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Quick inquiry, how do you paint a layer mask?


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UPDATED: paint brush DOES NOT WORK when painting a mask as shown in affinity tutorial

2 pixel layers, black mask on the top one, I select the brush and white paint and try to paint on the mask, nothing happens.
Am I missing something? you paint masks with black and white to mask out or in things right?

EDIT: can confirm even after watching affinity tutorial on masking, paint bursh does not work atall on a mask, it doesn't wor for painting white nor black, the only available thing is to "paint" the mask with the eraser tool, operation which is not reversable.

Help, there must be something wrong

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I've seen this myself. Had to reboot my MacBook Pro where it would work for a while but eventually return. Not sure how to reproduce it other than to wait for it to happen.

 

M

Just tried it a couple of times, problem still there, brush tool is useless when trying to paint on a layer mask

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How did you create your mask?

A video of your process would be very helpful. (yes, I know you followed a tutorial. Which one btw?)

Or maybe post the file? 

 

....but my initial guess is that you may have dragged a pixel layer into the mask position. In this case only opacity matters.

If you place it there and also "rasterize to mask", then you can paint.

(interestingly though, a fill layer can be used directly as a mask and painted on. no rasterizing needed)

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How did you create your mask?

A video of your process would be very helpful. (yes, I know you followed a tutorial. Which one btw?)

Or maybe post the file? 

 

....but my initial guess is that you may have dragged a pixel layer into the mask position. In this case only opacity matters.

If you place it there and also "rasterize to mask", then you can paint.

(interestingly though, a fill layer can be used directly as a mask and painted on. no rasterizing needed)

 

I assure you I tried this process many times, I just load an image, duplicate it or add a layer adjustement (in which case I don't add a mask since it has it already) and it just wouldn't paint on the mask, restart the application and it does, restart and its blocked, really it works 1 out of every 5 times I tried, and preserve alpha is off btw, I guess is some random glitch at this point

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Hi Vicks,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Are you using Windows or Mac?

Can you please attach the file here so we can take a look and check if we can reproduce the issue?

Thanks.

Hi MEB, I'm on Windows, and no I just use the mask on the adjustment layer or the one created on a pixel layer when I press create mask, really I'm not using a pixel layer instead of a mask.

Thing is if I select a portion of the image and then select a mask, or an adjustement layer, the selection gets transferred to the mask no problem, its just the brushing on a mask that its hit or miss.

In the Screenshot I just added a levels adj. to exaggerate the difference between the two layer but nothing this time

post-40797-0-08762500-1490867213_thumb.jpg

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  • Staff

You are saying you can't paint with black on the mask (it does nothing) when you have the program as shown in your screenshot...

Please press CTRL + D (to ensure there's no selection active) and try to paint with black on the mask again. Does it work? Are you using a brush from the Basic category (swatches panel) or something else?

If you could attach the actual afphoto file it may also help.

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Probably you didn't really select black as a color for your brush.

​The last white(!) field in your recent colors palette is still active (highlighted). See here:

 

post-45179-0-24235200-1490869211_thumb.png

 

Click on the first black field and try again.

••• MacBook Pro | El Captain 10.11.6 |
••• Affinity Photo 1.6.6 | Affinity Designer 1.6.0
••• English 0.0.2 (Beta) | … I'm sorry!

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You also have the hardness of the brush set to 5% with a width of 96.5 px. Judging from the 14% zoom level, this is a large image, so even if everything else is set correctly, it won't have a dramatic effect.

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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You are saying you can't paint with black on the mask (it does nothing) when you have the program as shown in your screenshot...

Please press CTRL + D (to ensure there's no selection active) and try to paint with black on the mask again. Does it work? Are you using a brush from the Basic category (swatches panel) or something else?

If you could attach the actual afphoto file it may also help.

I assure you  the brush is a stock one, I can't paint black on a white mask or white on a black mask, I did try every combination on opacity/flow/hardness and did select pure white and pure black brushes, its just hit or miss, but I did notice that even when it does not want to paint on a mask, if I create an empty pixel layer and paint on that directly the brush works, I thought it was due to maybe having 'preserve alpha' checked, but I triple checked and no, it's not selected when I try to paint on a mask, after some restarting it works, to go back to not working the following time, for now I'll just reinstall affinity and try again

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But have you checked what MEB suggested about using CTRL+D to make sure there is no active selection?

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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Andrew
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Win10 x64 AMD Threadripper 1950x, 64GB, 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD + 2TB, dual GTX 1080ti
Dual Monitor Dell Ultra HD 4k P2715Q 27-Inch

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  • 6 months later...

I have tried to emulate the tutorial on Quickmasks https://player.vimeo.com/video/130973259/.  I can load an image.  Pressing 'q' or clicking on the quickmask icon gives me a red overlay.  I can select the paintbrush tool.  But painting on the image has no effect whatsoever.  Image is attached.  Please explain.  I'm using late 2012 iMac, OS X 10.12.6, Affinity Photo 1.5.2.

IMG_0250.afphoto

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1 hour ago, dafus said:

I have tried to emulate the tutorial on Quickmasks https://player.vimeo.com/video/130973259/.  I can load an image.  Pressing 'q' or clicking on the quickmask icon gives me a red overlay.  I can select the paintbrush tool.  But painting on the image has no effect whatsoever.  Image is attached.  Please explain.  I'm using late 2012 iMac, OS X 10.12.6, Affinity Photo 1.5.2.

IMG_0250.afphoto

 

Make sure the white brush is set to 100% opacity !  If you paint at an opacity lower than 50% Photo won't display the Marching ants.

qm.jpg.f7358776f37db087684cc578f45d4b87.jpg

 

Press Q again to get the Marching ants. Also, make sure View > Show Pixel Selection is ticked.

 

ants.jpg.6cf7d1f0666cd187ebd2940fcd22e74e.jpg

 

 

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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  • 3 months later...

I am using the iPad Pro version 1.6.5.61 and I am having the same issue here. I place a black mask over my duplicate later and try to paint with the brush tool and nothing happens. I do, however, have the ability to use the pixel brush tool to do “paint” with. 

 

Is is this an issue that Affinity is going to address in future updates? Has the bug been addressed on the desktop platforms?

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  • Staff

Hi YorkshirePhoto,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Check the Protect Alpha button in the context toolbar on bottom. Is it enabled (does it have a thin outline around the circle)? If so tap it to disable this.

Also make sure you don't have the Opacity or the Flow of the brush set to 0% in the context toolbar on bottom.

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  • 2 years later...

I think I have a similar issue. I am well-versed in Photoshop and want to switch to AP, but simple things (I think) are confusing me.

As you can see in this image, I have a curves adjustment layer to blue up the sky. When I made the selection, I inadvertently included the top portion of the church steeple, thus it blue as well. I tried using the paintbrush tool to "paint away" the blue portion over the steeple, but it has no effect. I'm sure I am missing something simple, but for my life can't figure it out.

Any help is appreciated.

I'm on Windows 10 pro, 32GB RAM on a very capable laptop.

 

Capture.JPG

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Select (highlight) the Curves Adjustment layer in the layers panel

Select a Black regular paint brush and carefully paint on the steeple

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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2 hours ago, Clayton King said:

I rebooted and that seemed to fix it. Is this a common issue?

I've heard of restarting a particular Affinity app curing some random issues but having to reboot your PC/Mac to fix something, Affinity related, is far less common.

 

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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