Frozen Death Knight

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. ^-^

@belltype Sounds to me like you haven't calibrated your pen. Go to Wacom Tablet Properties -> Pro Pen -> Photo -> Calibrate -> Calibrate... and you will be able to fix the cursor after following the instructions.

It is going to get added in 1.9 according to the devs, so we just have to wait for the Beta.

Thanks a lot! I will!

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/WKdLQv Was practicing different mediums by mixing 3D sculpting and Greasepencil in Blender and then finally finishing it with a 2D paintover inside Affinity Photo. Was a lot fun! Here is the original Blender version before the paintover for those who are curious.

There are only a couple of businesses I would like to see Serif tackle with their software line-up; animation by adding a timeline for Designer and Photo (vector animation for UI/UX design like After Effects, pixel art animation, and standard 2D animation clean-up), 3D editing of textures (which they are already working on), and a DAM just to make make for a stronger image editing suite. Most of these do not require a brand new program to address. The last thing I want to see is Serif trying to emulate Adobe's business model of trying to tackle every single creative business under the sun. Frankly I don't think Adobe has been very successful at this considering how much legacy stuff that exist in their softwares and that they keep losing ground to other competitors that specialise at specific needs. Premiere Pro pretty much lost out to Davinci Resolve for instance. There are tons of ways to design and build websites nowadays, so you are hardly stuck with Adobe. Flash/Animate is kind of amazing because how much that software fell from grace when it used to dominate. Etc., etc. Heck, even Photoshop lost out to competitors in the 3D texturing business despite being the hub for 3D texturing back in the day, and even when they bought out Substance Painter last year they are very soon facing competition from free alternatives like Quixel Mixer and ArmorPaint. If Affinity is able to handle 3D texturing well enough you could also replace Photoshop as the go to software for dealing with final retouches at the end of a 3D texturing workflow. Still, the focus Serif should have above all of these is the core features and tools for the current line-up. Affinity has so much room to grow without creating a single new program for the next 5-10 years if so desired. I hope the devs specialise on these 3 core programs for a long time, since there are plenty of other programs you can replace the rest of Adobe's suite with. You can't however fully replace Photoshop, you can't fully replace Illustrator, and you can't fully replace InDesign. I want that to change.

I was in the process of wanting to make a free to use brush package of my most used brushes in an attempt to make it easier for other artists to jump into Affinity. However, some of them are from the brush packages already inside Affinity, so I wanted to ask and make sure if it's okay for me to distribute them for free like in the Resources section on these forums. There are quite a lot of really nice brushes I have come to use in nearly every project, so I felt like taking some of the best ones and distributing them in a more condensed version would be something people would appreciate.

Yeah, they really need to fix those. Though, I do hope that a shape builder tool arrives shortly after those are fixed. Would make for a good one-two combo.

But booleans are the system that runs a shape builder tool in the first place. Asking to remove them is like asking to remove the engine from a car in an attempt to drive. 🙃