Brush in / Brush out

[GFS]

This is doubtless a really dumb question ...

 

In Photo, if I do something as basic as use the eraser brush tool to remove part of a pixel (background) layer.  How do I brush it back in?

 

When I try with the paint brush tool, it just paints whatever colour is selected in the colour palette.

[barninga]

the eraser is destructive. you can bring back what you erased only through the undo command (or undo brush).

my advice is that you use add a mask to the layer you want partially erase and paint with black on the mask (click on it to select, first) where you want to hide the layer. this way, you can paint on the mask with white at any time where you want your layer back.

[GFS]

Thanks Stefano.

 

Sigh ... I've managed to avoid Photoshop through many years.  And now it seems if I want to use Affinity Photo ... I have to learn Photoshop.

 

Question:

 

Wasn't making a new app an opportunity to do something smarter?

 

What's wrong with ... Erase with the brush.  Press Option - paint in with the brush?  Or to get really radical, Paint in with brush, Press Option - paint out with the brush?

 

How hard does it need to be?

[barninga]

maybe i don't get the point. do you mean a brush tool that can alternatively paint or erase when used with certain combination of modifier keys?

 

i came to affinity photo from a program that organized its tools in a similar way, having a brush that paints and another brush that erases. this is, i think, mostly a matter of habit. for me, it's harder to remember lots of modifier keys than selecting a different tool from a a toolbox.

 

in these kind of tasks i don't think that photoshop can offer real advantages over affinity photo. the trick is to use non-destructive editing when possible, which means in most cases. coming from the gimp, that doesn't implement non-destructive editing -if not to a limited extent- it took me a little while to understand its benefits and how to take advantage of it, and now i use it all the times.

[GFS]

Yes Stefano.  A brush tool that toggles from brush-in to brush-out with a modifier key. (Like the masking tools in Affinity).

 

It's a simple, intuitive way to work.  You only need to remember one modifier key, because it always toggles the brush, no matter what tool you're using.

 

This is how I've been working (non-destructively) since 1995.

[barninga]

well, not considering habits and personal preferences about tools usability, i am not sure -but i may be wrong- that the editing method you describe is actually non destructive.

if you use the tool as an eraser, you erase parts of the images. then, you switch the tool mode (with a modifier key or whatever) and paint over the area you erased to make it reappear. i think that AP implements this as an undo brush, but this is not the point. let's say that you perform a different kind of editing on the same image, like applying adjustments, and so on.

then, you realize that you'd need to paint back something you erased earlier. i'm not sure that the brush/eraser tool would work... i'd say you need a mask for this, and you paint over the mask, not over the image itself.

[GFS]

Yes I understand Stefano and you're quite right.

 

But I'm used to working in a very old app that doesn't need to make the mask separately.  The brush is the mask.  So it's disappointing to see that progress 20 years later, is not actually progress.  It seems like a missed opportunity for Affinity.  Instead of just copying PS, they could have re-thought some of this stuff.

[barninga]

i got it now. AP works that way with adjustments, you paint black/white directly on the adjustment layer to hide/show it but, as far as i know, a mask is needed to hide/show parts of an image (what in AP is called a pixel layer).

you could suggest an implementation like that in the feature request forum.

[R C-R]

GFS, it sounds to me like what you described as a "brush tool that toggles from brush-in to brush-out" is more of an erase/unerase tool, so to speak. That might be fine for a very simple editing app, but for a full featured one like AP I can't imagine how that would work.

 

To see why, consider that there are many tools available in AP (& PS and most other graphics apps) besides the basic paint brush & eraser like the burn, dodge, blur, sharpen, flood fill (paint bucket), gradient, smudge, & so on tools that can alter the image in dozens of different ways, & they can be applied in any order.

 

So in a typical workflow, an "unerase" or "brush-in" tool would somehow have to provide a method to choose from dozens if not hundreds or thousands of possible previous "brushed out" states.

 

AP does have such a tool: it is the Undo Brush tool that barninga mentioned. To understand how it works, I suggest opening AP's help viewer, typing "undo brush" in the search box, & reading the Undo Brush Tool help topic.