KCP

Someone on this thread mentioned the potential end of Affinity if it doesn't adopt generative AI. As a commercial user of Adobe for several decades and a recent convert to the Affinity suite, I find no reason to worry about that. I was a power user of Adobe in the brand identity field and eventually decided to switch after retiring. With no more need to regularly share files, I was more than happy to cancel my overpriced membership. In a nutshell, Before converting, I ran three months of extensive comparisons to ensure that Affinity had the requisite tools and sophistication to compete with Adobe. The short answer is that it more than does that and a bit more. Adobe's AI has some value on a mass production level, although it's unnecessary for essentially all of the commercial workflow I ever encountered in 40 years of commercial work. 

Many of Adobe's newer tools have been strategically designed to automate processes for the average consumer and mostly bloat the apps with unnecessary automation. As someone with many years in and around advertising, my suggestion is not to get sucked in by shiny objects. Affinity is a powerhouse and getting better with every update.  

Someone on this thread mentioned the potential end of Affinity if it doesn't adopt generative AI. As a commercial user of Adobe for several decades and a recent convert to the Affinity suite, I find no reason to worry about that. I was a power user of Adobe in the brand identity field and eventually decided to switch after retiring. With no more need to regularly share files, I was more than happy to cancel my overpriced membership. In a nutshell, Before converting, I ran three months of extensive comparisons to ensure that Affinity had the requisite tools and sophistication to compete with Adobe. The short answer is that it more than does that and a bit more. Adobe's AI has some value on a mass production level, although it's unnecessary for essentially all of the commercial workflow I ever encountered in 40 years of commercial work. 

Many of Adobe's newer tools have been strategically designed to automate processes for the average consumer and mostly bloat the apps with unnecessary automation. As someone with many years in and around advertising, my suggestion is not to get sucked in by shiny objects. Affinity is a powerhouse and getting better with every update.  

Someone on this thread mentioned the potential end of Affinity if it doesn't adopt generative AI. As a commercial user of Adobe for several decades and a recent convert to the Affinity suite, I find no reason to worry about that. I was a power user of Adobe in the brand identity field and eventually decided to switch after retiring. With no more need to regularly share files, I was more than happy to cancel my overpriced membership. In a nutshell, Before converting, I ran three months of extensive comparisons to ensure that Affinity had the requisite tools and sophistication to compete with Adobe. The short answer is that it more than does that and a bit more. Adobe's AI has some value on a mass production level, although it's unnecessary for essentially all of the commercial workflow I ever encountered in 40 years of commercial work. 

Many of Adobe's newer tools have been strategically designed to automate processes for the average consumer and mostly bloat the apps with unnecessary automation. As someone with many years in and around advertising, my suggestion is not to get sucked in by shiny objects. Affinity is a powerhouse and getting better with every update.  

I tested the issue by going step-by-step through different brush settings and discovered that the primary cause of the lag is when I set the brush hardness to 100%. Backing it off just a few percent makes the brush responses exponentially faster. 

Hi
Well sometimes I have issues with brush lagging; there are a few things you could try:
a. see if there is any difference by toggling hardware acceleration in settings (Settings [Control+,]) >Performance>Hardware acceleration
b. Refrain from using really large brush nozzles (The free brush set you refer to above uses a lot of large stamp type brushes! (Nozzles do not need to be large to be effective!)
c. Avoid setting the Brush 'Spacing' [Brush Editing Panel >General] to very low levels like 0 | 1-4. It is sort of dependant on the nozzle size and the gaps between the ink of the actual nozzle!
d. Limit the number of sub-brushes in the sub-brush panel (I usually just use 1 or 2)
e. Experiment with the brush dynamics.... using extremes like 100% for everything!
f. Restrict the number of nozzles actually used in brush + remember you can now re-order them 

Document size and res can influence it!

Thanks, Stuart. I'm still struggling a bit with tool-name translation after decades working in the Adobe Suite. Btw, do you have any insight about the brush lag issue? 

Someone on this thread mentioned the potential end of Affinity if it doesn't adopt generative AI. As a commercial user of Adobe for several decades and a recent convert to the Affinity suite, I find no reason to worry about that. I was a power user of Adobe in the brand identity field and eventually decided to switch after retiring. With no more need to regularly share files, I was more than happy to cancel my overpriced membership. In a nutshell, Before converting, I ran three months of extensive comparisons to ensure that Affinity had the requisite tools and sophistication to compete with Adobe. The short answer is that it more than does that and a bit more. Adobe's AI has some value on a mass production level, although it's unnecessary for essentially all of the commercial workflow I ever encountered in 40 years of commercial work. 

Many of Adobe's newer tools have been strategically designed to automate processes for the average consumer and mostly bloat the apps with unnecessary automation. As someone with many years in and around advertising, my suggestion is not to get sucked in by shiny objects. Affinity is a powerhouse and getting better with every update.  

You cannot paint Pixels onto a Curve layer. So of course your assistant made a new pixel layer. You could rasterize the Curve layer used as a Mask and then you can paint on it. You could use the Select > Selection from Layer then make a Spare Channel, choose the other Curve and do the same then use those two Spare Channels to Load to Selection, and Add to Selection. Then hit the Mask Button. You could do a Boolean Add to the two Curve Layers and use that as a Mask. You could .... other things will be added by others.

Thank you for the update. The add/reset function was a very good hack for non-editable shapes. I hope the intention is to re-enable that option again soon or, better yet, add a designated "Reset Bounding Box" function. 

Thank you for the response. It worked.

@Return, I just tried this and it works. I didn't bother with assets. Instead, I created several artboards in the same file and then copied and pasted them individually into same-size artboards in a different file. It takes less time to create new column guides in your working file. It's a matter of typing in 3 numbers (columns, rows, and gutters). In retrospect, there doesn't seem to be much value in saving column guides after all. 

Thanks for the response, Dan. Fwiw, it's not lost on me that Adobe has much deeper pockets for R&D (approximately $20b vs $30m in revenues), which makes Serif's product development respectable at this point. Props for that. Regarding the stroke issue, it only came up when making custom grids from which to create shapes with the Shapebuilder as well as when attempting to rotate strokes around a "transform-origin" point. I've discovered workable hacks for both, which I'm happy to share if desired. 

Masks, selections, etc. I sometimes have hundreds of layers in a composite file and need quick access to selections to apply adjustment layers, constrain dodging and burning, and many other functions. And if I liquify something that already has a saved path, I can activate that saved path and reshape it to fit the liquified, warped, etc. asset. I noticed that AP2 allows you to save a selection as a channel, although clicking on it does not activate the selection but rather pulls up the channel. Ahh, I just discovered that you have to right-click and load the selection.

A video is worth a million words. I never even noticed the hour glass. Thank you! It works perfectly. My guess is that Affinity is much easier to learn from scratch, like with full-immersion language learning. I started using Adobe with the first version (Photo Shop 0.63), so everything is a comparison. 

Something like my crude example:
 
2023-05-23 00-26-03.mp4    

 

To preface, thank you to everyone for the input and thoughtful suggestions. I do appreciate them. That said, they don't demonstrate how to create smart objects as I demonstrated them in the screenshot from PS. Smart objects turn all of the adjustment filters into smart filters, which can easily be edited by simply clicking on the layer. It's one click, which makes workflow clean, fast, and simple. Can someone do a quick screen vid to demonstrate how AP (not Designer) can do this? It would not only help me but also anyone else in my situation trying to make this transition. Smart Filters are such an essential tool in PS that I'm surprised none of the Admins for Serif have posted a solution yet. 

Thanks, Walt. I'm aware of the importing Smart Objects into AP function, which I have checked, although I'm more interested in creating smart objects in my AP workflow. It seems, as of Version 2, that Serif is trying to bring the suite up to professional workflow standards, which, imo, requires the essential tools that pros depend on for flexibility and time restraints. 

This is not a viable alternative to Solid Color because the one in PS is an adjustment layer which is non-destructive and infinitely changeable. 

(...)
 

GIF starts after the ring set is created. Outside strokes (that's your offset). 
• expand strokes
• subtract, subtract, subtract
• divide, divide, divide
• select crossover pieces, delete
• recombine like colors
The trick is to do the divides separately.
(destructive, but with transparent spaces (still all vector though)....as in the Pshop example above. The shapebuilder method, as powerful as that tool is, actually kinda seems like the long way around in this case )

It took some thinking out but now I know how to do it it's fairly easy to do. The best part is it's all editable.

Before clicking on the Boolean icon, hold Alt.

Wow.
Along with the afdesign file of your first post, this reply is a complete step-by-step tutorial such as you might hope to find in a published workbook!
Amazingly generous of you, @Wosven. Merci

Thank you, @Wosven.
You lost me with most of that, although it probably has more to do with my not yet having wrapped my head conceptually around the software. I ended up finding a way to set the colors (see "SS4 Annotated" file). The problem with that method was that by not holding down the alt key when boolean-subtracting, I ended up losing the original, compound shape. When I hold down the alt key to subtract and add, each subtraction ends up in its own drop-down folder (see "SS5" file). I'm clearly missing something in translation. 

KC

Hi @KCP
As explain in the second post, the compound is only a visual help to know which object you need to substract, which one to add, and it can help at the begining to find which objects (rectangles, rings…) you'll need at which size to create a final object with efficiency. (But trial and error  + ctrl+z get the same result )
Using the alt key will create a compound, and we don't want one!
 
You need to copy-paste (out of it) all the elements of the compound object before adding/substracting them, or to release the compound to get them (right-click menu or main Layers menu).