Singapored

The day that I see Affinity align a keystroke to flow, is the day that I abandon Photoshop. Till then, unfortunately, AP will always be my second fiddle.

You can edit the gradient with the fill tool... but no easy way to invert the direction other than manually.

Been waiting for this since Affinity was introduced. It is the only thing stopping me from moving permenently to it. Cant imagine it taking more than a few lines of code to implement.

Any move on this? The inability to quickly adjust flow is now the only impeding me from moving to affinity permanently. I also teach Photoshop, and introduce Affinity as a cheaper alternative. I would love to teach Affinity instead, but for matte painting (which I teach) the flow value is extremely important.

I've been playing with Affinity Photo for some time now. I really like many aspects of its workflow, and judge them superior to PS's. However, as someone who teaches digital illustration and matte painting, it sadly won't be replacing PS yet. Reasons as follows: 1) I frequently require the flow rate of a brush to be super low. This is especially important for when I clip a layer blend layer to a content layer (e.g. a multiply to locally darken an object). The brush in AP behaves oddly when the flow is set low. By rights, even with such a low flow rate, it should build up to black. However, instead I can only get a dark grey. 2) The preceding point is not a deal breaker: maybe something I could get used to. But the lack of ability to set the flow with a keystroke makes painting difficult. Sure, Opacity can be set with number keys, but for blended painting this isn't enough. The brush is where all the action is, and a brush can be expected to have its values changed several times a minute. 3) The lack of ability to set the default BG/FG colours to black and white. In PS this is served by the 'D' key. For masking (super vital in matte painting) this is important. Without it, it is too easy to accidentally be using a very dark grey instead of a black, which can really screw things up. On the plus side: 1) The texture options of the brushes are great. I love the fact that many stamps can be loaded into a single brush. This makes the creation of natural textures a lot easier. 2) The Perlin noise is great. Absolutely miles better than PS's poxy little Clouds filter. I love the fact that It scales so nicely. It reminds me of Nuke's noise node. Again, this is great for natural textures. I find myself using photo textures far less. 3) The Mesh Warp tool is great. Its workflow took a bit of getting used to (it does not automatically act upon selections) but makes sense.

Agree. For working in masks this is essential.

I think that in order for Affinity to make significant inroads into education, the help function should receive a significant overhaul. I speak from experience: many years teaching Photoshop in Universities and schools. I also was involved in the development of the help function of a well known app (NDA... sorry no details). Specifically, I believe that the help for specific tools should be brought much closer to the tool. Good examples in this regard are Maya and Nuke. Both of these place the help function directly in the tool... a link which takes the user directly to the relevant page of the help manual (in a browser). Also worth a mention is MODO's 'Activate Help' feature. By activating this, each menu item turns into a link... to the help page for that item.

I'm going crazy here. Affinity photo is (for me) in almost every way the perfect replacement for Photoshop. The ONE SINGLE THING stopping me from switching is the ability to change the flow of the brush using a keystroke. I have taught digital painting for one million years (almost), and have a very successful course. My teaching website is here: http://opticalenquiry.com/photoshopThis is the single issue stopping me from recommending Affinity Photo to my students as a replacement for Photoshop. C'mon. It can't require much. Just a few lines of code, surely?

Fair enough. I agree it would be a nice feature. I can image it being useful in many situations. I have seen something like it in high end compositing applications, but no where else. But these apps seem to be leading the field in image editing. Illustrator's Roughen effect does something like it, thought it does not look exactly like a fractal.

I attach a link to an experiment. I managed to produce a coastline fractal thingy using Perlin noise then curves. Alternately use Hard Mix blend mode instead of curves. Both versions are shown. I then flattened and used Detect Edges, then inverted. This will give you a bitmap line. For a vector, just flatten and take to Illustrator and use Live Trace. This will give you paths. Or paste as a channel into PS and then convert to paths. http://opticalenquiry.com/files/COAST_LINE.afphoto.zip

Agreed. It should be discernible from a distance. It is by attention to the large shapes that we can make this happen. These shapes are the positive and negative shapes of the design. Tip: render it in black on white. You will see the shapes easier. Also, flip it horizontally. Artists have been looking at their work in the mirror (the analogue equivalent) for 100s of years. This helps us see the asymmetries of the design.

Actually both ways work :) I prefer always having the build-up set to on, as I very rarely adjust transparency. But thats my way of working.

1) Good idea. View matching is already a feature in some 3D apps, where many layouts run side by side. It is usually somthing that can be turned off should the user want. 2) Yes. Seems sensible. 5) yes. Hardness, flow and transparency should all be keyboard accessible, or easily accessible through some other means. I could not use PS for matte painting until they made the softness accessible through the contextual menu.

This thread has not seen much action, but I think it has huge potential. In the near future, cameras will be able to capture depth as well as RGB (in fact some cameras can already do this, eg Microsoft Kinect and the Lytro). AP could be ahead of the game in being the only editor that could use this info. Imagine being able to color adjust a flat RGB image with reference to its depth channel. Its the future!

Layer comps is a good tool for teaching. It can easily show the difference between one approach and another. Other than that, I have not found it useful as a painter. For a web designer or UI designer Im sure it can be useful.