Frozen Death Knight

Ah, that makes sense.

I think there has been a misunderstanding here. Just because it is that way on Mac or Windows (Windows has L click+R click for "Add" instead) doesn't change my stance on that I think it should be shift for "Add" and ctrl toggle for "Polygonal Lasso". I am saying that I want it to be that way, not that it currently is that way. Also, I made it clear in previous posts that I am a Windows user, even going so far as calling the modifier ctrl and not cmd (plus, how can I be envious of Mac users having GPU acceleration if I am also a Mac user?).

In the latest Beta version on Windows it works just like that, so it is not the other way around as you stated. Unless you are using the live version only (haven't used that one in ages, so have no clue how it works there)? Yes, Affinity Photo is still lacking stuff, as I stated. I am using AP for Beta testing so I can give feedback to the developers to get the software to a state where it is more suited for professional artists. I just made a compilation of improvements in 1.7 that were art related to the guy asking for them. 1.7 makes painting at least functionial, but we're still lacking stuff like brush dithering to fix this issue, GPU acceleration (Windows), creating a new brush from selection on a canvas (aka "Define Brush Preset" in Photoshop), more consistency with how modifiers behave for each tool that should have similar controls, and controls that work with a tablet (not this having to hold down R click and L click at the same time nonsense). If these core problems are solved, AP will be usable for professionals. Of course there are more stuff that can be done, but these things are the bare minimum as I see it.

Thanks for letting me know (had no idea that holding down both did that). However, it's not really much of an option for me who uses a tablet to draw, as you said (also doesn't help that just holding down R click to add to selection doesn't work). I can do some specific Wacom settings to make it function, but it seems a little bit backwards having to hold down both the L and R mouse buttons to do what one modifier key could do. Same could really be said about holding down alt+L click+R click to change brush size and hardness/softness with the Brush tool. These controls are not really made for pen and tablet use.

I would still put it as shift instead of cmd/ctrl, for the simple reason that shift in many other softwares are additive. I'd rather stick to the standard in this particular case. After doing some quick testing, I also think that using the "Polygonal Lasso" setting should be toggable using ctrl/cmd so you don't need to hold the modifier key down while using shift and alt to add/remove parts of your selection. Holding down the current shift modifier for using it works, but I could see it getting a little uncomfortable while doing long sessions of detailed selections with the "Polygonal Lasso".

Here's a list in no particular order: Straight horizontal and vertical lines can now be done using shift. A long requested feature that many artists use. Mirroring tools, which help speed up workflow for symmetrical work, and allow you to create some interesting shapes for drawing. (MAC ONLY) GPU acceleration, which speeds up the brush engine to allow painting on very large canvases with large brushes (1000px+ large) without much input delay if you have a strong graphics card (also speeds things up a bit on lower end machines). This also opens up possibilities to add features like rotating your canvas in 360 degrees down the line. On Windows we will have to wait for this feature (which is why I am so envious), but it is in the works, so hopefully it will be out sooner rather than later. Brush settings now support "Sub Brushes", which in Photoshop is called "Dual Brushes". It allows you to add multiple brushes onto another brush, allowing for new types of brushes to exist. Texture settings for brushes got some improvements too, like being able to sequence textures together instead of just randomly. You can do stuff like creating better looking chain brushes, complex texture sequences brushes, alphabetical order brushes, number brushes, and more. The colour picker had a bug fixed that caused it to not reliably pick up the correct colour from the canvas while using alt on a brush. Now it simply works as it should. Some minor quality of life improvements with context sensititve right click menus like in the "Layers" panel. It is still missing stuff, like "Merge Selected" and "New Fill Layer", but it's a bit more useful now, with less need to go to the header menu bar to find what you seek. The Sponge tool was previously completely unusable because of how ugly the results looked. Now if you want to use it to increase/decrease saturation of your colours, you can. A few adjustment layers got improved over the legacy versions, which help pretty much any artist who uses them to fine adjust stuff like contrast, saturation, hue, and more (I use them a lot, so I appreciate these improvements quite a bit). They also did general performance improvements of the brushes, but I haven't really compared and contrasted with how it used to be in 1.6, so it's a bit hard to say at the moment. There are probably stuff I missed, but these improvements are fairly substantial. AP is still missing stuff that it needs before I would consider it a proper replacement of Photoshop for artists, but many significant steps were taken during this Beta to get it in that direction. Hopefully the developers will keep checking off stuff on my list of improvements I made during the course of 1.7 testing in the coming Betas.

Congratulations! Been looking forward to this release quite a bit. Will this only launch for Mac users next week, or is it also for Windows? Anyway, some pretty solid features were added in 1.7, and the software is going in the right direction. Still missing a few core features I need for painting, but this release does address quite a few of the issues I had with the program that will improve the painting experience immensely. Now, time to look ahead into the future. Very much looking forward to when GPU acceleration is coming to Windows as well (I am so envious of you Mac users right now).

The problem with having it always set to "New" is that you can't use a modifier to add new parts to the selection while using that mode. In Photoshop you add to your selection by pressing down shift, which is a kind of a big deal for us painters who use the selection tool to block out shapes, while using the shift and alt modifiers to fine adjust our selections. My only workaround to this in previous versions of AP was to always set it to "Add", but now when that is no longer an option, I am stuck with having to go into the menu every time the tool resets to set it back to a setting that makes the tool functional for my type of work. This to me is a bit of a regression, which could all be fixed if you added a modifier key that will add to the selection. Right now shift switches to straight lines selection, which I think should be on ctrl instead, and "Add" should be on shift. Fix this and I will be more than happy.

Feels a bit too vague considering that the indicator is on top of where you would start typing the name of the layer. There is also the issue of the indicator disappearing when you have a long name for said layer, making it less useful as a result. Here's and example image:

Desktop 2019.05.31 - 18.57.07.02.mp4 As seen in the video, using the lasso tool and trying to cut out a piece of the image didn't work until I used rasterize on the screenshot. If this is intentional, I feel that there should be some sort of indicator that the image can't be edited like other layers.

They actually are working on GPU acceleration for Windows (see link). It seems however that GPU acceleration is a lot harder to implement on Windows, which to me isn't too surprising considering how open PC systems are over Macs. I know it sucks having to wait (would be a pretty big upgrade for me when I paint actually), but all we can do is have some patience and wait for the developers to figure out a solution. If it manages to come out this year I would be more than thrilled.

Made this quick drawing in AP during April Fools to surprise a friend of mine on Twitter. The character is someone called prince Franz from an animated television series my friend used to watch as a child.

@Chris B Hey again! It's been a bit more than month now since last we spoke, so I wanted to contact you again to see if you had any more information to share about the issue we discussed. Did you and the developer come to some sort of conclusion? Is this issue going to be hard to fix before the official 1.7 release, and if so, within what estimated time frame can we expect it to arrive? Thanks!

Agreed. It doesn't help that because of all the new symmetry features being added, the tool bar is getting so full of stuff that the Protect Transparency check box is being hidden away far in the right corner on 1080p screens. I lock transparency fairly often, so it would be a nice quality of life change for me if it got changed.

1. Better R click shortcuts to stuff that already exist inside Affinity (i.e. merge selected should be in the R click menu when interacting with layers). 2. Quality of life improvements, like being able to alt+drag layers to duplicate them like it works in Photoshop. Another would be the ability to flip/rotate individual layers instead of the entire canvas, as well as making the new symmetry tool have a reset position to center of canvas option (could make it so that double clicking the square shape actually resets the position back to default or using any of the modification keys when clicking on it). 3. More consistency across tools regarding specific modification keys. For instance, you can use ctrl on any of the shape tools to be able to transform each from the center of the shape. However, none of the marquee tools or the crop tool is able to use ctrl to transform the shape from the center, which is how it works in Photoshop as well. I do have a 4th one as well, but since I don't know how complicated it is to actually fix, I will just briefly mention it. Smoother transparency transitions for soft brush strokes on 8-bit canvases, so that the quality matches Photoshop 8-bit. There are a few issues there that make painting in Affinity not so ideal, so any fix to this will make my day.

Okay, thanks for the info! I am looking forward to your reply about that then.

@Chris B Hey, I'm back with a file! Halo Soft Brush Artifacts.afphoto I double checked if I had wet edges active, and it wasn't activated in the original screenshot. Here's some additional info about the file, my hardware, and AP settings if it is of any help: - The ICC profile used was sRGB IEC61966-2.1 and an RGB/8 canvas. - I run Windows 10 64-bit with an Nvidia Geforce GTX 980 graphics card, 32 GB DDR3 RAM, and an Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz CPU. - My monitor/tablet is a Wacom Cintiq 13" HD with standard monitor settings. - The brush used was a standard soft brush in the Basic folder in the Brushes panel, with Accumulation Jitter set to Pressure at 100% (as mentioned earlier, no wet edges activated). Hope this helps! ^^

All right, will be back later today with the file!

The feature to draw straight horizontal and vertical lines got added in a few builds ago in the 1.7 Beta by holding down shift when drawing (at least I know it works on Windows). It works just like it does in Photoshop. Should probably put this topic to rest now.

Okay! That screenshot of yours in AP looks better than what I can get on my home desktop. Maybe I should post an actual file so you can check if there are any issues with how I set up the document or if it is a monitor issue on my end? I don't have it right now, but once I get home I will post it.

I am pretty sure I didn't have wet edges enabled when I did this test (still, I will have to double check once I get home from work). Been trying to solve it on my own, but to no avail. The monitor I used was my Wacom Cintiq 13 inch HD screen with default settings, so that can be safely ruled out, since this problem is unique for Affinity Photo based on personal testing with other non-Affinity software on the same screen. Document profile can possibly be the culprit, but I haven't really fiddled with it much and just use the standard one when creating a new document. What settings did you use when testing?

I wanted to bring this issue some attention to the developers regarding soft brushes creating uneven gradients that are jagged between each value. The only way I have been able to find a fix to this is by switching the canvas to 16-bit mode (I work with RGB), but this also takes up a lot of resources, which can be quite taxing when I work on canvases at 6000 pixels or more. Here is an image comparing two gradients I painted with the exact same brush I use, but one was drawn while using 16-bit and the other with 8-bit. This particular problem does not exist in Photoshop. In Photoshop you don't have to work with 16-bit canvases to create the smoother gradients like in the example image from Affinity Photo. Then there is another issue with painting with soft brushes; the halos. While it isn't completely apparent in the above example image, when you softly apply your brush stroke to the canvas, the problem becomes way more apparent: This, along with the 8-bit issues, make soft brush painting less than ideal at times. Using blurs and other techniques can help fixing some of the more serious problem areas in your paintings, but that shouldn't really be needed as far as I'm concerned. I don't know what is causing this problem, but I do hope we can see a proper fix in at least the forseeable future. Fixing issues like these will go a long way in making me 100% recommend Affinity products to other people (still recommending it, but I always have to bring up little issues like these that can make it tougher to convince people).

I compared the feature with how it works in Photoshop, and it works the same way as you described in that program. Not much of an issue for me who is used to those controls. Also, the reason shift is using "continue last stroke" when making lines is so you can make straight lines while clicking on points on a canvas to make sure the dots get connected. Maybe that command could be changed to ctrl while keeping horizontal and vertical straight lines on shift, but personally I hope to see the concept evolve to where Affinity has a ruler system that can make straight lines while measuring things like distance and angles from 0 to 180 degrees, as well as allowing other types of measurements. To the developers I would suggest taking inspiration from programs like Lazy Nezumi Pro that has a pretty complex perspective measuring system for drawing, or just simply assist the add-on developer for Lazy Nezumi to add direct support to all Affinity products.

I just tried using the brush tool in the new beta build and noticed that pressing shift now produces straight lines horizontally and vertically. Didn't notice this change in the patch notes, so I wanted to ask fellow beta users if they are able to replicate this to confirm it functioning the same for the rest of you. Anyway, if my eyes don't deceive me, thanks a lot Affinity team for adding this in! I know a lot of other artists who will be super happy with this feature!

Okay! I sure hope so, since it's a fairly important part of my workflow in Photoshop. ^-^