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MarshallHarrison

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Posts posted by MarshallHarrison

  1. 2 minutes ago, gdenby said:

    Hi, MarshallHarrison,

    Note that w. traditional art, hand/eye skills can take years, even if you start as a child. It may feel a bit silly, but old fashioned "penmanship" exercises can help. Draw lots of circles, parallel lines, squares, triangles, until your arm gets the feel of moving across the rather slick surface of the tablet.

    At least there is the perfect eraser of "undo."

    I'm learning both and the digital mistakes are easier to correct than the analog. Its a daunting task but it gives me something to do n my retirement and its fun.

    I am really enjoying learning graphic design and digital art.

  2. The tablet arrived yesterday evening. I set it up on my desk and played with it last night. It is working great but I really suck at using a tablet. I'm sure that I will get batter after some practice. This will be a fun journey for me.

    I tried out CSP but it sin't a very OSX compliant application. I couldn't get it to move from my primary display to my secondary display. I could move some of the window but not the menu bar and some other items. So. I've put it aside for the moment and concentrating on AP and Krita.

    Thanks for all of the advice. It is much appreciated.

     

     

  3. 8 minutes ago, SrPx said:

    Careful, that version I don't know if is subscription based or time limited. I'd just buy the desktop one to be pretty sure there'd be no issues.

    Anyhow, I have this strange feeling that they'll keep improving the brush system in Photo. And, again, Photo is enough,for all (digital painting, image edit, comic authoring, and a large etc).

    The one issue with AP is that there isn't much in the way of training or videos on using Photo (or Designer) for painting.

    I spent 30 years as a software developer before retiring last year and I'm a big big fan of having multiple tools in my tool belt. I currently have the Affinity Studio Suite along with Krita and Scribus. I am also a proponent of Open Source software. Paint Shop is out of my price range as is the Adobe Suite. I'm currently experimenting with Paint Shop Essentials but it seemed a little quirky (I couldn't arrange the desktop to my liking) on my MacBook Pro. I'll download CSP later today and try it.

    I'm really liking the feature set and UI of Krita. It and the Affinity tools will probably be my main tools. And once I have the money I may add CSP to that mix.

    I did a lot of research before choosing the Artist 16 Pro and it seemed to have the best price to value ratio. I'm not sure if I could learn the hand eye coordination needed for a non screen tablet. I wish I could get a larger screen tablet or even a Wacom but the cost just goes too high for my budget. This will be more of a hobby or freelance gig for me in my "retirement" so keeping the cost low is my goal. I don't want to give up a lot of functionality but I don't have to have the fastest most efficient workflow possible.

    Do you have a website or portfolio? I would love to see some of your work.

  4. I got my first graphics tablet today and it has 12 user programmable function keys. I would like to hear your suggestions on what to program the keys for. So far I have only decided Command N to open a file along with [ and ].

    I'll primarily be using it with Designer but keystrokes that are common across the Affinity Suite may make the most sense. It also has 16 spft keys that I can program but it may be best to wait on those.

    So let's hear what you are using or what you think I should use for the function keys.

    Its a Huion HS610 and it seems to work well. But, I really suck and drawing with it. It is going to take a lot of practice. However,  being retired, I have lots of time for practice.

  5. 12 hours ago, Sam Ramzan said:

    Hello Matt, my name is Sam, I have been in graphic design and full web development for 19 years.

     

     

    By the way, I am 55 years old and Affinity returned me to the enthusiasm of my way back 30s

    Welcome Sam. I understand the enthusiasm. After 30+ years as a software and web developer I was burnt out. I still can't get any enthusiasm about writing code. But graphics design along with the new tools and the Affinity Suite have me excited again. Or maybe it was just the year of retirement...Either way, I'm having fun again.

    Here's to us old guys having fun with this stuff!!!!!

  6. I don't want to start a war here but...

    I've been reading up on tablet problems as well as looking at other problems people are having and the common denominator in a lot of the problems is Windows. I spent 25+ years in the Microsoft/Windows camp and was A  Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for 6 years.  They just seem to have gotten worse and worse about playing nicely with others. I jumped camps and though OSX isn't perfect, it sure seems a a lot more reliable for me.

  7. Background: I have Designer, Photo and Publisher installed in that order over the last few weeks.

    I was setting up my raw workflow today and when I double clicked on a Canon raw file I found that it opened the .CR2 files in Publisher. They opened fine but I reset them to Photo as that seems to make more sense.

    My questions for support and those in the know are: 

    1. Should I be opening them in Publisher?

    2. Does Publisher have all the same abilities for handling raw as Photo does?

    3. Is there some future  enhancement or reason to have these files opened by Publisher instead of Photo?

    I'm especially curious about question  #2

    Thanks.

  8. Thanks Ulysses.

    That sent me down a rabbit hole for a few hours so far. Bridge wouldn't install and it took several reboots and cleanup of crashing install files.  Finally got it installed and now to figure out how to rename the files when it copies them from the card.

    .

    I also had a problem with opening the raw files as the file association was set to open CR2 files with Affinity Publisher. Not sure why other than that was the last affinity program installed but, I had to reset that back to affinity Photo.

     

    I'm retired and  photography is mostly a hobby for me. So, I trying to figure out how much batch processing I need other than bulk copy and renaming of files. I don't know darktable or RawTherapee so I'm trying to decide which is easiest to use or if they are even necessary or should  I should skip them entirely and use AP for the raw preprocessing. 

    Anyway, thanks again for the help.

  9. Thanks Ulysses!

    So it looks like darktable will be where I end up. I played with RarTherapee a little but I didn't feel comfortable with its interface.

    If I understand everyone correctly then this looks like a 3 step process:

    1. Move the raw files to my hard drive (I'm on a Macbook Pro with a terabyte of SSD). Still need a good way of automating the copy/naming process. I feel this is necessary because darktable needs somewhere to create the sidecar files and I don't want them on the Camera's memory card.

    2. Batch process and maybe rename the files with darktable

    3.  Import the resulting file from step 2 into AP and do the final processing then save the results.

     

    Am I missing something? Am I on the right track?

    Any suggestions for software for step 1? I used to have a Windows based program for that but I don't remember the name of it?

  10. 48 minutes ago, j3rry said:

    I use DxO PL and Capture 1 for the developing of Raw files, only occasional use of the develop persona. 

    that may be the process I have to adopt. But the two you mentioned are a little too expensive for me right now. Darktable is free and there are a bunch of videos on Youtube so I'll probably experiment with that. I don't think it can be fully automated but it is non destructive and the editing history of a raw file can be applied to other raw files then exported to jpeg or something else. All this sounds like preprocessing before the image gets brought into AP.

     

  11. 34 minutes ago, j3rry said:

    You find here tons of tutorials.

     

    Thanks J3rry.

    The main thing I'm looking for and haven't determined if it is possible is the ability to have a workflow that allows me to see and rate multiple images at once (kind of like with a light table). Then to do a series of non destructive edits on one and apply the edits to a whole series of raw images and export them.

    I can do this with something like adobe Lightroom or with Darktable. But that brings up a question about should I  edit raw in AP or should I convert to say jpeg and edit that image.

    Im' just setting up my workflow and I want to get it right as changing things later can be difficult.

     

  12. 30 minutes ago, Alfred said:

    I don’t shoot raw, but many of those who do would have been asleep, or getting ready to go to sleep, when you posted 13 hours ago! (It’s now half past three on Sunday afternoon here in the UK, and half past ten in the morning on the east coast of the US.)

    Thanks.

    I'm on the east coast of the USA. I was thinking that this forum had users all around the world (55 views so far) but I guess it just takes longer to get an answer than I anticipated. 

  13. 44 minutes ago, PJenkin said:

    Hi there.

    I'm Paul, a 58 year old who has spent 40 years working in a profession that's about as far from photography as it's possible to get. I've lived in Essex, UK, since 1999 - though I'm originally from 250 mile, or so, NW of there (Manchester) but have also spent years living in Newcastle upon Tyne and Perth (the Scottish one).

    Photography has been my main hobby since I hot my teens and continues to be so. I'm still a very active film photographer - though I also shoot plenty of digital (I see no reason to have to choose one over the other). I'm not remotely tecchie - though I've worked out how to scan negatives and work on them in LRCC. PS is very much an unknown quantity, save for some fairly rudimentary techniques.  I'll probably keep with the Adobe subscription for a couple of months until I've come to terms with Photo a bit.

    I recently purchased Publisher as I'm thinking about putting together some "zines" based on some of the subjects I've photographed over the past years. I joined the Beta about a fortnight before the full version went live, so the discount was much appreciated.  I've just downloaded the trial version of Photo.  It looks fairly daunting - being more akin to PS than LRCC - but that's not really a bad thing as I should be able to approach it with no real legacy of having to re-learn Photo from an extensive legacy of using PS.

    My main concern is that I'll miss the way in which I've been able to import and file / back up folders in LRCC but, again, I'll be able to build new libraries with, hopefully, a more logical approach than I have at present.

    I'm sure I'll ask some very fundamental and (probably) stupid questions as both Publisher and Photo are very new to me.  Please bear with me, as my lack of understanding isn't intentional.  I will check out the excellent YouTube tutorials Affinity has produced to find answers - but I'm not great at understanding the tech-talk and I also find it hard to follow a tiny mouse across a demo screen whilst also listening to the expert explain the what and the how.  I'm a bloke. Multi-tasking is not strong with me....!

    Anyway, enough about me for now. I'm really looking forward to using the Affinity products and interacting with the community here. All the best.

     

    Search YouTube for "Elaine Giles". She does some very comprehensive tutorials on Affinity products. Her full tutorial of Publisher is over 3 hours long. 

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