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Why are my pencil strokes disappearing, and how do I get them back?


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Can anyone tell me what keeps happening to my pencil strokes, and what to do about it? 

I am drawing using the pencil tool. The thick black stroke in the first image is what I have been using, and it is what I want. However, in the middle of drawing something (in this case, I was tracing the shape that is on the bottom left of both images), all of a sudden all of my strokes disappear (compare images below). The pencil lines are still there, but the thick black part is gone and I'm left with just the thin blue selection lines (not the selection box; I mean the lines that make up the curves themselves are now just thin blue lines). And I don't mean just on the particular curve I've been working on, I mean when this happens every stroke in the document (even on other, supposedly locked layers) has gone from thick black lines to almost invisible thin lines.

When I check the stroke settings—brush width, size variance, solid line style, etc.—none of them have changed, but my nice thick black lines are still gone. Changing these settings has no effect, and undoing has no effect—I can undo all the way back to the point at which I first drew each line, and they are still thin blue lines the whole time, not thick black ones.

This has happened to me in two different documents so far, and because I can't find a way to fix the lines or undo whatever happened, I have had to start over from scratch, which really blows.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it? I've searched the forums and tutorials for help but haven't found any info.

If you reply please have mercy and use laymen's terms. :) I am very new to Affinity Designer, and to graphic design programs in general. Thank you very much.

Screen Shot 2018-07-28 at 7.26.52 PM.png

Screen Shot 2018-07-28 at 7.11.33 PM.png

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You have turned on Outline Mode, You could have accidentally turned it on via the keyboard, the keyboard combo for Outline Mode is ⌘+Y

118917001_ScreenShot2018-07-29at08_30_45.png.ab9c709bd0ed3001eb34c8bc238ee8c6.png

733910553_ScreenShot2018-07-29at08_36_12.png.977fd772cc087bb83cf0151c146d759d.png

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Yeah, that sounds like me, actually...usually that shortcut means "redo", but not in Designer apparently.
To turn it off again, I'm guessing I just click on one of those other view modes instead? I'll try that. And I'll change or delete that shortcut.

Thank you very much!!

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To turn off Outline View mode, click the button again. The other two View Mode buttons in that group work the same way -- only one can be enabled at a time & if none are, then you are in regular view mode.

Traditionally in the Mac OS, redo is CMD+Shift+Z, but some apps use CMD+Y instead, or give you the option to use either one. The Affinity apps give you the option to set the redo keyboard shortcut to whatever you want (as long as it does not conflict with another keyboard shortcut) or to set it to none.

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