gdenby

This is a know rendering problem, and has to do w. the rasterizing routine. The standard work around is to put a stroke aligned to the outside of the fill. If there are defined swatches for the document, all the shapes can be drawn snapped together, and then the fill tool can be used to color groups of shapes w. their strokes altogether.
 
Post have mentioned that the fix is not trivial.

... awaiting with bated breathe. No, with panting. 

Hi, ralphonz,
 
In this particular case there's something that might suit your need. Select the star tool, and choose a largish number of points, maybe 36. Draw the star, and then slide the inner radius control outward till it shows the top vertex lining up w. the ones 90 degrees to the side. Convert to curves, select all the nodes as in the example .mov, and change to smooth nodes.

... awaiting with bated breathe. No, with panting. 

Thank you, thank you... I do try  

Humor follows.
 
So the other day I took my old drafting table out of the basement, put it together, trued everything up. Still had some good paper, and one of  my Rapidograph nibs wasn't corroded. One of the india ink bottles was still wet.  So I proceeded to draw. I placed my triangular metal ruler on the paper with the mm scale at the top edge, and placed the pen end down. Then I moved to approximately 3mm to the right, and put the pen end down again.
 
!!There was no line connecting the entry points. 
 
I have to ask, whoever made this "reality,"  why is this is so-o-o lame!?. Do I actually have to drag the pen tip across the paper, and expect I must manually stop where the line needs to end? 

What is quickly?..... or easy ? Did the below in about 5 minutes. But it certainly ain't no vector distort...
 
1) Draw rectangle
2) Power duplicate it down in size
3) Add a centered star with 0 inner radius (double star works too). The only tricky thing here is that in order for the star lines to line up with the corners (I think) it has to be rotated 90º.  (star proportions should match the rectangle)
Throw the star into a copy of the biggest rectangle to clip it.
4) "Mask" out the center with another simple rectangle.... or add a couple points and mask out whatever section/piece you want (pictured).
Or clip it with the inverse.
 
Still somewhat editable.... i.e. the star is still editable as a star.
 

 
 

Not so quick, maybe 45 min, but doable.
 

I made a thick stroke. and copied it so I could see how the different pressure graphs were working. After making and saving a bunch of profiles, I deleted the line layers and saved the file. The pressure curves are associated w. the file, I suppose I should check and see if they can be saved as a style. I know dashed lines can. When I re-open the blank file, all the pressures are available in the stroke dialogue, ready for application to the newly drawn vectors. They can be tweaked w/o saving for 1 off variations that might be hard to tell apart as a tiny thumbnail.

A nice demonstration of a very handy feature. I have a file I keep on hand  called "line pressures" that has 8 different pressure curves saved so I can pick and choose as I like, or tweak as I go.

I do agree the interface would benefit from a bit more work. I was delighted with the light UI in the recent AD beta release, which is a fine improvement. But the 'wares prestige will be built on the speed, reliability and scope. If the devs have some spare time down the road (!?what), perhaps they could build in an option to load various 3rd party interface graphics packs.
 
The creative web link brought me to an error 404. 
 
I suppose you have a different version of GIMP, than I do, which is 2.8 Mac, tho' I don't know who put the package together. Finding the icon I want in GIMP is a PITA. 
 
I have 2 different problems w. your argument. While the "flat" icon look makes sense in many situations, it does not seem to be a perfect solution. Yes, it looks stylish, and that sells.  But the bigger issue I have is that the examples are too busy. Not cartoonish, but lots and lots of little lines for the icons, and masses of text to describe what the icons activate.  Perhaps have a tooltip pop up in a local language so that everyone everywhere would learn to associate a particular shape w. a specific operation.
 
I'm unfamiliar w. the apps you reference any time in the last 10 years, I have to wonder how much screen space the dialogues take up.  Will it work on an iPad w. finger tip control w/o obscuring the work?

Downloaded the PDF, its very useful. I never did any photo/image processing except in a very casual manner. Lots of basic stuff I need to have defined.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/44836-very-basic-things/
 
added a new PDF about the very very basics of image editing 
 
cheers 

I sincerely hope you still have those Jaguars!!  
Gotta be late 60's right?
 
As far as the eyes go, I'd pirate the eyes from the other guitarist.
 
I added a levels adj, and set the layer to darken.
 

Distant Sounds - v1_jj.afphoto

Awesome skill. Tutorial! Tutorial! Plz. Any part of the rearing horse, actually any part of just the back ground.

Hi, artisticperspective
 
I can offer some info.
If you can afford it, get a graphics tablet and pen. While they don't equal pencils/pens/brushes on paper, they are more subtle than mouse work, and much more spontaneous.
 
Take a look at both Designer's vector brush in the draw personna set, and the brush in the pixels personna.
For the vector brush, look at the textured set of brushes. Personally, I find the vector brush really interesting. What it does is record a vector, and stretch a bit-map texture along that. One can go back, and change the shape of the line, the width of the stroke, its color, etc.
 
The pixel brush has quite a few samples of drawing and painting brush styles. While each pixel layer it makes can be adjusted in various ways, once the lines are laid down, that's it except for erasing as in traditional media.
 
You can make your own brushes. I've made a few. I haven't been very happy with them, but with some work, I think I could come up with decent ones. There are 3rd party brushes available that are a good bit more subtle. 2 forum members offer some for sale, under the name Daub brushes and Frankentoon. Not too pricey, and it saves the time of having to learn and create your own.
 
Shading in a digital medium is quite easy if you take advantage of the opacity/transparency settings. You can, of course, us a traditional approach of cross hatching many fine strokes, layer over layer. However, by controlling a pixel layer's opacity, you can get just the amount of effect you want from one broad pass. Another reason I like the vector brush is that one can make a set of strokes, group those, duplicate the group, and then use the transparency tool to fade the upper layer away, giving a dramatic toning of the under layer.
 
You can place any photo as a background, use an adjustment to fade it in some way, and lock the layer. Then create new layers on top for tracing.
As far as composition goes, what would you ordinarily do? If you want, you can display guidelines or grids to use as a visual framework. Or you can draw simple vector shapes (think comic strip boxes) that are snapped to the grid/guides, and confine drawing work to strokes nested inside those.
 
Lots of stuff to try out.

Uhmmmmmmm. This is photo photo for ipad.....

Hi, SweetP,
 
Seems you posted in the wrong forum. Affinity Photo, which works on the iPad, doesn't have a brush stabilizer. Designer does, but it isn't on the iPad yet.
 
Best way to figure out the stabilizer is to first draw an arc, or a zig zag line whith out it turned on. Then, do the same line with it on. You will see that the slight jiggles that hand motion causes in the drawing are averaged out, giving a smoother line.

With that sort of task, painting, not selecting, is the way to go. Much easier with a graphic tablet of course, but can  be done with a mouse. 
 
It was only quick because I did it roughly to demonstrate. I went over quite a few edges and of course, I only did two areas. It would take a lot longer to do a proper job. Hopefully, you at least know where to start. A family photo with sentimental value is well worth spending time on. I have done a few for my family over the years and everybody was so pleased.
 
Make a Recolour adjustment layer . . . Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Recolour Adjustment . It will cover the whole image but don't worry. Adjust the sliders to get one colour you want to apply, like for the robe.
Invert the Recolour Adjustment layer. Layer > Invert. 
Now, when you paint on the Recolour Adjustment layer (not the image layer) with white paint, it paints the colour on, but keeps the details of the greyscale image below.
You have to repeat the new Recolour Adjustment layer, invert and paint process wherever you want to apply colour so it is a fairly time consuming business but the results can be very good.
 
What will help to make the skin look more natural is to select the faces and apply an Add Noise Filter. Say about 10%. That will apply a bit of natural texture.
 

Designer's boolean operations, such as subtract, etc. work w. closed shapes. What is happening is that when you try to subtract an open line, the software tries to close the line. What you need to do is select the line, and w. the node tool, create 2 new nodes where the line should then be broken. Those can then be selected one after another, each time using the "break line" widget. After the line is broken at those 2 points, there will be 3 curves shown in the layer panel. Delete the one that isn't needed. 
 
Messages indicate that there will be a knofe tool in the future to make this easier.

For the overly thick strokes, you need to select those layers. Some of the strokes in your file seem to be 8 pt! Open the group in the layers panel. Command/Windows key will allow selections of layers that are not directly above /below in the layer hierarchy. Switch to the node tool. In the stroke dialogue, set whatever thickness seems right. They will all change together.

Thanks, wasn't the best solution. I also spent some more time working back and forth with GIMP and Inkscape. Was able to come up w. something closer to the original image, but as much work, maybe more. I'd love to know how the original images line edges had so many standard ogee curves.  Any rate, an interesting exercise.

If you look closely at the strokes, you can see areas that are both very regular, and others where the troughs and peaks are shifted slightly. My guess is that there was a lot of hand work involved. I've used the Illustrator pucker and bloat tools a little, and the results I got tended to be much larger. 
 
So here's an approach. It is somewhat time consuming. 
 
Chose an appropriate font, and give it a fairly thick stroke. Convert to curves. Slightly flex any straight lines.
 

 
Expand the stroke. Pictured, the slightly distorted with strokes expanded., showing the nodes.
 

 
I spent a few minutes deleting some of the clusters of nodes. Reduced the number by at least 1/4. Then, began warping the arcs between the nodes..
 

 
Results after 5 minutes. Whole shape probably would have taken close to 1/2 hr, which seems too much. I suppose w. some practice, I might come up with a slightly safter method.
 

 

If you look closely at the strokes, you can see areas that are both very regular, and others where the troughs and peaks are shifted slightly. My guess is that there was a lot of hand work involved. I've used the Illustrator pucker and bloat tools a little, and the results I got tended to be much larger. 
 
So here's an approach. It is somewhat time consuming. 
 
Chose an appropriate font, and give it a fairly thick stroke. Convert to curves. Slightly flex any straight lines.
 

 
Expand the stroke. Pictured, the slightly distorted with strokes expanded., showing the nodes.
 

 
I spent a few minutes deleting some of the clusters of nodes. Reduced the number by at least 1/4. Then, began warping the arcs between the nodes..
 

 
Results after 5 minutes. Whole shape probably would have taken close to 1/2 hr, which seems too much. I suppose w. some practice, I might come up with a slightly safter method.