Why doesn't the eraser erase cleanly?

[nasu wong]

Thank you.

[Return]

Click the brush in the layers panel to see if there are 2 different brushes in use?
The eraser and the regular brush can have different brushes applied with different settings.

[nasu wong]

Thanks. I don't understand the concept for this. This video show how the eraser work on V.2.3.1

[PaulEC]

When you are using the Eraser you have "Wet edges" set!

[nasu wong]

@PaulEC Oh! Thank you very much.

[Return]

Like said, one can have different settings per brush for both eraser and painting.
So always make sure to select the brush you want and check it's settings including the wet edges and the protect alpha and even the tolerance and/or the blendmode options.

[debraspicher]

Wet edges once again. It turns itself on when you go through brushes and doesn't turn itself off. Very annoying when using painterly brushes and moving to mask. So yes, have to keep an eye on that setting... at least it's in the context toolbar and can be turned off easily.

[Hangman]

On 2/25/2024 at 8:49 PM, debraspicher said:

Wet edges once again. It turns itself on when you go through brushes and doesn't turn itself off. Very annoying when using painterly brushes and moving to mask. So yes, have to keep an eye on that setting... at least it's in the context toolbar and can be turned off easily.

As @walt.farrell points out in this post, wet edges is a ternary setting so if you don't want that to happen then you need to edit the respective brush settings from Don't set wet edges to Set wet edges "off"...

[Ron P.]

6 hours ago, Hangman said:

As @walt.farrell points out in this post, wet edges is a ternary setting so if you don't want that to happen then you need to edit the respective brush settings from Don't set wet edges to Set wet edges "off"...

So users need to go through all the brushes and change them? Users should not need to do that.

Do you understand the issue that Return posted, the setting is Sticky. Yes they are very sticky. If you use a brush with Wet Edges and say a few days go by before you again are using AP, and need to grab a brush, say for masking. You do not want Wet Edges. Well, too bad, it's going to be there. Yes, I, you and a lot of us know what that looks like so we can quickly and easily fix it.

Every time a brush that uses Wet Edges, it will remain there, even when a brush is used, that does not, IF that brushes settings are Don't Set Wet Edges. That is what I think should be looked at. In fact if they just done away with the Don't Set, so there's just the 2, perhaps every time a brush is selected that doesn't it would shut off the wet edges.

[Hangman]

10 minutes ago, Ron P. said:

So users need to go through all the brushes and change them? Users should not need to do that.

Clearly the decision to include wet edges as the default is the choice of the brush designer and for someone perhaps creating a set of Watercolour brushes that choice makes perfect sense. Equally while the default option may be a frustration for your particular workflow I can equally imagine the opposite could be true for someone who constantly wants wet edge brushes but finds the default setting is off based on their particular workflow.

Personally, if I had a particular set of brushes I used constantly for a workflow where there is a mix of wet edges on and off as their default setting but my workflow dictated all to be off by default then I would create a new brush category, duplicate the respective brushes, add these to the new brush category and set wet edges off as the default setting for all the brushes in that category then use these as my default brushes.

Just the approach I would adopt which may not work for everyone…

[debraspicher]

27 minutes ago, Ron P. said:

So users need to go through all the brushes and change them? Users should not need to do that.

Do you understand the issue that Return posted, the setting is Sticky. Yes they are very sticky. If you use a brush with Wet Edges and say a few days go by before you again are using AP, and need to grab a brush, say for masking. You do not want Wet Edges. Well, too bad, it's going to be there. Yes, I, you and a lot of us know what that looks like so we can quickly and easily fix it.

Every time a brush that uses Wet Edges, it will remain there, even when a brush is used, that does not, IF that brushes settings are Don't Set Wet Edges. That is what I think should be looked at. In fact if they just done away with the Don't Set, so there's just the 2, perhaps every time a brush is selected that doesn't it would shut off the wet edges.

I understand the theory behind the stickiness from @walt.farrell's post (thank you there, walt) in the other thread, but it also defies the point of having individualized brushes in the first place. Which is to have "on hand" a set of brushes that perform consistently on an as-needed basis. Even walt's explanation of this being a "ternary setting" would suggest (to me, anyway) this was conjured with "developer logic" in mind. I'm not the maker of 99% of my brushes in Affinity, so when it comes to experimenting, I always end up having to turn it off when returning to do mask work. Of course I always forget.

Settings that shut on and off seemingly at random (from user POV) creates unneeded tension between users and the programs and generates needless support requests. I remember when I first ran into this problem. It took me a bit to realize what had happened so I was pointlessly trying to work. Time wasted I will never get back. Normally I assume I had done something wrong, so I was checking Layers and blend settings, etc to see if I had hit a keyboard shortcut (which I did in PS at times). I had no idea a program would be causing it "intentionally", because that seemed so counterproductive. Anyway, this is yet another example of arrogant design decisions from Serif.

I "know" to setup the masking brushes to prevent this, yes. But I've had this issue with "creative" brushes as well. I sometimes can't tell whether "Wet edges" is intentionally set or not for other people's sets. There have been times it was seemingly obvious that setting was not intended, so I have to turn it off and check. But yes, I have to check the brush settings to see how it was intended/optimized just to simply test a new brush I'd bought. So you know what I do when I encounter this? I just go back to my other program which behaves perfectly rationally and ignore the brush engine even more... that's the cold reality.

[lenogre]

I agree with Hangman, the preset by default "wet edges" is not a good option. Me too, I've spent a lot of time as Debraspicher about what's wrong with my selected brush.

[PaulEC]

I have been caught out a few times by not noticing that Wet edges was set, however some brushes need it to be set to, so I don't think having it off by default, and only working if you explicitly set it, would be desirable, as you wouldn't know which brushes were intended to use it. It could also be annoying for people who frequently want to use Wet Edges. I don't really think that making duplicate brushes with your preferred settings is really very practical for people with a large number of brushes. My own feeling is that there should be a general option to keep the settings as they are now (Wet on, Wet off or Leave it as it is) or to override the Leave it as it is option and turn it off so that when you choose a new brush Wet Edges is turned off unless it is explicitly set on by the brushes designer. (IOW, the Leave it as it is setting is treated as Wet off.)