Softening the last step with Fade in Paint by Zaweba

Often a filter is almost right. The sharpening is a touch strong, the blur a little too heavy, the brush stroke a shade too dark. Undoing and trying again with different settings works, but there is a quicker way. Edit > Fade, on Ctrl+Shift+F in Paint by Zaweba, lets you turn down the last thing you did and change how it blends with what was there before.

What Fade works on

Fade works on the last filter, adjustment, fill, stroke or brush stroke. It compares the result with the pixels just before that step and lets you blend between them. You get an opacity control, which sets how much of the change to keep, and a blend mode, which changes how the new pixels combine with the old ones. A live preview shows the result as you move the controls.

It is like having put the change on its own layer and then adjusting that layer, but without having had to plan for it in advance.

Turning things down

The simplest use is opacity. Apply a sharpen, press Ctrl+Shift+F, and slide the opacity down until the halos disappear. Paint a stroke of shadow, fade it to half, and it blends into the picture. Fill a selection with colour, fade it, and it becomes a gentle tint.

This is especially helpful with filters that have few settings, such as the one-click Sharpen or a Despeckle, where there is no strength slider to adjust inside the filter.

Changing the blend

The blend mode is where Fade becomes more creative. Apply a strong sharpen, then fade it using a luminosity-style blend mode, and the sharpening affects brightness only, so you avoid colour fringes on edges. Fade a blur with a darkening mode and only the darker blurred areas come through, giving a soft, glowing shadow. Fade a texture or noise filter with a contrast mode and it sits into the picture rather than on top.

Trying several blend modes on the same filter is a quick way to discover looks you would not have thought to ask for.

When to use Fade and when to use layers

Fade is ideal for quick decisions you are confident about. It is fast and keeps your layer count low.

For anything you might want to change later, layers are better. Duplicate the layer, apply the filter to the copy, and use the copy's opacity and blend mode. You can then revisit them tomorrow, add a mask, or delete the effect entirely. Fade only works straight after the step; once you do something else, the chance has gone, though undo still works as usual.

Mistakes to avoid with Fade

Doing another step before fading is the most common one. Fade always acts on the most recent step, so if you clicked a different tool and painted a dot, Fade now acts on the dot. Apply the filter and fade straight away.

Another is fading as a substitute for good settings. If you find yourself fading every filter to a tiny amount, try gentler settings in the filter dialog first; you will often get a cleaner result. Every filter in Paint already has a Strength control in its own dialog, so Fade is best for the cases where you only realise afterwards that it went too far.

Where Fade fits

Fade sits with undo and history as a safety net. Together with the Strength control in every filter dialog, adjustment layers and blend modes, it means you rarely have to accept a result that is almost right in Paint by Zaweba.