Frozen Death Knight

You could always just have Affinity tell you that your Studio Preset has been changed and ask you if you want to change it when closing the program. This could also be configured to not show up through a checkbox if you are happy with your current presets and Affinity just simply ignores any change you've made on start-up unless you re-enable the option in the Preferences window (manual saving will of course always work).

Well, the reason I want it is because it makes it a bit easier to create selection patterns with precision. Not to mention it makes using all the tools a little more consistent. I use the selection tools quite a bit when doing artwork, so any amount of extra control is much appreciated. If you only have one source point to draw the selection from the centre it makes it a bit easier to do this stuff shown in the video below. It also allows you to combine the rectangular and elliptical selection tools with better precision (i.e. creating a rectangular/square hole inside of an ellipse/circle selection at the centre or vice versa). Desktop 2020.09.14 - 18.14.04.04.mp4

Very nice first patch! I have a question about this, though. Will you expand this functionality to include the Rectangular Marquee Tool as well? Also, the Crop Tool could have good use of this by allowing you to transform your canvas crops from the centre. ^^ Anyway, looking forward to the Windows build! Can't wait!

Sure, but based off of what info I have gathered, we will not be seeing a Publisher Beta for iPad when 1.9 arrives. Pretty sure the devs would have said something that confirms Publisher for iPad at this point if they had it ready for open user testing. A 1.10 release is more likely if they manage to solve whatever problems they're having with porting it over by next year.

Here are some links.

Odds are that we will be seeing the first Beta available in the next few weeks. Last year we had the 1.8 Beta appear in the last quarter after 1.7 had been released very early in 2019. With 1.8 officially being wrapped up and 1.9 already having lots of teasers earlier in the year, we will for certain be seeing a Beta at least before the year has ended and before Christmas when the devs are away during the holidays (like last year). What is odd however is that one of the devs all the way back in April said that the 1.9 Beta would be released "within the next few weeks" when he announced several 1.9 features as being confirmed. Now it's been several months since then. Maybe the Corona Virus deal delayed things, or did they change priorities by adding additional patches to the 1.8 series? The 1.8.x releases did bring a lot of nice updates like the vastly improved high precision tablet input APIs, so at least I have high hopes for 1.9.

Been reading Spy X Family lately and ended up loving it. Just wanted to make a fun little drawing of the cutest character in the manga, Anya. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/aYgyGq

Just uploaded the brushes. Had a friend over, so took a bit longer than originally planned. At least you have them in one place now. ^-^

All right! Will try to send them over later today. Right now busy making dinner. Just give me a Dropbox link and I'll drop them there when I am done. ^^

Sure, no problem! Well, there is only one brush I have actually changed the name of from the Affinity section and that one was just adding "(Subsurf Scattering)" to the brush name "Scatter Chalk". All other brushes that share the same name as the Affinity versions are completely unaltered from their original brush packages, names and all. All round, square, and soft brushes were made by me. The beginning section and bottom section are of my own creation with a couple in the middle section also being mine. The rest are Affinity brushes. If you want I could compile all of the Affinity brushes into a single file and separate them from my own collection to make it a bit easier check each of them.

I think clipping feels better after that update, yeah. However, one point of criticism that I hope you guys over at Serif will consider for a future release is that you add better indicators for when you are doing a clipping action or some other thing. For instance, instead of the highlight being the regular blue colour when doing a clipping layer action it is instead shown in a different colour; i.e green or yellow (just to take colour blindness into account). Would make it a lot easier to notice what kind of action you are taking at a glance. Alternatively you do it like Photoshop by changing the cursor icons for those types of actions. Considering the amount of modifier shortcuts there are for the Layers panel (i.e. alt clicking the thumbnail to isolate it), you could make several icons for the cursor indicating what is going on. Would be a fantastic quality of life change.

You were the one who brought up other filters like adjustments in the first place, so don't pin that one on me. <.< I don't really agree. I want non-destructive filters for Designer that retain the vectors on both the canvas and when exporting, since that is what is actually missing. Adding the Photo filters feels like just a band-aid to a problem that isn't really solved because of the raster problem still persisting both on the canvas and on export. Also, when both features are in the same program you will begin getting UI and UX problems where you have to differentiate non-destructive vector filters with raster filters when they perform basically the same function except one rasterizes and one doesn't. Not to mention that the vector version can actually be used in both vector and raster work because you can rasterize on export or through the rasterize operators, thus making the addition of Photo filters even more pointless.

You're right in that regard. However, the vector shapes still remain as vectors in the program. Ran multiple tests and all of them came out with the vectors still looking like vectors. The Photo filters don't even achieve that since they all come out looking heavily rasterized on the canvas. If it would be possible to fix the rasterization of the adjustments when exporting I would consider that another feature request which I would be all onboard with.

But they do not rasterize your vectors... I get that people want non-destructive filters for Designer and I think as well that they should be added asap, but it still doesn't change that Designer needs non-destructive vector tools and filters for a vector program, not raster.

Because the Photo filters rasterize your vector art, that's why. Designer doesn't have any non-destructive transformation filters or tools (except for the Move Tool in some aspects) like Photo and the ones that exist in Photo are not as plenty as in Photoshop. If you only want to do art then the rasterizing aspect of the Photo filters may not be a big deal, but if you want to work with vectors only you will not find them very useful. Especially since there is no tool to convert pixels to vectors in Designer yet. They are not, ahem, designed for Designer.

Great to hear! I uploaded the current version just now. Looking forward to sharing it to the public once everything is in order. ^-^

Not a very big deal, but I noticed that when I happened to have the Preferences window open while adding tools back on the Toolbar that I couldn't make them connect to the shelves properly. Moving away the window behind the Toolbar did solve the problem, but it would probably be a good idea to log anyway. Desktop 2020.08.30 - 21.35.32.02.mp4

Can ask him after I get an answer from the devs if needed. I am in no real hurry to release it, since I might change the contents.

Don't know if I have the time to do that right now. Plus, I would rather do it when 1.9 comes out, since you will then be able to create your custom brushes directly from the canvas. Feels like kind of a waste without that feature in place.

All right! At least it's good you figured out what was causing it. I actually use a Cintiq as a dual monitor and I don't experience this problem for some reason. Calibrating the pen solved the problem for me at least when I began using Affinity.

Well, there are in fact multiple changes I want to see for brush management in Affinity that would help with that: 1) Be able to sort your brush categories. It feels bad having to scroll to the bottom to access your personal and bought brushes. On Windows this is even worse since Affinity does not remember which category was open last time on start-up. However, on Mac this works for some reason. 2) Folders. Being able to sort your brushes into folders with names would make it so easy to manage brushes per tool and purpose. 3) R click for brushes and erasers to access the brush list. More convenient than having the Brushes panel always shown. 4) Affinity needs to remember which brush you picked even after changing your brush size/hardness, etc. Right now the Brushes panel deselects your picked brush after doing something as simple as changing the brush size, so changing that would be much appreciated. 5) Be able to create your own brushes by selecting things on the canvas like in Photoshop, since regardless of what basic brushes you make you will eventually have to make your own for specific effects once you get more advanced. This is however confirmed for 1.9. I don't think there is much that is inheritenly wrong with the installed brushes with the exceptions being the Basic category with round brushes that have poor defaults, especially the smooth brushes (also it lacks any default square brushes which are a cool addition that Photoshop lacks). If the devs want to take a look at my round brushes settings and recreate them they are free to do so, since they are really only there to help emulate the typical Photoshop experience. My starter pack is simply meant to make things easier for newcomers that are familiar with Photoshop to jump into Affinity without too many hiccups as well as provide some flavourful tools to add some variety into your paintings. Nothing more, nothing less.

Because not all of them are installed brushes and some people prefer to have one list rather than multiple ones (I do wish Affinity had brush folders for additional brush management like in Photoshop however). I don't even use the majority of the brushes packaged into Affinity, so just having a smaller list of the same brushes is a decent starting point without having to manually search every brush category. Also, many of them are tools specific and some are duplicates because they are used for different purposes. Right now there are 3 Smudge Tool brushes, 2 Sponge Brushes, and 2 Pixel Brushes (for those who like to work with pixel art) just to name a few examples.

Yeah, those were the ones I was talking about. Where can I find those again? I remember there was one brush I absolutely loved for sketching but I forgot to add it to my personal collection before everything changed.

The way I recall it, there were DAUB brushes packaged into Affinity a couple of versions ago. Don't know what exactly happened to those, but I happened to have a couple of them at least. I'd rather get an answer from Serif for confirmation on what is and isn't okay here since they made all the programs and added these brushes. Either way, the DAUB brushes are like 2 or 3 at most and can be easily removed for the final version.

@Dan C Thanks for answering back! I hope people will enjoy it once I am done. : ) The categories I am currently looking at are a couple each from Acrylics, Dry Media, Markers, Watercolours, DAUBs, and Pencils (tried to check all the categories to make sure where they came from). I have picked a small minority from each section, so they are a pretty condensed version of the currently available brushes. The amount of Affinity brushes are somewhere around 20-25 out of 69 in the current version of the brush pack. Most of the brushes are actually handmade that I used to have in Photoshop back in the day and are typical standard brushes with settings that don't require lots of tinkering. The Affinity brushes in question are there to help adding a bit extra texture to break up the typical monotony of standard digital brushes like the round and square brushes. I would have made them myself if I could create brushes from a canvas selection in Photo, but I have to wait till 1.9 for that since it was a confirmed feature. It just takes too long to do in the current version, which is why I came here to ask about using the built in packages. ^-^