Andy05

On windows, this usually works: Try to click/press (and hold the keys!) in the following order: [ALT]+[CTRL] -> [right mouse button] -> [left mouse button]. As long as you keep all those keys pressed, you can move the mouse left and right for changing the size of your brush, whilst moving vertically edits the brush's hardness. And, as @carl123 already suggested, it might be very, very useful if you'd grow yourself some more fingers for this stupidly difficult procedure. But I'm not complaining as it could have been worse (i. e. additionally drawing circles on a touchpad with the nose in order to activate the "shortcut" mentioned above).

What? If you have the "image with 300 dpi", why do you (or your client) need it—again—in half of that resolution but with the same details/amount of pixels? Seriously, are all here printing just images directly from app to printer and rely just on what HP, Brother, Canon or whatever printing service decides what to do with the dpi in regards of output size? No layouts done here whatsoever? Unless you don't tell the printer/printing service what size the output should be, the "dpi settings" in your image are noting but decoration. As you mentioned yourself: You need to tell the size in millimeters, inches etc. Images are usually placed into a layout for printing. And if you seriously just print images directly, you at least determine the size of the output either in the app's printing dialog or in the printer's. If you "assign" 150dpi to a "300dpi" image, all you achieve is an automatically resized output of the image, which fde101 proved with screenshots above. Depending on your client's setup, this size won't even the same as you intended. "But it works this way for you thus far?" Good luck with your workflow then, if your client purchases a different printer or uses a different printing service. How will you explain to him if the images don't print in the same size on his the configuration despite your "perfect dpi settings"?

I'm not into CAD, so can't say if those programs benefit from wrongly defined "dpi settings" in images. But seriously? The layout for such a precision/map tool? I highly doubt that anyone reliable would create such scales on a per-pixel base. Maybe for some Chinese imports. I refuse to accept that those scales are created as images. I'm pretty sure, they are vectors.

It makes perfectly sense. Read my comment again. I talked about printing, not storing/saving images. You can save whatever dpi with your images, these setting change instantly when you chose the size of your output or when you place it in a document (this needs to have dpi settings for the desired output, not your image). It really doesn't matter, if you save your images with 10 or 100000 dpi. The quality doesn't change at all. The only reproducible combination for printing is size and dpi, if your want to have consistency. And that's something—as you mentioned yourself correctly—which can't be stored in an image itself. That's what I'm telling here all the time, and that's the reason why dpi settings in images are pointless. You assign dpi for output to a document where you place your image into. Or—in your example—your app or printer driver does this job for you when you print it (therefore the different sizes despite the same amount of pixels in both cases). Hence, having some weird combination of dpi and pixels creates unpredictable results, if you use different apps and/or printers when printing your image. You basically proved my point. You always should set the size when printing. Either by overriding your apps/printer's scaling when printing or within the document you place your image in. EDIT: I deem the creators of graphic software (yes, you too, Adobe!) guilty for this misunderstanding. And it's their fault that the customer services of printing services have to deal with scenarios like "Why did you print my image on the back of my postcard so blurry?????? It had 300 dpi as you requested! I assigned it correctly in photoshop, I just checked it!" — "Yes, but the image had only 150x75 pixels." ;-D

That's what I meant. Your printer driver scales the image on its own. So it's actually rather dangerous setting up some dpi with your image. It's upscaling a 72 dpi image and downscaling if "dpi in image" > printer's resolution and prints either with XXX dpi (whatever resolution your printer has). That's why professional printing demands a combination of size and dpi. Not pixels and dpi (latter is just wrong). Otherwise you don't have any control about the output, it can vary from printer to printer.

But even then—the size of the output is NOT connected to your dpi settings rather than by the image's pixel dimensions. Its size is determined by the document's dpi settings where your image is placed in. That's the difference. But then again, the document's setup will just override your lovely dpi settings for your image. If they print images without size information, they will get printed in different sizes, depending on the printer's resolution. Just try it - and you'll see. Use an image 1000 x 1000 pixels and set it to 300 dpi. Then again use an image 1000 x 1000 at 30 dpi and print both of them. Both will print at the same size if they are sent directly to a printer (without getting placed into a document or unless your software or printer driver does some funny stuff like resizing images for output in order to correct the wrong thinking about dpi settings—some consumer grade printers do that). DPI settings without dimensions of an image (not pixels) mean nothing. fde101 mentioned the only point I can think of why dpi settings for an image might be helpful. Because they determine how big an image initially will show up when you import it into your layout software/document.

When exactly is that relevant? The dpi are automatically determined during print if you print 1:1. And if you override this by changing the size the "preset" dpi change anyways. Exaggerated example, to prove my point. Create an image, 100 x100 px. So a very, very tiny one with very little details. Now, "assign" 3000 dpi. That should print 10 inch x 10 inch with 300 dpi. Try it again, with 10 dpi assigned to the original image and print it at the same size. Now what? Exactly, the quality is the same. The quality is still crap, no matter what amount of DPI you setup for the input image as long as you don't edit the amount of pixels, too. BTW, both images have been printed with 300 dpi in this example—given that's the native resolution of the printer. I don't know why so many people think that assigning some dpi to a PIXEL based image has something to do with the quality.

Maybe you also should mention, which of the "vector" brushes are really vector brushes. Otherwise the OP might get frustrated over noticing his strokes still being pixelated as almost all of the vector brushes in Affinity's apps are in fact pixel brushes on a vector path.

That's only true, if you work with images in a given physical size for output (i. e. millimetres). If you stay in pixels, the DPI don't matter at all. 1000x1000 pixels are 1000x1000 pixels, no matter if you "assign" 10dpi or 10000 dpi to your image. Your image neither will get bigger nor smaller by changing its dpi—unless you also resize its physical dimensions (amount of pixels).

Yes, it seems so.

Unfortunately, it's different for windows. AFAIK, browsers like Chrome don't copy the image (data type), but only the displayed data without alpha channel. You not only lose transparency but also all metadata and colour profiles of the image. Hence, this behaviour (transparent background in a PNG becomes black or white when pasted into any app) is not connected to Affinity's apps. Saving the image as PNG and importing it into the app you need it in, should maintain transparency and all other data on windows systems.

No, rename the "background" layer to "Layer XX" or whatever during recording the macro only once. This renaming will apply to all images which you'll run the macro for.

It should work like that, yes. But I'd still try renaming the layer. As that will make it easier for the macro engine to assign any action to it. Kinda bulletproof option.

Rename your layers, each with a unique label. That can get recorded as well and lets you chose selection by name when recording your macros.

It's not "our product", we're just customers, just like you. And I want to have it improved, just like you. Pretty much at the same pace as competitors' apps improve, in a economically healthy speed. But with some common sense one might notice, that those "competitors" aren't ahead either, if you look at the functions available instead of picking one or two from each application and compare only those or comparing affinity apps with an app which cost multiple times more. That's like telling Lada, they should build faster cars, because Ferrari does that!

You can, at least in Windows, ignore snapping by holding the [ALT]-key.

That'd be a huge business risk for Serif. They'd have to invest an insane amount of time and manpower (therefore, money) before being able to sell even the first copy. Without any guarantee of it succeeding. Adobe sets the standards for the industry. The majority of businesses in the design sector are using them and won't switch unless some serious alternative is offered at a way better price. Mind you, if you have several dozens of employees, you'd also have to pay for their time learning a new software. That's something a lot of businesses wouldn't want to invest into as long as the current standard software is more than sufficient for their demands. An alternative app would have to be either be WAY cheaper or WAY better before switching to it would be economically justifiable. Hence, you're asking for Serif doing better than Adobe, yet maintaining two versions and their competitive version needs to be way cheaper than Adobe's products in order to succeed. They couldn't compete economical just like that. I still don't see Serif's apps are meant to become industry standard in the design sector. It's an alternative to Adobe's apps for a huge amount of users, but not a replacement for the whole design sector. And it probably will never be. If it would be that easy as you seem to think it is to develop a replacement for Adobe's apps, there would be competitors for the major market since decades. But there aren't any (for a reason). The best option is finding a niche in the design sector and get your customers from that. as not every illustrator/artist/designer/whatever needs the all of the functions which Adobe's apps provide.

And with all the effort and manpower needed to develop a Photoshop clone with all its features (or even surpassing it by implementing specialised third party capabilities as well), it'll probably also be on par with Photoshop's price...

Did you save the png and open it in Affinity? As copy'n'paste from the browser into the app most likely won't work and destroy the transparency.

I just want to confirm, this works exactly the same way on Windows when using the [ALT]-Key.

I had to edit some images for a client, who wanted to embed them into some kind of bank notes. The motives on them used to be classic copperplate engravings. So I created some macros for AP, some of which I want to share with the community. Requirements: The image needs to be square format (it will get resized to 3000 x 3000 px) The image needs to be flat (only 1 layer) The styles provided in this post need to be added prior to starting the macro I got an error message when trying to upload the files (probably due to their size, hence some google cloud links: Engraving Styles (2.2 MB) - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aHP4golVVLoidsw_aLs_EcMltfsM3oIu/view?usp=sharing Engraving Macros (1.8 MB) - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mMbZFTd-fLDuACyRCa7bne7cd0wksYUu/view?usp=sharing The macros and assets have been moved to Gumroad. (https://thargoran.gumroad.com/l/engraving_effect) t's still for free—just enter the code APforum2023 (I'd appreciate some stars rating nonetheless). Sorry, but the free period expired.

Ok, you're right. Wait! What? No, you're actually not right. As the fonts he referred to are NOT allowed for ALL commercial works. But people still think like that. And I'm not sure if latter part is true either. I doubt that most free fonts (which Mithferion seemed to refer to) are made by "studios". I can agree with designers, but that's a widely overused term anyways. I've seen quite a lot of "designers", who basically just ripped off copyrighted fonts, edited some corners and nodes here and there and post it as a "free font" on one of those websites. Of course they are–and no-one denied that. But if you'd have read the comments, you might have noticed that there was a link posted to a thread in these fora, which also points at other free pages (like dafont), which are way less safe than the one you've mentioned. I haven't given any specific legal advise. As you guessed correctly, I'm not a lawyer. But I seriously dislike this naive "it's free and they say it's ok to use"-attitude which is pretty common (yet still wrong and could cause trouble in case of commercial use). I'm just trying to make people think twice about it. Not only when using free fonts but also for bought ones. That's all. After all, if someone wants to use a free font for commercial projects and suddenly gets charged for copyright infringements, it's not my problem. Yet it appears kinda weird to me, that you–as a font designer–are either not aware of the problem yourself or you simply don't care about other's being not aware of it.

Yes, the links you provided are very legit, no problems with those at all. I just tried to make people aware of the risks using "free fonts" in commercial projects—even if there's something like "free for commercial use" mentioned somewhere on a website.

Unfortunately, that's what most people believe. It's not valid, tho. There are so many different "commercial" licenses. Even if the website says allowed for commercial use, you might still not use it i. e. for using it for designs on articles you want to sell. There's nothing like "A commercial license" which applies with the same permissions and restrictions when you just mention "ok for commercial use" somewhere on a website. Yes, and usually for commercial fonts, you can even see the copyright in the OS' font manager already. So a if you grabbed a "free font from Linotype" on one of the free font pages, you should be curious. 😉

Well, a friend of mine is an attorney specialised in copyright. He's making money because of people don't know about what the licenses are covering. "Free fonts/images" are a goldmine for copyright trolling, believe me. As the vast majority of users of such free stuff usually don't care for licenses at all. I can only advise everyone to read the licenses of those free materials used in commercial projects. It's less lately, but I even found fonts on "reliable free font pages", which were original Mototype or ITC fonts which just got uploaded by some random users. Illegally, yes. Yet you could be held responsible for using them. The Adobe license for desktop publishing explicitly permitted embedding fonts as a subset with only the glyphs needed for the document when I last used Adobe's fonts (it's a while ago, I have to admit).