The brush opacity issue that made my portfolio pieces look flat

Honestly, I spent 4 months posting character art on here and wondering why nobody commented on my shading, then I realized my lineart layer had brush opacity locked at 40% the whole time from an old custom preset. I only caught it after zooming into a WIP on my tablet in Denver and seeing the layers panel showed 40% where I thought it said 100%. Has anyone else had a forgotten setting quietly wreck their whole style for weeks?

2 comments

2 Comments

nora11029d ago

Read this exact thing in a digital art forum last week, someone had their opacity set to 23% for like two months and thought their tablet pressure settings broke. Took them a full commission batch to notice. I keep a screenshot of my default brush settings now and check it every few weeks, saved my butt twice already.

claire_hart5329d agoMost Upvoted

The "check my defaults every few weeks" part really got me, @nora110. I used to think I was just bad at making my strokes look right, or my tablet was dying or something. Turns out I had a brush that was set to 10% flow from some random experiment six months ago. I would have never thought to screenshot my settings, that's such a simple fix. Gonna go do that right now, honestly.