Gimp 2.10.6 Issues While Following a Tutorial

[KCRileyGyer]

In attempting to do the Hand-Drawn Mapping (for the Artistically Challenged) tutorial for the 2nd (and 3rd and 4th times), I’m having issues with some of the layers and brush settings.

Layers issue first:
First time of doing the tutorial and all was good even if I’d missed steps in my haste to do it.
Merrily plodding along doing the tutorial the 2nd time and all seems good until it came to the colouring of the map. One of the steps says to hide this, this and this layer then merge the rest. So I go to hide said layers, leaving the rest visible except when I hid one my landscaping vanished. Checking the brush layers, they’re still visible so I unhid the other layer then hid the mountains only to watch them vanish. Like they’re supposed to. Okay, they are on their own layer so I unhid them and hid the required layer only for the mountains to disappear again.

Thinking I’d done something wrong along the way, I scrapped the image and started again from scratch. Same result. Third time, the same thing again. I’m at an impasse so I can’t do the tutorial.

Brush setting issues:
By the time I was on my 3rd attempt of the tutorial, I started having brush settings issues. I’d set them with my mouse but once I’d start using the graphics tablet stylus, the settings would change. No matter what I did, the settings wouldn’t stay as I set them.

Between those two issues, I’ve had to have a break from Gimp, tutorials and graphics in general lol. Any help with either issues would be greatly appreciated.

It is currently Wednesday midday for me and I won’t be back home until either Friday or Saturday just in case I need to be in front of my computer to work out a solution.

[ChickPea]

Sorry you're having difficulties. What step exactly in the tutorial is causing the problems? At a guess, I'd say perhaps you have a layer set to a blend mode other than Normal (perhaps Overlay or Multiply)? If the background colour changes, sometimes layer blends won't show. Or have you accidentally merged the wrong layers?

About the mouse/tablet issues, Gimp treats them as two separate inputs and remembers the last settings for each. So, for example, if you pick a red colour with your mouse, then pick up your tablet pen, the colour will change to whatever colours you had when you last used the pen. Put the pen down and go back to the mouse, it'll bring back the red colour you picked earlier. This is how Gimp handles things and I don't think you can change it (some people prefer different settings for each device, I guess.) It's best to get into the habit of choosing your settings while using the tablet pen. If you do that, you shouldn't have any problems.

[KCRileyGyer]

Hi ChickPea,

While I understand what you're saying about the mouse and tablet pen, I hadn't experienced my issue until the last time I was attempting the tutorial. Because I'm new to Gimp, I don't know what's normal and what's not but, at the moment, I'm experiencing inconsistencies.

As for the tutorial issues, I don't understand what is going on. I know the tutorial is for a much earlier version of Gimp and I'm using the latest but all I'm doing is following the tutorial, doing what it says and this glitch is happening. Part of the tutorial says to merge down the Mountains layer to the mountain shading layer then apply multiply to the layer. Later in the tutorial, it says to hide the rivers, base map (if there's one) and the background so the merge visible can be applied to the rest of the layers (this includes the merged down mountain, hills and forest layers that have multiply applied to them). But as soon as I hide the background layer, the mountains disappear despite the mountains layer still being visible. I unhide the background layer and the mountains reappear. So, naturally to ensure I haven't done something wrong, while the background is visible I hide the mountains layer and they disappear as they should and confirms they are on their own layer. But, I hide the background again and the mountains disappear again.

[MistyBeee]

I'm not a Gimp user, only Photoshop and I don't know the tutorial you're mentionning, but it looks like a normal comportment to me : if the Mountains layer is set in Multiply, it needs a background to be visible because it's the interaction between the multiply blend mode and the background which matters here. So if you hide the background layer, probably the mountains multiply mode doesn't have any "support" to blend with and looks just invisible while trying to blend with... nothing. It doesn't means there is a problem with the mountains layer, nor with Gimp
To understand better what the Multiply mode does, have a try with just two layers : your mountains, for example, and a background you change : you'll see an empty, pure white or pure black backgrounds will show nothing, while any colored or textured backgrounds will change the mountains in different ways.

[KCRileyGyer]

Oh, and the tutorial is listed on this site in the tutorials that are pdfs sticky.

[KCRileyGyer]

Thank you, MistyBeee. I've just never come across that issue before when using the multiply layer effect in PSP. The thing that gets me is the issue didn't happen when I'd first completed the tutorial but it did so every other time. I understand that similar programs act differently to each other but I wasn't expecting such a drastic difference.