Disable Wet Edges for Eraser Tool on iPadOS

[Mr. Doodlezz]

Hey everyone!

For some reason, every brush I'm using is set to »wet edges« when I select the eraser tool, and I can't find the option to disable it globally for this tool. I don't plan on setting each individual brush to »wet edges off,« as that's super impractical and bothersome. There's a dedicated button in the toolbar for the brush painting tool:

But it's missing for the eraser tool, and according to its behaviour it must have turned on somehow at some point:

Does anyone have any idea? Am I missing something?

Greetings
Dennis

[NotMyFault]

Hi,

it depends on your intended use of brushes wrt wet edges, and what brushes you need to erase.

1. Do you need wet edges for any brush / any tool?
   1. set wet edges to off for all relevant brushes.
2. can you live with the basic round brush for erase?
   1. create a basic round brush, save in a new brush categorie. Set associated tool to erase tool set set edges to off.

i would suggest to

• export your self-crated brushes, and reset brushes. 
• deactive wet edges for all relevant brushes
• the wet edges setting while using erase brush is available under „more“, clicking the small thumbnail of the brush (one left to you red question mark)

[walt.farrell]

If you open the Settings in Photo, and click on Assistant Settings, there's an option for Brush Tip Sharing. It has three values, basically full sharing, smart sharing, and no sharing, and it affects which brush settings are retained when you switch between the various Brush Tools (one of which is the Eraser Brush Tool).

You might play with those settings. Smart or No Sharing may be better for you than All (which I think may be the default).

[Mr. Doodlezz]

42 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Hi,

it depends on your intended use of brushes wrt wet edges, and what brushes you need to erase.

1. Do you need wet edges for any brush / any tool?
   1. set wet edges to off for all relevant brushes.
2. can you live with the basic round brush for erase?
   1. create a basic round brush, save in a new brush categorie. Set associated tool to erase tool set set edges to off.

i would suggest to

• export your self-crated brushes, and reset brushes. 
• deactive wet edges for all relevant brushes
• the wet edges setting while using erase brush is available under „more“, clicking the small thumbnail of the brush (one left to you red question mark)

Thanks, but you outlined the precise steps I'm keen to avoid. 😅

I have no intention of adjusting this for each brush individually. There must be a way to toggle »wet edges« globally for the eraser, similar to what's possible with the paintbrush, as seen in my initial screenshot.

Essentially, I want to utilise the standard soft-edged brush as the eraser. However, it seems the eraser's (hidden?) global settings have switched to »wet edges on,« unless the individual brush has a different preference within its settings (the settings you mention).

Again, I'm not looking to adjust this setting for every single brush. I just need the global »wet edges« setting deactivated.

I've screen captured my current process: Draw using the soft-edged brush without wet edges, then switch to the eraser – exact same brush, 100% opacity – with no option whatsoever to adjust wet edges. Yet, the eraser operates with both transparency and wet edges, even though you should expect it to mirror the paintbrush counterpart just used. Does this make sense?

 

[NotMyFault]

What happens if you deactivate wet edges in the brush settings while erase brush is active?
again, click on the brush thumbnail with 128 below to get to this settings.

no need to do anything global.

[NotMyFault]

[Mr. Doodlezz]

23 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

What happens if you deactivate wet edges in the brush settings

Again, I don’t want to change any individual brush settings, not sure how to articulate this any clearer. 🤔

23 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

no need to do anything global.

Well, I don’t want to change the setting for every individual brush in my 100+ collection. Literally every brush behaves like shown in my video, having wet edges.

So it doesn't matter which brush tip I choose, because almost all brushes come without a specified specification in their settings. And since wet edge is not specifically defined in most standard brushes, the global setting is applied, which, as now mentioned several times, has been activated somewhere for inexplicable reasons.

–––

Noch mal auf deutsch, vielleicht ist das besser nachvollziehbar?

Ich möchte eigentlich keine Einstellungen für jeden einzelnen Pinsel ändern oder Duplikate erstellen, ich bin mir nicht sicher, wie ich es klarer formulieren könnte. 🤔

Also, ich möchte nicht für jeden meiner mehr als 100 Pinsel individuelle Anpassungen vornehmen. Denn wirklich alle zeigen das gleiche Verhalten mit den nassen Kanten, wie in meinem Video.

Es ist also fast egal, welche Pinselspitze ich auswähle, weil bei den meisten Pinseln diese Einstellungen standardmäßige nicht gesetzt wurde. Und wenn die »nassen Kanten« nicht ausdrücklich im Pinsel definiert wurde, kommt die allgemeine Einstellung zum Tragen, die anscheinend irgendwo ohne erkennbaren Grund aktiviert wurde.

[NotMyFault]

2 hours ago, Mr. Doodlezz said:

Noch mal auf deutsch, vielleicht ist das besser nachvollziehbar?

Es war von Anfang an klar was Du wolltest. Und zwar schnell. 😂

[Mr. Doodlezz]

Just now, NotMyFault said:

Es war von Anfang an was Du wolltest. Und zwar schnell. 😂

Nope. Die individuelle Einstellung jeder einzelnen Brush ist definitiv nicht das, wonach ich gefragt habe.

[NotMyFault]

Da hatte die Autokorrektur ein Wort verschluckt. 
 

16 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Es war von Anfang an klar was Du wolltest. Und zwar schnell. 😂

 

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Mr. Doodlezz said:

So it doesn't matter which brush tip I choose, because almost all brushes come without a specified specification in their settings. And since wet edge is not specifically defined in most standard brushes, the global setting is applied, which, as now mentioned several times, has been activated somewhere for inexplicable reasons.

Have you tried my suggestion of changing the Assistant Settings?

[Mr. Doodlezz]

26 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Have you tried my suggestion of changing the Assistant Settings?

Thanks for your tip/suggestion, @walt.farrell.
It’s not really what I’m after, and since it’s already set to Smart tip sharing I guess it’s not working as intended? But that’s a topic for another day I guess. 🫥

I experimented to see how the other Affinity apps manage this. And surprisingly, the Photo Persona within Publisher behaves just as I would anticipate the standalone Photo app should and what I think how it also worked at some point; choosing the same brush from the library in different tools shows a consistent image, whether it’s the brush or eraser. For the brush with a smooth edge, it appears as follows:

 

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, Mr. Doodlezz said:

and since it’s already set to Smart tip sharing I guess it’s not working as intended? But that’s a topic for another day I guess. 🫥

Try No Sharing, perhaps?

[Mr. Doodlezz]

10 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Try No Sharing, perhaps?

Sure, I just tried – no difference in behaviour. 😕

But even if it would make a difference, setting it to No tips shared does seem like a workaround for the actual problem rather then the solution. Maybe I do want to share some aspects of brushes.

 

[NathanC]

Hi @Mr. Doodlezz,

I believe this is occurring due to the fact that all Basic app brushes have the 'Wet Edges' behaviour set as 'Don't Set' which means Wet Edges behaviour can be inherited from a previous brush used if the setting was ever turned on at any point when using the erase brush tool (from the brush edit menu NMF referenced earlier). Here's what you could try: 

1. Select the Eraser Brush
2. Choose one of the basic round brushes in the brushes panel
3. Swipe Left on the brush in the brushes panel > 'Edit Brush'
4. Set 'Wet Edges' to 'Set Off'
5. Set that brush to the associated tool for the Eraser Brush and save your changes
6. With that brush selected, go to the Edit menu > defaults > Sync and then repeat again but 'Save'

Going forward in all new documents should default to that specific brush, and with it's behaviour set to 'Set Off' if you were to change what brush you want to use with the eraser the 'Dont Set' behaviour by default would remember that the previous brush had the behaviour was set to Off, meaning it would inherit this behaviour, unless you were to then change to a Brush with the Behaviour set to 'Force On'.

Doing this once with a single brush should hopefully prevent this and save you the trouble of configuring every single brush, and you always have an associated tool to go back to if the wet edges behaviour changes again to reset it back to Off.

 

[Mr. Doodlezz]

On 10/23/2023 at 4:10 PM, NathanC said:

Hi @Mr. Doodlezz,

I believe this is occurring due to the fact that all Basic app brushes have the 'Wet Edges' behaviour set as 'Don't Set' which means Wet Edges behaviour can be inherited from a previous brush used if the setting was ever turned on at any point when using the erase brush tool (from the brush edit menu NMF referenced earlier). Here's what you could try: 

1. Select the Eraser Brush
2. Choose one of the basic round brushes in the brushes panel
3. Swipe Left on the brush in the brushes panel > 'Edit Brush'
4. Set 'Wet Edges' to 'Set Off'
5. Set that brush to the associated tool for the Eraser Brush and save your changes
6. With that brush selected, go to the Edit menu > defaults > Sync and then repeat again but 'Save'

Going forward in all new documents should default to that specific brush, and with it's behaviour set to 'Set Off' if you were to change what brush you want to use with the eraser the 'Dont Set' behaviour by default would remember that the previous brush had the behaviour was set to Off, meaning it would inherit this behaviour, unless you were to then change to a Brush with the Behaviour set to 'Force On'.

Doing this once with a single brush should hopefully prevent this and save you the trouble of configuring every single brush, and you always have an associated tool to go back to if the wet edges behaviour changes again to reset it back to Off.

 

Thanks, @NathanC, that indeed solved it!
What a strange workaround. Is this knowledge expected of us users? I've been using the Affinity Suite every day (well, every app from day one, as soon as they where available, that is), and I've never encountered this behaviour or heard of handling this setting in such a way. 🤔
I guess you never stop learning. 😅

And I guess @NotMyFault was somewhat on the right track after all!

[NotMyFault]

36 minutes ago, Mr. Doodlezz said:

And I guess @NotMyFault was somewhat on the right track after all!

Thank you.

[NathanC]

Hi @Mr. Doodlezz,

Glad to hear that's working for you now. I do think much of the confusion is caused by the iPad's lack of the 'Wet Edges' toggle along the context toolbar for the Eraser Brush as this isn't the first time this has come up. For comparison 'Wet Edges' is configurable via the context toolbar on desktop's Eraser brush so i'm not sure why it was omitted on iPad.

Therefore i've gone ahead and logged this internally for it to be added on iPad so hopefully it will be considered.