maikm Posted September 22, 2023 Share Posted September 22, 2023 Hi, I'm trying to use a soft masking brush with black on a layer mask. Basic operation really. I've done this many times, but the brush keeps having a hard edge even with hardness set to 0%. The black circle here (the brush cursor) should really have a soft edge: And when I change the color to white, another strange effect happens. This is what painting with white on the same layer mask looks like when I draw a zigzag pattern (for illustration): I have no explanation for this weird behaviour and could not find anything by googling or searching these forums for it. Maik Affinity Photo v2.2.0 on macOS 13.6, M1Max MBP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted September 22, 2023 Share Posted September 22, 2023 We would need a full screen recording, plus the edited file, saved with history to reproduce. check you brush settings, including „more“ settings. check specifically wet edges, blend mode, protect alpha, color, color transparency, layer transparency. any time you think a brush mis-behaves: Start screen recording the full edit session add a pixel layer set pixel layer to solo mode / isolation mode use the brush to make some strokes. Inspect this layer carefully. create a new document (rgb/8, reasonable size below 4K), repeat. save all documents incl. history. try again, select a basic round brush of 16 or 32 px Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. My posts focus on technical aspects and leave out most of social grease like „maybe“, „in my opinion“, „I might be wrong“ etc. just add copy/paste all these softeners from this signature to make reading more comfortable for you. Otherwise I’m a fine person which respects you and everyone and wants to be respected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted September 22, 2023 Share Posted September 22, 2023 Add your full list of device specs. Mac or PC, external tablet, mouse, …. OS and patch level. All details matter. Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. My posts focus on technical aspects and leave out most of social grease like „maybe“, „in my opinion“, „I might be wrong“ etc. just add copy/paste all these softeners from this signature to make reading more comfortable for you. Otherwise I’m a fine person which respects you and everyone and wants to be respected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maikm Posted September 22, 2023 Author Share Posted September 22, 2023 Ok, I didn't want to use my actual current file, as thats multiple GBytes, so I created a small new one, and discovered that this problem is specific to the way I created it. Here is how to reproduce: Start with File/New Stack Select any two images and create the stack Select the top image in the layers panel and create a mask on it Select a soft brush, black color, and start painting on the mask Attached is a screen recording of me doing that, along with the sample document after creating the stack. Notice the hard edges of the black brush, as well as the strange rim around the white brush after I changed color. At the end of the recording, I pull the layers out of the stack group, and then things return to working as I expected. MacBook Pro 16" M1Max, 64 GB RAM, 4 TB SSD, using a standard Apple mouse, macOS 13.6, Affinity Photo 2.2.0. afphoto_stack.mp4 StackExample.afphoto NotMyFault 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted September 22, 2023 Share Posted September 22, 2023 Masks in a Stack Group are always hard-edged, by design, according to this old post from a Serif staff member: I haven't been able to find any documentation about that. maikm and NotMyFault 2 Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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