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Why is the Hardness setting greyed out here?


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Affinity Photo 2.5.0 (2453), Mac Studio M1 Max, Sonoma 14.5

The Clone Brush's hardness setting is greyed out. Also, it keeps defaulting to wet edges when I go back to the tool.

This particular picture has other quirks, so it may be specific to it, but I want to make sure I'm not missing anything before putting this in the bugs section.

 

image.thumb.png.79f4d4ac8d939219aaf1304e222872d0.png

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The Clone Brush Tool is a Brush Tool, and so you'll need to pick a brush to use from the Brushes panel. And you can pick one that turns Wet Edges off if you want.

However, Hardness can only be set for a small subset of brushes. For all others it is fixed at 80%. If you have the Brush category named Basic, you should be able to use one of the Hard Round brushes from it. Otherwise if I remember correctly there are a couple with adjustable Hardness in the Pens category.

 

-- 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

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20 minutes ago, nickbatz said:

Damn, I sure wish I could get it back

You can, but only via a Reset of the brushes. I can do that tomorrow and upload the default Clone Brush if you'd like.

-- 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

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Also note that how the brushes work is influenced by your Assistant settings in ways that I don't fully understand.

-- 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

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48 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

You can, but only via a Reset of the brushes. I can do that tomorrow and upload the default Clone Brush if you'd like.

Thanks so much, Walt, but I think the first one at the top of the Basic ones is the right one, at least it works fine.

6 minutes ago, debraspicher said:

Hardness only works on "basic rounds". They look just as described: a simple round.

Yeah, Walt explained that. Thanks.

I just started playing with different brushes (due to the nature of how I use the program).

What I wish existed: a brush with independent hardness settings for each side. Will post this in the feature request section, but I'd use it with the Clone brush when creating solid borders for objects. The soft side would blend with the existing object, the hard side would create the solid border, if that makes sense!

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There is a button in the Settings / Miscellaneous dialog which is called “Reset Brushes” but I’ve never pressed it so I don’t know what is reset or what could be lost.

The Help says that the button will “reset to factory defaults” but that doesn’t tell me if the user will only be left with those brushes that are supplied with the application (as they were defined originally), or whether the brushes that are supplied with the application will be "reset" while leaving the user-installed/defined brushes alone, or something else.

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This post should be in the beta section.

iMac 27" 2019 Sequoia 15.0 (24A335), iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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3 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

This post should be in the beta section.

I’m not so sure.
Is there anything in it which is specific to the functionalities that have changed in, or been added to, the beta?

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It was a design choice to have the hardness only being set for the basic brushes.
So it isn't a bug and it isn't solely related to the beta version and should be in feedback/requests to have this overruled and reinstated.
Or even, like requested, amended with extra options.




 

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2 minutes ago, GarryP said:

I’m not so sure.
Is there anything in it which is specific to the functionalities that have changed in, or been added to, the beta?

No idea, but maybe there is some cause because it's beta, I would have thought reporting on any anomaly within a beta would be a potential alert to a beta issue. You would get more people replying here but how many people actually have a beta version to test for issues and to that end shouldn't it be beta users that look at the issue, even if it turns out to be a user error it's still within the beta app. 

Just my logic... but we all know how that goes lol!

iMac 27" 2019 Sequoia 15.0 (24A335), iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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I was under the impression here that only issues which specifically relate to the beta changes/additions were to be posted in the beta sections, but I don’t think there’s a hard-and-fast rule about it.

I can certainly understand a desire to have things in the right place, to keep things tidy, and have threads where they can be seen by the right people for the right reasons but, in this case, I think it’s where I would have posted it.

If someone from Serif comes along and moves it then I wouldn’t have a problem with that.

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22 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

This post should be in the beta section.

 

18 minutes ago, GarryP said:

I’m not so sure.
Is there anything in it which is specific to the functionalities that have changed in, or been added to, the beta?

We don’t know the answer to that at this stage, but since the behaviour has been observed in a beta version it seems reasonable to report it against that version until someone has been able to test it in the current retail release.

 

11 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Just my logic... but we all know how that goes lol!

lipsrsealed2.gif

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.5.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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3 minutes ago, Alfred said:

We don’t know the answer to that at this stage

I failed to notice the exact nature of the issue, and I missed this contribution to the discussion:

16 minutes ago, Return said:

It was a design choice to have the hardness only being set for the basic brushes.
So it isn't a bug and it isn't solely related to the beta version and should be in feedback/requests to have this overruled and reinstated.
Or even, like requested, amended with extra options.

In other words, we do know that the behaviour can be observed in the current retail release. I see that the thread has already been silently moved from the beta forum.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.5.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Since the beta is to only be used for beta testing, and not just used as a ‘preview release’, I think it’s supposed to be the responsibility of the beta tester to check to see if the same issue also occurs in the commercial release and then report the issue in the appropriate place.

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27 minutes ago, Return said:

Yes I often wondered why something in the beta should be compared to the release version to validate the posting in beta section or not.
I think that if an issue is found in the beta and since it is the current version in development/worked on than it should be in the beta section even though the bug may have been in the previous developed version aka the release version.

And yes to me that would be also the most logical way to go.

If the issue is present in the Beta and related with the new features introduced in it, fill the report in the respective thread in the 2.5 Beta New Features and Improvements section.
If the issue is present in the Beta but not in the Retail version > fill it in Other New Bugs and Issues in the Betas section.
If the issue is present in the Retail version only fill it in the general Bug Reporting section.

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2 minutes ago, MEB said:

If the issue is present in the Beta and in the Retail version > fill it in Other New Bugs and Issues in the Betas

The purpose of that forum section is explained as follows:

Quote

For testers to report any new bugs that don't affect the release build, and which are unrelated to the new functionality.

An existing issue that has been observed in a retail version clearly doesn’t belong there.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.5.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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6 hours ago, firstdefence said:

This post should be in the beta section.

 

6 hours ago, GarryP said:

Since the beta is to only be used for beta testing, and not just used as a ‘preview release’, I think it’s supposed to be the responsibility of the beta tester to check to see if the same issue also occurs in the commercial release and then report the issue in the appropriate place.

It didn't occur to me that this was a bug - is it? - and I don't keep old versions of the program on my machine (because I have Time Machine backups).

In general it's not a good idea to use beta software for important things, but Affinity fixes bugs with each release and so far I haven't had any issues.

That aside, why do people who don't work for Affinity even care if there's a post in the wrong category?

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14 hours ago, nickbatz said:

Thanks so much, Walt, but I think the first one at the top of the Basic ones is the right one, at least it works fine.

It may have worked for you, but it does not have the exact same settings as the default used by the Clone Brush Tool with a freshly-installed (or Reset) app.

Here's the full collection. Note that many of these share the same set of characteristics, but as far as I've seen none are directly equivalent to any brush in the Basic category (though they may be quite similar).

Default Tool Brushes (Photo 2).afbrushes

-- 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

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3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Here's the full collection. Note that many of these share the same set of characteristics, but as far as I've seen none are directly equivalent to any brush in the Basic category (though they may be quite similar).

Walt! You da man. Thanks so much.

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You're welcome.

-- 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

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