layer mask painting problem

[roshani]

can someone tell me what I am doing wrong.

I must have changed something somewhere but I can't figure out what or where.
Normally when I create a layer mask, lets say a curves based one in which I want to darken a face for example. I would create the layer mask, tweak curves, and then hit ctrl-del to switch what I did to the background so now I could paint in what I want.

This process still works but, now when I paint in what i want it does it sort of as an opacity thing meaning if if wave my brush over the area the more I wave the more it revels. It used to be that if i waved my brush it would reveal that portion of the layer completely. I can see uses for both, but I want to be able to switch, I am stuck in this second mode and what I feel is happening is I am not uniformly revealing the layer below. Also it takes forever.

btw, I can also tell this difference because in the layer mask, when I switch the thingy to black, and start painting, instead of showing white where I painted it starts off with shades of gray and the more I paint the gray gets lighter then turns white.

thanks in advance for the education!

[Roy]

Sanjay,

Did you check the brush mode, opacity and flow?

[roshani]

Hey Roy,

I just changed the flow value (testing here at work) and it did what it used to! Thx a ton!

I am guessing for a normal scenario I would want a brush mode of normal, opacity 100% to start with and a flow of 100% if I want all of the layer reveled while painting?