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I worked on hannah's nice sample in AD. I used the transparency tool over the line to help blend them into the background where there was less light or contrast. Thanx, hanna. Hannas-engraving-mod.afdesign

Hi, Hubas, The Affinity suite makes vector objects by a series of co-ordinates from the 1st to the last. That series of co-ordinates may then be given "fill" and "stroke" attributes. So many people mis-take using the pen tool as something that can create a network of lines, when in fact it allows on to make a series of geometric shapes that may share the same space, but do not connect logically. "Pen" is just a convenient term, but is better called "bezier curve node maker." In short, and as you experienced, one can only draw an outline, and branches from that cannot happen, and the outline cannot be closed, except by joining w. the first point. I didn't notice you mentioned using Photo, so opened your file in Designer, which is what mostly use. It has features that are better suited for schematic renderings. The attached file can open in Photo. 1st, I used the pen tool in polygon mode, with it set to no fill and a solid stroke. I traced over your example from view points 1 thru 28. I then made separate lines for the extensions and pass thru connection on the tour. All were grouped on a single layer. I then drew an Ellipse, and duplicated it by command dragging it to each waypoint. These I also placed on its own layer above the line path. If you were using Designer, the circles could be made into symbols, and have color and shape changes applied all together, making design changes so much easier. I then duplicated the line layer, selected all the lines. I used the menu command "Layer, Expand Stroke." That turned all the strokes to polygon shapes. I then did a geometric add for all of them, which makes a networked shape that has adjustable attributes of its own Hope this helps. schemaVT.afdesign

Hi, the artistcourtney, How much about computers do you know? Do you understand the file system, so you can save, find, and retrieve what you are working on? Do you know about the various kinds of graphic files? Do you understand the difference between pixel and vector based drawings/paintings? I bring these up to help you feel a little more oriented. While most computer art emulates traditional methods, one makes a mark on a surface, it might be better to think of it a little more like making a collage, or a design out of colored paper shapes. The difference is that in contemporary applications the shapes/collage bits can be moved, re-shaped, removed as one goes along. As always, ask questions, and offer examples of what you are trying to do.

Hi, Isis478, Topics similar to this come up every now and then. AD is very well suited to doing precise drawing, but lack some common features usually found in CAD programs. Notably, there is no automatic dimensioning tool. One has to make one's own hatching patterns, I don't recall anyone making those and offering them to the public. You will most likely want to view both in house and user made vids on using the isometric grid features. Also check out the tute's on the snapping features. They allow objects to be precisely positioned on the grid, and in relation to other objects. Explore the built in shapes. You mention gears. The cog tool will likely satisfy making those very easily.

Hi. BrightBold, Looked over the product. It appears to to offer lots of stock texture and objects in .psd format. I infer from watching a few vids that the objects may get a layer order. For instance, wall textures always are at the back, picture frames are alway in front of the wall, objects like lamps are always in front of frames, lighting effect spread over all layers under. These are things that AP does, and one might put the images into an assets file. But the layering would be manual, I suppose. From the few vids I could find, it doesn't appear that they offer layers of depth. That is, a presentation with a wall in the foreground, and another in the background. This is something AP could do, tho' there would be a fair amount of work involved. While AP does not use the smart object routine, one can apply any number of adjustment layers to individual pixel layers, and turn them on or off as needed. Myself, it appears the package is optimized for very rapid presentations. Do you also need mock-ups for specific spaces?

Hi, Abcarli1988, Also make sure the "protect alpha" box is not checked. If its on, one can only paint on areas that already are painted. No paint can go on the blank area. Oh, and you can change the opacity of the vector brush strokes, which will give much the same effect as changing the flow rate on pixel brushes.

Its quite easy. Draw a shape that will enclose the "8" figure. Duplicate the 8, and move it above the enclosure in the layer hierarchy. <Select the upper 8 and the enclosure. Perform a boolean subtraction. Select the results, and perform a divide. < divided Delete the parts of the divided object not needed. Group them all so they can be moved and manipulated all together.

More fine work. Admired the curled paper style "A" a few days ago. But I'm all for cheap thrills. Like the color. But what happens if the indigo in the 1st iteration turns into a dot dapple?

I was using the supplied basic brushes. I've messed around some w. the settings, but not much. One thing that is important is that the brush spacing be sufficiently small that the shape dabs blend smoothly. Also, in the dynamics panel, different profile curves can make a big difference on how pressure and speed, etc. influence the stroke. If I zoom to 600 ~ 800%, I can usually still see aliasing artifacts.

Hi, gpowers01, This is just out of curiosity. Why do you need/use a real time cursor reading? AD will provide a real time readout to 2 decimal places if you are moving something really small, like a .24 pt circle, but myself, I can't manually position finely enough to get it at a whole integer position, much less a tenth or hundredth.

Hi, fabioromeo, I'm using a different system and tablet (see sig), But while I do get a bit of jitter, it is partially due to me having fairly severe arthritis, and my right thumb is giving me grief today. Any rate, quick scribbles, no stabilizer. I've been working w. the stabilizer setting some recently, and the length/window settings need to be adjusted for the average length of stroke.

Yes. Its a work around. I haven't needed an arrow that was very long in most cases. Lacking a built in arrow, I wish the pressure graph was larger, and had more node control. When I've tried for longer arrow lines, I've broken the stroke so there is an arrow end style, a middle, and a tail style. A bit of fuss that I'd be happy to do without.

Hi, RangeRooney, Consider what you can do by working w. the stroke pressure setting. The stroke can be saved as a style, and applied to other work as needed.

A find help. Find query for layers w. "left", and give the name bar a color highlight, so scrolling thru the list will have an easy visual cue.

Yes, a good feature request. I often have hundreds of layers, and scrolling thru them can often be quite difficult. So over to features request.

A "layer" in the Affinity suite is a generic term for what might also be called an object. When one creates a blank layer, it defaults to the whole work space size. Once can do anything within that space. But if you make a selection, as you saw, the new layer from it is just that selection. This is also true of a single vector arc, which is only the single mark residing within a bounding box. You can modify that selection by activating the layer, and using the "move" tool to access the selections bounding box, and resize the selection. For what you were trying to do, your working solution was a much better option. If up sizing the selection and moving it to cover the whole image, any irreguarities in the original selection would have been spread out, but still there. I don't us AP enough to say for sure, but I'm supposing using an adjustment layer that affected the whole canvas would have been a more appropriate method.

As mentioned earlier, Affinity Photo is now only available on iPad. Designer is in the works, but there has been no statement about when it will be available. Right now, you would need a PC to run both. Also as mentioned, Photo on iPad is not quite the same as on the desktop. For graphic design, I do think Designer is a better choice than Photo. Photo is aimed at developing camera images, and enhancing them. PCs tend to have upgrade options. Macs, at this point, very few. If you go w. an entry level pc, I suspect you may be able to upgrade the hardware when you start running into performance problems. Also, if you are like many students, you may find your academic focus changing after starting university. I will say again that if you intend to do CG, the more powerful the hardware, the better. But if you get into something like programming, that can be done on very rudimentary systems.

Hi, Ghaethm What is convergence software?

Dave2017, To address the rounding issue, here are three illustrations. 1st, establish a grid. I made one w. 10 mm division w. 2 (5 mm) divisions. Could easily have been any number to approach a level of precision needed. Turn snapping on. One will get a cross hair under the cursor when at snapping positions.: Then draw, noting the read-out that appears while drawing, so that you will know when you are approaching the snapping point. As I mentioned, one does need to manually annotate the document, but the drawing can be quite precise w. little effort. I used Sketch-Up from v. 2. There was no dimensioning for several more versions. The wait for the features was a good trade off, because the closest CAD package I could find at the time was about 3 times more expensive. (Google acquired it around version 7 or 8, made it free, then sold it off, and I lost my licence while that happened.) Besides the price, Sketch had nice intuitive features, and recent updates to AD have gone in the same direction by showing distances between objects while drawing, and their alignment w. other items when moved.

Hi, Dave2017, As MEB said, a CAD program is better suited to what you are trying to do. One can use AD to do simpler work. See Serif's vid on making floor plans. Last year, I needed to draw up a floor plan for a house I had inherited so I could estimate the cost of new flooring, and offer it to companies who might do the job. It was a rather ordinary plan, and I just had to make lots of rectangles using the transform dialogue to set them up to my measurements. I just set the document up as a legal size page, in inches. Don't recall the scale, but it was something like 3mm to 1". All the dimensioning and areas had to be done manually. One can download Sketch-Up for personal use, although it does a lot more than you need. It does dimensions and areas. My recollection is that there were plugins to do cost estimates for various materials. I had some years of practice w. it, and the 2-D work was quite easy to learn. I've also dabbled a bit w. Libre CAD. Somewhat harder to use than Sketch-up, which was designed for quick visualizations, as its name suggests. Libre CAD has a more technical approach.

Hello, ghaeth wardeh, Assuming when you write "pc," you mean a Windows machine. I haven't used one in decades, and only maintained them up to Vista. But here's an online review that might be helpful. Graphics apps tend gobble up hardware resources. They often work just fine w. minimal systems, just painfully slow. It always helps to get the best you can. From what I've read, the Affinity programs perform best with the most multi core processors. I upgraded the RAM on my iMac because certain functions would take every bit of physical RAM, and hitting virtual memory was just way way too slow, and sometimes failed.

In its current iteration, AD has a stabilizer tools for the pencil. From what I can tell of the AI feature, it averages repeated strokes to nudge the line closer to what is needed. The stabilizer removes some of the need for that upfront. With practice, I'm getting to where I only need to adjust a node or two. From a tracing I'm doing, you can see the lines are fairly smooth, and I think they are reasonably accurate to the underlying image.

Even easier way to do it. Select the group. Hold down the command key, and drag. A duplicate will automatically be made. Plus, by making the duplicate that way, one can use the power duplicate routine to repeat the duplication and motion and/or resizing. If snapping is on, one can often position the repeats quite accurately, particularly if there is a grid on. Like soL

Hi, Miriness, There are 2 ways that I know of to do this in AD. The one that is closest to what is shown in the AI tute is to create a stroke pressure curve, and save it as a style. See the following: Note, all styles are placed on a cog shape, which unfortunately is not well suited for representing line weights. The taper applied to various curves, set to different weights, and expanded into a vector shape. The 2nd way produces a different result. One can make a textured intensity brush that works w. the vector brush, pencil or pen. While the line form is a vector, the brush is a pixel image repeated or stretched along the vector, whose width and opacity, etc, can be varied by such things as stylus pressure or speed. The resulting shape remains modifiable along the vector, but is limited by the fineness of the bitmap.

You're probably right, the phone is too white for HSL to do much. Try changing the adjustment to recolor.