Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

dcadint

Members
  • Posts

    24
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by dcadint

  1. Thank you Dazmondo77. This so far has been the best method to recreate painting with a seamless texture. I've tried various brushes with base textures, dynamics and the seamless texture as the fill setting but it always ends up with offsets and the more you paint over a section it lays down not the same section of the texture but overlaps with a different one so it gets muddled. It is a few extra steps as compared to being able to just pick a texture and paint with it in Paintshop but not too bad. Also I liked the vector pattern brushes you were using can you share which they are and where you got them... thank you.
  2. I found that even though one cannot have swatches based on textures you can have seamless texture assets and drag and drop them on to the Fg/Bg Active Color Swapper and you can paint with a seamless texture. How it is impacted depends upon the spacing and brush dynamics jitter, rotation etc either you get the seamless textures pattern or a muddy mixture of all its colors. If you really want to paint with the texture duplicating a brush whose dynamics do not distort the textures pattern too much you can add the seamless texture to the base texture of the brush as well and play around with the base texture size for an improved outcome. So you can do it but it does require some work.
  3. Thank you that helped a little bit. I see from those brushes that if I use the brush nozzle from another brush and then change the base texture to one of the seamless textures I have I can get a little closer to what I could do in Paintshop but its still not quite there. The base texture is added as a desaturated mask but it would be nice to have the option to retain the color scheme of the original texture image. The seamless texture image will have variation in shades of rock or foliage colors that gets lost a little when you have to pick a single color from the swatches which makes the result a bit too monochromatic. It would be nice to have texture swatches that when selected override the base swatch for a brush and include the colors of the swatch so you can paint in with that pattern and colors underlying a brush and additional effects of its nozzle.
  4. In the past I have used Corel Paintshop and it allowed me to add seamless textures to the swatches and then use the various airbrushes, bristle brushes to paint in grass, ground, rock textures to create a scene. I tried creating an image brush with a seamless texture but it just lays down the seamless texture without any kind of blending which may be achieved with say an airbrush that would paint with a seamless texture. Is there a way to do this Affinity photo or designer?
  5. I actually have more than two letters I am trying to work with and I am trying to get them to weave in front and behind one another at various places. For something like this the shape builder tool is supposed to be a good option. But I don't expect counter holes to be filled in when a shape is created. PS. Tried to use Boolean functions to see if one might help but alas no joy... Thought the divide would give me individual shapes but the counter hole was filled in and became part of the D, that is not what I would expect from the boolean divide function either. I would expect any counter holes to either remain holes or become their own shape with divide but they are filled in and a part of the D shape. Also this appears to be an issue with shapes which were previously letters; I have tried this with the donut shape which is not a letter and didn't run into the same issue.
  6. While trying to design a logo I ran into an issue with shape builder not seeing the white space or counter/hole in a curve which formerly was a font as a separate shape if another shape is imposed over it. I would expect this white space to remain its own shape and would appear to be a bug. Steps. Insert a letter with a Counter/Hole such as a D or O and convert it to a curve Insert another letter and convert it to a curve and overlap them Select both curves and choose the shape builder and the counter/hole is no longer its own shape but part of the surrounding shape.
  7. I just noticed the same issue with Designer 2.0. Was trying to perspective warp a banana that had multiple gradients to give it shadows and highlights but when perspective warped to the isometric grid the gradients stayed where they were at. Using the gradient tool shows an outline of where the object used to be and the unmoved gradient handles. If I create a vector pattern clip it to the object then that will skew, stretch and warp with the object but not the gradient fills. This is quite the limitation. AppearanceAndWarping.afdesign
  8. I am using a general content master with text frames on page 2 and 3 and then another content master on page 20 and 21 which has text frames and a picture frame. I'll try using an empty master and create text frames outside of the master and see if that helps but this does seem to be a bit of a bug.
  9. I've created an 87 page workbook and inserted a Table of Contents on page 2. For some reason it is flowing to page 21 instead of page 3. When I select the text frames the flow is as one would expect, page 2 flow is linked to page 3.
  10. I find Affinity Designer to be more streamlined. I see that VS has a bunch of tools under the magnet for editing skew, perspective etc and they are all their own tool where as Affinity Designer has these as context tool bar options under a single tool, the node tool. Also there are many tools for gradients in VS where as in Affinity this is handled by the Appearance panel which allows the application of multiple strokes and fills with blend options which can act like the free form gradient tool in Illustrator. I find Designer more intuitive due to not having bloated the interface. Rather than tools there are additional contextually relevant options under fewer tools. Designer is missing a lot less than many think because it just does it differently. That said while I can work-a-round shape builder with the expand stroke, contour, and Boolean geometry a shape builder that condenses the steps would be nice. Couple other tools would be vector brushes, warp and autotrace/selection to curve. The blend tool and many of the path effect tools in VS and Inkscape have I think shouldn't be separate tools but would be handled within a vector brush; again simplify, less tool bar bloat.
  11. For many of the tools existing in Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape which do not exist in Affinity Designer there are some work-a-rounds which may be used to achieve comparable results. These often only add 10s of seconds to the workflow and while not optimal and a little of an annoyance they are still functional. However the lack of a distortion tool set I have found to be quite limiting. If I want to fit characters into a shape there is no good way to do this that doesn't add 10s of minutes onto a task. I can take the shape and text and use edit in photo so I can make use of its mesh warp, liquify or perspective tools but this rasterizes the curves so that they no longer scale. I might then bring them back into Designer and use the pen tool to outline and recreate the shapes but this adds quite a bit of time to the workflow. This is the biggest gap Designer has with other drawing applications. Using shearing and then the node tool to poke and prod segments here and there into a shape is rather difficult often looking out of sorts with the whole. Of all the tools other applications have If I could choose one to be added to the next version of Designer a distortion tool set is it. The other missing tools such as the knife tool, Eraser, and Shape Builder I can kludge using other tools. The knife can be achieved using the pen or pencil tool across a shape followed by the expand stroke operation and then selecting it with the underlying shape and apply geometry divide to cut the shapes along the expanded stroke. The shape builder alternative was a little harder to figure out. Overlaying shapes and using the divide tool works for simple shapes but with more complex shapes overlays don't always divide shapes as expected leaving artifacts of overlapped shapes which are not divided. To ensure clean cuts I've found if I select the shapes and expand stroke and then divide all shapes will be divided but there are a lot of artifacts of unclosed curves left between the shapes. To help identify these; before the divide I overlay the shapes with a gray 50% transparent rectangle and then do the divide. The shapes then stand out as grey in the layers panel and the curve artifacts are black and may be deleted. However there are gaps between the shapes preventing them from being added together without strokes being visible between. To fill the gaps select all shapes and use the Contour tool to expand them into the gaps. Then you have shapes which may be selected with the node tool and removed similar to the shape builder or multiple may be selected and converted to a single shape using the add operation. Quite obviously a kludge but it doesn't take as long as it sounds to achieve.
  12. I am working on creating macros for artistic effects such as a grunge look and also a painted look. I have used the Tone Mapping persona with the tone compression and Local contrast to achieve these looks along with the Denoise filter for the painted look but the Tone Mapping persona cannot be automated by macros. I noticed that James Ritson had created a Procedural Texture for HDR to SDR Tone Mapping using the equation; var divided=[R,G,B]/(tm*tms);var flat=sqrt(divided);lerp(flat,divided,c)*(br*brs) with tm variables for tone map and c variable for contrast. This seems to match the tone compression from the Tone mapping persona that seems to smooth out the colour transitions to something with less colour gradation and detail however the contrast seems more like the standard brightness and contrast effecting the whole image instead of the local contrast affecting the clarity of smaller details. I have tried to use the Clarity filter and it is close but its effect is too subtle and doesn't make the fine noise standout as much as the Tone Mapping local contrast. Does anyone have a method or a formula which may be used with the Procedural Texture to emulate the Tone Mapping Persona's Local Contrast?
  13. Interesting Ok, I see at 100% the issue goes away but then I can't see the whole image and the filter/adjustment on the whole image. Have to pan around
  14. Wish granted.. beginning of last year January 2020. Actually Affinity Designer does have free form gradient. It was added at the beginning of 2020 to Affinity Designer with the new Appearances tab which allows you to add multiple fills and strokes to a layer. If you add a gradient either circle or ellipse to the fill and then set the right sides opacity to 0% so its completely transparent and the left side to the desired colour and set the blend mode to average (or you can play around with it) it will become a free form gradient point and function just like free form gradient in Adobe Illustrator. Duplicate the fills and adjust the color on the left and you will have multiple gradient points that will interact with one another. Use the handles on the gradient to stretch and shrink the area of coverage of the gradient and how much it overlaps with the gradient fill point next to it.
  15. Actually Affinity Designer does have free form gradient. It was added at the beginning of 2020 to Affinity Designer with the new Appearances tab which allows you to add multiple fills and strokes to a layer. If you add a gradient either circle or ellipse to the fill and then set the right sides opacity to 0% so its completely transparent and the left side to the desired colour and set the blend mode to average (or you can play around with it) it will become a free form gradient point and function just like free form gradient in Adobe Illustrator. Duplicate the fills and adjust the color on the left and you will have multiple gradient points that will interact with one another. Use the handles on the gradient to stretch and shrink the area of coverage of the gradient and how much it overlaps with the gradient fill point next to it. I miss spoke it's actually more flexible than AI's freeform gradient as you can modify more options such as the shape of the gradient around the point, the size and area of coverage, the way it blends, add additional colors at various points with their own opacity levels, etc. There is a lot more control. As far as the others we definitely do need a Shape Builder tool. I have searched and fiddled around with the boolean geometry xor and node tools join and close curve buttons to varying degrees of success but this only works with simple shapes having no real line overlap. There is also a great need for a vector deform tool like Adobe Illustrators Envelope Distort Mesh Warp and to Warp to Shape tools as well as a Live Trace tool. A curve smoothing and simplification tool to cut down on the number of nodes would also be nice. As far as 3D text this can be somewhat achieved with the fx 3d and bevel tools.
  16. Actually Affinity Designer does have free form gradient. It was added at the beginning of 2020 to Affinity Designer with the new Appearances tab which allows you to add multiple fills and strokes to a layer. If you add a gradient either circle or ellipse to the fill and then set the right sides opacity to 0% so its completely transparent and the left side to the desired colour and set the blend mode to average (or you can play around with it) it will become a free form gradient point and function just like free form gradient in Adobe Illustrator. Duplicate the fills and adjust the color on the left and you will have multiple gradient points that will interact with one another. Use the handles on the gradient to stretch and shrink the area of coverage of the gradient and how much it overlaps with the gradient fill point next to it.
  17. Actually Affinity Designer does have free form gradient. It was added at the beginning of 2020 to Affinity Designer with the new Appearances tab which allows you to add multiple fills and strokes to a layer. If you add a gradient either circle or ellipse to the fill and then set the right sides opacity to 0% so its completely transparent and the left side to the desired colour and set the blend mode to average (or you can play around with it) it will become a free form gradient point and function just like free form gradient in Adobe Illustrator. Duplicate the fills and adjust the color on the left and you will have multiple gradient points that will interact with one another. Use the handles on the gradient to stretch and shrink the area of coverage of the gradient and how much it overlaps with the gradient fill point next to it.
  18. Yes, same zoom level before and after. I think I see the issue. If I apply the destructive add noise filter and adjust the slider to 50% and then when I close out the dialogue the image noise level decreases to the same level as the live filter after I merge visible or rasterize. So what I'm seeing with the live filters is like a rough draft. However this can be a wysiwyg problem if what I'm seeing with a set of live filters may not be what I'm going to get in the end. Must be a way to push a final image display calculation with live filters to see what I'm going to get in the end.
  19. If I take an image and apply live add noise filter and contrast filter and then use either merge visible or rasterize to merge the image the resulting image ends up having less noise. This happens whether the filters are in their own layer being applied globally or if I place them under the image as a mask or clipping layer. I was kind of expecting the resulting image to look the same as my image layer with child adjustments looks.
  20. I have created gradient maps and saved them as presets however it does not appear that there is a way to export or import these settings. For LUTs there is a cog icon when you select the LUTs in the adjustments dialogue which allows you to import and export LUTs but there is no such icon when you open the gradient map. It would be nice to be able to import gradients into the map or allow one to select a gradient from the swatches and then apply it to the gradient map adjustment.
  21. I copied a rectangle shape I was using to circle some text on the second to last page in my 60 page publication and pasted it on my 8th page. I was able to work with it and copy and paste it to circle other text but after I closed and reopened the document I could no longer select it and it had dropped into the layer group which is related to the master template. I can select it in this layer group but it acts like its part of the master because the handles of the selection are Xs not circles which can be manipulated and I can't even delete it. Has anyone ran into this problem and found a solution?
  22. I have had this happen in both Affinity Photo and Publisher version 1.9.1 while trying to drag stock photos from Unsplash and Pixabay into my document.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.