Hilltop
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Hilltop reacted to debraspicher in Asset panel reordering improvements
The apps lack visual feedback in some areas. It adds to a snappy feel to have these little things added. (ie makes it feel more effortless). It's not a game-changer, but I've noticed this as well and I always do a double take and wonder if it didn't register. Specifically, because I'm often on tablet and so not sure if it registered double click or did a hold click. Just the nature of working on the tablet too quickly at times.
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Hilltop reacted to Ash in Crop Tool improvements
Apps: Photo
Platforms: Windows, macOS and iPad
A number of improvements have been made to the crop tool based on customer feedback:
Crop to selection. If you have a pixel selection active the crop tool will now initiate to be a min fit around the selection you have. After a crop the current zoom level will be maintained (rather than automatically zooming to fit as previously). From various feedback this was considered preferable behaviour and leaving it to the user to choose if they want to zoom to fit after (cmd-0 or hitting zoom icon in the top toolbar of iPad). The Crop tool now remembers the last setting globally, so if you wish to apply the same ratio crop to a number of images it's much easier. You can now drag anywhere on the bounding box edges to resize the crop, rather than having to drag from a handle. Enter as well as Return will now commit a crop Escape will reset the current crop In unconstrained mode, holding Shift will constrain the current aspect ratio and Cmd (Ctrl on Windows) will resize around the centre When you rotate / use straighten feature in crop tool it will now automatically adjust crop box to fit. Please let us know what you think or if you spot any issues or have any feedback on this new behaviour.
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Hilltop reacted to Ash in Vector Flood Fill
Apps: Designer
Platforms: All
A new vector flood tool has been added to Affinity Designer. This is denoted by a paint bucket icon in the Tools Panel (on iPad you can find it nested with the gradient fill tool, on Windows it will currently need to be manually added via Customising the Tools Panel).
This tool allows you to automatically fill areas created by overlapping / intersecting shapes and open curves in your document. This tool requires you to make a selection first of the curves / shapes you want the tool to consider. You can then choose a colour from the colour or swatches panel, and tap within any enclosed area to create a new shape with that fill colour. While in the tool you can also drag swatches from the swatches panel onto any area.
There are two insertion modes to this tool you can select from the context toolbar:
Inside. This will attempt to create the new shapes / fills and place them inside existing shapes where possible. In-between. This will break fills and strokes apart in existing shapes, and insert the new fills in-between. The difference between the two is shown below.
While using the tool you can hold Cmd (macOS / iPad) or Ctrl (Windows) to make new selections (also combining with Shift to add / remove items from your selection). You can also click-drag the tool to quickly fill many areas all at once, a simple example is shown below with some text:
The tool works with any type of fill - solid colour, gradient or bitmap. The options in the context toolbar for min, max and stretch to fit are relevant only to gradient and bitmap fills, and refers to the method used to scale the fill to the new shape.
For bitmap fills you can select a bitmap fill swatch to use, alternatively you can create bitmap fills on the fly by dragging a texture file or asset directly into the active colour in the toolbar. Below is a video showing that in action with using assets to create bitmap fills:
Texture Fills.mov
For bitmap fills if the texture has any transparency then the fill will be added as an additional fill to the shape. This allows for overlay style textures to be easily added on top of an existing colour fill. We will look at a way to make this behaviour optional.
Finally it's also worth pointing out that when you are in the tool you can also drag swatch from your swatches panel directly into any area in your selection, to quickly add multiple different colours to areas without having to select them first.
We would love you to try this new tool out and let us know what you think or if you encounter any bugs or unexpected results.
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Hilltop reacted to loukash in conforming the end of a stroke to different angles
To expand on the above…
Use partially synced Symbols to make it interactive:
ade_clipped_stroke_symbols.mp4 -
Hilltop reacted to loukash in Unexpected Feature: Vectorize a Bitmap Image Directly in Publisher
Believe it or not, a rudimentary vectorizer has been included with Affinity from the very launch of Publisher 1!
Before you get too excited though: it only works on images with transparency, for example 1-bit images with alpha channel.
But hey, better than nothing, right?
Place your image into a Publisher document, the more pixels the original image has, the better Select the image and click the Edit Wrap Outline button in the main toolbar Copy Paste = Curves object: there's your image (roughly) vectorized, traced based on the transparency outline Apply fill and stroke as you see fit Optionally convert all the sharp nodes to smooth or smart nodes to make it appear less jagged, clean up as you see fit Tested in APu v1.10.6 Mac and APu v2.0.3 iPad.
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Hilltop reacted to smadell in Seth's Vignettes [luma adjusted] - Free Download
Quite some time ago, I downloaded a set of macros provided by Dave Straker (user name @dmstraker) which allowed for a customizable set of vignettes. Dave’s vignettes came in a variety of shapes (although I only used the Ellipse and Rounded Rectangle versions). The nice thing about these macros was that the central shape (the highlighted area that would overlay the subject) could be positioned, resized, and rotated as desired. Also, because it remained a shape, it could be distorted by adding nodes and warping them. The blurred edges of the highlighted shape could be edited, as well, making them more or less distinct.
They were a nice set of vignette macros, and I’ve used them for several years. However, there were a few issues for me. (1) The vignettes tended to darken the deepest shadows too much, crushing parts of the original photo that were close to black. (2) They always started out small, in the upper left-hand corner of the image, and needed to be resized to fit the size of the document. (3) It was necessary to set the Fill color to white before invoking the macros, or else the results would be wrong.
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I am including a new macro category for creating similar vignettes. I believe that these vignettes have most of the strengths of Dave’s Vignettes, but expand on them and improve them.
1) I have only included Elliptical and Rounded Rectangle versions of the vignettes, since these are the only ones I have ever used.
2) The vignettes are called “luma adjusted” because they do not crush the blacks in the vignette. Rather than use a 100% black pixel layer as the periphery of the vignette, these macros use a Merge Visible copy of the existing document, adjusted via Blend Ranges to omit the darkest tones. I believe this gives a more satisfying effect to the shadowed areas.
3) The vignettes are sized to the existing document “out of the box.” This is done by rasterizing the shape layer (the ellipse or the rounded rectangle) and creating a new pixel layer in its stead. This pixel layer can still be resized, re-positioned, and/or rotated as desired. The edge of the ellipse (or rounded rectangle) has a Gaussian Blur filter attached, and the blur can be edited to make the vignette more or less soft-edged. However, since the highlighted ellipse/rounded rectangle is no longer a shape, per se, it cannot be warped by adding nodes and adjusting their handles. I suppose that a more traditional “Mesh Warp” could be applied to the “Highlight” pixel layer, but I have never had to do this and I think this will be an unusual requirement.
4) The vignettes will create a central “highlight” area set to white. This is done automatically, and does not require that the user set the Fill color beforehand.
5) The vignettes were created in Affinity Photo version 1 and come as a macro category, containing two macros (one each for the ellipse and the rounded rectangle). Since they were created in v1, they can be imported into both versions 1 and 2, and will function in the same manner. Also, since they are included as a category, they can be imported into either version of Affinity Photo for iPad.
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I’ve attached a small PDF file that explains the macros in more detail, and includes images of how they are best used. Keep this as a reference, if you like.
As with all of the macros I have submitted over the years, please remember that I am one person with one computer (and one iPad). This allows me to test on a limited number of images. There is no way to have foreseen all possible scenarios. I believe (but obviously cannot guarantee) that you will be happy with the results.
If you like the macro, please keep it and enjoy it. It is yours to use freely. What I ask in return is simply this: leave a comment below, letting me know if you’re using the macros and (hopefully) that you’re enjoying them. Remember that we users benefit from each other’s knowledge. Never forget to “pay it forward” and contribute to the forum in whatever ways you can.
Also, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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For reference, and as a tip-of-the-hat to Dave Straker, here is a link to his original YouTube video describing his macros.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg6ldQrAG1s
Seth's Luma Adjusted Vignettes.zip
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Hilltop reacted to Greggry P in New artwork - Put the Knife Down Sandra
New artwork - “Put the Knife Down Sandra.”
Part-inspired by Mia Goth in the closing shot of the horror film “ Pearl”, and part-inspired by the slightly crazed smiles of Nigella Lawson (I love Nigella, but, you know…) comes the lovely Sandra, with her slightly demented 80’s appearance.
Hope you like her!
(Made on Affinity Designer iPad v2)
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Hilltop reacted to James Ritson in Official Affinity Photo (V2) Tutorials
Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas!
I wanted to sneak in another video before the new year, so here you go:
High Dynamic Range Workflows HDR/EDR technology has actually been present in Affinity Photo for a few years now (since around 1.7 I believe), but with V2 introducing JPEG-XL export I thought it was about time to do a proper video on high dynamic range editing. This video was shot in HDR and mastered to 1600 nits of peak brightness, so if you have a display capable of that brightness (for example, the M1 Pro/Max MacBook displays), you're in for a visual treat! For those viewing on SDR displays, the content will be tone mapped and will of course lose a bit of its impact...
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Hilltop reacted to jmwellborn in Christmas Wishes to Everyone!
Five hundred cookies and 128 rum buns out of the oven (not all at once) and here is my feeble attempt at a Christmas card. Since I couldn't draw my way out of a paper bag, I decided to use the Paper Cut Woodlands Assets with Designer 2 and the wonderful Warp Group, for this year's magnum opus. Hooray for the eye dropper!
Thank you to all of the wonderful people at Serif who have worked so hard to give us all the new things in the three V2's. And best wishes to everyone for a very Merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year.
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Hilltop reacted to awakenedbyowls in Chicken Abbey Road - The Re-shoe
I did this stupid photo design 8 years where I photoshopped 4 chickens walking across an old country road with zebra crossing lines and it went a it viral across the internet (so much that two musical artists stole it and put it on their album cover) and so I decided to redesign it better recently and ended up with this
One morning in the Spring of 1972 - in a parallel universe somewhere - George, Paul, Ringo and John are on a road trip to a farm - to grow some wheat - when they bump into their old pal Buster Bloodvessel out walking his chickens
Trying to get some nice dust brush effects going on but I don’t feel I’m 100% happy with the result so far so might rework bits of it - if anyone has any nice tips for me then I’m happy to take them
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Hilltop reacted to Volker Krenz in Star Rain - Brush - StarLightImpression by VolkerKrenz
Hi Guys, I have once again created a beautiful star brush. Maybe you like it. Installation Guide: 1. Scan the file for viruses 2. You can install the file with a double click in the file manager. 2.b Alternatively, you can import the file in the Brush tab via the Options menu. 3. A new category is created with the name "StarLightImpression by VolkerKrenz" Have a lot of fun Volker Krenz
StarLightImpression by VolkerKrenz.afbrushes
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Hilltop reacted to Granddaddy in Recovering memories, gifting friends
Our 98-year-old friend Mildred proudly showed us a 5" x 7"photo of her father standing with his pupils outside his schoolhouse in southwest Virginia around 1900. Details were a bit hard to make out. (I'm posting only small images here because the photos are not my own, but you'll get the idea.)
Having recently started using Affinity Photo, I was looking for a project to test it. So I asked if I could borrow the photo in hopes of making it more presentable.
For those who haven't done this sort of thing but would like to try, here's a brief summary of tools used.:
1.) duplicate the photo and work only on the duplicate
2.) crop to remove bad edges
3.) convert to B&W
4.) levels adjustment to improve brightness and contrast overall
5.) inpainting brush tool to repair creases, remove most of the tree on the left as it added little to the photo, smooth the badly mottled sky, and fix damage or distracting details in dirt in front of children
6.) clone brush tool to fill in part of the schoolhouse and to fill breaks in the branches of trees on the right
7.) quick masks to make selections over the several long faded streaks (water damage?) across various parts of the photo
8.) levels and/or brightness adjustments to adjust the selected washed out streaks
9.) copy, flip, then paste the teachers left eye where the right eye was badly damaged. (I am definitely not an artist who could draw details into the badly damaged face)
10.) make final adjustments using brightness, levels, and/or curves on entire image
11.) frame text tool to insert caption for the scene in foreground (not shown)
Most of this was done non-destructively by painting on a new pixel layer with the clone brush or inpainting brush set to sample layers below. I'd do it a lot more systematically and non-destructively now that I've had several months of practice using Affinity Photo and have watched many more videos both from Affinity and from several other sources.
The end result was a B&W 5" x 7" photo framed on a table top.
Hardly anything is more enjoyable than fixing an old photo for a friend.
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Hilltop got a reaction from Ron P. in Extremely Disappointed, Existing Customers must Purchase Affinity V2
With all due respect, but your position and arguments are ridiculous. Every software upgrade offered by a commercial company comes with a price. You can now purchase the app(s) at a 40% discount and that's quite generous.
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Hilltop reacted to v_kyr in A few Paper Effect Assets
Here are a few Paper Effects as vector assets (...since some new forum user recently asked me for such things).
The assets file:
paper-effects.afassets A paper effects samples file:
paper-effect-samples.afdesign
And two curled paper sample files:
curled_paper_template.afdesign curled_paper_sample.afdesign
As mostly all freely reusable, have a nice time!
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Hilltop reacted to v_kyr in Xmas Trees Assets
Some this year (2022 and again last minute) Affinity Designer v.1.10.5 based Xmas trees as vector assets.
The assets file:
x-mas-trees.afassets You will find a bunch of other Xmas related things under some of my other resources contributions, see therefor:
Retrospective of resources contributions
Have a contemplative and peaceful Xmas time!
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Hilltop reacted to VectorVonDoom in Web Sites For Graphic Design Inspiration
Here's a short list of websites that may give you some inspiration for your next project. For this I've no interest in product branding, UI/UX or website design sites so haven't included any that are specific to those subjects. These are just ones that I've visited and found interesting rather than thinking meh (which is quite a few!).
The first two are probably obvious ones to most people. I personally ignore the likes/upvotes as they often don't reflect the quality of work. Neither site works well unless you are signed in.
Behance
Dribbble
Some sites that are perhaps less well know and in no particular order:
Design Inspiration
AIGA Eye On Design
abdz.do
InspirationGrid
Directory Of Illustration
Central Illustration
You also have Instagram but the images are so tiny whether you find it that useful for inspiration purposes is up to you. I don't use it at all but that's me.
Not a web site but there used to be a magazine in the UK called Computer Arts. I would buy it occasionally but to be honest rarely found content that was particularly interesting. But if you look around you can find issues in PDF format. For example there are a few on here:
Computer Arts
If you find an artist you really like then look them up as they more often than not have their own site.
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Hilltop reacted to bananayoshimoto in Free Halftone Dots Brushes, Color Chart and CMYK set-up
A preview of B&W strokes and their corresponding CMYK colors:
The Halftone Chart uses a traditional CMYK color palette with “absolute“ values (C:100, M:100, Y:100, K:100, everything else set to zero). Replace them with different values in the CMYK panel of each swatch, according to your needs. Set CMY to stronger values and K to lower value to avoid strong black patters.
A short video about setting a CMYK document plus the brushes in action:
ZIP includes Halftone Brushes, Color Palette, document setup, Color Chart folder with individual PNG pieces on transparent background (import them to document, set them to Multiply over the paper of your choice and save it yourself)
You can use and modify all the resources found here for personal and professional work.
(About halftone dots https://legionofandy.com/2013/06/03/roy-lichtenstein-the-man-who-didnt-paint-benday-dots/ , http://the-print-guide.blogspot.com/2009/05/halftone-screen-angles.html)
Halftone brushes + CMYK setup + Color Chart.zip
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Hilltop reacted to randomjames in Affinity 2 App Icons
If this is useful for anyone, here's my rendering of the new app icons in .afdesign format.
Affinity 2 Icons.afdesign
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Hilltop reacted to souacz in WEB 2.0 v.3 gradients (swatches) .afpalette file converted from .grd file
Here is the set of gradients "WEB 2.0 v.3" converted from the free .grd Photoshop file. I downloaded the PS gradient file from this site and converted it into .afpalette.
It's a pity that creating .afpalette files from .grd files is so time-consuming, I hope that in the upcoming versions of Affinity programs, the ability to import the .grd file will be added, just like it is with files .abr
WEB 2.0 v.3 gradients.afpalette
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Hilltop reacted to mrs68tm in Engraving templates
Hi,
I made two templates, Horizontal and Vertical, for engraving effect. You can modify them as you want! You can play with gradient fill layer, with BW adjustment, also you can replace the engraving files. (for a stonger effect, you can duplicate them, and then you have to play with opacity, you can pick-up another blend mode)
I attached them below, also a folder with some engraving patterns in .png.
I attached the final result, in a gradient and two colors, for the Vertical template.
More, in the below link. I would like to say a big THANKS to the author GraphicalFinity.
engraving-png.zip
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Hilltop reacted to Haffinity in text tutorial: hide all layers below (make them transparent)
@NotMyFault :
Very nice hint!
@Hilltop :
I saved this adjustment as preset (Set 𝛂 to 0). Now I can use this preset in a macro.
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Hilltop got a reaction from JoshB in Extremely Disappointed, Existing Customers must Purchase Affinity V2
With all due respect, but your position and arguments are ridiculous. Every software upgrade offered by a commercial company comes with a price. You can now purchase the app(s) at a 40% discount and that's quite generous.
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Hilltop got a reaction from _Th in Extremely Disappointed, Existing Customers must Purchase Affinity V2
With all due respect, but your position and arguments are ridiculous. Every software upgrade offered by a commercial company comes with a price. You can now purchase the app(s) at a 40% discount and that's quite generous.
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Hilltop reacted to markw in Why my image is downscaled after developping in affinity photo?
The DPI number is just a meta data tag attached to an image which can be used by printers or computers to assume a printed or displayed image size.
As far as image quality goes, it is the actual pixel dimensions that count.
So long as that doesn’t change there is no difference in image quality for an image of say 4000px x 6000px, whether it is at 72dpi or 300dpi.
To change the DPI tag, in Photo’s Menubar go to; Document > Resize Document… In the window that opens, first make sure Resample is not selected then set dpi to your desired amount and then click the Resize button.
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Hilltop got a reaction from Gemini80 in Noob Question about 'Merging Visible' and then Exporting
Png (unlike jpeg) files support transparency and that's what you want when removing the white background.
