Frozen Death Knight

A pretty good summary of my own problems after having tried VectorStyler a few years ago. Features are nice, but performance is honestly more important in my eyes. Hope the development focuses more on the core engine so it can become a solid choice for vector art.

One feature I like from Gimp is the ability to change the selection size with transformation handles just like how the Move Tool works in Affinity. Would be useful for re-adjusting the selection without having to redraw it again.

If it is of any help, 2.1 has implemented shortcuts for adjusting the stroke width.

Paint Brush Tool: Paint Mixer Brush: The feature does work if I keybind it, but I can't actually change the settings without switching tools.

I have come across a bug with brushing that causes the UI to become completely unresponsive. What I notice is that when the brush becomes laggy at times, most likely caused by the size of the brush and canvas, it then leads to the UI no longer being clickable. I am still able to keep brushing on the canvas and can even paint through the UI itself after activating this bug, so the bug is more complicated than Affinity just simply freezing up. The solution I have found is that alt-tabbing or just simply clicking outside of Affinity will then unlock the UI again to work as it should. I managed to capture the bug fully in action. Also notice that the History panel keeps making more brush stroke history states when clicking through the UI.

After having worked with 2.1 for some weeks now, I started to notice a bug when restarting Affinity. The auto-scroll feature does not remember the brushes that were selected the last time I had the program open. All the tools still have the brushes loaded, but the Brushes panel no longer highlights the brush that was actually active at the time of close-down. In this image you see me use the Paint Mixer Brush with Taper Hair 2 already loaded into the tool from start-up, but the list fails to select it. Doesn't matter if the selection was marked blue or red, it will not remember regardless. The moment I select a brush again the feature works as it should.

Slightly related to the topic of menus and shortcuts. Just had the thought that this kind of menu could be added to the FX icon as well. R click to select which FX to activate and then open up the main panel would be a decent shortcut to access specific effects quickly. Reason why I bring this up is because of issues like these where the V2 Effects panel no longer defaults to Gaussian Blur, which causes a lack of efficiency for some users who rely on that effect often. Having an R click menu would be a potential improvement for anyone who likes to use different effects instead of Gaussian Blur like in V1.

That's what batch renaming is for, which is something I think should be supported at some point. For renaming single layers however this feature is fine as it is. Your suggestion would just remove the ability to rename anything unless having the Layers panel available, which would be a downgrade in my book. As someone who uses Blender the current iteration of this feature works exactly the same. Batch renaming could support multi-select, not to mention other features that would help with projects that need more specific naming conventions.

A problem with that is that we would then need the Layers panel to do any renaming, if I understand you correctly. If I toggled off the UI to paint without any distractions this new feature would become inaccessible until activated again.

Little improvements like these are often what make or break our workflows when having to repeatedly do them across multiple projects. I am glad that this release has been focusing on smoothing out the rougher edges so we can just work more efficiently. Really been enjoying working with 2.1 thanks to stuff like the added functionality to the Brushes and Layers panels. Hope 2.1 will have the time to fix the dark mode UI for selecting stuff not being visible as well. Probably my biggest gripe after moving from V1 to V2.

I am really liking the new auto-crop to selection feature. Being able to ctrl+L click a thumbnail to select and then activate the Crop Tool is very handy. That said, a small quality of life improvement that would help newcomers find this feature would be if there was a button while using the tool that said "Crop to Selection". It would automatically do the selection part for you based on whatever layer/layers you happened to have selected in the Layers panel at the time. Since the Layers panel is still fully available when using the Crop Tool I think it would be pretty clear how to do these sorts of crops to any new user. Another idea that could improve this new feature along with adding a new button for it would be the option to add some padding around your selection. For instance, allow us to type in a number in the top toolbar, i.e. 3 pixels (based on document units and should also allow negative values), which will create a 3 pixel spacing from the selected objects and the final cropping area. This could also be added as a feature to the Artboard Tool since it too has a selection based cropping feature.

I noticed that resetting the crop with Escape disables the modifier keys to transform the crop from the centre and/or constrain it. Only after dragging once and confirming the placement am I able to use the modifier keys again.

Context sensitive menus are meant for features that assist with these kinds of tasks. Plenty of people like using tablets, so tablet users will not have direct access to keyboards, and searching the top menus every time is just impractical. Context sensitive menus help simplify workflow by compiling the operators that are useful for that specific thing you are interacting with. If you are that bothered with having more operators, just use keybinds. Let those who use menus get the features they ask for.

Regarding just masking in general, three operators I would like to see added to the R click menu for individual masks would be Invert Mask, Clear Mask, and Rasterize Mask. Invert is pretty obvious. Clearing a mask would simply fill the mask with a white colour so everything becomes visible as a way to reset it. Rasterize Mask would allow us to destructively apply any changes done to it. This option would also need to be available for Compound Mask, so it is possible to merge masks together destructively. This is especially important for compatibility with PSD since Photoshop does not support this kind of feature, so working with others who use Photoshop will become more troublesome.

R click works too I noticed.

@DylanGG It is a bug. The last build had ctrl+alt+L click drag work as well and V1 and 2.0 work the same way. Only this build does not work that way.

This tool is pretty neat. Looking forward to when it supports filling open gaps as well for line art that is built around having them. Also, once Affinity has a raster-to-vector workflow, we should then be able to vector fill even raster artwork. Tons of potential.

Works great. Thanks, @Ash and Co.!

Same thing on my end. Pressing ctrl+alt+L click drag only affects Hardness, but I can change both when holding down ctrl+shift+alt+L click drag, which was possible before as well.

Looking good! Question, how will we be able to access the API for different operators inside of Affinity? One thing I always appreciated when using Blender and Maya is that every action taken is actually recorded as a coding command. I.e. changing the position of an object, using modifiers, etc. get recorded in a timeline and you can also right click any button, slider, etc. to copy the code to run that operator. Would really help open up the API to casual coders if we can very clearly see what code we need to do specific stuff. Also, will switching modes be supported as well? For instance, let's say I am doing something in Designer/Designer Persona and I wish to access Photo/Photo Persona for specific operators, will I be able to program it so Affinity opens up what I need to access it if I own the necessary software? Would be cool as well if we could create new operators that can be put into the current UI and even make shortcuts for them in all the accessible menus. I happen to know a guy who wishes to get started on a basic animation timeline for Affinity once there is a scripting API established. Will that be possible too?

With some further testing, I noticed that Pressure makes arrowheads invisible regardless of mode sometimes. I had to reset the Pressure profile just to make it work again. Invisible Arrowheads with Pressure applied.afpub Changing Pressure affects the size of the arrows while using Dashed Line Style at the same time, so having tapered off line thickness at each end can make the arrows look invisible when using dashed lines.

Glad to see that this old bug has been dealt with with the new dashed lines. Switching Styles no longer makes dashed lines invisible just because it has Pressure applied in another Style mode. Speaking of Pressure, any chance that Affinity could support dashed lines with different line thickness applied on a vector line?

Really glad that the drag controls were added for each value. Much more intuitive and comfortable than before.

I am of the opinion that I preferred the menu since it compiles everything in one place without going into the top menus, but I can see why adding the instant mask button was done. A modifier key to enable the menu again would be a nice middle ground, or alternatively add a new icon next to it to activate the menu. Would take up a bit of extra space, but it's worth considering at least.

Fantastic! Works great. Thanks a bunch!