Patchworks

Custom Personas would be fantastic for Pros not only doing retouching work. I'm using both Designer and Photo for game art and would love to set up a persona for texturing. Especially on the iPad since the selection tools are way to many taps off from the brush and the node tool. I've said i before and say i again: having customisable radial menus would also be great for desktop-class work speed. There are some really nice pro apps for sketching (Procreate) and writing (Ulysses; Scrivener) that I use at work but Affinity Photo is the pro app for the iPad I've been waiting for to cover texturing workflow. Yet It still feels hampered when compared to the desktop version if one is used to zipping around the UI with hotkeys (like all pros I know do). Really looking forward to future improvements to this fantastic application.

This! So many times this! I'm playing with the iPad app right now at work, and I'm loving the feature set so far. Gesture triggered radial menu, that is customisable (just like in procreate) would be my number one feature request. Working with the iPad app is great, but it still feels a bit hampered, like if I was on the mac version but were not allowed to use hotkeys. I really notice how much I do on the keyboard without even thinking about it. One little additional question I have is: why not have iCloud sync on affinity files. I was sort of surprised that I had to import my old projects from the affinity photo iCloud folder, then edit there as a copy, instead of just picking up where I left off in the mac and edit, save and then being able to just return to the mac and continue with those new iPad created edits in place. Am i just missing something or is there a good reason not being able to actually work on the same file. In Pixelmator this works flawlessly, but that app hasn't got nearly the amount of power that Affinity Photo has. I've had to use that work flow when I want to edit work files in Procreate too: import them into Procreate, edit them, export them back to gDrive as a new file and then keep working at the desktop. However that is for external files edited in both procreate and photoshop. I actually just assumed that native iCloud sync would be the standard way to work on files. Anyway, thanks for pushing more real pro apps onto the iPad. I'm looking forward to things to come.

I've been searching in the forums and trying to look in preferences to find a way to set a hotkey for turning all points on a curve sharp (and back again in some cases). We have a workflow in Illustrator where we draw out shapes with the vector brush and then convert the points to sharp to get a specific polygonal-looking art style. Is there any way to do this without having to actually go up and hit the "sharp" button or alt clicking one point at a time. I'd really like to just set a hotkey to turn all selected points sharp.

I'm using my iPad pro a lot these days, both professionally and privately. My biggest grip to date is the lack of pro apps on the platform. I work as an artist and writer at a game studio. The writing part can easily be done just as well on my iPad as on the Mac and with the added benefit of real portability. On the art side I've been trying out Procreate and Autodesk Graphics primarily and they are the best I've used on iOS so far. However, like most of the other apps I've tried, they fall short when compared to the desktop counterparts. The biggest problem, as I se it, is that the developers seem to lack the time or the guts to make real pro features: things that demand a bit from the user. I've worked a lot with 3D applications in the past and to navigate around them in a comfortable speed one usually resort to a multitude of keyboard shortcut combinations. I have yet to see anyone implement something to fill that function on iOS. Sure one could use the iPad pro with an actual keyboard for the pro apps and have all the hotkeys one would like but that would hamper the work as soon as one moves away from the desk. Something that most of the big 3D applications out there have done to lessen the need for memorizing hotkeys, and easing the use of tablet input, is to add a radial menu. Maya specifically have implemented a radial menu that is based on flicks and gestures. You don't really need to see the menu once you learn the gesture: press the radial menu hotkey (right klick on some apps, space on maya, or other combinations to trigger customized radial menus) and flick in the direction of the tool you want and it is applied. I would love a feature like this on the Affinity iPad versions. My first thought is that it would be triggered by a double tap and hold to get a circular menu of tools around the pen or finger and then you drag to the tool you want and release to select it. This would free me from breaking my focus on the content I'm working on at the center of the screen to move my eyes and finger to tools anchored at the far corners of the screen. You could also get secondary radial menus by using two or three fingers. This would be on top of using the, close to standard, three finger swipe left or right for Undo and Redo respectively. As it stands now when it comes to doing professional artwork on the iPad it feels like it is comparable to using a desktop while wearing mittens.