Question about masks in Affinity Designer on iPad

[zei]

Absolutely loving Affinity Designer on the iPad, but there’s one thing that I just can’t figure out - working with masks. I usually start with making a pixel layer lineart drawing, set to multiply. Then I do the colouring, in either pixels or vectors in a layer underneath this. What I then need to do is to remove parts of the lineart that I don’t need anymore. I could of course use the eraser tool, but I prefer to do this in a mask, as I often change my mind about what works or not. However, when I add a masking layer to my pixel lineart layer, the quality of the line suddenly changes radically, almost as if it burns and disintegrates somehow, weakening the overall lineart a lot, without me adding any black to the mask whatsoever. Now I think this effect is kind of cool, but I don’t always want it, and I want to figure out why it happens and how to control it. What I’m looking for is adding a mask so that I can paint out the lines with my pixel persona brush tool, without Designer suddenly changing the quality of my lineart when I add that mask. I’ve watched the tutorials, but found no info to help me with this particular challenge. Should be pretty straightforward and simple, yet this trick eludes me in Designer for iPad. Anyone else encountered this, or have any experience with masking pixel layers in AD? 

- zei

[R C-R]

Hi @zei & welcome to the forums! 

I see an odd effect when I apply a mask to a pixel layer in the iPad version, but I would not describe it as a burning or disintegrating effect. To me, it is more of a slight blur & reduction in thickness. The difference may be in how the layers are stacked or with the line art I am using, so if you could explain a bit more about that (or attach a screenshot) it might help.

Regardless, I am not seeing the same thing when I save the file to iCloud & open it in the Mac desktop version of Affinity Designer, so maybe this is a bug in the iPad version or a rendering effect.

[zei]

Thanks for the reply @R C-R.  Yes, perhaps my description wasn’t quite good or precise enough. But there was as you said, definitely a reduction in thickness. As I tried to make you a screenshot today, the strangest thing happened. When applying a mask, nothing happened. The thickness wasn’t reduced. In other words, it suddenly behaved the way I wanted it to. This was in a new document, so I tried applying masks in the files I was working on yesterday, and the same thing happened - it now all worked correctly, the way it’s supposed to be. Which is weird, as I haven’t done anything differently from yesterday. I haven’t changed any settings, layer properties, order or tool values. Nothing. But as long as it works now, I’m happy.