Hi!
I’m not sure if this would be as useful as it sounds in my head, but I think it might be very convenient if a brush could be locked to a specific layer.
For example, let’s say you are drawing a sketch and are using three different brushes for that, and are using shortcuts (or a plugin) to switch between the brushes conveniently.
So for example you use one brush to do quick helper lines (for anatomy and proportions or perspective for example), another brush to do your sketch and a third one to do shading.
Now currently, of course, you could either do this all on a single layer and then manually erase helper lines later on, or you could make three layers – one for the sketch, one for the shading, and one for the helper lines, and then just keep switching around whenever you want to adjust.
Both of these workflows aren’t necessarily ideal because they can be either time consuming or finicky, and if you make a mistake and don’t notice, you end up with a layer with a bunch of wrong lines on it. because you forgot to switch back after making a single stroke on the other layer.
But then instead, what if it was possible to tell a brush to always go on a specific layer? E.g. my sketch brush is assigned to my sketch layer; whenever I activate it, the sketch layer becomes active and I can’t draw on any other layer with it. Same with a halftone brush for shading etc.
And then I could even assign a layer style to each layer like a colour overlay that automatically adjusts the colour of all of my perspective brush strokes since they will all be on that layer and nothing else, and I would not even have to change the brush colour in order to have perspective lines have a different colour or a lower opacity or anything, it would all be handled just by switching to that brush and thus require no other input. And i could easily hide perspective strokes later on for example, no manual erasing inside the drawing necessary
I had similar think before, but I finally discarded it. It may burden my mind with additional, changing brush may or may not cause current activated layer to change, I need to consider both brush and layer, It’s gonna be a mess.
Simply going to switch layer and then changing brush is easier for me. I make it efficient with shortcuts and plugins.
For occasional drawn on incorrect layer, this is indeed irritating, but I don’t think it’s avoidable, we can only reduce the probability of it happening. To avoid it happening, completely binding one brush to one layer is not worth it.
Of course that doesn’t mean the idea is worthless to others, maybe it’s useful for others. It’s not difficult to implement it as a python plugin, It’s technically possible. But as a native feature it might be difficult, because probably no one has time to finish it.
… I’d do it exactly the other way 'round: let the layer activate the associated brush(es).
Also, I’d use the brush tags for linking and not a specific brush. Activating a layer would then select the last used brush with the associated tag as well as switching the brush panel to that tag. This could be triggered by including the tag name in the layer name.
This would be more flexible than locking a layer to a single brush. Just an idea…
The idea is good but having to assign a brush to a specific layer would then disable using said brush on any other layer, then if you wanted to use it on another layer you have to assign it to each new layer you want to use it at.
Automatic brush swapping to last used brush on each layer would probably be a better option. Although again, sometimes you may not want that either.
Something that Affinity Photo/Designer added in 2.x is brush layer history. They have a brush icon on layer that you click which opens a history of brushes used on each layer you can choose from.
It is found right left beside your topic’s heading.