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Effect of dodge/burn outside of brush circle


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I'm sure this is something I'm doing/misunderstanding but I haven't figured it out yet. Anyone care to share some insight?

The attached video shows a zero hardness, low flow, attempt to dodge the shadows of an image but when I get anywhere close to the highlights, weird things start happening, such as:

  • the effect of the brush is applied outside the bounds of the brush
  • the effect of the brush is applied to areas specifically outside the selected tonal range
  • the effect of the brush has an unexpected result

The things that appear NOT to change the behavior:

  • Changing the tonal range
  • Changing protect hue
  • Changing the brush size (it still impacts outside the visible bounds of the brush)

Thoughts?

Affinity Photo 1.7.2 Production, macOS X Mojave

EDIT: Added a screenshot of the image details

Screen Shot 2019-09-09 at 5.14.50 PM.png

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If you click on the more button what brush settings do you have set? 

On the General tab what blend mode is set?

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1 hour ago, Lee D said:

Do you have the 32-Bit Preview panel and Enable EDR enabled and perhaps Show EDR Clipping. If so do you have a supported Extended Dynamic Range monitor? If you aren't sure what is your monitor model?

Hi @Lee D,

Bingo - for part of this. Thank you. "Enable EDR" was on; "Show EDR Clipping" and "Prevent display tone-mapping" were both off. And no, this display is not EDR.

The remaining question: does this also explain the action outside the brush circle or am I misunderstanding the bounds of the brush? Shouldn't its effects be limited to a maximum of that bound?

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7 hours ago, Lee D said:

It's mostly due to the hardness setting, if it's set low the effect will expand outside of the brush preview area, the same happens in other apps as well.

@Lee D Is this an intentional behavior change in 1.7 because with the same settings, 1.6.x honors the bounds as a maximum (that is, hardness takes the effect UP TO the bounds but not beyond it). 1.7 seems to treat the bounds as a minimum effect, not a maximum. 

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  • Staff

Hi Brad,

This hasn't changed between 1.6 and 1.7—neither version honours the bounds of the brush. You can try and combat this by reducing the accumulation of the brush you are using but this may have an undesired effect.

As Lee said, this happens in other apps and I think it is generally expected. The brush is still the same size but the bounding circle does get smaller when you reduce the hardness. The feathered effect shouldn't be much smaller than when using 100% hardness, even though the bounding circle looks smaller but remember the brush is the same size throughout so it has to find a happy middle-ground.

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Hi @Chris B,

Thanks for weighing in. I re-tested before I posted my most recent followup so I'll see if I can put a video together for it. I don't know if I'm misinterpreting what I'm seeing or what, but I feel like I'm definitely seeing a difference in behavior between the two versions. 

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On 9/12/2019 at 12:50 AM, Chris B said:

Hi Brad,

This hasn't changed between 1.6 and 1.7—neither version honours the bounds of the brush. You can try and combat this by reducing the accumulation of the brush you are using but this may have an undesired effect.

As Lee said, this happens in other apps and I think it is generally expected. The brush is still the same size but the bounding circle does get smaller when you reduce the hardness. The feathered effect shouldn't be much smaller than when using 100% hardness, even though the bounding circle looks smaller but remember the brush is the same size throughout so it has to find a happy middle-ground.

So in the process of getting into the nitty-gritty of making sure everything was equal for the video, a few things are becoming clearer:

  • The bounding circle may or may not actually delineate the bounds of the effect (dodging in the case of the example I'm testing)
  • Hardness at 100% does bring the effect within the bounding circle. As the hardness is reduced, the core effect zone shrinks within the bounding circle while the external "corona" if you will grows.
  • Opacity and flow each impacts my ability to determine whether the effect is being applied or not, both in actual application as well as preview mode (as would be expected)
  • The differences I noted between 1.6.11 and 1.7.2 are probably explained by different settings in the opacity, flow

If these described behaviors are as expected, then I guess we're done on this thread. I figured it was something about me; that's why this is here, not in the bug threads. 

If these behaviors seem off in some fashion, perhaps more investigation is required.

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  • Staff

I see every reason as to why you began discussing this. However you will note that the brush size stays the same and the circle gets smaller with 0% hardness so the brush will never paint bigger than the brush with 100% hardness.

I think the circle with 0% hardness is pretty much saying 'this is where the brush will be almost solid and anything outside of the circle is the feathering, but it will still be smaller than the same sized brush with 100% hardness'.

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7 hours ago, Chris B said:

I see every reason as to why you began discussing this. However you will note that the brush size stays the same and the circle gets smaller with 0% hardness so the brush will never paint bigger than the brush with 100% hardness.

I think the circle with 0% hardness is pretty much saying 'this is where the brush will be almost solid and anything outside of the circle is the feathering, but it will still be smaller than the same sized brush with 100% hardness'.

Hi @Chris B,

I do apologize for being obtuse but my American English reading of your comment confuses me. Maybe we have a terminology thing going on here? 

When I describe the bounding circle, I refer to the white circle whose width can be set in a variety of ways. When I describe the _effect_ of the brush, it is outside or inside of that circle.

When you say, for example, "the brush stays the same and the circle gets smaller", the white circle (see my definition above) does not change size visually (except when I specifically change its width), even though the visible _effect_ and the reach of the tool (inside or outside that circle) does indeed change on changes to hardness.

Thanks for bearing with me... are we saying the same thing just in different phrasings?

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My apologies.

Let's say we have a 450 px Width brush at 100% hardness. When we paint, the paint fills the entire bounding circle.

Now let's change the hardness to 0%. When we paint, the brush width is still 450 px but the bounding circle is smaller. This means that the area inside the bounding circle should be almost solid leading into a less-solid area which eventually begins to feather.

However, you should notice that the feathering is never bigger than the original brush when painting with 100% hardness.

If we constrained the feathering to fit withinside the bounding circle, how do we measure where the solid fill ends and the feathering begins within said bounding circle?

Do you have any other software that does it differently? Or know of any? If so, it might be worth us looking into it. The only worry I would have is changing the behaviour for everyone if they are used to how it currently is.

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6 hours ago, Chris B said:

However, you should notice that the feathering is never bigger than the original brush when painting with 100% hardness.

Thanks for bearing with me... I finally understand (I think) where my misunderstanding lies.

Apparently I am more focused on the task than on the exact size of the white bounding circle because it indeed does change with relation to hardness. It took setting up a video and comparing directly for me to realize this.

6 hours ago, Chris B said:

If we constrained the feathering to fit withinside the bounding circle, how do we measure where the solid fill ends and the feathering begins within said bounding circle?

As a general statement, you're already measuring it, to my mind, when you decide what the new representation of the bounding circle on the screen is.

6 hours ago, Chris B said:

Do you have any other software that does it differently? Or know of any? If so, it might be worth us looking into it. The only worry I would have is changing the behaviour for everyone if they are used to how it currently is.

I can't say I know of other software that does differently as I've never noticed the need to look this closely before and even if it does behave differently than other software, now that I realize how THIS works,  can deal with it. If changes were going to be offered though, I'd go one of two ways; the first (and likely the least intrusive to existing behaviors) would be a second circle that marks the true outside bounds (the end of the feathering). The two circles would be the same size at 100% hardness and diverge from there. The second of the two ways would be a user-selectable toggle (current behavior should be the default) that turns the single bounding circle into a true bounding circle, always representing the outside edge of the effect of the brush.

My ultimate wish is to see a visual demarcation of the bounds of the effect even, (or especially) in the case where the changes may not be noticeable on the particular monitor or to a given set of eyes even though modifications are being made.

THANK YOU for all your help and I apologize for being "that person" this time. I'm considering this thread completed unless there's something useful to you to continue it.

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38 minutes ago, Brad Brighton said:

My ultimate wish is to see a visual demarcation of the bounds of the effect ...

Have you considered that these are brush tools, which means they may not be round & in fact could be some kind of mottled or other discontinuous shapes, including sub-brushes with their own shapes?

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18 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Have you considered that these are brush tools, which means they may not be round & in fact could be some kind of mottled or other discontinuous shapes, including sub-brushes with their own shapes?

I had not considered that but nowhere in the declaration that you quoted (though I did indeed use 'circle' in other instances) did I say it had to be a regular region.

The analogy holds though; if the app can demonstrate any bounds (which it does) it can know what the outer bounds are as well. "Unpredictable" behavior (or "predictable but only with magic knowledge") is less useful than "clearly predictable".

EDIT: Even for brushes that have an element of random set to them; an outer bound of effect (other than canvas edge) is surely known.

EDIT 2: As far as discontinuity within the bounds, I don't think I care (for the sake of this particular discussion), only the maximum effect bounds.

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2 minutes ago, Brad Brighton said:

The analogy holds though; if the app can demonstrate any bounds (which it does) it can know what the outer bounds are as well.

I don't understand the point you are trying to make with this. Obviously, the app knows the area of the canvas where the brush will have an effect (if that is what you mean by "bounds") but that by itself is not going to demonstrate how much of an effect it will have within the bounds of that area.

The brush preview does that (assuming you have it enabled in Preferences), but since many brushes include dynamics, including various jitters & maybe multiple nozzles, even that can't predict the visual demarcation of the bounds of the effect once you start using the brush.

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@R C-R Knowing the area to which an effect will be applied is my wishlist desire.

I fully understand that how much of an effect within that area may be applied may vary, sometimes greatly.You're attributing intent to me that I do not describe (unless I mistakenly did at some point -- show me where and I'll correct it. :-) )

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6 minutes ago, Brad Brighton said:

R C-R Knowing the area to which an effect will be applied is my wishlist desire.

How could the app possibly show you that for brushes that include dynamic changes as you use them? To do that, it would need to see into the future.

Like I said, the closest you can get to that is by enabling the brush preview preference, but it can only predict the area that will be affected when you begin to apply the brush. After that the dynamics can (among other things) change the size of the brush on the fly & thus the area it affects.

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47 minutes ago, R C-R said:

How could the app possibly show you that for brushes that include dynamic changes as you use them? To do that, it would need to see into the future.

You have me in a mis-wording there. Change WILL to MAY.

And I suspect from a technical aspect, the specs of the brushes define the maximum bounds (allowing that in the cases of most entropy, the effect applied may go from zero to the bounds and may be non-deterministic as to where within those bounds any given effect will be applied). If the bounds of some extreme brushes are the full document (in which case brush width would be a useless attribute) so be it but I would also wager that those are edge cases (pun not intended) and that most brushes, by definition, have a finite maximum bound (even if it's non-obvious to a human observer when the interactions of sub-components are computed in compound groupings) regardless of any variability within that maximum.

If the argument is that there is no way to predict the largest possible region for the effect of a brush (compound or simple) to be applied based on settings that demonstrably change the effect, we'll have to agree to disagree until and unless additional technical information proves otherwise. From everything I can see, the maximums are deterministic even if the current values are not.

Now, if the argument is that you do not see the utility in demonstrating the bounds I describe, that's fine; we each have different approaches to our work and different needs within a generally describable workflow. It will (obviously) ultimately be up to the Serif folks to weigh the utility and difficulty of implementation of what I describe against the infinite list of other demands. :-)

Edited by Brad Brighton
Fixed a "why didn't I type that word?" omission

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3 hours ago, Brad Brighton said:

If the argument is that there is no way to predict the largest possible region for the effect of a brush (compound or simple) to be applied based on settings that demonstrably change the effect, we'll have to agree to disagree...

The largest possible region is by definition the size of the brush, but the shape of the brush can be anything, including asymmetric patterns with gaps in the coverage region. The shape, rotation, size & considerably more may change dynamically (including randomly) while the brush is in use. Among other things, this means that 'stamping' (clicking without dragging) with the brush will have a different effect than 'painting' (clicking & dragging) with it.

So my argument is that a 'maximal' bounding brush circle like I think you want -- IOW, a circle with a radius just large enough to enclose all of the region -- is not enough to show where in the region the brush will have any effect, much less what it will be. So no, this 'maximal' bounding circle would not & cannot be deterministic except in special cases.

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