SrPx

IMPORTANT: Please don't use it for the shortcuts I mention in that tut for AP or AD...I mean, there were some improvements in the apps, so that for those functions is not needed any more, those workarounds. Obviously you still can use it for any other shortcut or mouse gesture which you can't set with the current apps.

Lol , those posts are from the AP open beta times....

- shhhhh - I was just being lazy....thought no one would notice....

And you got the 43th like. I'm more of a direct inker, but I used to do the contours so... the thing is that your workflow is fast enough so that it does not really differs much in time compared to directly inking (and instead, get an absolute control). Special extra kudos for the choice of showing it like old cinema, and that music.

X-Mouse button control can help you in setting middle click (or any other mouse thing, or key, or whatever) for panning instead of whatever the key or button does that in every single application, and you can customize a different behavior for each program. I have it permanently now (around 5 apps customized), and WAY more confortable now in my day by day work. It uses no significant resources, at all. Indeed, in my arcane machine -in my sig- I have not been able to tell the difference, and counting how much of a crazy stress I put to this good old thing every day...I'd have noticed even a little decrease. Neither noticed any collision or problem. I made a basic tutorial on how to handle it, in these forums, but that was so long ago, would be hard for me to find it fast now...

Allegorithmic covers a very specific set of tasks, of an specific industry (well, games and film, but the things you do with it are very specific), mostly to cover PBR texturing. A. Photo, just like Photoshop, cover an outstandingly wider area, many profiles and sectors, industries and many different ways of using it, tasks to cover, each group of people with very different requests (Print, web, FX-motion, games, fashion, science, photography, illustration, pixel art...etc, etc. etc. That's (well, an extremely minimal list compared to the real number of fields) what a do-it-all jack of all trades like PS or APhoto have every day for breakfast in terms of complaints and features request !! ). IMO, doing such a Swiss army knife is way more complex. I'd mention, those from Allegorithmic have an OPTIONAL subscription model (even more generous and flexible than today's Corel's) that would be an example for Adobe to have made a user friendly solution. They'll never go that path, only if the competitors (IMO, mostly Affinity) starts to be strong enough. If not, they could even have ended raising the subscription's cost. But even introducing the subscription in a super friendly way, as an optional thing, is a bad sign to me. If I could trust that a company offering that will always keep the permanent purchase (of an specific version in time, of course!) of a license, I'd have not trouble then with that. The prob is that when I see that happening in Substance Painter, etc, is that I wonder if they are not just going towards the goal of progressively eliminating the purchase option for the customers. CSP is doing that with its iPad version. If they force that also in desktop - strongly doubt that being the main purchasers, I think, manga artists, a ton of teen age people- at some point, no trouble, as I love Krita, also because is Open source (and KDE related!) , or, probably, Affinity Photo. For my painting (for general image editing APhoto wins it already in my book) @bvz I was in a Linux based company for many years, and they treated the matter as the pain that is artists, in general, (as part of the production staff. For some strange reason, the administrative guy, and the marketing/SEM expert, using Windows, that was no issue for them!. And they would have tolerated my non-linux ugly habit better if I'd have been a Mac user, that's for sure) not liking/using linux for art, as kind of the bad apple (no bad joke intended ) spoiling the bunch. The complaints weren't much in the direction of compatibility, because I know my stuff, and always provided the files without issues for their systems. Just that they felt it like a spot of dirt in their little linux world. Still, there's an obvious sense of "shall we have all machines with Linux" that did hurt them terribly for me having as machine with all, and capable of ALL with a Windows installed, and very rarely would need a reinstall through almost a decade, only one I can remember for change of OS. And the fact that the hated OS worked rock solid for all, in good hands. Is this thing... I find it everywhere, no matter if is at companies as employee, during years with colleagues, or simply going out as I was many years -non all related with work, most weren't- on Saturdays with a bunch of linux geeks, they'd all always would try to "convert " me. Latest incarnation of that, has been extremely funny, the other day. I go to a shop to sell second hand one of my phones (I keep my hardware very well cared, and rarely do this, but what do I want so many old cell phones for), the only one that would have a chance...and during the talks and negotiation, the boss of the place realize I'm a Blender user, and we start to talk about it... The man IMMEDIATELY tries to sell me the "convert to linux" slogan. As usually, I let him talk, then I admit Linux blender versions do actually handle RAM and resources better, and so, the renders are slightly faster, but is no deal break difference for me (I do statics, lately I do little animation). I too realize he's not fully up-to-date with Blender, and also is a hobby for him, not a freelancing profession. I keep telling him that I know the render benchmarks (he didn't, even tried to convince me his 980 nvidia would render faster than latest 1070 -80) demonstrate the difference for what would be not a render farm use, is not that great, it is *very* small, indeed, and as keeps telling me with passion "you need to at least try it!" I had to finally tell him I've been a Linux user (multi booting and not) for a ton of years,using it professionally too. I understand this "mission". The numbers are terrible, and they are realizing that a ton of issues arise for the lack of compatibility in files, software, and workflows with the majority, which is clearly Windows, followed by OSX. I think one can be passionate, but this must not lead to forget a bunch of facts... The guy went as far as telling me this : "There is a software" (he obviously was NOT an expert in 2D) "Called Yshimp" (trying to bring here how he said Gimp to me, the way he pronounced it) "that destroys Photoshop and all 2D software in terms of capability, workflow, ease of use" . I begged to differ, but not like I've read here from some. Is not the terrible tool some here have said Gimp is: It is a VERY capable tool, but c'mon, "more featured and capable than Photoshop" (despite being a man a bit older than my age, part of the explanation involved a flying kick as a figure of speech...)....gimme a break. I just made my nodding gesture for these cases (and a smile with a little irony) as a "we'll have to agree to disagree", as the poor other guy attending me wanted to close the shop and head home (but clearly didn't want to interrupt the boss in that passionate speech. )... It would have been much more interesting to know the kind of Blender projects he's into... The Adobe color management might not work for your kind of tasks, but in print and web, corporate image, illustration, worked pretty well for me and a bunch of us... I agree with your " B) " so much....with a passion, indeed. And I suppose you mean with C) using those machines for other uses... or sell them (lately been doing that, selling hardware second hand hardware is almost always a terrible business...)

I was saying this as a light joke, of course. I have been a Linux user for a very long time, and during a certain time, Linux was my preferred OS. (more of a KDE than Gnome person, in its days, but handled comfortably several Ubuntus in the very later times, though was very happy too with that Kubuntu thing in its moment..) And have had multi-boot machines, with up to 3 linux distros (not using linux provided boot/partition utilities, but others, DOS based, of my own preference (often, a combination of several), that allowed me to configure Windows boot stuff in ways non usual... well like I do everything in Windows/DOS/Linux, etc...., people configure stuff very poorly, and then complain about it...happens the same with the actual applications... .is a kind of user, the prob, imo.... ), and had also as boot options a pair of very different Windows versions (non OEM). I'd boot at each moment an OS depending on the set of tasks to do in the day or bunch of hours. That ended being non practical, as no matter how much you minimize your OS mainteinance, there are always stuff to handle, drivers to fine tune, etc. At some point, time started to be more valuable than anything, as I got more professional in making graphics. So, decided for the Windows route. But I've used Slackware 1.x, red Hat 4, Debian, and quite a bunch of old distros, along many years. What I use now as applications are ironically majorly applications that could be perfectly used with ANY of the 3 OSes, as Wings3D (WONDERFUL 3D modeler) is supported for Mac, Linux, Win, and so are Libre Office, Blender, Krita, Thunderbird. These are my bread and butter. Almost every day use kind of stuff . And this could be loaded in a Linux distro (or any sort of Mac) just as well, or even better (Blender for example renders slightly faster). True that I also use quite Clip Paint Studio (ye olde manga Studio, BTW, only WIN/MAC version...no Linux, so evil .... ;D ) and Affinity Designer, but the irony is despite preferring by much to use Windows for compatibility with the rest of the humanity, among other heavier reasons, like, the software available in a bunch of areas (and trust me, I KNOW what is available for graphics for Linux, much better than most modern or current Linux die-hards...And better than most of them where are the limitations at professional levels. ), but the funny thing is I end up using cross platfom open source for a lot of my activity, if not for the majority of it. (anyway, I use Max, Photoshop, Illustrator, Zbrush at companies when am contracted as employee there, no other way round, it's their workflow, it's the set of established triple A tools. And happy with it too, as I love those tools. ) My change back to Windows (was with the Linux + Windows thing for a great bunch of years) was a bit that I was tired to swim against the freaking stream (if that's the English word), and against all sort of obstacles (like independent software authors thinking CMYK mode in a 2D tool was not sth of interest to add, lol... ). It's been decades hoping the situation with the software applications for graphics creation would change. I don't have that kindda time now. Blender, Wings3D, Krita are TOTALLY getting there where the others should be, but I'll enjoy 'em from my Windows, thanks.

And there's this other massive huge bunch of people, even pro freelancers (hello!), pretty happy and comfortable with Windows 7, 8.1 AND 10 (able to deal with any issue, update, setting, whatever.... handle Macs, Windows machines or Linux at console level, do whatever task with it, and still rather preferring Windows... )..... I'm one of those nasty, evil users.... And we got (maybe should say "ownz") the numbers....

They might do it. But from what I have read from the developers in this very thread, seems that wouldn't require a short development time...

...and euphemism. J/K ! This forum wouldn't be the same without that wordplay of yours...

Gorgeous. Very good work, and great choice.

IMO, in any case, not supporting TGA format - even not either in import - is by far not enough reason to discard one package or another (anyone remember (been a user at companies since PS 2.0) pre-CS, and so, pre CC too, PS 7 ? It did have a veery weak support of TGA, huge issue with alpha channel. It also caused almost riots, but yet they took a while to address that. And by then, TGA was much more important, and less apps to convert the TGAs well than now). And I know pretty well your field. I'm 45 and have worked at 4 game companies, and as a freelancer worked in a ton of indy and, - previously that term wasn't a thing in games - shareware games. Back then TGA was even more important than today. There are tons of utilities that even do batch conversion, which rarely you'd have in a full package. Adobe PS has it, somehow, but extremely limited compared to what you can do in these free and/or dirty cheap tools (unless you factor in Actions,of course, still, would be limited in a lot of file operations) . You can also use these tools to extract the alpha info as greyscale bitmaps, then composite it somewhere else, - tools like AP, or video tools of many flavors, depending if you work for video or games, I've worked for both. Would it be useful ? Totally, as simplifies the workflow. Can't you do your work without it, and instead, with free or cheap specialized macro converter utilities? Not true, as you can do it perfectly, even better : using these utilities has a ton of key advantages, specially when dealing with a bunch of frames (again, encountered the advantages both in games and video) So, yep, it is useful for game and video (but I have always been able to EXPORT the alpha as an appart bitmap, and the game engine would take it no probs, or I'd just export it to the mentioned conversion tools, mount it there in a more versatile way than in any full 2D package, included Photoshop ! ) Does it justify the strong reaction or saying this is like not supporting the game editing community or game professionals? LOL...gimme a break... It'd be funny if I wouldn't find the tone sort of excessive, bordering offensive. I would fully agree, though, importing is more key. You can however import the split alpha, and mount it in AP, but seems there's more functionality in programs for importing the split thing than others exporting it so. There are literally tons of software apps out there not supporting TGA. I sometimes wonder why the strong reactions with Affinity's.... being one of the very few companies giving real feedback of what they do for their app. Others keep it just internal and never attend so much the final user as this people does (I can see now why the others do so... it requires a ton of patience to hear or read some stuff... ). All said, I'd vote to for at least an importer (an exporter would be very practical, too). And all the people KINDLY asking for it , kudos to them, that's the way to go. PD: " you guys are just being willfully ignorant " <------ This is blatant name calling, insulting. Totally non aceptable. They have to keep it polite, but I'm not from the company, so I can say freely that this was a very poor behavior (and there are other "jewels" in the thread, sadly). I know many others will think like me when reading the whole thread. You can request features and give feedback or report bugs, it is indeed very useful, but IMO keep it civil and use some adult manners.

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In my country, we had implemented a law for education which pretended to change everything upside down. The intentions were extremely good, I really had hopes for them, realized that when studying the actual law, while preparing for an administration teaching vacant. But it did not take in consideration - at all - the complexity of its implementation, and most of all, what realities those measures will obviously find in real scenarios, not the real resources needed, neither the nature of the schools and high schools, neither the complex and delicate relationships among teachers-students-parents. And very sadly, a lot of later laws inherited bad stuff from it. It seems to me it is a very similar scenario with Scrum. Maybe in areas (understand this as a region inside a country or even an entire country) were jobs flourish, there's a solid IT or etc market , so that there are enough job offers and therefor salaries are good -at least decent!- , bosses and employees have a more balanced relation (so direction can't extort / exploit the others) and really people is not fearing a massive sack at the next Monday, then that sort of thing is great. Or among teams working in some government administration (but this also varies from country to country). In places were all is already QUITE toxic, were people is doing unpaid extra hours, destroying often their family life, and were, not just Scrum, it is just one of the tools badly used, but many other techniques that seem to have been designed for a very narrow set of of scenarios, these new approaches are being used merely because direction, even after all exploitation, yet thinks they are not getting aaall the juice (or blood) they could be getting (believe me, thinking on the employee well-being is a set of concepts very alien for some of us, sadly), then they go and contract some of these - insert the new book selling thing here - new techniques to use as a new form of pressure and control. But of course, it does not work, even not in the long run, and bosses are making everything else - also - wrong. And even more: what I did read in those times, as was really amazed that such things could come from in-depth studies (probably planned mainly for Silicon Valley or dunno where) from what is real life team work, I did my research, and yeah, they were only applying a portion of that, and very wrongly (the key is I don't blame only the bosses or other people at the company , I do mostly with the initial creators and promoters of these theories), and only in a way that damages the worker-direction relationship, besides never ever benefiting the employee in any way one can imagine, and very specially, becoming a royal obstacle for the worker's tasks and team work, bloating the day organization. Why is not considered all this before promoting things like this worldwide as a new mantra that every single company in every single place, culture, every set of circumstances a company has (really problematic when applied to a sinking company, is the grace shot) it just escapes my understanding. At some point - and I have perceived some winds of change, but who knows, crap floats, it always goes back to surface - some of the new tendencies, I mean -as these exist already- the trend will perhaps go more massively accepted and adopted as the new IN thing, it might go more in the line of trusting way more on so simple and natural (which good companies have always applied by instinct, ) solutions (no need of a theory or book for this...) which focus in employees' motivation, but real one (not trying to motivate with own's boss's ones -anyone seen The Office, UK or US, will have a vivid image of this) and their well-being, then we all will have won the battle and the war (all as in bosses AND employees AND the actual production) they'll get a boost in productivity, every time. If it does not work with some employees, rarely anything else will ! Once they start to consider them mates, colleagues that will help their business to grow and even skyrocket climb, that they have thinking minds that can help the company, then the succeed will be way nearer for whatever the company. These things, when (to start with) are never a work in common with long term workers, who know a thing or two of how teams are best managed, how to handle certain motivation/personalities issues of some workers (which, knowing how to deal with, can become great for the company), etc, and yet instead apply to them the whatever general rule and trendy theory, and when are simply used as yet another form of pressure in these environments (trust me, they don't need more pressure), are only going to be perceived very negatively by workers. Even worse, associated non consciously to bad things. The direction ends up realizing this as they at least look at the stats. It slowly fades away, and barely maintain the name of it instead of calling it a meeting and a whatever the term was before for whatever the existing thing like before, doing so just to not recognize they failed horrendously. What I could see in my experience, even did drive (or contributed to) a ton of workers to walk away from the company (I'd be rich if I'd have get a cent for every time I've seen a key brain and resource for a company leave for the dense stupidity/anachronic price of management circles, but this would be another theme). We are in a global world and all that pretty discourse, but first, there's a point in time that has to come for some of these promoted things to be taken by companies at least with a pinch of salt (not saying can't be applied in more ideal environments). And stick to what worked always for them, and innovate not because is the freaking trend, but just applying the things that a direction might feel that would work with the real circumstances of the specific company. Not just sth to mention very proud in the next PR blog post about "my company" style. And also would be great if these theorists considered not only nicely paid happy employees never doing unpaid extra hours (so many that many of us balanced that with so many hours given as a gift, we better off doing our own freelancing thing ! ), and where the whatever boss/direction would be tempted to see it as the new magic thing (which later it never is, it only pisses off workers who eventually leave, or just get high demotivation, damaging drastically productivity, of the entire company) This is from a multi profiled worker, very long experience at 10 IT companies, and even worked in pre-scrum times as an intermediate team manager. I always had zero probs while integrating in a team asa worker, and definitely having no diva attitude. The guy you always see creating good ambience/environment and never obstructing. So, what I detected in some places where this was used, you can (but you don't have to, obviously) trust that it is (at least in many real life scenarios), what I've told above. A set of techniques that only work in ideal circumstances and can be a cause for drastically slowing down really fast paced environments, and help some extra abuse can be, inside a company..really evil. I've seen it. Maybe is the opposite of what the theory is all about. I tell you what I lived. You may scratch all I said, is a dump from real experience, but no one is supposed to believe it, or anything written in a forum, of course. I can only tell you what happened in every case, to each his/her own with it... You wouldn't believe me, but in my last company, were I lasted indeed more years, this is what we had (and quite good responsible people, and micro teams very capable, micro-managing working pretty well) this was working definitely better before the bad tries of implementing scrum techniques.

Me hopes it will, at some point. Is something they have detected and agreed that it needs several improvements, so, they'll get to that as they do with everything. So, am not worried (painting with other apps meanwhile, but yet Affinity is my must-have tool. Once this is solved, who knows if maybe AP and AD will get to be the only ones I use for all (2D). ). I waited way longer for Blender 3D, and it really did pay (literally) me WELL, that patience. . Also, I like the style of doing things from Serif too much, even more if I compare them to other companies. (one of the main reasons while it is worth the wait... another one...AP and AD depth and capability of covering all range of pro tasks. I'm discovering every day things that are a better take in Affinity than in the main competitor, which, btw , I was not expecting. )

But..if probably happens the same, and the file structure is totally different....(this is common when an entire application is new and does not share code nor structure with the legacy one)

Argh, scrum.... No thanks. Maybe in some hidden place in the North Pole someone uses it in a correct way... In my own very long experience, was mostly to pay a "clever guy" for some very inefficient classes/training for the company, to pay him outstanding chunks of money, even forced to buy his book, and later on, just do the freaking same meeting of always, just standing up and shorter, WAY less effective than what the ppl in "the machines room" we already did since... always, and much more effectively. The prob is way more simple. At the moment the bosses start playing against the team instead of working with the people, the ship starts a slow (or fast) sinking. Not even workers recycling (I mean rotation, people given the sack), new contracts (this is the Dodo way to solve a big problem). Scrum, and a ton of books and methodologies wont do what even a traditional family business that I knew did always so much better than any other company on which I did put my foot on : They just care about the people, and left the ego issues at home. They were humble and hard working. They weren't bosses to feel powerful (that is, with a non fixed mental issue) or to work less and earn more. No need for more than what those just did in their everyday... Other than that, employees need -and bosses, as are another piece of the machine- to ALWAYS have kind of a red light ON to detect if what they are making, could be made faster, and better (a combination of the two is the key). Yet tho at some point one needs to stick to a plan and work done. I've also known those constantly changing things and breaking others' work just to justify the overpaid salary for doing close to nothing.... I've seen all sort of magic herbs sellers, but all is reduced to the above mentioned. Amazingly simple, as a lot of things of beauty in this world. A bit more on topic, I dunno others, but after having used quite some software through the years, my own conclusion is that one chooses not only an specific application (well in many cases, that's all I'd analyze ! No need for more), in many situations, one chooses a style, a way of doing things, an specific team, with its circumstances. One knows is opting for a certain way of doing from the company, its limitations, resources, release rate, usual bugs, UI philosophy, etc. So, shouldn't be as surprised about some logical, expected stuff. Besides what's said above, PS and rest of the suite (AI, etc) do have too a ton of issues (some certainly annoying, in the apps, but also in the reaction to users, etc. In relation to users, my humble opinion, Serif is among THE VERY BEST, not just of the today's overall market, but computed in general, in decades. Starting with very affordable prices for a lot -and I mean it- of value, following with a heroic support here in the forums. You go try that with some of the big fishes, hehe. So, I'm saying, one chooses an option with its advantages and its issues/circumstances. Affinity Photo, (once I end some huge current projects, linked (specially in native files) to another very cheap and good package from another company) I've chosen it to be my future main image software, and integrator tool in raster, and Designer is already my main vectors solution, no doubt there. (in raster I have more tools, specially for painting). But I knew what I was signing for : smaller than Adobe company, so, less resources, probably more time between releases. Logical as heck. Besides that, a fresher approach to the app and features, very nice UI, and freaking heck... no subscription (I would need only this reason coupled with the great pricing, with these two alone it already beats the big guy with a Taekwondo flying kick)

Indeed, I've been told that in their internal market they have brands of very premium quality. They typically export tho lower cost products/brands. Surely this way is a good business compensating the large costs of shipping, which tend to be huge. I have VERY positive experiences in 3D printing small plastic figures for games. Better said, models which I made very recently, sent as 3D prints (in a kind of plastic) to serve as a sort of visual guide, and with that and my 3D files they generated very top quality mold injection produced miniatures. Even more, it was a first for me to create a basic set of assembling parts to be 3D printed, and this Chinese company made it with such accuracy that all copies later on did assemble perfectly. Given the material tolerances in plastics, and how can vary stuff from one copy to another, this is quite hard to get, and they got it perfect. Have some other less optimal experiences with color accuracy in cardboard/paper color printed illustrations, but this happened with a number of POD printers all around the world, too. (now I have my club of favorites, hehe) . Not gonna say names, I don't want to favor anyone, neither damage others. But their (the Chinese companies I've interacted with) capability of reach everywhere, ability to produce large volumes, etc, make them a formidable actor in production. (my 2c)

First: China is improving in all of its products... just look how the Cintiq alternatives are starting to be real threats for the brand ...Second (and mostly) : It's the point of view.

Serif should be worried... it seems it has attracted a bunch of old timers with its Affinity, lol... I don't feel old, I feel experienced... ! C'mon it has its advantages, too ! Plus, I look much younger than I am in the mirror... (surely is just the way I look at it...! )

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Lol! Didn't know this one.... And even he did not show him a 5,25" ...

I saw the other day a TV show where they put kids to guess how to make work one of those tape playback machines. No clue...The girl got angry as no one had told her the tape had to be inside, lol... And that machine made my childhood(teen age, mostly) so different, as used it for loading Spectrum games, connected to a regular CRT TV (first one in B/W, lol). Indeed the only "computer" that had seen before the Spectrum were the arcade machines in pubs. We were not even in the euro, yet. The kids now have born with technology, are being handled tablets at the age of 3 (kind of not sure personally about if this is a great thing...). Till 15 that I had no personal computers (but went to friends' houses who had, hehe. Indeed could make a sort of coded game with friends). Then came the monochrome XT computers (glorious green and purple), then the AT, I still have my old 286. Can't get ride of it somehow...That thing already allowed to create graphics pretty well (what we today could only qualify as pixel art, of course. I did not know that around 20 years later I'd be doing again that sort of art for a phone company...I dreamed about it, tho.) It was my teen years...My childhood's toys were a bit less technology related : Kids today don't know what they are missing....

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-- Edited --- (by me, SrPx)