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Why can I not paint on a layer in Affinity Photo?


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45 minutes ago, ruvy said:

Thanks for the good reply. It is very important function but I think it is a poor choice of name...

The name Inpainting & its function has a long history, going back centuries.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 1 month later...

Hello, i am also having an issue painting and even replacing colors.  I created a pixel layer, can't paint on it or use paint bucket.

so i tried to import a color square - originally red.  Couldn't change the color.  Using eraser tool turned it black, but that's it.

duplicated it and tried to paint it white.  No bueno.  used all the brushes  and checked each setting, but i don't know what most of them do.  but it still won't let me paint.

went through the menu and rasterized it and still not working.  can't figure out what i am doing wrong.

1.  why can't i paint on a new (pixel) layer

2. why can't i change the color of an imported png pic.

any help is appreciated...Thanks.

 

 

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OK, found that there is something wrong with my copy of Affinity Photo.

Had to restart several times before it started to work like it's supposed to.

after i restart program after crash, i have to go through a whole lot of prep

to get the program back to what i thought was default.

Workspace keep being hidden. - have to unhide the workspace and then

go into view menu and show (tool bar, ruler, tools, context toolbar, ect.),

then i have to reset snapping.

Saving my presets doesn't do anything.

Program constantly freezes and crashes.

I have ver 1.9.2.1035

Probably needs to update.

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10 hours ago, junkstuff said:

Workspace keep being hidden. - have to unhide the workspace and then

go into view menu and show (tool bar, ruler, tools, context toolbar, ect.),

That sounds like you've been pressing the Tab key, which is the default shortcut for View > Toggle User Interface (UI).

I have no idea about your painting problem.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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13 hours ago, junkstuff said:

used all the brushes  and checked each setting,

Any of the ‘Basic’ brushes should work with the default settings.

13 hours ago, junkstuff said:

but i don't know what most of them do.

Affinity Photo Help: Modifying brushes

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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  • 1 month later...

You have another layer atop of the active layer. Try deactivating the top layer, it might cover the lower ones, making your edits invisible.

Next, select a basic brush from brush panel. Then re-adjust flow and hardness.

If still nothing happens, could you upload the file ?

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iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Today I also had/have this very problem of brushstrokes not showing on a pixel layer in a Publisher document (via the Photo Persona).

My document is of rather large dimensions as it collects 8 different layouts of a 300 cm x 45 cm sign on 9 pages (8 of which just have a coloured rectangle as a background and one big but short line of type on them). As it happens I don't seem to be quite able to paint on a pixel layer (or a normal new layer that's been rasterized) here which I have added to one of the pages (on which there are just 4 additional vector objects).

But then again, say: after copying that same pixel layer to another page in the doccument or after switching to another brush, it seems to work again, but for a short while. For example it only takes toggling secondary and primary colours and the brush will again leave no mark on the pixel layer.

However, when I copy the content of that page into a new Publisher document of the same dimensions (but which is just this one page) I actually CAN use the paint brush on a pixel layer there without these difficulties. Same applies to a new empty document – painting tends to be sluggish, though, with a spatter/speckle brush of 4000px, but it does work, at least.

Maybe this has something to do with memory usage after all? (BTW: this is all about Affinity 1.9.3 – on macOS 10.14.6 – as I haven't actually dared to update to 1.10.4 so far due to several issues that have been observed and reported by some users after they had updated their Affinity apps...).

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56 minutes ago, Lorox said:

Today I also had/have this very problem of brushstrokes not showing on a pixel layer in a Publisher document (via the Photo Persona).

Check whether you have Protect Alpha set; it's an option on the right side of the Context Toolbar. You may need to click the >> symbol to see it, depending on your monitor/window width.

If that doesn't explain it, we'll probably need (at a minimum) some screenshots showing the complete window including the Context Toolbar and the Layers panel when you're unable to paint.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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15 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Check whether you have Protect Alpha set; it's an option on the right side of the Context Toolbar. You may need to click the >> symbol to see it, depending on your monitor/window width.

If that doesn't explain it, we'll probably need (at a minimum) some screenshots showing the complete window including the Context Toolbar and the Layers panel when you're unable to paint

Hi Walt,

no, "Protect Alpha“ had definitely not been set. I'm perfectly confident that my Context Toolbar and Layers Panel wouldn't offer clues to anything wrong or unusual.

Actually, this morning after a fresh launch of Publisher everything worked as should be expected. I first created a new layer on the chosen page while in Publisher Persona, then rasterized it and switched to the Photo Persona to add some big (4000px) spatter brushstrokes to that (now) pixel layer. They showed up fine, maybe with a bit of lag because of their size, though. Even toggling primary and secondary colours between brushstrokes didn't stop it from working, whereas yesterday I couldn't add more brushstrokes after doing so.

However, this has been just a quick test and – given my experience yesterday – I wouldn't actually bet on it to continue working after some more changes to the design/layout have been made. I have done it exactly all the same way as yesterday, no settings whatsoever had been changed since then.

Nevertheless it just wouldn't work out yesterday and the only difference I can think of has been that yesterday I had already been working on the document for quite a while (and having saved every now and then) whereas today I went for that pixel layer right after launching Publisher and having just opened my document. So maybe there IS some kind of memory issue here after all which is sort of accumulating while the file is being worked on and/or the app isn't relaunched?

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  • 1 month later...
17 minutes ago, Zane Vali said:

Opened a new pixel layer, painted over nothing happens.

How specifically did you "open" a new pixel layer? Is that layer selected when you use the Paint Brush Tool? What are the settings for that brush?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I tried "Add a Pixel Layer" that didn't work. I then thought it would work if I duplicated the layer. Layers are created but there is nothing I can do on them. The brush settings do not matter, I have tried changing them. Do I open a layer, then select the brush tool. I tried this, but it did not work either. I started by duplicating the background layer then proceeding to clean up the image which worked fine. I then opened a pixel layer and tried to use the paint brush on some areas, but from this point, I can do no more adjustments on the image, whether I open a new pixel layer or duplicate the layer. I really cannot understand why! I did the same in GIMP and it worked just fine. Maybe in Affinity the procedure is different. 

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I would recommend to watch the official tutorial videos and start with the basic steps. You can find the link in my signature. The user interface is specific to Affinity and does not compare to any other photo editing app.

I can assure you that 99.999% of users were able to adapt to the UI, and I’m almost certain that you will be able to master it, too.

 

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5

iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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10 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

I would recommend to watch the official tutorial videos and start with the basic steps. You can find the link in my signature. The user interface is specific to Affinity and does not compare to any other photo editing app.

I can assure you that 99.999% of users were able to adapt to the UI, and I’m almost certain that you will be able to master it, too

I, on my part, can assure you that the observed behaviour of not being able to paint on a pixel layer, can in fact be errratic (and enigmatic) and didn't go away when established ways of doing things (like those shown in the official tutorial videos) were followed.

As I have reported in this thread the problem has occured on an on and off basis when I used Designer(!)'s pixel layers some time ago. The workflow used i.e. the steps taken had been exactly the same with different tries but sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Just toggling primary and secondary colours could be sufficient to not being able to paint on a previously unproblematic pixel layer anymore.

As I pointed out before it seemed to me that maybe(!) all this could be related to memory issues as quitting and relaunching Designer (or the computer as such) could – for a while at least – make that strange problem go away.

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2 hours ago, Lorox said:

I, on my part, can assure you that the observed behaviour of not being able to paint on a pixel layer, can in fact be errratic (and enigmatic) and didn't go away when established ways of doing things (like those shown in the official tutorial videos) were followed.

As I have reported in this thread the problem has occured on an on and off basis when I used Designer(!)'s pixel layers some time ago. The workflow used i.e. the steps taken had been exactly the same with different tries but sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Just toggling primary and secondary colours could be sufficient to not being able to paint on a previously unproblematic pixel layer anymore.

As I pointed out before it seemed to me that maybe(!) all this could be related to memory issues as quitting and relaunching Designer (or the computer as such) could – for a while at least – make that strange problem go away.

My comment was targeting the user Zane Vali who is just switching from GIMP and maybe is struggling with UI issues, probably unrelated to the original topic. I tried to give him assurance that he is able to master the issue.

Your answer let’s me assume you might have read this different, possibly offending. 

I experience rendering issues on all platforms (Win, M1 Mac, iPad), and luckily their vanished always by restarting - as you suggested. As there occur randomly and are very difficult to reproduce, it is hard for all to identify the root cause, even for Affinity.

Never the less, there are bugs acknowledged by Affinity where actual damage was caused to the document itself.

 

 

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5

iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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Without being offensive, it is not a UI issue, since I have opened a new layer and selected the brush as intended. Thi issue is that the brush did not work. Closing and restarting Affinity a couple of times appeared to have rectified the problem in this instance. It is not ideal but I can continue to edit. Thank you.

 

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1 hour ago, Zane Vali said:

Without being offensive, it is not a UI issue, since I have opened a new layer and selected the brush as intended. Thi issue is that the brush did not work. Closing and restarting Affinity a couple of times appeared to have rectified the problem in this instance. It is not ideal but I can continue to edit. Thank you.

 

For future occurrences: it helps if you provide a screenshot of the complete application window, with the Tools (left edge of screen) included, the Layers panel visible and the layer you're painting on visible in it. And it would be nice to see the right edge of the Context Toolbar, too.

Otherwise we have to do a lot of guessing :) 

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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19 hours ago, Zane Vali said:

I tried "Add a Pixel Layer" that didn't work.

I assume you mean that in AP you clicked the "Add Pixel Layer" button at the bottom of the Layers panel, right? If so, a new "(Pixel)" layer should have appeared in the Layers panel & be selected (highlighted) in that panel. So when you say that didn't work, do you mean this did not happen or something else?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Brushes not working is one of the top X most frequent complains.

in (own guesstimate) 95% it’s actually a UI issue:

  • protect alpha selected
  • an (invisible) selection active. This is really a nasty thing! Need to switch to selection persona, or long-touch to get the context menu offering deselect all. (On Desktop clicking ctrl-D is much faster)
  • Blend mode of brush changed
  • Wrong layer active
  • mask active 
  • Brush settings got wired. As Photo does not show which brush is active, this is another nasty UI trap
  • One of the many opacity settings got to 0 (layer, color, fill, …). Happens mostly on Desktop by hitting 0.
  • Channels panel, clicked one of the color channels (deactivates alpha edits)
  • wrong tool selected (not brush, but color mixer, eraser, …)
  • And there are at least 20 more UI traps.

Cases where an actual software issue (iPad OS or Affinity) is causing brush issues are far less likely. As some of the UI or even document settings get reset by force-quitting Affinity, you could get the mis-conception it was a sw bug when in reality is was an UI issue.

As always the difficult part is to distinguish between UI issue and software bug, and I too as user tend to blame the software, before I realize I made a mistake - often caused by one of the UI quirks I listed above. But please, be fair to Affinity and honest to yourself. Try to distinguish carefully and avoid premature conclusion.

If this happens in future:

  •  immediately save the document with history (use save as copy, as regular save is not reliable currently because of unsolved rename issue)
  • close document,
  • create a new document,
  • add pixel layer
  • select brush tool
  • select black color 100% opacity
  • check if  brush works ok there 
  • if not, create a new basic round brush and try again
  • if still not working: software bug
  • otherwise: User error or UI issue, or in rare cases file got corrupted. This is very rare, really.
     

To be absolutely clear: I do not blame anybody / any user
It is one of the weaknesses of Affinity having a … hm … special UI with a certain number of nasty UI traps.

And I really desire Affinity makes the UI more streamlined. Never the less, tricky UI is not software bug / malfunction.

 

 

 

 

Edited by NotMyFault
Several edits

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5

iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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5 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

Your answer let’s me assume you might have read this different, possibly offending.

Hi NotMyFault,

yeah, I sort of had the impression that – more or less between the lines – you seemed to be insinuating that Zane Vali must have made some mistake that could have easily been avoided just by paying intention to the official tutorial videos.

As I had been experiencing quite similar problems not so long ago while being 100% (OK, let's say 99%) sure that I'd been playing entirely by the rules this got me a bit on the wrong foot, I guess...

So – no offence meant on my part – I didn't really mean to be harsh and what you write about the obvious difficulties getting to the core of such apperently random issues is – of course – perfectly true. Luckily I haven't encountered issues myself where actual damage was caused to the document(s) itself (although some reports by users having issues with proper PDF exporting with versions 1.10.x have prevented me from updating my 1.9.3 versions so far...). But then I'm maybe a bit paranoid after all...

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8 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

As always the difficult part is to distinguish between UI issue and software bug...

And to do that we almost always need a lot more detailed info than just saying that something is not working. It helps a lot if everything is clearly identified, like if it is a button, menu item, or something else, where & when it appears in the UI, & what if anything happens when it is selected, even if it is not what is expected.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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