

[R C-R]

17 hours ago, SusB said:

Do you have a trick for keeping track of which brushes you use with the various layers?

Since a single pixel layer could have hundreds of brush strokes, each with different attributes, it would be almost impossible for you to keep track of all of them. Consider for instance that with a pressure sensitive input device like a drawing tablet, a single brush stroke could have a dozen different attributes.

IOW, it would be more or less like trying to keep track of how each brush stroke was made using real brushes on a real canvas.

[SusB]

All good points! Thanks!

[thomaso]

15 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Since a single pixel layer could have hundreds of brush strokes, each with different attributes, it would be almost impossible for you to keep track of all of them. Consider for instance that with a pressure sensitive input device like a drawing tablet, a single brush stroke could have a dozen different attributes.

Aren't each of the single brush stroke properties saved in the document history anyway and allow to go back and forward in the history as long the document is opened?

So it appears to be rather a problem of interface design to make such info accessible again at any later time. Optional even without the need to save the entire history with the document but for selected properties only, … or develop such a feature for certain object types only (vector brushes) at first.

26 minutes ago, R C-R said:

IOW, it would be more or less like trying to keep track of how each brush stroke was made using real brushes on a real canvas.

Hardly. The digital interface of digital brushes on a digital canvas definitely do know all the required data already – and store them in the "Undo" history. And with their data for pressure, they are even easier to reproduce exactly than analogue brushstrokes ever would be. (… unless the get digitised and reproduced as 3D-print).
Occasionally it happens in real live that I notice me thinking "command-Z" when a sudden action of mine caused unwanted results, e.g. broken crockery.

[walt.farrell]

7 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Aren't each of the single brush stroke properties saved in the document history anyway and allow to go back and forward in the history as long the document is opened?

No. Brush strokes are recorded in History. Changes to brush properties aren't.

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Aren't each of the single brush stroke properties saved in the document history anyway and allow to go back and forward in the history as long the document is opened?

The OP asked about brush strokes being saved when closing the document.

11 minutes ago, thomaso said:

The digital interface of digital brushes on a digital canvas definitely do know all the required data already – and store them in the "Undo" history.

If by "Undo history" you mean what is stored in the History panel then like Walt said, the changes to brush properties are not saved. Plus, in AD V2 there isn't even an Undo brush or any way to set a history step to use with that missing brush type.

[thomaso]

12 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

No. Brush strokes are recorded in History. Changes to brush properties aren't.

For a vector brush stroke I get entries in the Undo history for "Set Line Pressure" or "Set linestyle".

Also single pixel brush strokes on a pixel layer get each a single entry in the Undo history (… though I can't judge whether pixel strokes get stored as pixel values only, without their creating property data).

9 minutes ago, R C-R said:

If by "Undo history" you mean what is stored in the History panel then like Walt said, the changes to brush properties are not saved. Plus, in AD V2 there isn't

You know, I replied to your comparison "would be more or less like trying to like keep track of how each brush stroke was made using real brushes on a real canvas.", which in fact doesn't compare well with digital painting – regardless of what the app currently makes accessible or reproducible.

[R C-R]

5 minutes ago, thomaso said:

You know, I replied to your comparison "would be more or less like trying to like keep track of how each brush stroke was made using real brushes on a real canvas.", which in fact doesn't compare well with digital painting – regardless of what the app currently makes accessible or reproducible.

Imagine a real canvas painted with 10,000 or more brush strokes, some using small, fine tipped soft brushes, others made with large brushes with stiff bristles, & maybe a few sponge brushes & so on. Each of them could be made using different pressures that varied as the stroke was applied. Even if a digital app could keep track of all of that, image how hard it would be for a human to sort through each of them to find the one used for a particular brush stroke, which could well be partially overlapping others and/or painted with different paint opacities & blended with other strokes in the same part of the canvas.

Plus, of course, in digital apps there can be multiple pixel layers & other layer types in the same project, all blended together to create the final image.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Even if a digital app could keep track of all of that, image how hard it would be for a human to sort through each of them to find the one used for a particular brush stroke,

This is why I said it is a matter of the interface, how the brush property data for a certain stroke gets accessible and gets presented to the user. I don't see a technical reason why it would not be possible to develop such a feature for digital paintings. And, as said, it could be developed first for specific aspects only and would not necessarily have to cover every possible aspect of creation of every pixel displayed on the screen while working to enable the user to re-create a certain brush stroke. Again, just consider the complexity of 3D-printed objects that is possible nowadays. They are created from purely digital data into purely physical objects with shape, texture, colour and material properties. – Your concern/comparison sounds to me like, "A car will never work for transportation because it has no legs and cannot eat."

[Old Bruce]

14 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I don't see a technical reason why it would not be possible to develop such a feature for digital paintings.

Perfectly possible. But I won't sort through the 200,000 +/- brush strokes to find the first one that I put on a particular area of a canvas. And then hunt for the brush stroke(s) that slightly overlaps its position, altering the original colour as well as the new one.

Back in the day I spent a lot of time putting down watercolour pigments on paper in order to get to know how that medium works. Heavily loaded, light touch, and slowly across the paper. Then alter those three things time and again and take notice of the different results.

[R C-R]

55 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Perfectly possible. But I won't sort through the 200,000 +/- brush strokes to find the first one that I put on a particular area of a canvas. And then hunt for the brush stroke(s) that slightly overlaps its position, altering the original colour as well as the new one.

Yes, technically possible but totally useless if the goal is to identify what brush stroke(s) were used on some area of the canvas & duplicate its appearance elsewhere.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

I won't sort through the 200,000 +/- brush strokes to find the first one that I put on a particular area of a canvas. And then hunt for the brush stroke(s) that slightly overlaps its position,

14 minutes ago, R C-R said:

totally useless if the goal is to identify what brush stroke(s) were used on some area of the canvas & duplicate its appearance elsewhere.

Currently we are able to pick the colour of an area in an image of a few million pixels to use this colour somewhere else. And we don't complain "Oh, there are so many pixels in so many colours!"

Same for text characters with a specific pattern in a document of thousands. Or a specific URL we used months ago in our browser, or a specific place on earth we didn't even know its name before. There are thousands of common uses of databases that contain a huge number of entries that may feel useless until we get an interface for efficient access. And we can have hundreds of fonts installed, colour swatches created, brushes imported to choose from in their panels ... or in the canvas. – Only for brushes you can't imagine choosing one from the canvas?

[R C-R]

36 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Currently we are able to pick the colour of an area in an image of a few million pixels to use this colour somewhere else. And we don't complain "Oh, there are so many pixels in so many colours!"

Same for text characters with a specific pattern in a document of thousands. Or a specific URL we used months ago in our browser, or a specific place on earth we didn't even know its name before. There are thousands of common uses of databases that contain a huge number of entries that may feel useless until we get an interface for efficient access. And we can have hundreds of fonts installed, colour swatches created, brushes imported to choose from in their panels ... or in the canvas. – Only for brushes you can't imagine choosing one from the canvas?

What does any of that have to do with identifying what brush stroke(s) were used on some area of the canvas & duplicate its appearance elsewhere?

[thomaso]

14 hours ago, R C-R said:

What does any of that have to do with identifying what brush stroke(s) were used on some area of the canvas & duplicate its appearance elsewhere?

That has to do with handling large amounts of data through an interface that prevents users from being overwhelmed by the amount of all possible values – as some seem to fear when the parameters for each existing brush stroke respectively its initially selected brush in the Brushes panel could become accessible for the creation of new brush strokes. So, in Affinity that is about the accessibility of parameters of formerly created objects and the reusability of these parameters for new ones. For instance …

• For each individual text glyph among many thousands in a document, a formerly assigned text style gets mentioned as soon it gets selected at any later time and, if applicable, gets automatically selected / highlighted in the Text Styles panel.

• For every single colour of all vector objects in a document, a possibly assigned Colour Swatch is highlighted in the Swatches panel palette when the object is selected and can immediately be reused for new objects. For pixel objects, there are the Colour Picker Tools to make one colour among many thousands of an image available for reuse in new objects.

• For each individual brush stroke ... a corresponding interface could also be available – and of course be used selectively and only by those users who do not feel overwhelmed by that extended possibilities. A simple start could be to highlight that brush in the Brushes panel / display the brushes name on which an existing brush stroke is based.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, thomaso said:

• For each individual brush stroke ... a corresponding interface could also be available – and of course be used selectively and only by those users who do not feel overwhelmed by that extended possibilities. A simple start could be to highlight that brush in the Brushes panel / display the brushes name on which an existing brush stroke is based.

What do you mean? Any area of a pixel layer could have many different brush strokes applied, so if the goal is to be able to duplicate the look of that area somewhere else on the canvas (or in a different document) what is the point of a UI that lists all of what could hundreds or thousands of strokes that might have been used to create that look. the area might be of any shape or extent -- it does not have to be rectilinear or circular or any other particular shape, so for example just using the color picker to sample the area won't help.

So again, it isn't about if it is technically possible; it is about if there is any point in implementing it.

[thomaso]

25 minutes ago, R C-R said:

it is about if there is any point in implementing it.

What do you mean? – At least for vector brush strokes it is as useful as for colour or text. A possibly large number of results within a document is definitely no reason to avoid its implementation. Especially the current solution for text is interesting, because it not only highlights an initially used saved style in the Text Style panel but also lists every single deviation at the top of this panel.

Of course, it is up to you to make use of such a options. But there is no point in pointing out repeatedly in a thread asking for the option that you would not use it.

In case you still are interested to understand the sense of such an option you can continue or restart in one of the existing feature request threads about brush handling, for instance this one, where you already mentioned your disagreement, not understanding, not being sure or not seeing much use in several of your posts:

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, thomaso said:

What do you mean? – At least for vector brush strokes it is as useful as for colour or text.

I mean that I have repeatedly mentioned that this would not be useful for pixel layers because any part of one of them could have hundreds or thousands of brush strokes applied, including many where their attributes change during the application of the stroke. It has nothing to do with text, vector, or quick shape layers.

[thomaso]

3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I have repeatedly mentioned that this would not be useful for pixel layers

That's the problem. The first sentence of this thread says:

On 1/14/2023 at 1:00 AM, SusB said:

I love the fact that the brushes now appear with the layers

… which does neither mention nor focus on pixel layers nor exclude any other layer type.
– While you and your first reply limited it down to pixel layers (for no much use :•)

On 1/14/2023 at 7:08 PM, R C-R said:

Since a single pixel layer could have hundreds of brush strokes,

… then adding your real brush on real canvas comparison, which reduced the usefulness of the limited view additionally.

All right, I'll leave this now that it's been cleared up.

[walt.farrell]

44 minutes ago, thomaso said:

… which does neither mention nor focus on pixel layers nor exclude any other layer type.

But pixel brushes and pixel layers are implied/assumed, as it's only pixel brushes that provide the function being discussed.

[R C-R]

26 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

But pixel brushes and pixel layers are implied/assumed, as it's only pixel brushes that provide the function being discussed.

Exactly! Refer to the very first sentence of the OP:

On 1/13/2023 at 6:00 PM, SusB said:

I love the fact that the brushes now appear with the layers...

 

[Old Bruce]

I may use one brush to Paint, the same brush to Dodge, Smudge and erase bits. Each action puts a Brush into the Pixel layer.  I may use several different brushes to do each those four things. Then there are different colours I use to paint with different Blend modes. So let us now include what tool was used for each brush and the associated pressures. But I also need to know the area(s) of the Pixel layer that this was used on.  Quite quickly the number of entries for one Pixel layer would multiply into thousands of relatively verbose entries. As my sister would say "Gack!"

I would have a hell of a time sorting through all the entries to find the relevant information for the little area I want to emulate in another document.

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, Old Bruce said:

I would have a hell of a time sorting through all the entries to find the relevant information for the little area I want to emulate in another document.

Plus, it could add a lot of size to the file, even more than saving the document with its history does now.