Frozen Death Knight

Thanks for such a detailed answer! I understand the logic. I can just say from my Photoshop background how I use these merging features to help you see my point of view. While doing paintings I need to cut, copy, group, and merge various layer types to get specific results. A very common practice I did was to merge layers and groups together after making backup copies of those layers in case I needed the layer hierarchy again. This was to simplify the painting process after having done multiple edits with Mask Layers, Vector Layers, Adjustment Layers, Group Layers, etc. In Photoshop this process is very straight forward. I just select any layer type I want and use commands like Merge Selected or Merge Down and it would automatically rasterize all layers to do the final merge. Yes, it is destructive editing, but it kept the flow going and it is years of getting used to stuff I took for granted and that I started to miss once I switched software. In Affinity I have had to build muscle memory to rasterize everything before any merge happens because otherwise I do not get the desired end result. It is those added extra steps that make the programs more annoying to use than the competition. I have gotten used to some of it, but in all honesty I really shouldn't have to. Personally I would be fine with the current method as long as there was a pop-up to ask if you want to destructively rasterize all affected layers the first time before merging like it is done for rasterizing when it asks if you want to keep FX or not. Most of the time I just want it to do destructive editing due to how I work, but I can see the logic in wanting to put up some safeguards as to avoid scenarios where people. I just am too used to a certain workflow and the less steps I have to do to achieve that workflow the better.

Hey again! I tried the latest Beta builds and unfortunately the issue still exists with certain brushes. As for my hardware, I use a Wacom Cintiq 13" HD that I bought back in 2013. I have used the latest Wacom drivers provided by the manufacturer. I use High Precision instead of Windows Ink.

Just wanted to check if my comment about it not being fixed in 2.6.2 has been seen by the devs. Merging anything that isn't a Pixel Layer does not work due to the other layer types not being properly rasterized ahead of a merge, so the issue persists.

I've been trying 3.0 yesterday. It is a massive step up for sure, but it is no Affinity still. Even with some of the bugs I get better performance from running Affinity through Wine on Linux. Also, Krita is miles ahead of GIMP in terms of features and general quality of life like a much stronger brush engine and a very flexible hotkeys system. It even has non-destructive filters long before GIMP achieved the same thing. Here's my current list of improvements I would like to see in GIMP: - A better hotkeys system. Again I point to Krita (can change how modifiers work) and also Affinity (switching tools on the same hotkey and using shift as an option). - GPU acceleration. - A more extensive brush engine like Krita. - More vector capabilities. - A brush selection menu like the one from Photoshop including some features from Krita. - UI panel placement presets that can be saved and loaded. - Smudge Tool is not as good as in Krita and Affinity after 2.6. - The Tool Options panel needs to be completely reworked so it becomes a top bar like how it is done in Photoshop and Affinity. The current version takes up a ton of unnecessary screen space when it needs to be shown at all times to be able to adjust settings on the fly. This issue has long since been solved with having the settings of each tool as a top bar and even other open source software does this like Blender and Inkscape. Also, GIMP 3.0 is crashing on me a ton when making new canvases. It is incredibly unstable in its current form. There is also some weirdness with the window management itself where I cannot use the fullscreen shortcut or adjust the height of the window. If there is one thing I think GIMP 3.0 really succeeds at it is the new interface. It looks great. It is miles ahead of Affinity V2 by being a lot more customisable with custom icons, colours, scalable UI, etc. The layer locking feature is just as good as in Photoshop and works exactly like how I want it to. If GIMP just fixed those other core issues I listed I would be a lot more willing to switch over. Hopefully 3.0 will make GIMP more popular and thus lead it to a golden age the way Blender and Krita have been developed over recent years. Non-destructive layers is a massive dealbreaker for a lot of people, so I can see some people jump onboard because of this release.

@Affinity Info Bot It is still not fixed. The expected behaviour I have for this operator in every scenario is that it will automatically rasterize all selected layers before merging anything. When I select a Group Layer, Vector Layer, Image Layer, etc. I expect it to rasterize and then merge. It should never be greyed out under any circumstances. This is how Photoshop works since the Creative Suite days and I used it all the time to collapse certain layer stacks in the painting process. I do not want to manually rasterize and then merge since it is a waste of time when it can be done in one single button press.

Works like before. Thanks! Would be nice if it could be expanded in the future where you can transform child layers and parent layers simultaneously. I know it was possible in some very old V1 builds until it was no longer possible to select both parent layers and child layers. Would be convenient to make liquify possible to affect child layers with a toggle while working on the main parent layer. Just an idea.

I can confirm this issue exists on Windows as well.

Yes, I resize it by tilting my tablet pen when brushing. Seems like a pretty normal thing you would want to do for certain brush effects.

As an artist, the new method is a lot better for blending and it has reduced a lot of the artefacts that came with the tool like how it broke the alpha with transparency artefacts on completely opaque layers. Still some issues as I have reported on previously, but a lot better compared to previously. Smudging now behaves more like Krita smudging, which has a really good smudging algorithm. All that being said, I can understand if someone would like to have the old behaviour back in some way, because the results can be very different. Personally I vastly prefer the results of the new smudging over the old one. The forced spacing is indeed weird however.

Here you go! Square Artefact Brushes.afbrushes

No worries! Anyway, I found a custom brush of mine called Round Smudge that produces squares in the smudge when I tilt my tablet pen to adjust the brush size.

Just to give even more examples, this bug also affects brushes drawn with a mouse. Even smoothing with Stabilize doesn't solve it. Affinity: Compare this to Krita: Pretty stark differences in how each software processes the drawing input. I seriously doubt it is a hardware issue when Affinity is literally the only software that has ever done this on my end. I've tested this on multiple different PCs with vastly different hardware and even using different pen tablets to boot. So hardware being the culprit can easily be discounted from the equation.

I can confirm that this bug happens on Windows as well. It is quite a big issue when it can consistently be triggered on all lines if you are too fast at drawing. Interesting that it also happens on iPad as well. I originally thought it was a Windows only issue, but it apparently is a general design issue with the brush engine itself. Heck, I was even able to reproduce it on Linux through Wine despite having a lot of extra tools on Linux for fine adjusting the pen tablet parameters to reduce any type of input lag, stuttering, etc. I really hope it gets a high priority fix. Until it is fixed I will just be doing my line art in Krita and do general painting in Affinity when I do not need as much precision. The amount of time wasted trying to fix these broken lines adds up quite substantially.

I was watching this video demonstration of all the new changes in 2.6. I got to the portion where certain aspects of the workflow have been improved to better automate operations, so I started going through each one to see how they worked. One bug I found was that Merge Selected on non-Pixel Layers does not work unless you have a Pixel Layer at the bottom of the selection stack in the Layers panel. Another (possible?) limitation I found was in that butterfly example of cutting a piece of an Image Layer to move it around after doing a selection. I tried doing the same thing to a Group Layer ańd instead of rasterizing and moving just that pixel selection I instead got it duplicated with the entire thing intact. I am however unsure if you want this to be the case, but maybe something to discuss about adding the option to rasterize Group Layers when you pixel selct and transform. I'll be trying more of the changes once I get the time. If I find any other inconsistencies I'll try to update this thread.

Sure, but if people do not know how to access it regardless, you will get posts like the one I quoted who claim that it doesn't exist. A lot of people do not pay attention to that small bar at the bottom. It does provide the information, but it can very easily be missed if you do not already know of it. Then there are just general expectations from using other software. Adobe Illustrator has a ton of different tools for editing vector curves and nodes while Affinity Designer is able to condense multiple tools into the Pen Tool and Node Tool only. If you are used to using Illustrator then Designer will feel quite alien to you. Personally I think Affinity does node editing way better because of how the Pen Tool and Node Tool are designed, but there is still a learning curve going into it from Illustrator. I am of the opinion that it should be possible to select a tool in Affinity and then have a way to list all the commands in a small pop-up window when hovering over it (with the option to turn it off in user settings). This would improve the user experience for newcomers by making it clearer what each tool is capable of with its modifier shortcuts.