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PaulEC

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Posts posted by PaulEC

  1. Maybe a bit OT, but at the moment I'm trying to learn how to use a bit of software called Scrivener. I know someone who uses it regularly and they think it is really useful. I spent half an hour or so playing around with it and couldn't get the hang of it. It does look like it could be useful for me, if I could just get my head around it. Now my problem is, should I just give up, should I put some effort into trying to learn how to use it, or should I find a user forum for it and tell people who are already using it what a load of rubbish it is, because I don't understand it?

  2. One way:

    Use the Flood Select tool. Untick the Contiguous box. Click on the white part, then delete, Click on the blue parts, then delete. You may have to go in close to see any bits left over, click on them until you only have the black part left. You may need to try adjusting the Tolerance setting to get the cleanest removal of unwanted areas. To get rid of the black borders you can use the Erase brush.

  3. 12 hours ago, benbeara said:

    just because Excel can act as a database, should you use it as one?

    Yes - if it works for you and does all you need! Sometimes using an all singing, all dancing app to do something simple is just overkill.

    Going back to -- If all you want to do are a few simple drawings and paintings, there's not much point buying the most expensive software on the market,  of which you will probably never use more than10% of what it is capable of doing. 😉

    15 hours ago, benbeara said:

    she continues to believe that the workflow should be similar across all applications

    It isn't! -- Most drawing/painting apps will have similar tools, functions etc, but, although, once you get the hang of basic concepts, it becomes easier to transition from one app to another, they all need a certain amount to work to learn how to use them. 

  4. FireAlpaca is a pretty basic painting program. IMHO Affinity Photo/Designer can certainly do anything that FireAlpaca can, and way more, but not necessarily in the same way. The same can be said for the Adobe products. From what you say, your daughter was quite happy with FireAlpaca until there was some sort of "glitch". There are plenty of other cheap/free basic painting apps around, just do a "Google" and try a few.

    If she wants something more advanced, I would strongly suggest that she sticks with the Affinity apps you have already bought and learns how to use them. (There are lots of tutorials available.) There's really no point in spending lots more money on an Adobe subscription, as, if anything, it will be a steeper learning curve than Affinity. Bluntly I suspect that this is a case of assuming that the most expensive software will be the best, but that is not always the case, it really depends on what you actually want to do with it. There are certain functions which are common to all "professional" drawing and painting apps, so if you learn one, it is easier to transition to another. If she does decide that she really needs to use Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator for some reason in the future, it will be much easier to start using it after learning the basics with Affinity Photo/Designer. But, whether she goes with Affinity or Adobe, there will be quite a difference from using one of the very basic apps like FireAlpaca.

  5. A couple of things to keep in mind. The Opacity setting on the Blur Brush doesn't seem to do anything, you need to use the Flow setting to alter the strength of the effect. Also, apart from the type of brush you're using, the resolution of the image will affect how obvious the effect is, as will the magnification you are viewing it at. An alternative to using the Blur Brush, especially if you want a strong effect, is to create a blur layer, invert the mask and paint in the areas you want blurred. (You can then use the opacity setting for the blur layer to fine tune it.)

  6. Something I've never had to do before: add multiple Master Pages to a range of pages in a document. The problem is that, if I want to change the page range, I have to keep putting in the same information in the "Apply Master Page to pages" dialogue. It would make much more sense (at least to me) if, when I select a Master Page, the settings that I previously entered were still there, so that I could just modify them, rather than having to enter them all again. 

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