Cleaning up line art in Affinity Photo

[Merton Dot]

Hello - - new to the forums, so I apologize in advance if I am being a knucklehead in general.

I'm trying to clean up/sharpen line art in Affinity Photo. In Photoshop I would select the line art, select 'Levels' and then adjust to get the desired level of sharpness. My forum digging suggests that in Affinity Photo, the 'Threshold Adjustment' should achieve the same result.

The issue I'm running into is that when I place the Threshold Adjustment directly above the line art layer, it allows me to make the line art as crisp as I'd like but it also applies to every other layer below it.

When I try to move the Threshold Adjustment as a child layer (I hope that's the right name for docking it underneath the line art layer) the adjustment is no longer affecting the layers below - but it's also not affecting the line art I'm trying to sharpen either. When I drag the adjustment to a child layer - BOOM - the line art gets fuzzy again.

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I assume there's a simple solution I'm just missing. Thought I'd ask the experts. Thanks in advance.

[toltec]

Are you sure you "docked it" ?

 

You have to drag the adjustment layer to the "masking" position, so there is a small vertical blue line, before you release it.

 

If correct, the Adjustment layer will be indented, as shown below.

 

An alternative method to docking it is to group the top layer and the Adjustment layer. Select them both and click on the group icon.

 

 

 

[lepr]

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[Merton Dot]

16 hours ago, toltec said:

Are you sure you "docked it" ?

 

You have to drag the adjustment layer to the "masking" position, so there is a small vertical blue line, before you release it.

 

If correct, the Adjustment layer will be indented, as shown below.

 

 

An alternative method to docking it is to group the top layer and the Adjustment layer. Select them both and click on the group icon.

 

 

 

I suppose I was using incorrect terminology, I did drag the adjustment to the masking position like your screenshots show - - thanks!

[Merton Dot]

14 hours ago, owenr said:

Because your black lines are defined by varying opacity of black in an otherwise transparent layer, and not varying levels of RGB in a fully opaque layer, you need to adjust the alpha of the line art Pixel object. You should be able to give that Pixel object a nested Levels or Curves adjustment with its target set to Alpha instead of Master, and manipulate its black point and white points.

However, alpha adjustment of a Pixel object by a nested adjustment is broken in the current Affinity apps. A workaround is to make the Pixel object the sole member of a Group object that has Normal blending mode, and then control the Group's alpha as described above.

 

 

This worked like a charm - thank you so much for walking me through this. Also good to know that some of these nested adjustments currently don't work like they're supposed to, I suspected something was a little wonky.