Paint Brush won't paint on Quick Mask

[Jacla]

I watched the Quick Mask Video and tried to use the technique illustrated. The Quick Mask icon produced a mask, but the Paint Brush tool simply showed a circle with no preview and I could not get it to paint on the areas I wished to select. I appeared to be following the tutorial technique exactly. Presumably the image I was working on was not appropriately set up. I was working on an iMac on an unlocked background pixel image which I had developed from raw on Affinity Photo. Grateful for any guidance.

[smadell]

If you press Q, or choose Quick Mask in some other way, with no active selection, your entire image should be covered by a red overlay. As you know, you use the paint brush to create the selection. If you are choosing the paint brush, but you are seeing a "circle with no preview," chances are that your brush has defaulted to Black. It is not uncommon at all for the Paint Brush tool to default to black when you first choose it. Check it out and, if needed, switch it to white (you can just press X to do this) and your Quick Mask will probably start working again.

Also, check the Paint Brush tool settings - are your opacity, flow, and hardness choices appropriate or are they causing your selection to be so limited as to be invisible?

[Jacla]

Thank you smadell. The brush had indeed defaulted to black and switching it to white immediately solved the problem as you predicted.

[smadell]

Glad to help! Your question got me to re-visit the Quick Mask, which I rarely use, to remember all the details for myself. Always nice to learn some of the basics all over again.