Frozen Death Knight

1. Better R click shortcuts to stuff that already exist inside Affinity (i.e. merge selected should be in the R click menu when interacting with layers). 2. Quality of life improvements, like being able to alt+drag layers to duplicate them like it works in Photoshop. Another would be the ability to flip/rotate individual layers instead of the entire canvas, as well as making the new symmetry tool have a reset position to center of canvas option (could make it so that double clicking the square shape actually resets the position back to default or using any of the modification keys when clicking on it). 3. More consistency across tools regarding specific modification keys. For instance, you can use ctrl on any of the shape tools to be able to transform each from the center of the shape. However, none of the marquee tools or the crop tool is able to use ctrl to transform the shape from the center, which is how it works in Photoshop as well. I do have a 4th one as well, but since I don't know how complicated it is to actually fix, I will just briefly mention it. Smoother transparency transitions for soft brush strokes on 8-bit canvases, so that the quality matches Photoshop 8-bit. There are a few issues there that make painting in Affinity not so ideal, so any fix to this will make my day.

Okay, thanks for the info! I am looking forward to your reply about that then.

@Chris B Hey, I'm back with a file! Halo Soft Brush Artifacts.afphoto I double checked if I had wet edges active, and it wasn't activated in the original screenshot. Here's some additional info about the file, my hardware, and AP settings if it is of any help: - The ICC profile used was sRGB IEC61966-2.1 and an RGB/8 canvas. - I run Windows 10 64-bit with an Nvidia Geforce GTX 980 graphics card, 32 GB DDR3 RAM, and an Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz CPU. - My monitor/tablet is a Wacom Cintiq 13" HD with standard monitor settings. - The brush used was a standard soft brush in the Basic folder in the Brushes panel, with Accumulation Jitter set to Pressure at 100% (as mentioned earlier, no wet edges activated). Hope this helps! ^^

All right, will be back later today with the file!

The feature to draw straight horizontal and vertical lines got added in a few builds ago in the 1.7 Beta by holding down shift when drawing (at least I know it works on Windows). It works just like it does in Photoshop. Should probably put this topic to rest now.

Okay! That screenshot of yours in AP looks better than what I can get on my home desktop. Maybe I should post an actual file so you can check if there are any issues with how I set up the document or if it is a monitor issue on my end? I don't have it right now, but once I get home I will post it.

I am pretty sure I didn't have wet edges enabled when I did this test (still, I will have to double check once I get home from work). Been trying to solve it on my own, but to no avail. The monitor I used was my Wacom Cintiq 13 inch HD screen with default settings, so that can be safely ruled out, since this problem is unique for Affinity Photo based on personal testing with other non-Affinity software on the same screen. Document profile can possibly be the culprit, but I haven't really fiddled with it much and just use the standard one when creating a new document. What settings did you use when testing?

I wanted to bring this issue some attention to the developers regarding soft brushes creating uneven gradients that are jagged between each value. The only way I have been able to find a fix to this is by switching the canvas to 16-bit mode (I work with RGB), but this also takes up a lot of resources, which can be quite taxing when I work on canvases at 6000 pixels or more. Here is an image comparing two gradients I painted with the exact same brush I use, but one was drawn while using 16-bit and the other with 8-bit. This particular problem does not exist in Photoshop. In Photoshop you don't have to work with 16-bit canvases to create the smoother gradients like in the example image from Affinity Photo. Then there is another issue with painting with soft brushes; the halos. While it isn't completely apparent in the above example image, when you softly apply your brush stroke to the canvas, the problem becomes way more apparent: This, along with the 8-bit issues, make soft brush painting less than ideal at times. Using blurs and other techniques can help fixing some of the more serious problem areas in your paintings, but that shouldn't really be needed as far as I'm concerned. I don't know what is causing this problem, but I do hope we can see a proper fix in at least the forseeable future. Fixing issues like these will go a long way in making me 100% recommend Affinity products to other people (still recommending it, but I always have to bring up little issues like these that can make it tougher to convince people).

I compared the feature with how it works in Photoshop, and it works the same way as you described in that program. Not much of an issue for me who is used to those controls. Also, the reason shift is using "continue last stroke" when making lines is so you can make straight lines while clicking on points on a canvas to make sure the dots get connected. Maybe that command could be changed to ctrl while keeping horizontal and vertical straight lines on shift, but personally I hope to see the concept evolve to where Affinity has a ruler system that can make straight lines while measuring things like distance and angles from 0 to 180 degrees, as well as allowing other types of measurements. To the developers I would suggest taking inspiration from programs like Lazy Nezumi Pro that has a pretty complex perspective measuring system for drawing, or just simply assist the add-on developer for Lazy Nezumi to add direct support to all Affinity products.

I just tried using the brush tool in the new beta build and noticed that pressing shift now produces straight lines horizontally and vertically. Didn't notice this change in the patch notes, so I wanted to ask fellow beta users if they are able to replicate this to confirm it functioning the same for the rest of you. Anyway, if my eyes don't deceive me, thanks a lot Affinity team for adding this in! I know a lot of other artists who will be super happy with this feature!

Okay! I sure hope so, since it's a fairly important part of my workflow in Photoshop. ^-^

Checked out the latest beta build and noticed we are still missing rasterize & trim, rasterize to mask, merge selected, and create new fill layer in the R click menu while in the Layer window. It is such a simple quality of life change that I would really appreciate being addressed by the developers for 1.7!

Question. What exactly is a "Looks Persona" and what does it do that the other personas can't?

Good to know! While we are on the topic of shortcuts, can you please take a look at your context sensitive menus like R click while using the layer window? It's missing a significant bunch of shortcuts that exist in your layer menu at the top of the screen. Merge selected, rasterize & trim, rasterize to mask, and create new fill layer do not exist in the R click menu, which are commands I use a lot while working, especially merge selected.

I may be wrong, but I guess it has something to do with how photographers need to process their RAW files and other camera image formats before dragging in their files into the Photo Persona, which then converts the image into a non-RAW format to be edited there. I know Photoshop has a similar feature in their Camera Raw addon where you preferrably want to edit your RAW photos in before exporting them into Photoshop.