Inpainting Brush Tool

[jsampson45]

In Affinity Photo 2.3.1,  I was earlier working on a JPG file, and I found a "healing" brush with a subsidiary "inpainting" brush (if I remember rightly). Resuming after a break, now I cannot find them. I tried View / Customise Tools but they are not available there either. Selecting the "Pixel" "persona" did not reveal them. It looks as if my best option is to uninstall Affinity Designer and reinstall it. Resetting the "tools" left-hand side bar might be an option but I cannot find a way of doing that. If I save a JPG file, are settings saved along with the image? What moves can make tools disappear, especially brushes?

[Old Bruce]

You mention Photo and Designer. Photo has the Healing and Inpainting brushes, Designer does not have them.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, jsampson45 said:

It looks as if my best option is to uninstall Affinity Designer and reinstall it

In addition to what @Old Bruce said, note that reinstalling an Affinity app rarely fixes anything other than if some component of the app itself is damaged, which usually means it won't start or if it does crashes when it tries to use the damaged component.

More often, if there is some problem that is caused by a corrupted per user support file (like items in your user account's Application Support folder), using the Control key startup method will help fix that, while reinstalling the app will have no effect except waste some of your time.

But here, there is no problem other than confusing which apps provide which tools, a common enough occurrence, particularly among new or infrequent users.

[jsampson45]

Thanks, perhaps this was the confusion - I am not sure. I do not know about the Control key startup method - is this simply holding down the Control key while starting?

[R C-R]

6 minutes ago, jsampson45 said:

I do not know about the Control key startup method - is this simply holding down the Control key while starting?

Yes.

[jsampson45]

Thanks. I now have the Inpainting brush tool but I can't make it do anything. I will resume the battle on Monday.

[R C-R]

6 minutes ago, jsampson45 said:

I now have the Inpainting brush tool but I can't make it do anything.

Do you have a pixel layer selected? If so, what are the settings for it shown on the Context Toolbar? Also, which brush are you using?

[jsampson45]

Pixel layer is selected. Context toolbar shows 2510 x 2575pxm RGBA/8 - sRGB IEC61966-2.1  SM-G(30F Units: Pixels. I am using the inpainting brush. I am following the tutorial by Robin Whalley - his beginner's course: Essential Tools. A disadvantage of these tutorials is that one cannot see what buttons or keys the teacher is pressing.

 

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, jsampson45 said:

Pixel layer is selected. Context toolbar shows 2510 x 2575pxm RGBA/8 - sRGB IEC61966-2.1  SM-G(30F Units: Pixels. I am using the inpainting brush. I am following the tutorial by Robin Whalley - his beginner's course: Essential Tools. A disadvantage of these tutorials is that one cannot see what buttons or keys the teacher is pressing.

 

A screenshot would be useful. Please make sure it includes the complete application window, with the Inpainting Brush Tool active and the Layers panel visible.

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, jsampson45 said:

Pixel layer is selected. Context toolbar shows 2510 x 2575pxm RGBA/8 - sRGB IEC61966-2.1  SM-G(30F Units: Pixels.

Not sure what "pxm" means but if you have the Inpainting Brush Tool selected, the Context Toolbar should show items like Width, Opacity, Flow, Hardness, & so on.

[jsampson45]

I attach a screenshot with the Inpainting Brush Tool selected. Image is zoomed to 100%. My aim is to remove the vehicles on the road. What keys or mouse buttons should be pressed to operate the inpainting brush? Also, is it possible to change the name of a thread in this forum? This is about the Inpainting Brush Tool. 

[GarryP]

21 minutes ago, jsampson45 said:

Image is zoomed to 100%.

The image is zoomed to 150%, see the percentage value after the document name at the top of the image.

21 minutes ago, jsampson45 said:

My aim is to remove the vehicles on the road.

That might be very tricky to do convincingly as the software has no idea what should be ‘behind’ the vehicles. I’m not saying that it can’t be done, only that it might take a lot of experimentation with extra manual work.

21 minutes ago, jsampson45 said:

Also, is it possible to change the name of a thread in this forum?

You can change the name of a thread which you created by hovering the mouse pointer over the thread title for a little while and then following the instructions in the tool tip which pops up (this will only work on devices where you can hover the mouse pointer).

----

I can’t see where your mouse pointer is in your attached image. Is that part of the problem which you are reporting?

Also, I notice that your Inpainting Brush Tool settings (on the Context Toolbar) has “Current Layer” set which means that the software is trying to inpaint on the selected empty Pixel Layer (there’s nothing there to sample from, just transparent pixels). You might want to change that to “Current Layer & Below” instead.

[Dan C]

Hi @jsampson45!

1 hour ago, jsampson45 said:

What keys or mouse buttons should be pressed to operate the inpainting brush?

The Inpainting Brush Tool works the same as an other brush tool - simply click and drag the cursor to 'Paint' the sections of the image you want to remove.

You can find out more regarding this tool below:

https://affinity.help/photo2/English.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Retouching/retouching_inpainting.html?title=Inpainting

1 hour ago, jsampson45 said:

Also, is it possible to change the name of a thread in this forum? This is about the Inpainting Brush Tool. 

I've updated the title of the thread for you

1 hour ago, GarryP said:

Also, I notice that your Inpainting Brush Tool settings (on the Context Toolbar) has “Current Layer” set which means that the software is trying to inpaint on the selected empty Pixel Layer (there’s nothing there to sample from, just transparent pixels). You might want to change that to “Current Layer & Below” instead.

I suspect the above is the crux of the issue you're having, with the tool set to 'Current Layer' you'll only be Inpainting on the empty Pixel layer in your file - changing this to 'Current Layer & Below' as Garry has mentioned should allow this tool to work as expected in your document.

I hope this helps!

[jsampson45]

Thanks - the problem was indeed due to omitting the change to "Current Layer & Below". Now that I can make the brush work at all I can study it. Thanks for changing the subject line.

[StephenLeon]

Hi, can anyone explain why I no longer have the Inpainting Brush?

I was working through the AF Workbook and was enjoying the Inpainting Brush exercise. 

Today I wanted to use the brush again and it has vanished and the brush selection also seems different. 

Here is a screenshot of the brush selection. AF2

 

[carl123]

You are looking in the wrong dropdown, try the one 5 below where you are looking

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @StephenLeon

I can’t tell you why it’s isn’t where you think it should be (it’s by default in the Healing Brush Tool group, as pointed out by carl123 above, not the Erase Brush Tool group) but I can tell you that you can use menu “View → Customise Tools..” to get it back on your Tools Panel as a separate tool if that makes it easier to get to.

[R C-R]

38 minutes ago, GarryP said:

but I can tell you that you can use menu “View → Customise Tools..” to get it back on your Tools Panel as a separate tool if that makes it easier to get to.

And you can set the Tools panel to have more than one column if you want so you can have more individual tools shown on it without having to go through the group pop up to get to them.

[StephenLeon]

Thank you everybody....I feel a bit stupid right now. I was sure that when I couldn't find the Inpainting brush that I checked all the other tool group drop downs.

I think I may have been too focused on the tool image in the book & not in the program.

Thanks..