Frozen Death Knight

Name?

Didn't DrawPlus exist for decades though? Affinity practically reset decades of work in favour of a new code base at the expense of features (you can't simply copy+paste features from one program to the next). With the addition of the Shape Builder Tool and Mesh Warp I think it is a matter of time that Affinity will get a blend tool and image trace feature as well, among other things.

@Alex_M Deactivate the option "Automatically undo and redo assistant actions" (added in V2). It will solve the problem for you.

@profanicus They added a Normals Adjustment Layer and improved other things like masking which will be useful for game textures. I think they made some changes to working with channels as well, but I haven't experimented enough to be sure. I hope that when they add actual 3D painting to Photo as they teased back in 2020 that they will add texture channel packing similar to how Substance Painter does it. That and DDS support (would give Affinity a significant edge over Adobe that rely on 3rd part add-ons).

Agreed! Reduces the layer complexity tremendously. I use these a lot when making UI, so the change is much appreciated. Only thing I do wish had been added as well would be the texture tiling feature from Photoshop when using Bevel & Emboss. Had a client who needed help with converting Photoshop files into Affinity, so I had to find some workaround using bitmap fills for the outlines. Still, I'm very happy!

@spinhead I suggest watching this review if you wish to get a good grasp of the Shape Builder Tool. The guy has been using Inkscape and Illustrator a bunch before, so I trust his word that it's better than Illustrator's.

Yeah, precisely. I tried this before and it does not have a lot of issue copy+pasting stuff in-between programs as long as no V2 features are present. Had V1 crash when having a Warp Mesh when trying once, for instance.

Keep us updated about your progress on getting it to run.

I think it would be a nice quality of life change if guides were allowed to be recoloured just like the other features available in the Guides window.

I made that report some time ago. The dithering we're talking about is brush specific, so it is not related gradients made by the Gradient Tool. You also probably wouldn't want dithering on every brush, so adding it as a toggle option in the brush editor would be a good idea. At least you have found a solution that works. Nowadays I only work on 16-bit and 32-bit canvases because of this very issue. Luckily Affinity is significantly faster than Photoshop when working with higher colour ranges, so it is not a massive issue anymore. Still, I would very much like to have this fixed.

To me Linked Layers is a must have in Designer. It's the most efficient way of doing complex symmetrical work and layer management. It is just too good of a feature for vector work to just have it be accessible only in Photo.

I remember a dev some years ago mentioning on these forums that he was working on an advanced gradient option in Designer, but it would take some time before it was actually ready. He also mentioned that he could implement the old school way of doing multiple gradients as well, but at the time most people agreed that it is just as well that he focused on fixing the idea he originally planned. So yeah, it is on the radar, but who knows when it will be added.

Agreed. As someone who only sits in Publisher when doing Designer work (I mean seriously, there is literally no point in using Designer if you own Publisher and Photo as well), the only thing missing is the Export Persona. While I would appreciate having access to the other missing Photo Personas as well, the Export Persona is the most important one for me.

That's some wishful thinking if I ever saw it. XD

@CartoonjoshActually, you can change stuff like spacing on the canvas. On Windows you can toggle brush size/hardness to other settings by pressing ctrl+alt+L click on the canvas while using a brush. I agree with you on principle, however.

It frankly doesn't matter. Only thing that needs to be done is to fix the highlighting so it stays on the selected brush on the list, just like any other art program with brush lists. Heck, even Blender with its antiquated brush system works like this. It is just expected behaviour at this point.

Fully agreed. The selected brush should always be highlighted regardless of if you change various settings. The only times I could see this being a problem is when using the Brush Editor, but that could be solved by just having a "Apply to Brush Preset" button that updates your selected brush after being done with the edit. Regular settings like changing brush size/hardness, etc. with normal shortcuts should just work with the highlight on and reset back to standard settings once selecting the brush preset again. Just like any other art program I've used.

V1 will still be available through download on your Affinity account after purchasing V2, right? Would be nice in case there ever were hardware/OS compatibility issues and one would have to install older versions.

Having a company that lasts decades suggests stability to endure both good and bad times. Serif themselves have also said that they are doing fine and I have little reason to distrust them on that. Affinity is not free though? It's easy to be an armchair economist while not making any of the business decisions nor have an overview of their books. Neither of us have any idea how well they are actually doing, but to say that they are making a free product is just plain false.

Yep. Also, I might not have been around Serif for long since I bought Photo back in 2017, but for a company that has been around since the 80s they must be doing something right. I had no clue who they were before Affinity, so their new business plan seems to be working just fine. Just for some anecdotal experiences, as an avid YouTube watcher I have noticed that Affinity has gotten a fair share of attention to the point where more and more channels are discussing and producing Affinity content, which to me is a sign of a healthy community. I don't think we have much to worry about. The future is looking bright.

Well, you basically called the developers incompetent and the company they work for too poor to afford "good" developers, which is another slight towards the employees. It's not that hard to grasp.

How is the current drawing speed and performance on Linux for raster brushes? That to me is going to be a massive deal breaker once I try this myself.

If that is supported it means that once Affinity works properly through stuff like Proton and/or Wine, it is then possible to paint with high precision tablet input, which is a necessity for high quality art. Considering how much progress Valve have been making with SteamOS and Proton, it is probably just a matter of time before Linux is able to run all the software I require to work. This video shows the potential of SteamOS. Once Valve officially release a downloadable desktop version along with proper Nvidia driver support (another hurdle that Nvidia has started to fix with the help of open source drivers being in the works), I will give Linux and Proton a go to see if I can get it to work with my workflow. As it looks like right now, Windows 10 likely will be my last Windows OS considering how utterly atrocious Windows 11 is both from a user experience standpoint and from a security standpoint. The push for ads in their OSes is something I will not tolerate in any paid for retail product.

@1stn00bCool! So, how well does the API for drawing with high precision input work with Affinity? Is Linux able to translate over Windows Ink to something that works, since that's what Affinity supports on Windows?

Question to Linux users, what's the Linux equivalent of Windows Ink/WinTab API for drawing with tablets? How well supported are Wacom tablets?