nickbatz

Has anyone actually tried this, or is this just a theoretical article? https://affinityspotlight.com/article/working-with-affinity-apps-through-sidecar/ I bought a lower-end iPad and an Apple Pencil, but returned them because the latency was way too high to use... except that when I asked, I was also told pointedly by the Apple Genius that there is no way to use a wired connection. Hello? So now, after since returning a graphics tablet because I absolutely despised that horrible thing so much, I tried an Apple Pencil on an iPad at the Apple Store again. There's no learning period, contrary what what 50 people have told me about the tablet. You pick the pencil up and start drawing with it, and it feels as natural as you'd expect. What are you talking about?! But I want to know whether it really works well with Affinity Photo. Is there noticeable latency when using Sidecar over a wired connection? Do the pressure and tilt sensitivity work? TIA

Hm. My Pro100 driver is working fine in Ventura - albeit without ICC profiles - but I think it was installed automatically (because I didn't use Migration Assistant for system files when I set it up, going from Intel to M1). Point being, I wonder whether it really is the old driver rather than one that got installed automatically?

Revanian is using a Mac running macOS Ventura.

Ah, got it. Thanks. I think what happened is that the Select Sampled Color panel was closed and I was just looking at the ants. Out of sight, out of mind. By the way, if you hit delete in v.2 without a selection tool or the panel dismissed, it deletes the layer instead of the selection.

I'd download a trial of Qimage One (https://www.binartem.com/qimageone/) before I scrapped a perfectly good Pro-100. The Pro-100 is a very good dye printer. Did you know it can print larger than 13x19? https://support.usa.canon.com/kb/index?page=content&id=ART163128 I now have a Pro-1000 - which I've now outgrown as well! - but I still use my Pro-100 for everyday printing. It just goes and goes.

Thanks very much. Not My Fault, you're the winner: you have to have a selection tool activated. I had no idea, in fact when I posted this question I'd just used Select Sampled Color - i.e. I wasn't using a selection tool.

You make a selection on a rasterized pixel layer that you want to make transparent by converting to alpha (i.e. deleting the selection, leaving a hole for what's underneath). How? I still haven't figured out why it works sometimes (when hitting Delete) and not others. TIA

Thanks. Yes, connecting an iPad to a computer is a matter of... connecting the iPad to the computer. And there are lots of tablets with a screen (graphics tablets rather than drawing tablets). Maybe I'll try one during this lifetime, although right now I'm inclined to wait for the one after next.

Actually an iPad with an Apple pencil would be great if it worked. And it does work if you're drawing on the iPad, but there's way too much lag if you use it over [I think it connects to the Mac over Bluetooth rather than Wi-Fi]. If they ever solve that issue - even over a wired connection - it would be great. What I don't want to do is export a Merged Visible file from Affinity Photo to the iPad, draw a couple of lines, and then send it back. It's possible that a graphics tablet (one with the picture) rather than a drawing tablet would make me happier, but I don't want to pfaff with HDMI adapters on my Mac.

It took me a few hours to confirm that I hated it even more than I did before those few hours.

Do you use a tablet? I didn't think so. Please try one for several hours, explore *all* the adjustments like I did (going way beyond the defaults), and then come back and explain to me how I'm wrong, that I actually do like this stupid thing. In all fairness, lots of people swear by trackballs. I won't go as far as saying I swear *at* them, but I don't like them much. You might have taken days to explore all the options on your trackball - like programming the buttons, etc. - but I think you either like the basic way it tracks after a few minutes or you don't. I worked with this turkey long enough to know that it's not going to add anything to my artwork, and in fact that it's just going to sit there unused when push comes to shove. Now, the remote that comes with it is pretty good, but why bother when you can use a keyboard and mouse without looking at them. And if your response is just that it's what I'm used to, well, being used to things is totally valid. But you haven't said that, so I won't get into a straw man argument with myself.

Okay. So after hours of trying as hard as I could to like this thing, I've decided it's just not for me. I don't just dislike it, I absolutely loathe using it with a passion. The truth is that if you don't like an input device after a few minutes, it seems unlikely to become second nature. Yeah you have to get used to anything, but this was just annoying.

I'd by happy to explain my opinion - which happens to correspond to reality - at great length, but not on Affinity's forum. They probably wouldn't appreciate it. But I do like your line about rules.

I don’t either, but you do know that the red is because the print driver isn’t scaling the picture to fit the paper size, right?

Not buying your argument about failing to vote. In any case, I hope you like your tablet at least as much as I dislike mine so far. Obviously, I’m an outlier.

First, not voting is a vote for the most evil candidate. Leaving aside what our Supreme Court did here in the US to stop the recount, we had a presidential election determined by less than 400 votes in Florida. Second, having just started using a drawing tablet (the kind without a screen) and thus far being thoroughly disappointed, I'd recommend making sure you can return it if you have a similar reaction. That's just the tablet - the Affinity software is fantastic. I don't want to be overly negative - we're not all the same person, many people seem to like tablets, and I'm used to using a mouse rather than a brush - but my sense is that if you're expecting to pick up where your brushes left off, you may be surprised at how awkward it feels at first. My comment isn't about one tablet, it's about the whole category of input device. And to be fair, oil paints also feel awkward at first. But I do suggest that you lower your expectations. It occurs to me that you might be more comfortable with a graphics tablet - one with a screen.

thomaso, what I wrote is that it's not fast enough *for my taste.* And it isn't. Mouse movements aren't linear, they sense acceleration so that you don't have the problem you're talking about. If you move it fast you can jump from one corner of a 4K monitor to the other without moving your wrist more than an inch - or if you move it slowly you can control fine movements. My reason for wanting to use a pen as an input device is only because the mouse is thick, designed more for pointing and clicking than for drawing. The tilt sensor issue is something very different. Think of it this way: lifting the pen maybe 1/2" above the tablet surface is like moving a mouse (or other pointing device). Dropping the pen to the surface is clicking. The issue with the tilt sensing is that when you drop the pen to the surface to "click," the cursor jumps to a different position from where it was. That could be some kind of calibration issue, but I suspect it's a programming murder. You don't want the tilt sensing to kick in until the pen is touching the surface unless you want people like me to hate the product!

To expound on the tilt control - and this is something I'll tell them on their forum - you don't want it to work until it's touching the surface. Otherwise when you put the pen down it jumps to a different place and people like me are ready to pack the damn thing up and return it.

It's all online, but not really in manual format and not all that easy to search. They make it very easy to get the thing working, but not to get it working so you don't utterly despise it at first. The tilt control is completely farkakte, as I said, and I can't imagine wanting to use absolute mode rather than relative (aka Mouse Mode). If you were looking at the picture on a drawing tablet then an absolute screen representation would be mandatory, but on a graphics tablet you're looking at the screen and want it to behave like a mouse. My only complaint about Mouse mode is that the maximum speed setting still isn't fast enough for my taste. Well, that plus there doesn't seem to be a way to make it the default (although I could be wrong).

Okay, I solved the first problem (not being able to locate the click spot easily) by turning off tilt sensing. That removes 45% of my ire. And it does have a mouse mode with relative movement rather than absolute. I'm less annoyed. But you'd think they'd set the defaults up better and provide a manual so people like me don't want to throw the thing when they first start using it!

Thanks v_kyr. I do need to customize it more, but there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it, the problem is that so far I just hate it. Again, my hope is that I change my mind. I may well. [EDIT: this was written in frustration. I still have to get used to it, but I don't completely despise it any more.]

Weird. I replied to thomaso's and v_kyr's messages from my phone earlier today but they didn't appear. Anyway... thomaso wrote: "The first is mainly a matter of the tablet size versus the screen size. As mentioned, if they differ too much the tablet can feel useless because precision is hard to achieve (small movement on the tablet = large movement on screen). Of course it is also a matter of training if working with a tablet is new for you." Yes, I really do understand how that works, thomaso. In my case the first is because the pen is off the surface when you're moving it to point, and you have to put it down exactly below where it's floating to click. The way to minimize that is to keep it lower so there's less room for it to move move. But so far I don't just dislike this, I absolutely despise it. [EDIT: turning off Tilt solved that problem. What an utterly execrable feature, especially to have turned on by default!] As to the second, I would like it to behave like a mouse when I want it to. And a clutch to put it into a relative position mode rather than absolute 1:1 with the screen shouldn't be a difficult feature to implement. [EDIT: there is a Mouse mode after all. Why is it hidden?] What i was hoping for was something that feels like a mouse only with more precision for drawing. So at this point it's the opposite - something that feels worse than a mouse and that takes conscious effort to control. I will give it time, but if I don't like it exponentially more after a few days I'm either going to return it or put it on the used market and cut my losses. [EDIT: this is an excellent lesson in How to make a customer absolutely hate your product by making the initial user experience unnecessarily horrible.]

Okay, after using it a little... it still feels clunky as hell. I have to move very slowly to get the cursor (or tool) to go where I want it to. But the biggest issue is when I drop the pen to the tablet surface. It never goes to the exact spot. So far I feel like this was a big waste of money. I sure hope I change my mind. Note that this is not the Xencelabs product, it's the nature of the tool that I find disappointing so far. Really, I was hoping it would be intuitive. Hopefully I'll change my mind.

What was the issue? Just curious to see whether it's related to some random beachball activity I've encountered when closing pictures (also on Ventura).

Can't you just resize the document with the resolution you want (complete with resampling algorithm choices), export the file, and then undo the resizing? I personally just set the resolution to 300 DPI first thing and never look at it again.