paolo.limoncelli

Strictly speaking, I did nothing other than designing those tool keeping this feature in mind as "an option". 😜 All the credit goes to the Affinity Team. It is a very "creativity first" feature, so far cannot imagine a use case in photo-retouching. "Artistically speaking" could be improved/polished to push the boundaries a bit. For example I've not found a way to control the direction of the gradient itself.

I can barely recall if we discussed this in the past... 🤪 Happy that someone's finally re-discovered this feature! When I worked on refreshing the brush library for version 2.0, I had designed some tools specifically for use with these features. If you haven't already, I suggest trying the brushes in the "Oils" set, especially the "broken bristles" ones. Oils_BrokenBristles.mp4 The effect achieved is almost "expressionist," and with the right gradients, it can yield intriguing results. For some reason, Affinity does not have a Gradient Studio, so the usability of this feature necessarily depends on creating a specific palette made up of gradients, this likely contributed to making it "hidden."

Hi, These are some digressions I've collected about this tool, coming from both users and personal experience. I think Paint Mixer has an impressive potential but I'm still struggling in making credible and usable brushes for this one... 😅 Probably there are some wrong expectations from my side, but using it "as is" it still looks more like an "advanced" blender or "Pixel Mixer" than a painting tool (to me at least...). The behaviour of the Strength slider is clearly non-linear It seems to start acting as a paintbrush close to the end of the ramp mixerBrush.mov In order to make it more credible you need to paint into a filled layer, so it needs a "one layer" approach for illustrations. Also, using tablets only Nozzles Interpolation and "Geometry" Jitters work properly. Maybe HSL Jitters or Wet Edges are skipped by design, but Flow's variation does nothing at all (both Jitter and its context bar value). Sub Brushes > Erase mode do not work too. Basically almost 80% of tablet's dynamic looks disabled and the only parameter which rules interaction (Strength) does not have its Jitter and needs to be changed manually. A user suggested to decrease spacing... But with the smallest spacing possible on macOS it is even worse. Screen Recording 2023-03-15 at 09.03.37.mov This video is made painting on an empty layer... So it could make sense. In the video below you can see a different tool (larger nozzle) and background colour (opaque layer) Screen Recording 2023-03-15 at 09.24.15.mov No great changes also you can spot other issues such as the "blocky" effect or the mixing that happens "before" crossing colour areas. It is true that I'm not a photo retoucher, and AP is "photography-first" so for sure its behaviour is useful for these channel and frequency separation tasks/workflows. For sure illustration is still feasible... But speaking as an illustrator, I find it still hard and "confusing"... Also it requires a totally different design strategy. Maybe this happens because of my forma mentis and when I read "Paint Mixer" I think of "colours" rather than skin smoothing or similar tasks... Am I approaching the tool from the wrong point of view? Any feedbacks?

Hi! I've been using this engine since 2014 I guess... It was still a free beta... 😅 Personally I do not use stabilisers, since I've always found rather smooth the internal cycle itself (at least on macOS and iPadOS). Other APPs basically use the very same interpolations, but do not "expose" these as overlays so I think an option should do the job. This is something I've occasionally noticed on my side too on macOS, and happens for textures in particular at 100% These looks slightly blurry for some reasons... Do you have a screenshot of this blurred/soft strokes on your side? Just to compare... The Texture options (Contrast, Brightness and Blending modes) and Nozzle facilities would be very welcome. I'd be happy with a proper Rotation unit (not % but degrees) and a flip Horizontal/Vertical option at this stage.

Ok folks... This set is NOT abandonware... 😜 A massive update is in the making and very close to the release. Pigmento Mk4 is a deep redesign of almost ALL brushes in this set The work has been mainly on Colour Jitters for a more controllable and refined experience for 2.x users. Also I focused on a "materic" feeling for strokes. Old nozzles have been tweaked a bit, and finally these are able to do what they were designed for back in 2016. I'm very happy with the result, I tried to push the engine here whilst keeping all as responsive as possible. Each preset can be used as Blender and Paintbrush, in particular Blockers. I decided to rename Subsets and normalise all names, also some redundant brushes will be removed. These two examples are made with four brushes in total, picked from Expressive and Acryls subsets. Last but not least the old Pigmento will be always available as a legacy for Affinity 1.x users, so if you're happy with old stuff you can still download them. Stay tuned! 😎

Maybe because we're close to Halloween... 😜 My setup is still the same Intel MBPro 15" Sonoma 14.6.1 This had been solved in 2.x I guess but is back with AP 2.6 (2805) and happens with Intensity Brushes. From Brush editing panel, changing the Brush Nozzle to a new one still keeps the old in memory... The task is simple: add a new nozzle, remove the old one, paint. Here you can see the nozzle, and the result on the canvas...

The use case you've described needs sub-pixel snapping... And you're no more in a "real" pixel scenario... 🙃 Turning off and using a classic grid snapping works best in this case. I personally always avoid "open" vector lines, it is not a good design strategy for pixel perfect requirements, rounding errors are there and it takes time to double check stuff... No matter which APP are you using.

Sorry, but this is not a real scenario... Or maybe I misunderstood... 🤔 It is impossible to reproduce/visualise it correctly with non sub-pixel screen (high density)... That line will be blurred. If you accept it blurred the pixel alignment is not a requirement, so no need to enable these options.

The use case is still pixel perfect design, I know it could sound strange but sometimes you have to deal with non pixel perfect alignment too... If you set Force Pixel Alignment for new assets, you could need MBWP off to fix optical alignment or find a different anti-alias rendering for stuff which is off-grid by design. This is the case o certain fonts and logos, whereas pixel perfect is not possible and a trade off is needed. By Pixel Perfect design I do not mean pixel art, but mainly UI design for OEM.

I should have better clarified... Sorry. Force Pixel Alignment and Move By Whole Pixels are both very needed if you start a project with pixel perfect requirements. This means that you are "creating" something from scratch: blank canvas, start drawing stuff... Obviously if you turn MBWP ON when your starting project is not pixel perfect, it will retain the non pixel perfect alignment... As you correctly said, it could make things even worse.

When you have to deal with custom OEM displays and low-res stuff you want both on... Or at least... I need both on... 😜

Yes I well know... We've been using AD since 2014... 😜 It also creates problems with slices' dimensions in Export Persona. This is a long term glitch, and could be fixed to snap back to the closest integer (if the Force Pixel Alignment is ON), but could be very demanding for CPUs maybe? I guess switching complex vector art stuff could be tricky... Today I'm accustomed to the scroll-wheel over the input field to fix if weird things happen.

Sure... And this si the case: different usage for different use cases. We can always use CMD+Z... Also... Those action buttons could be placed in the floating panel too. Search Studio works with the same UX pattern (Buttons for live actions...). Stroke Studio for example does not exist in AP, but works as modal only from context bar whereas APub and AD have both... Affinity allows a customisation of the toolbar exposing "basic" alignment, and these work without a "commit" action. Multiple way to access the same functions. Anyway, we're not asking to remove the dropdown, but to add a sidecar "non modal" version because with large canvases and lots of artboards these alignment and spacing functions will be easier to reach. 😀

Thanks! +1 for this! 😜

Thank you!