Medical Officer Bones

The current preview is not there yet. Developers call this a MVP - Minimal Viable Product. Read up on it here: https://blog.crisp.se/2016/01/25/henrikkniberg/making-sense-of-mvp To use that analogy: users ask for a flying DeLorean, but get a hover board first. It kinda works, users won't exactly be happy about it, but at least it is a functional initial implementation. To me this Preview option in the Export Settings is rather more comparable to a regular skateboard with wheels - barely functional, but it will appease users to wait for the next stage of implementation. Not "quite there yet". At least it's a start, and hopefully by version 2.0 the export persona will have been updated with similar controls as @madonnaragu would like to see (and the rest of us). We will just have to be patient until the devs get to the flying DeLorean stage In the meantime, use ColorQuantizer for near-perfect PNG optimization and more bells and whistles and control than any other software, free or paid! http://x128.ho.ua/color-quantizer.html

OpenToonz/Tahoma2d is highly effective and powerful 2d animation software. It is comparable to ToonBoom Advanced and in some regards ToonBoom Harmony. The built-in compositor is as strong as Harmony. Tahoma2d is a version of OpenToonz with a simpler default GUI setup. Either one is free and open source. It is used in the Japanese animation industry, and even Clip Studio Paint EX includes a direct OpenToonz export option (Clip Studio is not meant for full animation production, while OpenToonz is a full animation studio). As for Adobe Animate: I would avoid it. Flash used to be great, but Adobe's Animate development team has their priorities upside-down, if you ask me. The last production usable and ready version is still Flash CS6, while the later Animate version introduced bug after bug after performance regressions, and more bugs. The bone tools are useless. Every time a new animation feature is introduced, somehow the dev team botched it, and delivered only half-working tools. That said, an old copy of Flash CS6 plus Flanimate (free character animation plugin for Flash/Animate) is a really good combo. Animate's current state is a crying shame, though. Avoid Toonboom Essentials. ToonBoom Advanced and Harmony are the way to go if you decide to go with ToonBoom. Essentials is way too limited in my experience. Besides, OpenToonz wipes the floor with Essentials, and even measures up with Harmony in many regards - for free! Also have a look at Krita, which has nice bitmap-based frame-by-frame animation. It also depends on the type of 2d animation that you are looking for: traditional hand-drawn frame-by-frame? Puppet-based cut-out characters? That makes a world of a difference. Cut-out 2d character animation can be done brilliantly well in not-so obvious software such as Blender and After Effects with the free DUIK plugin, or the dedicated Moho Pro animation app. And do not underestimate Character Animator 4 from Reallusion. It is getting better and better for this type of animation too. To answer your question better, let us know what specific type of animation you are looking for.

Correct, this will work. But you MUST have the same fonts installed on your local computer as the ones which are used in your book, otherwise you will run into issues with your text formatting, i.e., fonts will be replaced.

I would stick with Krita for digital painting. At this point Affinity Photo is missing a number of options which hamper it as a digital painting tool, in particular when compared to Krita. For example, brush management is pretty far behind Krita, Brush control in Photo is light-years behind, a free transform tool is missing (and forget about Krita's really nice transformation tools), the GUI is counter-productive in my opinion (the right-mouse click widget in Krita is hard to beat), no proper canvas rotation unless working on a Mac (an absolute must), colour palette control and selection is not nearly as good, and so on. Which is understandable, since Krita focuses on being a best-in-class digital painting app, while Photo is meant to be a more general image editor. It scores better in that department compared. Photo is great as a compositor, though: use Krita for painting, and Photo for compositing work. My opinion, of course. Photo misses too many features which I rely on in Krita.

Serif would be taking a huge risk: the market is already saturated with excellent 2d and 3d animation software, including professional level free options such as OpenToonz/Tahoma2d. I'd rather have the Affinity developers speed up development of the existing apps, and improve those. Too many paper cuts and missing basic features, which are really mostly low hanging fruits compared to the effort of developing an entirely new 2d animation application.

Two options off the top of my head. 1) OpenToonz / Tahoma2d. I use this for my gif animations. Either import the movie file directly, or convert the movie file to an image sequence and import that. The advantage of image sequences: each image can be separately edited in an external image editor, and I use ColorQuantizer to control the conversion to 8bit images with precise controls for dithering, rare colours threshold, balancing gradients and details. The dither amount is controllable, as well as bypassing edges (preventing edge dithering). With ColorQuantizer I process all images to 8bit or even less colours depending on the source material. Then save as an animated Gif. As an image sequence OpenToonz/Tahoma2d automatically re-imports the adjusted images. Then I export to a Gif animation. It is also possible to render a movie file to images with OpenToonz/Tahoma2d. 2) an alternative option is ScreenToGif. The editor allows for movie import, and converts to image frames. Right-clicking one of the frames enables the user to open the folder with the images (which will all be 24 bit). (1) allows for much more editing control, but is a more complex animation application. (2) is pretty simple, and also includes gif animation controls to define the length of the frames. Both options are free! https://tahoma2d.org/ https://opentoonz.github.io/e/ (Tahoma2d is a simplified GUI version of OpenToonz). https://www.screentogif.com/ http://x128.ho.ua/color-quantizer.html Processing the frames with ColorQuantizer saves typically 50% in terms of file size in combination with OpenToonz/Tahoma2d and the proper output settings. ScreenToGif offers 5 methods to control the Gif anim export (does not support 8bit source images, so I would have to enforce RGB mode for output and use in ScreenToGif).

In the meantime Krita adds Live Mesh Warp to its already excellent complement of live transformation tools (including perspective, warp, liquid, and cage transformations). The implementation is really very good. Perhaps the Affinity devs could have a look at its code for inspiration?

I agree, this is quite useful to have for compositing, VFX, and concept art. PS Luminar 4 and Aurora HDR with many presets are now on sale in a Humble Bundle deal. https://www.humblebundle.com/software/aipowered-photo-editor-with-luminar-4-software

For those interested, PhotoLine added FITS file support in the beta last June. A nice HDR non-destructive adjustment layer with automatic exposure is automatically added for convenience. Could be an alternative until Serif decides to support FITS files in Affinty.

Or fire up a 3d app, and create your 3d metal object. I find that is more effective, and leads to better looking results. Much more freedom too. It took me a few minutes to create these.

SWF is a legacy format. SVG is a good replacement format for vector art import into a game engine. It's on the developers' heads of game engines to support it. GameMaker Studio still insists on the decrepit SWF format to import vector art, which is just plain dumb. Besides, it has all sorts of technical limitations. For example, Unity and Godot will import SVG directly. HTML-based game engines may support it as well, or you use plain vanilla JS with a SVG library to take care of it. But to expect support for SWF export at this point in time? Time to change your workflow.

I have a feeling that Affinity Photo's architecture perhaps complicates the implementation of a true 1bit (and 8bit indexed) mode to such an extent that the devs would have to re-code large swaths of their core code. I don't think they ever anticipated the need for a 1bit mode architecture, and patching the current code base is probably a really bad idea. And to be fair, it does present a new set of novel problems: how do you deal with transparency? Layers? How will those layers with different bit depths interact? For example, in Photoshop most of the functionality is simply turned off. No layers, no blending, most filters are greyed out and unavailable. Same in indexed mode. PhotoLine is completely unique in that it allows the user to actually keep using layers, vector layers, blend modes, layer masks and effects, but many effects and blend modes have no effect in 1bit mode, and layer masks still allow for grey values, which potentially can lead to issues. So in PhotoLine's case the responsibility lies entirely with the user to avoid making mistakes. Photoshop and PhotoLine represent in my mind two extremes in how to tackle the implementation of a 1bit mode: either limit the user's freedom when working in 1bit mode, or allow full freedom, but with that freedom comes the user's responsibility to avoid using features that might break the 1bit workflow. For an experienced user or expert PhotoLine is a revelation when working with 1bit graphics. For a novice a potential minefield, and Photoshop's hand-holding probably a better approach. And if an 8bit indexed bitmap mode is required in your workflow: even PhotoLine avoids opening that tin can of worms. I would argue it is preferable to switch to a dedicated 8bit (pixel art) image editor, such as Pro Motion NG, because of an entire new set of requirements. All of which returns us to the need of 1bit support in Affinity products. For many print/textile professionals it is an absolute requirement. If the Affinity devs could integrate 1bit in the export persona, fix the custom 8bit palette option (which has never worked), for heaven's sake implement a proper real-time preview in the export persona, as well as make sure Publisher (and Photo and Designer) deal with 1bit images properly in the PDF export and keep the original higher resolution, then Serif may perhaps at the very least provide a feasible 1bit workflow.

Various options which support all of your needs already exist on the market: OpenToonz, Toonboom Harmony, Flash/Animate CC, ... OpenToonz is open source and free, btw. It will also convert black and white drawings to vector.

Since it is related, for anyone looking for an affordable deal on a good video/sound editor: Humble Bundle is having a new video maker deal. https://www.humblebundle.com/software/your-sounds-your-movies-professional-video-and-audio-creation-software Video Pro X11, Vegas Movie Studio 16 Platinum, Sound Forge 13, and a few music maker apps for $33. And deals like these show that the video editing software market is overly saturated at this point. It would be, in my opinion, unwise for Serif to invest too heavily in a new video editor, unless it does something completely innovative.

A more controllable and simpler method: This is combined with a document-wide anti-aliasing control for flexibility, which means it is simple to control this property easily for document-wide and object-specific anti-aliasing.

A fellow C64 user! Yes, I recall GEOS: I was a GUI nut even before the term "GUI designer" was ever coined. GEOS was sloooooowwww, though, I agree. After the C64/C128 I switched to an Amstrad CPC 664, followed up by an Amiga 1000 (courtesy of the parents), and from there more Amigas. Then unfortunately the Amiga era ended (I held on to my Amiga till the latter half of the nineties!) before getting my first Windows 95 box. Good times.

That's interesting. It looks as if the image I created still has too much colours in each tile. Will check out that Multipaint tool! My graphics career started with a C64, Koala Paint and Pad in the 80s. Check out this video! 🙂

Here is a TRUE Commodore 64 version: one that would be displayed exactly like this, including the infamous 3 colours + 1 background colour per 4 by 8 tile! The zoomed version: ...and the 320x200 version at double pixel res: To generate an image like this needs specialized software that keeps track of the physical resolution limitations of these older 8-bit machines. In this case I used Affinity Photo to resize the image to 640x400 (double 320x200), open in Krita, use the Palletize filter with a C64 Lospec PAL file and Pixelate at 4:2 (this is the reason I needed to feed it a 640x400 image: the pixelate filter cannot go below 2). This then generates a version which can be downsampled in Affinity with nearest neighbour to 160x200.pixels. All double pixels are maintained this way in the next step! To ensure the hardware limitations (no more than 3+1 colours per 4 by 8 pixel tile) of the original c64 are maintained, I created a C64 Multi Color image in Pro Motion NG. Pro Motion NG is "aware" of the colour screen mode constraints of the older 8bit machines. Pro Motion NG automatically fixes any tile that contains more than the aforementioned hardware limit. I pasted the 160x200 image in PM, and saved the final result. This version could be displayed on a real Commodore 64! Anyway, in this little project I used three different apps to create the final result. I'd suggest to be pragmatic about software: use the right tool for the right job, and have a range of tools in your tool bag. I use Affinity for certain things, PhotoLine for other things, Krita, even an older version of PS CS6 and GIMP for various jobs, when they call for it.

Lospec has a list of pixel art palettes which include various 8bit machines https://lospec.com/palette-list/tag/computer

I would say to just stick with Gimp. Or Krita, which allows for a non-destructive pixelate filter that offers separate controls for x and y resolution, as well as the brilliant new Palettize filter. Use the right tool for the job, and in this case Affinity Photo just makes the process painful. There is no Palettize filter in Photo. There is no direct method to pixelate with 2:1 pixels in Photo. Photo should have at least an option to use a custom palette in the export persona, but it's been broken for more than 3 years now since it was first reported! Just stick with Krita or Gimp for this job (or just about any other image editor out there: most do have similar options), and import the result in Affinity if required. I have a feeling the development team has many other things at the top of their to-do list to fix or improve first. I mean, the custom palette export option is SO BASIC a feature, yet after more than 3 years it is still not fixed. A bit of a sad state of affairs, but it is what it is.

As far as I am aware, Truetype fonts are defined using quadratic bezier curves, while Type 1 fonts are created using cubic bezier curves. The latter has more control points, and the former less. Converting a Type 1 font to a Truetype is a lossy process, and information is lost, and such a conversion should be avoided. Anyway, in my experience PDF readers render T1 fonts generally better than TT fonts. OTF fonts can contain either format (as MikeW pointed out), so an OTF is no guarantee for a high quality font. And TT fonts may include hinting, which is again lost in a direct TT-->TT conversion, which leads to issues as well. Many free fonts online are poor conversions from their original source files. I checked the original document in PDF Exchange viewer, and the result is as expected: the TT version looks pretty bad in comparison to the T1 Quark document.

There are many different user types. Which user type exactly should Photo adapt to? Your user type? Mine? A beginner? An expert in image editing? A photographer? A texture artist? A digital painter? An illustrator? The collage creator parent? The wiz kid programmer? It is literally impossible to satisfy or even define every type of user. The best we can achieve is generalized user types - abstractions of reality. It is therefore impossible to have any software adapt to every single user's background, personal preferences, personal workflow, software experience, GUI expectations, and so on. It is just plain impossible. Any user interface is a compromise. The more complex the software, the more the developers/UX designers have to compromise. Now, having said all of this... I do agree with you that a bitmap gradient tool ought to "remember" the previous settings, and allow the user to edit an existing bitmap gradient. Not many image editors allow for this, however (only one comes to mind: PhotoLine). Even Photoshop can't do it. Truth is that by far the most design applications only allow vector objects to have "non-destructive" gradients. Node-based editors fare much better, and generally do support such a workflow. So, unfortunately the "standard" consensus in layered image editors seems to be that bitmap gradients, once created, cannot be edited.

In my experience no layer-based image editor is perfect. PhotoLine does support pretty much a full non-destructive workflow with 32bpc images, and, like Photoshop, fully implements a "smart objects" ("placeholder layers") workflow, up to the point of allowing external PS plugins to be applied as live filters, and using placeholder layers as masks for other placeholder layers, and live instancing of layers. Krita also supports instanced layers, and a non-destructive filter layer. The thing that really bothers me about Photoshop is its reliance on clipped layers to create stacks of combined masks. It just works better to allow multiple (grouped) layer masks. But the issue remains that layer-based editors do slow down at some point, and things become rather complex fast: a nodal approach is often easier and more effective to work with when things heat up in terms of complex compositing. I would love to see a nodal layer of some sort to be implemented. If memory serves me, I recall a mac-based image editor that (years ago) implemented a kind-of stackable puzzle approach on top of the traditional layer stack. I forget its name; it was quite intriguing, but development stopped at some point.

Speaking from experience: get the larger one. 6"x4" seems awfully small to me. I work on a large Wacom now, and before I used a smaller one. The larger tablet is far more comfortable to work on for me personally. That said, I am aware that some people prefer a smaller tablet. In this case the 12", however, is still fairly small in my opinion. Just get the larger one, because even IF you feel you want a smaller surface to work on, the drivers always allow you to reduce the active area.

Confirmed. When I use a 32px ink brush, and start drawing a continuous line (using Wacom tablet) at some point Designer starts lagging more and more, and does not keep up with my stroke. In my case the issue becomes problematic after around 12 seconds of continous line drawing, and for short strokes it does not appear to be an issue. My machine is very, very old: an Intel i7 920 and GTX1080. Why your modern rig is experiencing the issue faster? I have no idea. But it definitely is an issue, and probably a bug.