Gregory-CJ

I just posted my approach to digital oil painting.. have a look and your comments are always welcomed. Gregory

Hi Digital Painters!, I have been using Affinity photo for the last ~ 7 years and have tried a variety of approaches to digital painting with this software. My latest approach which I find successful, involves three main steps. 1. Define the flat shape of the head ( in this example) using grayscale and the default digital pencils... I especially like the 4B natural pencil and the Carpenter's pencil and a few blending brushes I created by reducing the strength of the default painting brush. 2 Create the form of the head by introducing light and dark to create volume and light and shade to create the lighting/luminosity across the surface of face, again using grayscale. 3. Add color- use gradient maps as a non destructive approach to adding colour. 3b. final tweaks. Hope you find this helpful. All the best Gregory Follow me on instagram @clarkejohnsen

Hi NahanC Further to our discussion , I notice a marked performance reduction when using the liquify tool with hardware acceleration disabled. In other words, the liquify tool performs much better when hardware acceleration is enabled.... and since I use the liquify tool a lot .. I will go back to using hardware acceleration and live with any holes in the layers that might come along until Serif fixes the problem.

Hi NathanC, I think your suggestion has solved the issue. To eliminate the possibility that a large file >1GB, might be the factor, I started a new file with only three layers and did not disable hardware acceleration at this point and got the holes showing up when using the smudge tool... see attached.. So, now I know that the file size has nothing to do with the hole issue... So I disabled hardware acceleration and have been using the smudge tool with no issue of the holes showing up in the layers... at this point in time. Thanks again for your input..

Thanks NathanC ,, I will check it out...

I will give it a try...... I should mention that this "hole in layers revealing the bottom transparent layer" does not come up often.....it's not a regular event but it has showed up before this time. I really haven't managed to tie it to one situation in AP but one thing that seems to be a common denominator , is when the file that I am working on gradually increases in size to anything over 1 GB , then AP gets cranky. This large file size brings out some quirks within AP..... in other words. Generally , I always have Hardware Acceleration enabled. Since, I have your attention, do you mind a question? When is the option "use only integrated GPU" used? I have worked AP with this option enabled but didn't notice much if any difference in performance.. Thanks for you help.

Hello, I am running AP 1.10.5 on a 3 year old iMac with plenty of ram.. The file in question has 11 layers and resolution of 300 dpi with 16" x20" dimension. When using the smudge brush on a layer below another layer.. this action causes huge artifacts... or really huge rectangular holes into the canvas, to reveal the bottom transparent layer. I can temporarily eliminate this "bug" by clicking on another layer, usually the upper layer and then going back to the layer in question to continue with the smudge brush. Thanks for your attention on this...

Hi Gregg, So your layers per page are all cleaned up.... meaning, you are using what is needed in your doc....no extra hidden layers... make sure to get rid of all or any disabled layers per page that you aren't using and make sure you don't have extra master pages in the layers stack that you don't need/ want? Hope this helps

Hi, To start with, I created a 13 page , heavily image laden (~2 linked images per page) doc within publisher. At some point within the creation of the doc, I noticed that inputting text into a text box wasn't responsive ... ie... the typing slowed down to nothing. A quick look through this forum and I tried the suggestions.. reset publisher.... close down the paragraph panel... I closed all but the pages and the layers panel.... but still the lagging text continued. I had been experimenting with different master page/templates designs... and noticed that most of my pages had several copies of master pages/templates, that were either enabled or disabled on the layers panel.....and that was the problem.... I quickly deleted all the master page/template designs for each page that I wasn't using and kept only my final and approved master page/template.... and wonder of wonders.... the speedy text input has come back...Yea.... I love Publisher and AP.

Thanks MEB, yes I will keep an eye open to this issue... although, this generally happens when I am fully engaged in the creative process..and not thinking about the apps themselves... so it comes as a big surprise but will let you know if I find anything.

Hi MEB, I did reset AP after this anomaly happened and I attempted to replicate this abnormality but to no avail... in other words, the AP eraser tool ~with and without the stabilizer~ is working as it should. To answer your questions, at the time I was using the eraser tool on a pixel layer with basic brush settings. I did notice at the time when the eraser tool wasn't working , that AP in general was acting strange.....normal actions were generating unpredictable results.. At first, I thought it was me and not getting my keystrokes right, but when the eraser tool started acting strange... I had this thought... " In the early days of creating digital art- ~ 25 years ago, it was a common experience for me and my friends that whenever we would install a new application, this would sometimes produce compatibility issues with the existing, already installed apps. Could that same compatibility issue exist today with AP and an newly installed app? I just updated Davinci Resolve -video editing- and started using it for many hours per day, as well as my Zoom app just got an update too. And going back and forth between AP and Davinci all day is when this AP anomaly seemly occurred. Could these updates to newly installed apps impact AP adversely? Thanks for your help MEB.

Hi there, I'm running the latest AP 1.10.1 and noticed a glitch when using the erase tool. 1. normal settings for erase tool = good performance. 2. using the stabilizer with the erase tool causes weird performance issues ( see attached) 3. once these weird performance issues show up then the history undo function doesn't appear to work. 4. Help 5. Thanks for your help. I am using an 2 year old iMac with lots of Ram ... Greg CJ

Thanks Chris and Loukash for your input.... this problem did initially show up with the Window> Separated Mode , which I use heavily. But since I can't replicate this error in separated mode, I have moved to using the two options of split screen that i listed above. Will go back to using the Window> Separated Mode and see if I can isolate the problem there. thanks Again!

Okay I think I have found the issue which shows up in both 1. using the Mac OS "Tile window to left or right screen " as well as by 2. placing AP on the left half the monitor while featuring several preview images on the right side of the monitor. ( which amounts to the same thing) I am painting on the left AP image and then want to move the image by holding down the space bar, which brings up the hand (view)tool. Everything is very good up to this point. Still holding down the space bar, I touch the right image to move it.... which doesn't work by the way...... and then go back to the left panel image... At this point the hand (view) tool shows up and persists.... meaning even selecting the B on the keyboard > paint brush.... I don't get the paint brush but the persistent hand tool. After several back and forth actions between the B key and the space bar, the paint brush eventually shows up. I know...... the answer is not to click on the right hand reference image while holding down the space bar..... but it happens.... This does happen to me when using the separated mode with two images present.... but I haven't managed to replicate this "error" with the same procedures... Will keep looking for what is causing this freezing of the hand tool while in separated mode. Your thoughts are appreciated.

thanks Chris for your attention.. I will keep a watchful eye and let you know when it happens again..... been away from my computer for the last week.