tomsdesign

A few feature ideas/suggestions/requests that would be awesome, inspired by other apps - basically a wishlist for Designer & Photo as an illustrator. Here they are, in no specific order: Quick shapes, like Procreate - I can't explain the amount of time this saves. Essentially incorporating rulers into your pen so that you don't have to create a vector shape every time you want to draw one. Quick shapes really speed up the drawing process and eliminate the need to create vector shapes every time you need a geometric shape drawn out. Special Rulers, like Sketchbook Pro, and Clip Studio Paint, - drafting rulers like french curves, elliptical rulers, perspective rulers, etc. You can place and move a floating, transparent ruler on the canvas and your pen will automatically snap to it. Lasso Fill, like Clip Studio Paint - being able to toggle 'auto foreground/background colour fill' when using the Lasso/Freehand Selection Tool. That way you don't have to make a selection, select the Flood Fill Tool, and click to fill every time, the selection automatically fills with a colour. Dissolve Blend Mode, like Photoshop - great for comic art, gritty textures, and removing anti-aliasing to make artwork easier to set up for screen-printing purposes. A pro level colour wheel with colour theory options integrated, like Coolorus - one of the things I miss most about using Photoshop. Coolorus is a PS plugin that is far more sophisticated than the standard colour wheel and is used religiously by artists working for the likes of Disney. A Rotation Tool, like Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, and Sketchbook Pro. A big time saver. PS and CSP have dedicated tools for this, and Sketchbook Pro gives you a rotation pop-up window when you move using the space bar. Much better than having to select "Rotate Left/Right" every time, or pressing a keyboard shortcut, which also only rotates a few degrees at a time. External Floating View Windows, like Photoshop. Being able to save a second view of your artboard is already available in Affinity, but you're not able to remove it from the app window. It's great to have the second, zoomed out, view on a second monitor so that you can see how your artwork and design is looking in full while you're working on it in another window. Alternate brush views/display, like most creative software - having the ability to view your brushes panel in different ways, like brush icons, of lists with titles (like the Affinity iPad apps). I feel like these types of features will really open the market up to the likes of illustrators who prefer raster tools, as well as digital painters, concept artists, and comic book artists a lot more. Similarly it will also attract more 'influencer' type artists, as online audiences absolutely love seeing timelapse videos of the process - I know people who prefer painting in Photo and Designer, but use Procreate purely because of its timelapse feature to bring their audiences into their creation process. Affinity has really established itself so well with graphic designers, vector illustrators, and photo retouchers and editors already. There are of course people who love using Affinity software for digital painting, myself included, but there are also many who still prefer other software due to the lack of the aforementioned features. I've read about this on the forums, and elsewhere on the web, and also heard the same echoed by other creatives/digital artists/illustrators I've spoken to about Affinity. I feel that these features will open up a whole new market, and a whole new world for Affinity and users alike. Just some food for thought. Apologies for the lengthy post!