John at Esscont

The only deficiency that I see is the lack of a tracing feature to turn a bitmap into a genuine vector state, rather than vector with embedded bitmap. But maybe I have again missed something! Cheers John

Chris J As soon as I had finished typing all that, there was a wail of anguish! The context menu had vanished, the 'studio' had vanished and not much seemed to be possible. Ros had objected to the 'studio' taking up so much of the screen, she also had wanted to move the tools. So in 'view' she had ticked or unticked everything in sight! Some groping around brought it all back. I strongly recommend a 'dock it' button on the studio, rather than just ctrl-shift-H. At least let it be shrunk to be unobtrusive. With the correct default brush, most can be achived within the 'more' tab, clicking on the colour icon to bring up the colour menu as at present. You might consider an option at startup to load a set of preset options from a choice of 'beginner', 'simple', 'bright', 'expert' and such. Remeber that your product is targeted at artists, not nerds. Cheers John

Chris J Very many thanks - your first image worked the trick. Not the brush stoke, but the ringed menu item. That had not appeared on my screen! So a close inspection showed me the >> and that brought it up! With only one or two days left of the trial, Ros has renewed enthusiasm to try it out. But I would strongly encourage you to put that control inside 'more'. There is a lready a control there to choose 'velocity' 'pressure' or 'none', but with that hidden control inactive they have no effect at all. Put the controls where the new user cannot help tripping over them! As a product it is excellent, simple and clear without the clutter of its rivals, having may features in common with DrawPlus but avoiding the pitfalls like the default brush. Cheers and thanks again John

Chris J I cannot see any 'force...' button to the right of 'more'! In the 'more' dialogue there is no sign of pressure. Affinity just does not seem to see the pressure on a Surface Studio! Cheers John

Still struggling! I downloaded a ten-day trial to see if the beta version was the problem - no difference. The line-thickness does not change with pressure, even when a brush with pressure is selected. Using the 'more' tab to change to velocity still gives a constant thickness. Maybe there is some different setting that I should choose, in which case the problem would be with the documentation and the user interface. In either case, something should be fixed if you ever want to sell to anyone with a Surface Studio. Having lashed out a heap of cash for her new machine my designer wife is looking for perfection!

That worked as far as the dancing paper is concerned. But now another problem raises its head. The 'auto-fill' seems to be activated sporadically, so that sometimes the stroke is as it should be, sometimes it is weirdly filled. A possibility is that the wireless keyboard is sending odd unrequested characters. I'll keep struggling!

I have installed the new Beta - with mixed reactions. The interface is clear and much less cluttered than your rivals, but I think that your 'out of the box' defaults could be much improved. I do not know whether your remarks about the public version explain my problems with it. It launched and ran as expected, after I had clicked the '10 day trial' box. It took a while to find the way to switch from dark theme to light - perhaps you could have a setup phase in first use. But I could find no way to make pressure vary the brush line thickness. The 'more' tab seemed promising, but gave no way to vary what was drawn. Then I set the mode to 'velocity' instead - still the line thicknesss was constant, although the width variation slider was at maximum. Windows Ink has given an expectation that pressure will show immediate results. Many applications include a 'calibration' stage for pressure, which shows the user that pressure is actually being seen. Gimp has an 'inputs' option to select the signal sources. Unfortunately Serif Drawplus does not, causing the paper to slide about because of touch signals - other wise it would be a contender. There is a bug in the pressure profile setting in the 'stroke' pane, where the left and right ends lock together - fortunately a linear preset can be chosen, but pressure still has no effect! I will now download your production version and choose the 10 day trial, to see if the version is the problem. My designer wife has followed Corel Draw ever since Corel 1.1, spending a total of some thousands of dollars. Corel 5 was simple and useful, but included and then abandoned Ventura page design. Corel 8 was a good standard, leading on to Corel 13. But then came Windows 10 which killed off all versions before Corel 17. The prospect of spending $800 to add Corel to her new machine ruled it out of contention! Fingers crossed! John PS This is not my main email address, but supports a book on control theory - see www.esscont.com

I must admit that having joined the beta project some years ago, I did not geet around to installing it then. I have just tried installing (successfully) but as I should have expected I was told that it had expired! I have been writing software for halt a century and have a graphic-designer wife. As packages such as Corel, Inkscape and such develop, the added features have become an encumbrance! I am now keen to try out Affinity and see if you have fallen into the same errors. Serif Drawplus looked hopeful, despit its chalky default brush. But now, with a grandiose Surface Studio, instead of drawing on the 'paper' the brush just moves it around. I hope that the app store offers a 'try before you buy' option or it will join a host of unused applications! If it fits the bill, the price will be no problem - after Corel's bonanze from Windows 10 making all previous versions unworkable. But I still expect that you will see numerous posts of 'helpful' suggestions! Best wishes John