Frozen Death Knight

Forgot to add sticky settings to that feedback. I use some specific settings for some tools that support sticky settings that get remembered on start-up, so having Studio Presets remember the sticky settings would be another fantastic feature! You would even be allowed to customise your sticky settings based on individual presets, thus making it extra convenient when doing very specific types of work. ^^

You're welcome! ^^ While we are on the topic of the Studio Presets Manager, it would be nice if you could change the order of the presets in the manager. Just realised that you can't drag and drop an item in the list. Then it would be extra sweet if you could export/import your presets elsewhere so you can add them to another PC with Affinity installed. Would make things a lot easier to save your settings in case of some error causing you to reset your program/-s than having to manually recreate everything again.

Wasn't able to find a way to save over one of my presets after it had been saved in the Studio Presets Manager. Had to delete and save it again. Will that be added later? Also, it would be nice if you were able to just quickly switch between presets without having to press Okay every time you select one. Maybe add that as a checkbox option in the Studio Presets Manager? EDIT: Found more problems. You don't have Add Presets... in the Studio Presets Manager as a button, which makes it a bit inconvenient when using the feature. I also found two bugs. If you have the Studio Presets Manager open when you save your presets with Add Presets..., then the manager doesn't update the list. It will not update until you close the manager and reopen it. You can also open up more than one Studio Presets Manager panel, which will show two completely different lists since one of them hasn't updated properly. This is possible even without replicating the first bug, however.

I personally would not have any issues with paying the full price for 2.0 depending on the features that it will launch with. That said, it is in everyone's best interest that customers upgrade, and discounts for older customers are a way to do that. It helps create customer loyalty for those early adopters and it gives incentive to move over just not miss out. I am sure that Serif already have their business model figured out. Really have no complaints regarding their pricing model, so they just can keep doing what they are already doing.

I was actually able to save the bug in a document that the devs can use to replicate. Bug.afphoto Check the History panel as well. There are also corrupted history thumbnails that show the problem.

Been trying the latest Beta and for the most part, hardware acceleration actually works! Massive brushes are significantly faster than in 1.8.5. Haven't been able to get my recording software to work, but I noticed significant speed boosts with 3k+ pixel sized brushes, which are practically impossible to use in older versions of Affinity. One problem I have however encountered is that there is some start-up lag happening at the beginning of your brush strokes, so if you do multiple brush strokes in rapid successions Affinity loses its more consistent performance like when OpenCL is turned off. However, I have found a pretty program breaking bug when I attempted to do multiple strokes in rapid succession. Affinity loses pixel information in square like patterns on some brush strokes, creating artefacts like these (no, I did not erase anything): I tried to press undo to regain that lost canvas data, but it was permanently gone (of some reason the lost data reappears in some undo strokes but they remove the other data in some inverted pattern). Pretty important that this issue gets sorted out before the Beta ends, since this is a very serious bug.

"Bake" is actually pretty common term in the 3D business where you deal with textures and the like, so there is at least some precedent in other softwares when using the term. Baking in the details created from the Contour Tool into the actual model does make some logical sense here. That said, there might be a more suitable name for it. Personally I think the operator has a lot in common with Expand Stroke, so maybe rename it to "Expand Shape/Contour" instead as a way to explain both features?

Well, I said I agree. We just need to bring these issues to the devs and over time Affinity will become more fluid in terms of workflow. I have at least got a lot more positive towards working with Affinity with 1.7 and 1.8 addressing some really serious problem areas, especially in regards to Photo. 1.9 is already looking really promising, but I will keep pushing for certain UX design improvements during the feedback session. That said, a workaround I found regarding fill layers was adding it as a keyboard shortcut and as a regular asset. Not exactly ideal, but it works for now. I feel like things are flowing much better after I jumped into the keymap and explored what kind of shortcuts I needed the most. From my artist point of view I think Photo is like 90-95% there with the missing pieces being mostly bugs and little annoyances like the fill layers problem.

New Fill Layer is not that hard to find. However, I also have suggested that New Fill Layer should be a button at the bottom of the Layers panel as well as adding it as an operator in the R click menu the same way as the New Pixel Layer operator. This feature is so darn useful (imo I think that fill layers in Photo are better than the ones in Photoshop), so it is just a shame that it has to be hidden away in the top menu when it should be always available directly in the Layers panel.

Yeah, but since I use completely different brushes when painting and erasing, it wouldn't be as useful to me. If it still used your custom picked eraser brush from the tool instead of the currently used brush, I could see this being a lot more useful.

Glad you noticed! Thank you!

It doesn't exist, I'm afraid. I would suggest downloading Inkscape which is a completely free open source vector program. It has that feature, so it is an okay workaround if you don't want to spend extra money until Serif decides to add it.

No problem! Always nice getting constructive criticism. Glad you liked it! In regards to my own thought process, I wanted to add a bit of discomfort into the piece by giving her an unsettling expression, so I added some extra strain in her neck muscles to sell the intensity. Will have that in mind for other pieces I make in the future. Thanks for commenting! ^^

Hard to say when we don't know any details on how the site measures these metrics. The metrics also leave me a bit puzzled regarding some of the softwares mentioned. Honestly surprised by how few companies are using the industry standard 3D softwares like Maya, ZBrush, and Max, just to name a few. I get that Photoshop and Illustrator are very popular because of how many areas it is used for in various industries, but the rest of the metrics either seem outdated or the criteria are being measured in a way that makes me question their validity.

It most likely is. However, just like all the other requests they have received and responded to over the years, it will likely take some years before we see it come into fruition. For instance, the devs said during the 1.7 Beta period early last year that GPU acceleration was being worked on for Windows, and only now in 1.9 do we get to see the results of that work with last week's Beta build. You might convince the devs that this feature is important enough to get pushed to the top of the priority list, but with all the other stickied Publisher threads talking about missing features, my guess is that at least a couple of them will have priority over this one, especially if there is less complexity to fixing those problems over this one. You might get it sooner, or later. I seriously doubt they would refuse putting the feature in when it is in everyone's best interest that Affinity has nearly matching functionality with its Adobe counterparts.

@Dan CHey! Just wanted to ask about the progress on that review of the brushes you mentioned. ^^

Thanks! ^-^

Just had the desire to freehand paint something and see where it got me. Pretty happy with the final results considering the amount of time and effort put into it. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/48yEqq

I recall them mentioning before they scrapped the 1.x series roadmap that convert raster to vector would be a feature for version 2. Personally I hope it is a 1.x feature, but I wouldn't mind paying for it considering how cheap the programs are and hopefully there are other significant workflow improvements packaged in with the 2.x series to justify jumping over. However, until then I can see them making bug fixes and UX improvements while fixing core issues with the software. 1.7 for Photo brought us stuff like a better brush engine and GPU acceleration for Macs. 1.8 brought us improvements to line quality on Windows, embedded layers improvements, and document/template presets. 1.9 will bring Windows users GPU acceleration, workspace presets, and hopefully other UX improvements to their core tools. Photo in particular I don't really need a lot of brand new fancy tools, just fixes to already existing tools and features in the form of better shortcuts, better access to already existing features through menus and such (aka UX design), and of course bug fixes. I personally can't wait till they improve the Colour Picker Tool/colour picking in general, Smudge Tool, Sponge Tool, merge and rasterize operators, Freehand Selection Tool, and general brush and layers management, Windows in particular (so many Windows specific bugs). Last year the devs mentioned that we will be getting updates for at least some more years before the jump to 2.0. My personal guess is that it is going to happen in about 2-4 years from now with at least 3 more major updates.

Agree with @walt.farrell. Certain things will always have some complexity to it that are not necessarily intuitive, but for advanced users it will open up possibilities that will push your work further which they can then teach beginners on how to use in their own work. Trying to be as intuitive as possible should of course be strived for, but sometimes unorthodox methods will have to be taught through practice and discovery, which can then be shared to hopefully become common knowledge. For instance, for the longest time I never used the Channels panel when painting with very few exceptions. This was simply because it wasn't exactly intuitive to use after years of barely even using the Channels panel inside Photoshop. However, when I discovered that you could hide/unhide and activate/deactivate editing of all RGBA channels in any combination you like in Affinity Photo (something that is a lot more limited in Photoshop and in some cases non-existent like editing/locking the alpha channel globally for every single layer), it unlocked possibilities I never could have dreamed of. Now I can't even imagine not having this feature available when painting. Bear in mind that I have been an advanced Photoshop user with a very good understanding of several features and functions, so being faced with a new kind of workflow like this was a delight since I was willing to explore beyond my own expectations of what I thought was intuitive design.

I think in the long run that Serif should invest in their own platform manager which deals with the updates rather than having each program tell you when there is an update available. Doesn't have to be very complex, just designed well enough where you can manage all your installs, including Betas, under one umbrella, therefore eliminating any need to have these sort of pop-ups. Would also make it easier to check all the free assets Serif has given users over the years as well. Not to mention patch notes. I don't expect them to have this kind of infrastructure until maybe version 2 or 3. The current system works for now, but anything that isn't what I mentioned in the beginning paragraph will just be band-aids until that happens.

@benrymndAre you referring to Photo or Designer? Pixel brush as in the Pixel Tool in Affinity Photo, or do you mean just a pixel brush vs a vector brush in Designer? What happens when you use the brush you want to use? What's the name of the brush category and the brush in the Brushes panel?

Same here. One possibility I can think of is that they have other plans for shortcut features down the road and left it vacant for that. Or they wanted users to get used to using more than one modifier since there are other tools that use ctrl+alt as well like the Freehand Selection Tool which they also changed in the same Beta along with the other selection tools. Still, it's just speculation until the devs say something about their reasoning.

The new hotkey is a lot better than the old one, especially for tablet users, but I can understand the confusion regarding it being ctrl+alt+L click instead of just ctrl+L click for extra clarity. It is however not that complicated to do with a keyboard either (there are several keybinds that combine modifiers like ctrl+shift+Z to redo, etc.), so it isn't really the disaster you make it out to be when compared to the old one, which was in fact impossible to use on certain tablets with no R click functionality. At the very least it was super inconvenient to use since pressing R click+L click with my Wacom pen was super awkward. I do hope however that the devs will start adding features to fill those empty modifier spots like ctrl+L click and normal R click. Would be nice changing your brush opacity and flow for brushes on ctrl+L click as a separate feature from the current ctrl+alt+L click command. You could also add tool specific settings to ctrl+L click like the Smudge Tool having flow and strength as tool settings instead of opacity and flow that the Brush Tool uses. R click would greatly benefit from having the brush manager open up as a pop-up screen like Photoshop does.

I do hope the devs over at Serif will consider this feature for the 1.x series. It's one of those things that I as a raster artist can't really live without. Currently I use Inkscape to compensate for this shortcoming in Affinity, but it would improve the workflow and overall value of Affinity Designer immensely from this single feature for what I like to do with vector art (i.e. converting my sketch drawings into something that can be reused to save a lot of time for a finished product).