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phoerious

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  1. Thanks for your reply. This is more a usability issue than a technical issue. Brush dynamics do work, but only after enabling them manually in the brush's dynamics settings (which are all off by default). Photoshop has at least transfer dynamics enabled by default, which is convenient and shows me as a new user that brush dynamics are working, whereas in Affinity I wasn't so sure about that and had to google it first. I will test the beta when I find the time. In 1.7 it feels very rough. It's not horrible, but it doesn't feel smooth either. Perhaps the main issue is that it's too slow, i.e. the zoom factor is too small. It may also be an issue that the zoom factor is constant and not adaptive. Yeah, this was one of the main pain points. If you start an entirely new document, there could be an option as to what background to set (transparent, white, black, none). The setting should be remembered. In general, I don't think it makes much sense to start with no layer at all, but perhaps that just comes down to personal preference. In fact, there is already an option to have a "transparent" aka checkerboard background, but that only controls the visual representation in Affinity and doesn't actually create a new layer. I think this is particularly confusing, since for me, a checkerboard implies no background (or a transparent) layer, whereas a white background implies that there is an opaque background layer already.
  2. Thanks, I didn't know that option. Kind of a life saver. If only the rest worked as well now. :-)
  3. Hi, first of all thank you for this amazing application. It's the first serious Photoshop contender I've come across and boy, we need one so badly. That said, I tried to get a little deeper into the Affinity workflow recently, but unfortunately found the pen workflow to be so severely broken to the point where it was easier to pain with my laptop trackpad. Most issues should be relatively easy to fix, so I decided to submit them here. Some (most) of these things have been reported before in one form or another, but I get the feeling that the individual reports are scattered too broadly across the forums, so I created a little collection. I have an Intuos 4 Wacom Tablet with the latest 6.3.38-2 drivers and I am running Affinity 1.7.3.481 on Windows 10. Issue #1: Brush dynamics This one's a really small thing and may be a novice issue, but I find it not very optimal from a usability standpoint to have no brush dynamics at all by default. I would have expected at least some pressure-sensitive size or flow dynamics enabled out of the box. This way I had to google first if Affinity supports brush dynamics at all, because if it didn't it'd been a ditch for me from the start. Issue #2: Menu placement I still find it extremely irritating that menus appear on the left-hand side of the point where I click. I know this has to do with my Windows Ink settings, but no other application does this, not even Photoshop. Setting my workspace to left-handed is a workaround, but since I am right-handed, it's a really bad one. Reported previously here: Issue #3: Brush cursor invisible This is the first real deal breaker. As soon as my pen enters the detection zone of my tablet, Affinity stops updating its brush rendering. As a result, I have either no brush cursor (i.e. normal cursor only) or I have a brush cursor, but it doesn't respond to any size, opacity, or hardness updates. It's basically impossible to draw with this, because I do not see where my cursor is or what amount of "ink" will be emitted. Using the mouse for drawing does not trigger this issue. Similar, but not the same issue reported here: Very similar issue, but with a non-solution here: Issue #4: Scrubby zoom is jerky I don't know if this is just me or my Hi-DPI screen, but the scrubby zoom with a pen seems jerky and insanely slow. Perhaps the zoom factor per moved distance has to be increased a notch and perhaps it needs some performance optimisations also. Issue #5: Scrubby zoom with a pen requires hotkey release I often cycle through my tools via hotkeys, particularly the brush and zoom tools. I am very used to Photoshop's amazing temporary tool selection by holding down the tool hotkey (e.g. Z for scrubby zoom) and then releasing it afterwards, which switches me back to my original tool (usually the brush). In Affinity, this doesn't work, but at least the tool already responds while I hold down the hotkey. I only have to remember to manually switch back as an additional nuisance. Unfortunately, this is not the case when I use a pen. Scrubby zoom with a pen does not work until I fully release the Z key. Issue #6: Tool hotkey cycling getting the best of me This is connected to the previous issue and amplified by my habit of holding down hotkeys, but it's a real deal breaker for me. Pressing a tool hotkey multiple times cycles through all sub tools. I am constantly battling against the application trying to make me draw soft masks with either the colour selection brush (which creates pretty much the opposite of a "soft" mask) or the pixel tool instead of the normal brush. Having to check each time if I have the right kind of brush selected is a huge no-go as it slows me down massively and often I don't even notice the error until the edges of my drawing are starting to fray. There is a previous report here, but the only "solution" was to manually remove or reassign all the tool shortcuts: Issue #7: Changing brush size and hardness almost impossible I know that the hotkeys for changing the brush size are [ and ], but those are not very practical to use while drawing. First, because they are on the right-hand side of the keyboard (on non US/UK keyboards, they may not even be accessible with one hand), secondly, they are pretty clunky, since you can control the size only in discrete steps, and lastly, they only control size, but not hardness. The Alt + press-all-the-buttons-on-your-mouse-at-once shortcut is an Affinity speciality, which I myself find very weird and error-prone and it is entirely impractical for any tool that is not a three-button mouse (e.g. a pen). Despite some posts on the forums here saying otherwise, it is NOT possible to change the size or hardness with Alt + right-click drag on my graphics tablet. No matter the order of the buttons, I only get the magnified eye dropper tool, which is insanely annoying, because it messes up my brush colour. Neither Alt + right click + pen drag, nor Alt + pen drag + right click works. Finally, setting one of my pen buttons to Left+Right click wouldn't even be a good solution if it worked (spoiler: it doesn't). Reported here, but without a working solution: Issue #8: Pixel layers and the aggravating assistant After a while, the "Painting with no layer selected" assistant setting got on my nerves so massively, that I chose to disable it. This is a minor usability issue, but it's quite annoying that new documents start without a base layer. With the assistant disabled, I have to manually create one or always wonder why I cannot draw anything. I would prefer having a base layer from the start, especially since the viewport shows a white background rather than a checker board, implying the existence of such a base layer. I definitely prefer this nuisance over tons of random pixel layers added in my layer hierarchy, but it would still be nice to have this fixed. Thanks for reading and (possibly) your consideration!
  4. Hi, Are there plans for making .afdesign files PDF-compatible or allow direct editing of PDFs? One of Illustrator's most important features has always been that you could save a PDF-compatible .ai file that you could use directly in other applications. For instance, you could save a figure as .ai and choosing the "Adobe CS2" compatibility setting, you could embed it directly into LaTeX (or other non-Creative Suite programmes for that matter). With Affinity Designer, it always involves the extra step of exporting to a PDF (with the correct compatibility settings). I also cannot open and modify a PDF directly without importing it first and then exporting it again, which discards crucial information in the process such as object groupings etc.. I would appreciate if something like this could be implemented. Also, such a feature could potentially improve Illustrator compatibility, since the same issues that I have with PDF files, I naturally have with AI files as well. Thanks!
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