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How do I paint a mask onto an adjustment layer?


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In Affinity Photo any adjustment layer has a mask with it. It should be possible to paint with black colour on it to reduce the effect of the adjustment.

 

Basically I do understand this concept.

 

But for some reasons it does not work for me. Here is what I did:

1) Open a photo in AP

2) Add a Black & White adjustment layer on top of it. The photo turns into b/w

3) Use the paintbrush and paint with black colour onto the adjustment > colour comes back in

4) Use the paintbrush and paint with white colour over the formerly black painted area > more colour comes back in
just as if the colour of my brush doesn't matter at all

 

Is this working differently than masks in Photoshop?

Sorry if I don't get the obvious...

 

Thanks for any help.

 

d.

 

 

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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Works correct for me  ..

 

 

 

This seems to be working fine for me as well. Which app version are you using and on which platform (Win or Mac)?

 

Thank you both for confirming that it is working as expected. I am on Windows and AP 1.5.2.69 & beta 1.6.0.70

 

I just tried again after I had shut down the program and restarted it and it works here as well with a diffferent photo.

 

When this first occured I was working on a rather complex montage and then I tried to recreate the 'error' in a stripped down version with just one photo and an adjustment layer. But I did not restart the program.

 

But: I tried again with the original file and the problem persists.

Here is a link to the file (149 MB). Can you paint with white color on the B/W adjustment layer and reveal the black and white effect (= make colour black and white again)?

 

Thanks,

 

d,

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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Dominik...

 

My bet is that your afphoto file is corrupted in some way. I downloaded the file you linked to above, and I could not paint with white on the Black and White adjustment either. BUT - I copied the Image layer (not the adjustment layer), closed the file, and then did a "New from Clipboard" to make a duplicate file with just the image. I put a Black and White adjustment on this, and inverted it. I could paint with white to turn the painted areas back to Black and White, working as expected.

 

NOTE - I am on a Mac, and did this in v1.5.2. I'll try it in the 1.6 beta and see if it works.

 

ADDITIONAL  - Just tried the same process using the new beta (1.6). Painting with white on the inverted mask works as expected. I suspect that the problem is in the file, itself.

Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2 (latest retail versions) - desktop & iPad
Culling - FastRawViewer; Raw Developer - Capture One Pro; Asset Management - Photo Supreme
Mac Studio with M2 Max (2023}; 64 GB RAM; macOS 13 (Ventura); Mac Studio Display - iPad Air 4th Gen; iPadOS 17

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Hi dominic,

Thanks for the file. Seems your "white" is actually a mid grey (check the colour panel) but for some reason it doesn't appear to work immediately after you open the document (as if it was black).

Can you please check/adjust it so you really have white selected on the colour wheel (or sliders) in the Colour panel and then try to paint again? It should then work as you'd expect. Let me know how it goes...

 

In any case something seems wrong as it doesn't appear to work immediately after you open the document. I will check it on a Windows system.

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When opening your file I experience the same behavior! 

Also after rasterizing the image

The current color format is CMYKA/8 - U.S. Web Coated (SWOP)v2 !! Did you assign this?

Have you made any other adjustments?

If I export to JPG and reopen the problem does not occur anymore !!

 

Perhaps it would be better to provide a link of the original image.

Affinity Photo  2.3.1

Laptop MSI Prestige PS42
Windows 11 Home 23H2 (Build 22631.3007) - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8565U CPU @ 1.80GHz   2.00 GHz - RAM 16,0 GB

 

 
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I had another look at this, dominik. When I open your file, the color format is indeed CMYKA/8 (although I didn't need to change it to get things to work). If you select the Black and White Adjustment layer, and then double-click on the White circle in the color picker, I noticed that the HSL version of the color had a Luminance value of 100 (no problem) but a Saturation value of 0. Once you set the Saturation to 100, your file works as expected. In essence, MEB's observation that the "white" you chose to paint with wasn't really white after all was correct. I'm not sure how that happened, although it may be a peculiarity of working in CMYK color space.

Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2 (latest retail versions) - desktop & iPad
Culling - FastRawViewer; Raw Developer - Capture One Pro; Asset Management - Photo Supreme
Mac Studio with M2 Max (2023}; 64 GB RAM; macOS 13 (Ventura); Mac Studio Display - iPad Air 4th Gen; iPadOS 17

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but a Saturation value of 0. Once you set the Saturation to 100

 

Thank you everyone for looking into this and providing me with some observations that got me now going again.

 

It is indeed a 'wrong' white that I was using to paint on the mask. I have no idea how this happened since I did not dial in these values intentionally.

 

I am glad that this was more a case of user error and not a bug in the software ;)  

I'll more carefully check my colour settings.

 

Thanks again for sorting this out.

 

d.

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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