Frozen Death Knight

Question. Are the rotation tools supposed to make the image grainy? Tried using it on a file and all the clean silhouettes became very grainy with very strange anti-aliasing. The problem became increasingly worse the further out you zoomed. Desktop 2020.10.04 - 17.06.57.04.mp4 Also, would it be possible to create a more tablet friendly version of these shortcuts as well? Sadly I can't scroll with my tablet pen nor do so with the buttons I have available. Same could be said about wanting to zoom with ctrl+scroll wheel. I only have access to Mid click and the modifiers. I know a lot of artists that would love to have direct access to these new rotation tools. Would you consider adding the ability to scroll up and down with mid click by dragging up and down on the canvas when using modifiers as to not interfere with Mid click to pan? Thanks!

Sure, but one thing that should also be considered is that unless the devs want to create another presets manager just to handle the toolbar and such, it would be more practical if down the line that the current Studio Presets is able to handle things like the main program window location and the toolbar location. Extra bonus points if it could even save what your toolbar looks like by having it specialised towards very specific types of work (i.e. painting tools only, photo retouching only, etc.). Then when the devs decide to ship Affinity with some presets already packaged in for convenience they can custom tailor whatever user experience they desire to cater to different types of users.

@Chris J Had some more time to test the Beta again and I think I found another bug, or at least an inconsistent element regarding Studio Presets. Studio Presets do not actually affect the placement of the toolbar with all the tool icons when it is undocked from its regular place on the left side of the Affinity window. I was trying to create two identical presets that would work on two separate screens; my main screen and my Cintiq screen. So far I have managed to get all the regular panels to move, but I still have to manually move the normal toolbar despite it having a lot of the same panel like qualities like being able to get docked and undocked. I don't really expect the toolbar contents to necessarily change if it is considered a "sticky setting" that was previously mentioned in this discussion, but I at least would appreciate if it was possible to take the toolbar position into account when finalising the design of Studio Presets. As a sidenote, would it be possible to add an option to have Studio Presets affect the entire Affinity window as well? For instance, going back to my previous example of my Cintiq and main screen when dual screening, it would be nice if you could add an option to take into account your entire window position for certain presets while ignoring it for others. This way your entire canvas moves to the screen you want to work with with zero needs to move anything in place. Might be wishful thinking, but I just wanted to throw the idea out there at least. ^^

Yeah! There is actually a lot of space in the UI next to the current Personas which you can customise at your leisure. I was actually kind of hoping that when Affinity got symmetry painting that that UI space would be used to expose symmetry up there just next to.the Snapping buttons. Would be nice if the presets were at least a bit more exposed considering how useful they are. ^-^

Okay, thanks for the heads up! Currently in the middle of studying for a course in programming, but I will post the brush pack eventually with these criteria as requested. Hopefully some time this weekend. Thanks again for taking the time to help with this! I appreciate it. ^-^ Btw, when I give credit, would this comment be all right with you? "This brush pack has been approved and endorsed by the original owners of the brushes I picked out from their hand tailored collections. Credit for these brushes go to the Serif team behind the Affinity Suite and Paolo Limoncelli who created the DAUB Brushes. Thanks for your support!" If you have any comments about something I should change with the bold text above, just give me a message and I'll change it for the final post. ^^

Oh. Well, it's at least something that would be nice if you could export/import the settings in some way as a file. Doesn't have to be tied to Studio Presets if it means that it overcomplicates things for development. The reason I want to be able to export/import as many user preferences as possible is because it has happened on multiple occassions that my settings have randomly resetted without me realising what triggered it, so being able to quickly restore them by saving this stuff externally would be much appreciated. ^^

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 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 its 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, and 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.