Wrong behavior of Affinity Photo?

[Carlos Badiola]

Hi,

I have been a Photoshop user for a long time and am considering moving to Photo. I have detected a behavior which seems strange to me in this software. According to the tutorials, and in line with Photoshop behavior, when you perform a selection and implement a modification into an adjustment layer or live filter, the modification should apply to the selection only. I have applied a clarity live filter to the background layer with a selection previously implemented and I have found that the clarity effect is implemented to the whole image, not to the active selection. Am I doing anything wrong?

Another strange thing. When you check the tutorial about live filters, it is clearly stated that live filters, as with adjustment layers, have their masks already incorporated, and the changes implemented to the masks should be shown in the mask thumbnail of the layer, i.e., if we fill the mask with a black color, this black color is shown in the thumbnail, so looking to the layer and thumbnail you know which color is the mask and if there is anything painted into that. When I applied the previously mentioned clarity live filter, the thumbnail remained white despite I inverted the color of the mask to black, something that I could verify by Alt-clicking in the thumbnail and showing the mask fill with black and the clarity effect not being applied to the image.

Are you undergoing similar behaviors?

I am running version 1.6.7 under Mac OS 10.12.6.

Thanks for your help,

[Gabe]

Hi @Carlos Badiola,

Welcome to the forums. 

I could not replicate any of the issues you described. See below:

If you can send a screen recording we can have a look for you. 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

[dutchshader]

Could it be that the op has a image layer and not a pixel layer?

[Gabe]

It's the same behaviour on both pixel and image.

[lepr]

.

[Gabe]

3 minutes ago, owenr said:

That's a well-known bug.

The mask thumbnail won't update until you make another change in the Layers panel, such as moving an object to a higher or lower level in the stack, or adding a new object to the document.

 

Thanks. I forgot about this. However, this only applies if your live filter is a child of the pixel layer. If it's not nested, it updates fine. 

[Carlos Badiola]

Thanks all for your responses and help.

One example. I have added a clarity live filter first, then I have loaded the selection of the castle to the pixel layer (background), then I have  implemented changes to the clarity filter and those changes have been applied to the castle and the foreground (not selected) also (see screenshot). The workflow worked correctly if I select the castle before adding the live filter. 

[Carlos Badiola]

I have tried to reveal a sharpen mask effect by painting in white, and this time has worked properly, but I did the same before and it did not work. 

 

[Gabe]

15 hours ago, Carlos Badiola said:

Thanks all for your responses and help.

One example. I have added a clarity live filter first, then I have loaded the selection of the castle to the pixel layer (background), then I have  implemented changes to the clarity filter and those changes have been applied to the castle and the foreground (not selected) also (see screenshot). The workflow worked correctly if I select the castle before adding the live filter. 

If you already applied an adjustment, just making a selection won't make any difference. You would have to either "delete" that selection or pain with black/white. A selection on its own on an adjustment layer does not have any effect. 

[Carlos Badiola]

I might not be understanding your point, but as you can see in the order of actions that I implemented, I first performed the selection and then I configured the clarity adjustment layer to 100 pixels, as the image shows. My surprise is that the effect is applied not only to the selected area of the image but to the rest of the image not selected.

[walt.farrell]

31 minutes ago, Carlos Badiola said:

I might not be understanding your point, but as you can see in the order of actions that I implemented, I first performed the selection and then I configured the clarity adjustment layer to 100 pixels, as the image shows. My surprise is that the effect is applied not only to the selected area of the image but to the rest of the image not selected.

It sounds (from your earlier posts, and this one) like you created the clarity adjustment before you made the selection, and then you changed the clarity adjustment after you made the selection. That would not work.

This may just be a problem understanding your use of English (I think English may not be your primary language, thoough you do write it well). For example, you said that after you made the selection you "configured the clarity adjustment layer" which makes it seem like the adjustment layer existed before you made the selection, and then you changed the adjustment layer afterward. Unfortunately, we cannot see the order of your actions without seeing the History studio.

[Carlos Badiola]

You are fully right in your interpretation. I created the clarity adjustment before implementing the selection. Sorry for my English, which is my second language.

[walt.farrell]

Your English is much better than my Spanish

If you need an overall clarity adjustment for the image, and an additional one for part of the image, just create another clarity adjustment layer after you make the selection.

Or, if you just need an adjustment for the selection, make the selection, then create the adjustment, and it will work as you want.

[Carlos Badiola]

Thanks very much indeed for your support  

However, and I am sorry to insist in the topic of whether selections should be made before or after creating an adjustment layer, I wonder if you would be so kind as to check tutorial titled "Channels, creating and storing selections". In this tutorial, the author creates and modifies parameters of an HSL adjustment layer before loading a selection previously saved as a channel. When loading the selection, the effects of the HSL layer start affecting the selection as opposed to the whole image.

In this regard, I have followed exactly the same workflow than the author of the tutorial: first, creating an HSL adjustment layer; second, modifying the parameters of the HSL layer, which affect the whole image; third, trying to load a selection previously saved as a channel into the HSL layer in order for it to affect the selection only.

What I have found is that my Affinity Photo does not offer me the possibility to load a selection previously saved as a channel ("Cielo") into the adjustment layer when I right-click the channel with the selection. I send one picture with the tutorial's channel right-click menu and another with mine's.

What is going wrong here with my program?

Thanks 

[lepr]

.

[Carlos Badiola]

Right! Thanks very much indeed.

A list of bugs of this type would be welcome, since they seem to be part of the normal functioning of the software.

[Carlos Badiola]

I have just experienced what I mentioned in a previous post about the paint brush tool not reflecting its painting on an adjustment layer's mask. In the screenshot I have taken to illustrate this I show a selected Levels adjustment layer (Aclaramiento local) to which I have applied the "Screen" blend mode in order to lighten the image below. The layer has a black mask. The idea is to paint in white on the mask with the paint brush tool in order to reveal the lighten effect, which I guess should be shown through the brush. You can see in the screenshot that the paint brush tool is selected, the white color in the Color panel is also selected, and the layer is also selected with the black mask. Despite that the brush is configured with 100% opacity and flow, no effect is revealed at all, neither through the brush (shown in the screenshot) nor when painting.

What is going wrong here?

Thanks indeed!

 

[carl123]

If you look in the Colour panel your brush colour appears to have 0% opacity.  But I can't be 100% sure as I don't read Spanish(?)

[Carlos Badiola]

You are right, but I tried to move this slider to 100% opacity and it did not produce any different result

[R C-R]

9 hours ago, Carlos Badiola said:

You are right, but I tried to move this slider to 100% opacity and it did not produce any different result

When I tried duplicating what you were doing by painting on the Levels Adjustment layer's mask, it did work for me but unless I moved the level sliders inward quite a bit to create an extreme adjustment, the effect of the brush was so small it was almost unnoticeable, particularly with the Screen blend mode.

[Carlos Badiola]

Thanks very much indeed. I have watched all tutorials and I am doing additional tests.Let us see ...