patriciamelvill

Looks like I had the wrong tool selected. Below the brush is the pixelated tool and I had that on by mistake. Took me forever to understand that we have 2 types of brushes: normal and pixelated. We can change from one to another with the B key, so it's pretty easy to make this mistake. Is this a suitable solution for you?
Ever since I found this info everything has been going amazing with affinity. 

I do understand this notion - however we are still looking at the 1.x version, right :o) Even Photoshop in version xx changed how Ctrl+Z works, quite recently...
Of all those users who don't post in the forums - what scenario would you consider more likely: Relatively inexperienced users running into what happened to Patricia (neither being aware of the cause, nor of the recently introduced fix in Preferences).
Or experienced users who use a lot of keyboard shortcuts and even like the concept of stacked hotkeys - who at the same time get just mad about little behaviour change, which they may get rid of with one little checkmark in Preferences?
My personal preference is that software makers remain open for change - even on long established conventions :o)
 

Hi, thanks for the comments. Unfortunately changing the default behaviour of the application is a thing which we rarely want to do. If 90% of people are accustomed to the way the current system works, and we invert the behaviour, we've now satisfied 10% of customers, and annoyed 90%. Don't forget - the forums aren't reflective of all our customers, it's a place where people come if they have problems (amongst other things). As such, the safest action we can take, is add a preference for the behaviour.

Yeah, to get the brush preset you are looking for, you need to use the Paint Brush Tool.

@Mark IngramThe actual reason also here (in Designer) is very likely an accidental tool-change by pressing the B-key twice. I suggest implementing the Shift-protection for accidental tool change suite wide. Further, I think you should consider inverting the default behaviour – one should have to check a box if one dislikes having to press Shift. I doubt that you will find a lot of users who will freak out. The OP didn't even want to use the tool cycle mechanism – obviously she wasn't even aware of that option: Patricia only wanted to pick a tool – the fact that it was already active before her tea break made the operation fail.

Please have someone  analyze such error patterns. One only needs to read this forum regularly and runs into them, pretty much on a daily basis.

Looking at the left-hand toolbar, it looks like you have the 'Pixel tool' selected.
 

To throw my two cents in, I think it makes more sense to not change the hotkeys from what they were at start. I think it was wrong of Adobe in the first place. There is quick access and then there is recognizable access. As a product made for everyday work, customers need to be familiar with the routine of their workstation. Change can be bothersome for many people; including my former college professor who was teaching Adobe at the time.

Yeah, I was drawing with the wrong tool, what a noob!
Thanks for the replies!