Singapored
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Posts posted by Singapored
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You can edit the gradient with the fill tool... but no easy way to invert the direction other than manually.
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On 11/16/2016 at 9:53 PM, Lee D said:
Hi DreamThinkLive,
The Flow option doesn't have a keyboard shortcut available and I believe you have previously posted in the Feature Requests section. Hopefully the developers decide to include it in a future update.
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.
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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.
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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.
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Agree. For working in masks this is essential.
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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.
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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? -
Thanks again for your suggestion. However, I'm not looking for a workaround, though yours is interesting—I have one already. The problem is that any workaround that requires you to use a multitude of different applications for such a relatively simple purpose is very time-consuming and potentially expensive.
Also, using vectors with midpoint displacement—like I'm suggesting—gives you complete control over the final coastline, whereas the perlin noise method is random.
I'm not a programmer by any means, but from what I've read, midpoint displacement is quite a simple algorithm, and it sounds like it wouldn't be very difficult to implement—and the rewards would be great. This is why I'm putting this forth as a feature request.
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.
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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.
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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.
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Actually, [number] gives you the equivalent 10% of opacity, SHIFT-[number] gives the equivalent 10% of flow.
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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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The help menu is surprisingly useful. I use it in all OSX apps.
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Hi Asha... there is already a flow slider. But having to constantly tweak it slows down the act of painting tremendously. I know other painters that feel as strongly about being able to control the transparency rate with numbers keys. This is something that AP already has.
In PS the default is that number keys control transparency. When the 'build up' button is activated in brush settings, the number keys then control the flow.
Broadly I would say that Illustrators prefer the transparency setting, whilst matte painters (i.e. photo real) prefer the flow setting.
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Here is an odd request, but something that I have frequently wished for.
The problem:
Working as a digital painter, I frequently break down my painting into separate layers. Each layer has its own function: one for light details (set to screen), one for large shadows (set to multiply) one for ordinary paint. etc. As one goes from layer to layer, switching between the different brush settings can be arduous and boring.
The solution:
Each layer presents the option to remember the last tool that was used on it. When the user switches to that tool, the tool automatically becomes selected, together with all its settings.
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The Selective color adjustment is great, and I have enjoyed using it. However, in PS I was able to use it to make a saturation map. Details are here:
http://opticalenquiry.com/photoshop/index.php?title=Selective_Color
Though not exactly a deal killer, it would be nice to have a similar function in AP. Apart from anything else, it was a very useful teaching tool. Using it I can show students the saturation values of their paintings.
EDIT:
I have just found a way to create a saturation map in AP.
1) Make a black to white Gradient Map adjustment.
2) Using an HSL Shift adjustment, desaturate the result.
3) Using curves (or Brightness / Contrast), lighten the result by around 100%
This will result in a pretty good saturation map. Apart from anything else, it can be used to mask a HSL Shift adjustment, to make a saturation contrast adjustment.
Which... brings me to another feature request: a curves adjustment for Saturation. This would be very useful, and not something that Photoshop is ever likely to have.
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The Vignette filter is fine, but could be improved a lot. Currently, it emulates a optical photographic vignette. However, if I ever use one, I like to apply the darkening selectively to objects depending upon their lightness value. This takes its aesthetic cue from the way that a vista is constructed in a classical landscape painting (vistas are aesthetically related to vignettes). It is possible to do this in AP by applying the vignette filter to a white layer, then setting the blend mode of that layer to Multiply, then playing with the 'Blend Option' values (PS's blend if layer style values).
Additionally, a lightening of the centre can be applied. This can be done with a bit of color dodging (first a black layer, then set to Colour Dodge, then paint in gently some white).
My point is that all of this can be wrapped into one dialogue box.
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Finally, it would be nice to have the option to have a PS style undo/redo. Though I prefer AP's way of handling many things over PS's, the way that PS's undo command Z worked, offered the ability to quickly compare the file with and without the most recent edit.
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I can imagine that this would be Achievable using gaussian noise followed by levels.
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The only thing that is stopping me from moving my production to Affinity is its lack of a shortcut to control the flow rate on the brush. I change it too often to have to go to the slider value to make this adjustment.
I find that for matte painting, the flow rate is far more important than the transparency value. My reasons for thinking this are outlined in my Wiki page here...
http://opticalenquiry.com/photoshop/index.php?title=Painting#Flow_rate_vs_transparency
Once this issue is addressed, I can recommend affinity to all my students, as well as adopting it in my own work.
Control brush flow with shortcut...
in Pre-V2 Archive of Affinity on Desktop Questions (macOS and Windows)
Posted
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.