How Do you Use The Inpainting Tool brush

[DDW]

Hello,

I run Windows 10.  And my version of Affinity is 1.5.269.  I have never processed a pic with it yet.  Intimated by it.  I was going to print the guide out, put I ran out of toner.

 

I am trying to do what the lady on this video is doing with the imprinting brush.  I cannot do it.  What she is doing is using it to 'paint' over an object, and then she releases the mouse and the painted over object is gone. 

 

She talks about how easy it is.  When I do it, I get a thin line to 'paint' with.  The line I paint with in the size of a the print of a normal pen.  The one she uses is large and she can quickly paint over a telephone pole for example.  There are no comments after her video is over, so I am left without any help.  Could those of you that know how to use the imprinting brush teach me how to do it?  Please?  The time window for what I am interested below is from the 31:19 min mark to the 40:22 mark.  How does she make her brush bigger?  What is the deal about the two layers (ie. Current layer and Below, Current layer)  Also, how come I do not see a red-eye icon on my screen?  Would you please which the short clip above and teach me how to do it?  Is her version the same as mine?

 

 

You don't have to watch the whole video.  

[toltec]

Select the Inpainting Brush tool.

 

Note that the Inpainting Brush tool  is part of the healing brush group (plaster). Click on the plaster and the group of tools will pop-out. (picture). Click on the Inpainting tool.

 

To set the size of the brush, on the toolbar above the window

 

 

click on the little down arrow to the right, and drag the slider that appears to adjust the brush, or you can click where is says 64 px and enter a new size, like 128  to double the size. You don't need to enter the "px"

 

As an example ...

 

To remove the post, 

 

Set the brush to a sensible size and paint over the post. Try 60  but it depends on the size of your picture!

 

Release the mouse, and it's gone.

 

[DDW]

Toltec, thank you show much for your help.  I have some more questions.  However, I am ill today and will probably get back with you tomorrow on them.  The way you can insert an image, highlight certain parts of it . . . is amazing and helpful.  Unfortunately, I do not know how to do that.   I'll attach one of the images I was working on with NO SUCCESS.  I was making multiple people (cloning I guess - although I never remember using that tool). 

 

I will attach the pic.  If any one wants to have a go at it and if you are successful, could you jot down the steps you used for your success.  My daughter is a cheerleader.  I was trying to single her out.  I wanted to remove the orange pylon directly behind her.  I wanted to remove the dark line on the turf.  I wanted to remove the other two cheerleaders.  And finally, I wanted to remove the white lines off of the track the ladies were standing on.  When I tried it . . .  it was an ugly/blurry mix.

 

Can shortcuts be uploaded?  I'll try.  Reason being, it stated that my photo was too big 16.4mb.

 

Thank you very much.   

DSC00004 - Shortcut.lnk

DSC00002 - Shortcut.lnk

[Bri-Toon]

Quote

When I tried it . . .  it was an ugly/blurry mix.

 

Hello DDW. First of all, get well. It's no good being ill.

 

Secondly, you are correct that inpainting is a tool to remove unwanted areas, but it works best on more simple backgrounds. From your description (unable to view the links), you are looking to remove areas of more complexity. It all depends on the object's surroundings. Let's say there is an image of a bird flying in a blue cloud-less sky. The bird's surroundings is a solid blue, so when you paint over it, the program detects the inbetween. It takes whatever borders around the painted region and merges it. In this case, you would get a clean result. However, if the bird was in front of a cloud, then the result would look blurry; as it did in your case.

 

And I don't know how the lady changed her brush size. It looks like a key command was used, but I do not know it. I always change the size the way Toltec mentioned.

[Alfred]

9 minutes ago, Bri-Toon said:

And I don't know how the lady changed her brush size. It looks like a key command was used, but I do not know it. I always change the size the way Toltec mentioned.

 

With my UK keyboard, I can resize the Inpainting Brush Tool brush with the same [ and ] shortcuts that work for any other brush.

 

[DDW]

Please let me know if you can see the pics above.  If not, I'll see about compressing them into smaller files and/or using dropbox.  Any other suggestions?  Thank you.

[DDW]

13 hours ago, toltec said:

 

 

 

Select the Inpainting Brush tool.

 

Hello,  DDW wants to know, what version of Affinity that Toltec has.  I have read on the net, that the  inpainting tool with my version (1.5.2.69) is buggy.  Anybody else hear or believe that?  Sick boy is writing from his sick bed.  And, anybody know of ways to compress jpegs so that I can put my attempts to inpaint on this forum?  One way I tried was to have Affinity export my photo in its lowest quality.  That didn't work.  It was still a little too big.  Thank you.

[Alfred]

A *.lnk shortcut file is just that: it's a link or shortcut to a file on your computer. We need to see the file itself, rather than a local pointer to it.

 

[DDW]

33 minutes ago, Bri-Toon said:

 

Hello DDW. First of all, get well. It's no good being ill.

 

Amen.  Thank you.  I am disabled so I have plenty of time to get better.  No job to go to.  Trying to make a hobby out of using Affinity to help pass time.

 

33 minutes ago, Bri-Toon said:

 

Secondly, you are correct that inpainting is a tool to remove unwanted areas, but it works best on more simple backgrounds. 

 

33 minutes ago, Bri-Toon said:

 

^^^Understood.  But, did you see the clip above that I asked others to watch?  Not the whole, long, drawn out thing - just the 10 minutes worth.  She was doing some amazing things and making it look amazingly easy.  I tried to replicate what she was doing on some 'easier' image without much success.  At the end of this, I have more questions again from just watching the 10 minutes of above.  Please see them at the end of this message.  Thank you.  

 

From your description (unable to view the links),

 

I'm working on that!  How does one compress a jpg small enough to fit for this forum?!

 

33 minutes ago, Bri-Toon said:

 

you are looking to remove areas of more complexity. It all depends on the object's surroundings. Let's say there is an image of a bird flying in a blue cloud-less sky. The bird's surroundings is a solid blue, so when you paint over it, the program detects the inbetween. It takes whatever borders around the painted region and merges it. In this case, you would get a clean result. However, if the bird was in front of a cloud, then the result would look blurry; as it did in your case.

 

Again, the clip above.  The lady was removing telephone poles that were in the FORREST!  Along with a dozen other different things all in about 5 minutes.  Of course she is a trainer and has been one for many years.  I am a former tennis player.  I am completely aware of the fact that highly skilled people can make things like very simple.  But I was no where in the ballpark.  If only she TAUGHT, as well as she used the software.  Heck, there where not even comments at the end of it.  I was hoping that would clear up all the foggy places . . .  

 

33 minutes ago, Bri-Toon said:

 

And I don't know how the lady changed her brush size. It looks like a key command was used, but I do not know it. I always change the size the way Toltec mentioned.

 

Agreed.  Easy enough.  What about the 'More' button that appears after adjusting brush width and those few other things?  It looks like that is NOT a place for a rookie like me to go to?  Besides, Ms. Expert on the youtube video did not go there.  That is my assumption anyway.  I never saw/heard her go there.

 

Some more questions after watching the ten minutes of her clip again:

 

Note:  the numbers before the questions represent the time that the comment/question comes up on the clip abve.

 

·     31.14 she pulls up a new image out of ‘thin air’.  HOW?

 

·     31.47 – ‘what I am going to do to make sure it is non-destructive is to add a layer, that is just a blank pixel layer’  HOW DO YOU ADD ANOTHER LAYER?  And is it necessary?   Would the image/edits be destructive if you didn’t do this step?

 

·     29.59 ‘make sure you have selected current layer and below’ (although she is not consistent with this in her practice) – WHY?

 

·     32.20 she makes a white line disappear and calls it ‘perfect’ and it is!!!  I try something similar and it leaves on obvious, blurry path.  UGH.

 

·     32.34 Talks about the zoom key (but is speaking ‘Apple’).  What is the Widows command?  Let me guess.  Z?  And she mentions how it toggles back and forth.  ‘Push ZED (? Apple?) again, it takes me back to the previous tool’

 

·     33.23 ‘Sometimes it is better to do it with a smaller brush and do it little by little.’  Agree?  However, I watched her on this clip take out many things with a bigger brush and a bigger area all in one move.  IE.  Telephone poles, trees, etc

 

·     33.30 “I can actually show you the before and after.”  Are there other ways to show the 'before'/'afters'?

 

·     35.10 – Again breaks one of her own ‘rules’ by painting with a VERY LARGE BRUSH over a VERY LARGE AREA – ALL AT ONCE.  IE.  Taking out a whole telephone pole.

 

·     35.30 Getting rid of the telephone cables with a much bigger than necessary brush.  And again, it shows at the top – ‘current layer’.

 

·     36.20 ‘Try not to veer off – try to keep it in a straight as line as possible’ said when she was taking out a large telephone pole.  Would you agree that that is important?  It seems like it would appear on the context of the image.

 

·     37.00 she gets rid of telephone cables with a brush much bigger than what she needs, but it still looks good.  And again, she is in ‘current layer’.

 

·     37.13 she ‘paints’ a large area as she gets rid of telephone cables – seeming to break one of her on rules again.

 

·     37.25 'Staying on the cables because the intelligence of the software gets it better to stay in one area/thing at a time.'

 

·     38.38 – There were three long cables.  She took them out one at a time, and with a smaller brush that what she was using on them previously.

 

·     39.45 Takes out a telephone pole that was partially covered by trees at the bottom.  She did it in two stages and it looks great.  Mine would most likely be a blurry mess.

 

·     40.55 there was a dip on the horizon from here take something out.  She used the same tool to fix the dip.  She just painted from one side of the dip to the other and it was gone.  That was a trip.  I tried it.  It didn't work for me.  Thanks.

 

 

 

[toltec]

31 minutes ago, DDW said:

 

Hello,  DDW wants to know, what version of Affinity that Toltec has.  I have read on the net, that the  inpainting tool with my version (1.5.2.69) is buggy.  Anybody else hear or believe that?  Sick boy is writing from his sick bed.  And, anybody know of ways to compress jpegs so that I can put my attempts to inpaint on this forum?  One way I tried was to have Affinity export my photo in its lowest quality.  That didn't work.  It was still a little too big.  Thank you.

 

 

1.5.2.69

 

I have never had any problems or found any bugs

 

Never believe what you read on the 'net 

[Alfred]

24 minutes ago, toltec said:

Never believe what you read on the 'net 

 

Not even when you read on the 'net that you should never believe what you read on the 'net?

 

[toltec]

5 minutes ago, Alfred said:

 

Not even when you read on the 'net that you should never believe what you read on the 'net?

 

 

Would I lie to you ? 

[toltec]

To export a JPEG, go File > Export  and this panel will appear

 

The yellow box is the physical size of the image. The smaller the image size, the smaller the file size.

You can enter a size of about 800, that is big enough for what we need,

 

If you drag the slider (Red box) that affects the (quality) or compression and therefore file size. Don't go lower than 75 . 

 

The green box shows what the file size will be on the disc. As you drag the slider, it changes.

 

 

So ...

enter 800 in the size (left hand box)  

drag the slider

the estimated file size will tell you what the file size will be.

Click on Export to save it.

 

p.s. Get well soon 

[DDW]

Well, thank you all on all accounts.  Much appreciated.  

 

Early today I wrote:

 

 I'll attach one of the images I was working on with NO SUCCESS.  I was making multiple people (cloning I guess - although I never remember using that tool). 

 

I will attach the pic.  If any one wants to have a go at it and if you are successful, could you jot down the steps you used for your success.  My daughter is a cheerleader.  I was trying to single her out.  I wanted to remove the orange pylon directly behind her.  I wanted to remove the dark line on the turf.  I wanted to remove the other two cheerleaders.  And finally, I wanted to remove the white lines off of the track the ladies were standing on.  When I tried it . . .  it was an ugly/blurry mix.

 

I think my photos will fit now.  With the one where my poor daughter's head is cloned liked 7 times, that is me . . . trying to use the imprinting brush.  The other pic is untouched by me (other than the down sizing).  It is the same or similar pic to the one I mangled.  Boo hoo . . .   The only thing that has been done to it - is I have resized it, to fix this forum.  Here is what I was wanting to do:  1.) Remove the orange pylon from behind her head.  2.) Remove the dark line down the side of the green turf.  3.) Remove the white lines from off of the track and finally 4.) Remove any other cheerleaders in the picture (I just want my firstborn!).   After over 2 hours of working on the photo . .  . all I could do is create a creepy seven-headed beast.  But . . . all was not lost.  I quickly got an email from my daughter (she never emails me - I'm not 'cool' enough).  "Please take that off of Facebook . . . I am so embarrassed."  Not exactly the hugs and kisses I was hoping for when I bought Affinity.  NOTE:  I don't blame them.

 

After watching 'Mrs. Giles' in the youtube clip, I figured . . . piece of cake!  'This will be EASY!  Look at how quickly she removed poles, lines painted on the highway, telephone cables, etc...'  If any of you can do it, could you please jot down . . . step by step how you did it?   I'd be most appreciate!   Thank you very much.

 

Finally, if you have any insights into what I might have been doing wrong to create my seven headed beauty queen, I'd appreciative if you would share those insight with me.  Thanks again!  Time for medicine and rest again.

 

PS:  Yeah!  It looks like the picture thing worked!  I got it done for free at http://picresize.com/ .  It was quick and easy.  Idiot proof.  Just like I thought inpainting would be.  So . . . there.  I finally contribute something to this community.  To my new friends!

[DDW]

WHOOPS!!!  The undamaged one . . . coming up now.  Sorry about that.  Ghez.

[Bri-Toon]

Hi DDW,

I did see the part of the video you wanted us to see and I do understand that is a more complex photo. The example I gave was more for a general understanding of how it works. It may not look it, but there is indeed a pattern in the painted areas of that image the lady painted on. And if you don't look at the image as a whole, but each element separately, you will begin to see a pattern.

 

 

With the telephone pole, the background is symmetrical on both sides. The bushy area on the bottom left could've been a problem, but it is not actually hitting it. And the height of the trees and grass almost match.

 

 

On this one of the post, the background is on an angle, and in some cases, that can be tricky, but there is nothing else happening in the background. If it were object piled on object, plus the background, then that would result to a mess.

 

Now getting to your image, the giant slice of cheese that orange cone can be removed, because it is like the post example. The background is on an angle, but there is not much happening. (My version does look sloppy though). Just be careful with that, because unlike the post example, the shadow does not fill up the remaining bottom area.

 

 

Okay now this is a hard thing to edit, and I am sorry to say, I do not have those skills. Imagine trying to get your daughter's arm to connect. There is a vertical part of the arm trying to merge with the horizontal part. And say it did merge, it would have to also calculate the shape of the elbow which would have to be round, but there would be no way of knowing.

 

 

For this operation, the Clone Tool works much better. My example may look sloppy, but I did what I could. It's that arm that's getting in the way.

 

[toltec]

Well, this is the best I can do, not perfect though.

 

I don't know how to start explaining it. A mixture of cloning, inpainting, blurring, liquifying and so on.

 

Quite a challenge, getting rid of the unwanted stuff was easy. It was creating her arm that was hard.

 

[Bri-Toon]

Well done!

[R C-R]

Hi @DDW. Welcome to the forum! 

 

Affinity Photo is a powerful, feature-rich app. If you are new to it, I suggest starting off by watching the Beginners Series of official Affinity video tutorials listed here. This should answer some of your questions & get you familiar with the basics of how it works. Then you can browse through the other, more specialized videos like those listed in the Retouching section, for example the Inpainting one.

 

The inpainting tool usually works best if you paint over smaller areas containing things you want to remove with just a bit of the surrounding area included. You may also need to make several passes to remove any leftover unwanted stuff. In the Affinity inpainting video, you can see this clearly at around the 4:00 mark, where James removes the person with the red jacket behind the tree by applying the brush several times.

 

However, it also depends on the surrounding area -- when it has strong textural & structural elements the inpainting algorithm can identify, you can increase the area & still get good results. If you are curious about what that means, this section of the Wikipedia Inpainting article discusses some of the technical detail about that, but to get a feel for how it works in real world use there is no substitute for practice & experimentation. This is true for all retouching techniques -- it is an acquired skill.

 

Regarding the "Current Layer & Below" option, as in the live session video you can use that to do your inpainting on a new pixel layer. As the name suggests, it samples from both that layer & all those visible below it, but it still adds the inpainted pixels to the selected layer. This is non-destructive because, as in the video, you can switch on & off that layer to reveal the untouched pixels below it.

[smadell]

I’ve attached a ZIP file with an .afphoto file enclosed. The “background” layer is your original picture. There are a bunch of other layers, all of which are turned off (the check box on the right side of each layer in the Layers panel). You should start at the bottom and turn on each of the layers to see the progression of things. The first 5 layers (the 5 above the background) involve taking pieces of the picture OUT. For the most part, this was done either with Inpainting or with Cloning. Mostly, cloning. For any inpainting or cloning operation, I chose “Current Layer and Below” and made multiple passes to get rid of the offending element(s). The hardness of the cloning brush was generally set really low, so as to blend the layers. The hardness of the Inpainting brush was usually set to 100%, since that’s how I’ve found it works best.

After that, it was a matter of recreating the missing parts of your daughter. Once the cheerleader in front of her is removed, there are large chunks of her legs, waist, and left arm missing. To do this, I copied generously from the other girls in the picture.

First, I grabbed the left chest wall border from the girl on the right side of the picture. Copied and pasted into a new layer. Masked out everything but the border of the shirt. Used the Move tool to stretch it a bit horizontally. Blurred the edges to make it blend in.

Also copied the left thigh, hip, and inner legs from the girl at the left. Pasted into 2 new layers and masked out everything I didn’t want. Blurred the borders. Used the Move tool to stretch the layers to the proper curvature.

The Left Arm was the hardest. I copied the upper arm from the girl at the lower left corner of the picture, and copied the forearm from the girl at the right. I pasted both into new layers, and flipped the forearm horizontally to make sure it was facing the right direction. Rotated both and stretched them to fit. Blurred the edges. Masked as needed. Did a merge selected to make the arm into a single pixel layer. Still very rough, as you can see.

Cheerleaders.afphoto.zip

[DDW]

On 9/27/2017 at 7:46 PM, toltec said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, this is the best I can do, not perfect though.

 

I don't know how to start explaining it. A mixture of cloning, inpainting, blurring, liquifying and so on.

 

Quite a challenge, getting rid of the unwanted stuff was easy. It was creating her arm that was hard.

 

Yeah!  That's my girl!!!  Thanks and AWESOME!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DDW]

3 hours ago, smadell said:

On 9/27/2017 at 5:27 PM, toltec said:

To export a JPEG, go File > Export  and this panel will appear

 

The yellow box is the physical size of the image. The smaller the image size, the smaller the file size.

You can enter a size of about 800, that is big enough for what we need,

 

If you drag the slider (Red box) that affects the (quality) or compression and therefore file size. Don't go lower than 75 . 

 

The green box shows what the file size will be on the disc. As you drag the slider, it changes.

 

 

So ...

enter 800 in the size (left hand box)  

drag the slider

the estimated file size will tell you what the file size will be.

Click on Export to save it.

 

p.s. Get well soon 

 

^^^ Dean has another question -- where does it EXPORT TO?  And how can you control the pathway?  I'm going to start watching the suggested videos that are in this thread!  Thanks.  You all are great!  What an amazing and supportive tool.  Speaks volumes to how well the program is!

 

 

I’ve attached a ZIP file with an .afphoto file enclosed. The “background” layer is your original picture. There are a bunch of other layers, all of which are turned off (the check box on the right side of each layer in the Layers panel). You should start at the bottom and turn on each of the layers to see the progression of things. The first 5 layers (the 5 above the background) involve taking pieces of the picture OUT. For the most part, this was done either with Inpainting or with Cloning. Mostly, cloning. For any inpainting or cloning operation, I chose “Current Layer and Below” and made multiple passes to get rid of the offending element(s). The hardness of the cloning brush was generally set really low, so as to blend the layers. The hardness of the Inpainting brush was usually set to 100%, since that’s how I’ve found it works best.

After that, it was a matter of recreating the missing parts of your daughter. Once the cheerleader in front of her is removed, there are large chunks of her legs, waist, and left arm missing. To do this, I copied generously from the other girls in the picture.

First, I grabbed the left chest wall border from the girl on the right side of the picture. Copied and pasted into a new layer. Masked out everything but the border of the shirt. Used the Move tool to stretch it a bit horizontally. Blurred the edges to make it blend in.

Also copied the left thigh, hip, and inner legs from the girl at the left. Pasted into 2 new layers and masked out everything I didn’t want. Blurred the borders. Used the Move tool to stretch the layers to the proper curvature.

The Left Arm was the hardest. I copied the upper arm from the girl at the lower left corner of the picture, and copied the forearm from the girl at the right. I pasted both into new layers, and flipped the forearm horizontally to make sure it was facing the right direction. Rotated both and stretched them to fit. Blurred the edges. Masked as needed. Did a merge selected to make the arm into a single pixel layer. Still very rough, as you can see.

Cheerleaders.afphoto.zip

 

[DDW]

You guys are AMAZING!!!  Thank you so much!  What a great community.

 

I figured out my problem.  Correct me if I am wrong.

 

1st grader comes up to the teacher:  "Mrs. Jones, I want you to teach me math please."

 

"Well . . . that is great DDW!   Math covers a lot of areas."                                                     "Calculus or Trigonometry.  Either would be fine!"

"But DDW, you cannot count to 20 yet.  How about we work on that first?!"

 

BIG GRIN!

[toltec]

Yes, I was thinking of how to say something similar, diplomatically 

 

Reminds me of the expression.  "Don't try to run before you can walk"  This is a bit like trying to take on Usain Bolt before you can crawl.

 

I suggest practice and watching some videos. However, don't give up !  I've had 30 years practice but am still learning and still enjoy it.

[smadell]

The same answer applies to the question, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?"