Masks Disappear

[GreenSWOhio]

On a multi-layer (12 layers) image I am adding masks I am adding masks via the Layers Panel to about every layer.

Some masks disappear. While I am working with the mask, the changes caused by the mask are incorporated into the layer, and the mask is gone. If I go back in the history panel to where the mask still existed, and select a historical action, the mask reappears. Of course if I've worked on some other layer that work is lost as it appears after the historical action I had to go back to.

Not all masks are lost and there are many masks on other layers. The disappearance seems random. 

Very annoying.

 

[walt.farrell]

What actions does the History panel show that caused the problem?

[GreenSWOhio]

The history panel has many entries. Any action that might have caused the problem is not obvious.

 

[NotMyFault]

Would you mind uploading a screenshot of the history panel, or the actual afphoto file (saved with history)? Then we might be able to spot what has caused the issue.

[NotMyFault]

Possible causes for mask layers disappear:

• deleting them by keystroke or menu
• running a macro which includes deletion step, e.g. triggered by keystroke 
• ungroup. It will delete all layers in masking positions
• filling or clearing the alpha channel of a layer will remove only inherent masks.
• edit: triggering any action which rasterizes the parent layer, e.g. painting on an image layer. Rasterizing a parent will „consume“ any nested layers like masks. Automatic rasterization may occur depending on assistant settings. Normally you get a brief text message (if configured in Assistent settings) whenever an assistant is triggered.

i‘m not aware of any other way to delete layers, especially mask layers.

[GreenSWOhio]

it happened again. I went thru the history. It occurred during a 'raterize (assistant)' step. 

I do not know why the assistant rasterized the image. Undoing it did not seem to undo anything I wanted done.

 

[walt.farrell]

4 minutes ago, GreenSWOhio said:

Undoing it did not seem to undo anything I wanted done.

You might have needed to Undo twice. Watch the History panel while you use Undo, or manually click where you want it to be.

The Assistant typically rasterizes something when you try to paint on a vector item usig a pixel brush. If you can recreate this, you might try doing a screen recording so we can see what you're doing, or perhaps you can tell us more about what you were doing when that History entry appeared. And please provide a screenshot, including the Layers panel.

[NotMyFault]

Probably you are painting over an image layer by accident when you actually try to paint over the nested mask. This automatically rasterizes the image layer.

[Dan C]

Hi @GreenSWOhio,

As you've found, the Assistant will automatically Rasterise layers when certain actions are performed, and a 'Rasterise' will merge any Mask layer directly into the resulting Pixel layer.

The Assistant will be automatically triggered when performing certain actions on your layers, however if you don't like this behaviour, you can selectively disable it within Affinity.

To do this, please navigate to Edit > Settings > Assistant. Here you can change the behaviour of certain Assistant options, or disable the feature altogether.

I hope this helps

[GreenSWOhio]

Thanks!