Frequency Separation Healing Brush Issues

[josephs47183850]

Hey!

Having some really weird issues with healing brush with frequency separation.  Here's what the healing brush looks like in the texture:

So I'm using the same action that I made and have been using for a few months now.  But, now when I go to use the healing brush and set a source location, the brush comes up grey like this and doesn't seem to work correctly.  For reference, the brush used to come up and show the texture that was going to be used, not the subtract layer grey thing.

Also one thing I've noticed is that I now have to seem to work in both layers to fix color, whereas before (like, a few days or a week ago maybe?) it was very clear; color fixes in color layer, texture fixes in texture layer.  Now it's almost like they're blended. 

I have double checked my action, and also done frequency separation manually with layers and I get the same problems with my healing brush.  I've reset the brush tools, I've reset preferences, I've done the ctrl + alt + shift reset when booting Photoshop up, and have tried the last two previous versions and this is still happening.

I'm pretty confused at this point.  Can anyone help?

P.S.  I don't know if it makes a difference or not, but I just recently started using a Wacom Intuos Pro Small.  Are there any sort of windows ink settings that might influence this happening?

Thanks for the help,

Joseph

[Linda Marie Stella]

Maybe the Apply Image part of the action didn't run quite right. It looks like it might be the layer that has no texture in it, instead of a problem with your healing brush. If you put that layer back to Normal instead of Linear Light, can you see the texture in the grey on it or is it just grey?

[davescm]

Looks normal to me - the healing brush shows what is on the brush (i.e. the grey high frequency image texture). Once applied to the layer , then the layer blend mode comes into play.

In case my memory was incorrect, I've just gone back from CC2020 v21.0.3 to CC2018 v19.1.9 to check and it was the same.

I often use the spot healing brush on the HF layer as it does not carry the texture so is more natural to use.

Dave