Blur brush tool in Photo is not working

[Riverpiper 4]

The blur brush tool is behaving strangely. The selection circle is displayed and is normal when I move it over the image. When I click to work with it a checkered background appears within the circle. It also does not work. The same applies to sharpen and gaussian blur brush tools but strangely not smudge which works as normal. Does this mean a re-install?

[firstdefence 2,294]

A checkered background would suggest transparency.

[Riverpiper 4]

Yes it does, but this does not help me to resolve the issue.

[walt.farrell 3,428]

So, to help further with resolving the issue, how about giving us some information to work with? For example, screenshots (including the photo and the Layers panel), or ideally a .afphoto file that we can look at?

Also, what OS do you use, and what version of Photo?

[Riverpiper 4]

Hi Walt

Attached is an example image with the 'offending' circle showing a transparency background. I'm using Photo version 1.7.4 with OS 10.14.6. Strange that this problem does not occur on the smudge brush tool.

[PixelPest 303]

May I ask where you got AP 1.7.4 from?

Cheers

[Brad Brighton 69]

1 hour ago, Riverpiper said:

Attached is an example image with the 'offending' circle showing a transparency background. I'm using Photo version 1.7.4 with OS 10.14.6. Strange that this problem does not occur on the smudge brush tool.

Could you post a concurrent screenshot of the colo(u)r tab configuration?

[Pšenda 570]

6 hours ago, PixelPest said:

May I ask where you got AP 1.7.4 from?

Fast Ring? :-) 

[firstdefence 2,294]

1.7.4 = Typo

Click on the more button this could have something to do with the brush settings more than the blur tool.

[Dan C 1,039]

Hi Riverpiper

Sorry to see you're having trouble! Could you please open Affinity Photo > Performance > Preferences and provide a screenshot of your settings here?

[Riverpiper 4]

[Dan C 1,039]

Thank you for that, and can you confirm is the issue only happening with the Preview of the blur tool?

14 hours ago, Riverpiper said:

When I click to work with it a checkered background appears within the circle. It also does not work.

I'm a little unsure due to the above sentence, however your second screenshot shows no transparent circle, so I suspect this is a current known issue which occurs when using Metal Compute. Could you please try unticking Enable Hardware Acceleration  in your settings, restarting the app when prompted and try using these tools again?

[Riverpiper 4]

Hi Dan

Unticking Enable Hardware Acceleration has solved the problem. Thank's

Can you tell me what Metal Compute is?

Paul

[Dan C 1,039]

Glad to hear it, many thanks for letting me know!

This is a bug our development team are aware of and we're working to fix this ASAP.

Metal Compute is an architecture created by Apple to allow apps to utilise the Graphics Card in a Mac to provide the best performance possible, you can find out more about this here - https://developer.apple.com/metal/

As our implementation of Metal and Hardware Acceleration is still relatively new to us, this can occasionally cause rendering issues, such as the transparent preview of your Blur tool - I hope this clears things up

[drmajorbob 1]

I have the same issues, and unclicking hardware acceleration doesn't make blur or median blur work.

[Dan C 1,039]

Hi drmajorbob

Sorry to hear this, could you please provide a screenshot of Affinity Photo with the Blur Brush tool selected?

[Scotchtape 0]

I have also found that the blur tool does not work. I have tried changing the settings for the brush--one poster suggested moving the "hardness" and "flow" sliders back and forth to get Affinity Photo "unstuck"--and toggling the lock next to the "(pixel)" line for the layer. However, even though the layer is set to pixel, I still can't get the blur tool to work no matter what. I've had to just use the rectangular selection tool and then blur the selection with a filter, but this is kludgy and not what I paid for this software to do. 

I am running Affinity Photo 1.7.3 on a Mac running Mojave. I recall that older versions of Affinity Photo seemed to have a blur tool that worked for me.

[Pšenda 570]

For me work fine.

[MEB 8,178]

Hi Scotchtape,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
We are aware of a few issues with the Blur Tool on macOS. Do you mind replying a few questions please?
1. Does the brush cursor displays as an empty/transparent circle after you lay down the first stroke as shown in the screenshot in the 4th post of this thread?
2. if you perform multiples passes (click and drag several times) on the same area does it start getting blurry (move the slider in the History panel back and forward to check if there was changes). It's possible the brush is actually working but the output is quite subtle and only visible after multiple passes (even with Opacity, Flow and Hardness set to 100% in the context toolbar for the Blur Brush Tool) - can you confirm this please?
 

Note: It should work correctly for you if you disable/untick Metal Compute acceleration in Affinity Photo Preferences, Performance section (on bottom of the panel - you will have to restart Affinity Photo for the new setting take effect).

[tudor 21]

Is this issue still being addressed? I've just bumped into it (blur tool not working, checkerboard pattern on cursor until I disable the Metal Compute acceleration) in 1.73 and 1.8 beta. 

[Riverpiper 4]

Thanks to everyone who replied. Problem now resolved.

[jdvoracek 0]

On 9/10/2019 at 6:14 AM, Dan C said:

Glad to hear it, many thanks for letting me know!

This is a bug our development team are aware of and we're working to fix this ASAP.

Metal Compute is an architecture created by Apple to allow apps to utilise the Graphics Card in a Mac to provide the best performance possible, you can find out more about this here - https://developer.apple.com/metal/

As our implementation of Metal and Hardware Acceleration is still relatively new to us, this can occasionally cause rendering issues, such as the transparent preview of your Blur tool - I hope this clears things up

Affinity Photo 1.8.2 same issue resolved by disabling that hardware acceleration.

[quasiDigi 0]

On 3/23/2020 at 3:04 AM, jdvoracek said:

Affinity Photo 1.8.2 same issue resolved by disabling that hardware acceleration.

Same here

[jamesKRK 0]

For me blur brush does very little difference, and hardness or opacity if it is 10 or 100 % doesn't make any difference. I'm using 1.8.3 mac os, tried everything above. Any solutions?

[MEB 8,178]

Hi jamesKRK,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Thanks for your feedback. What's the size of the image you are working with (px)? If you disable/untick Enable Metal compute acceleration in Affinity Photo Preferences, Performance section does it work as expected for you (clearly visible blur)?