Kuttyjoe

The funny thing is, I was begging Adobe to implement the level of image based brushes that were in Serif DrawPlus.  Adobe implemented a very basic level of image brushes a few years back that is practically unusable and they've never revisited it.  I keep DrawPlus around just for the image brushes.  Both image and true vector brushes have advantages, but one big disadvantage of the true vector brush is that they can be so complicated that they are too slow to use.  If I convert one of those to an image based brush for use in DrawPlus, it is able to work smoothly.  Affinity Designer of course also has a lot of catching up to do to match the brushes in DrawPlus but that's not even on a roadmap so I don't expect that to happen.  For now, the best image brush game in town is sadly in two discontinued programs!  DrawPlus and Microsoft's Expression Design.

The solution is like Adobe Illustrator.  A regular layer is like  a parent layer.  All the objects you draw will fall on that layer until you decide to make a new one.  You can tip the layer down and see all of the sub layers, one for each object.  After hours of work, I have maybe 3 or 5 layers.  No scrolling unless I decide to tip a layer and see all of the sub layers.  Having it expand constantly with no control over it must suit some kind of work flow that I don't know about.

I do think so indeed - There's a collective clamoring from the customer base stretching back 5+ years for Serif to add what are considered basic tools and features found in other vector programs. Taking 5+ years to implement basic vector tools and features is not a good look for Serif.  Expecting users to go pull up years old threads to add yet another request to the years long list is not realistic. There's no good reason for multi-year long threads all asking for the same thing

I believe that Alfred’s single use of an exclamation point in this thread was simply in good cheer.
I read it more as a friendly “ha” at the end of the sentence in a conversation between two people agreeing on a point, rather than a raising of voice in anger.
The rest of Alfred’s first post in the thread certainly reads like he agrees with you, but would like other things ‘fixed’ first, rather than being against you.
I think you may have taken what he wrote in a bit more serious and adversarial way than he intended.

The solution is like Adobe Illustrator.  A regular layer is like  a parent layer.  All the objects you draw will fall on that layer until you decide to make a new one.  You can tip the layer down and see all of the sub layers, one for each object.  After hours of work, I have maybe 3 or 5 layers.  No scrolling unless I decide to tip a layer and see all of the sub layers.  Having it expand constantly with no control over it must suit some kind of work flow that I don't know about.

Yeah I was kind of alluding to the fact that the brush stroke is kinda sorta selected, but not in a way that is actually useful.  If you hold the option key, you can see the path and nodes on the brush stroke. That would seem to indicate that it is indeed selected.  But in order to act on that selection, like change the brush type on that line, you have to keep holding the option key.  Which is weird.
 
Regarding synchronizing defaults, I don't really see how that relates to what I've said.  It's not something you can do on the fly while drawing or painting.  With Serif DrawPlus, it's like dipping a brush in ink and immediately acquiring that ink color and making the next stroke.  Designer doesn't appear to be made to do anything like this.  DrawPlus is such a unique program and it's just unfortunate to see Designer lose some of it's strongest and most unique features.  This stuff is where it truly had an advantage over Illustrator and other programs.

The solution is like Adobe Illustrator.  A regular layer is like  a parent layer.  All the objects you draw will fall on that layer until you decide to make a new one.  You can tip the layer down and see all of the sub layers, one for each object.  After hours of work, I have maybe 3 or 5 layers.  No scrolling unless I decide to tip a layer and see all of the sub layers.  Having it expand constantly with no control over it must suit some kind of work flow that I don't know about.

The solution is like Adobe Illustrator.  A regular layer is like  a parent layer.  All the objects you draw will fall on that layer until you decide to make a new one.  You can tip the layer down and see all of the sub layers, one for each object.  After hours of work, I have maybe 3 or 5 layers.  No scrolling unless I decide to tip a layer and see all of the sub layers.  Having it expand constantly with no control over it must suit some kind of work flow that I don't know about.

Clip Studio does rotation even better than Photoshop. It doesn't have a rotation "tool" which must be used.  Screen rotation is done by key modifier and mouse or stylus drag, and no giant compass appears in the middle of the screen.  In Photoshop, I had to waste a precious button on my Wacom EK remote just for the screen rotation tool.  If Serif is going to do a proper rotation function, I hope they take notes from Clip Studio Paint and not Photoshop.    Also, if you hold the same key modifier and double tap the screen, it resets the screen rotation to default.  It's perfection.

It's kind of amazing that this can't be disabled.

It's kind of amazing that this can't be disabled.

This is a good request.  DrawPlus has a super customizable workspace.  When working with just a stylus, I'm using completely custom toolbars and workspace where I've mixed and matched items from the toolbox, items from the toolbar, even items from the drop down menus into two horizontal toolbars.  Also, I moved the Help menu inside the Window menu, and other things have been moved into the View menu, to create a shorter menu on the top and leave more room for tools horizontally across the top.  This is the workspace I created for a tablet PC, but I ended up using it on my desktop with my Cintiq as well.  Look at the attached image and notice the two toolbars on the very top.  Everything is mixed and matched up there, in exactly the way that I believe I need them to be.  Of course, the undo/redo are there as well and can be repositioned, anywhere.

I wasn't aware until this morning that vector paths could be saved with jpegs but that started me down a path of investigation, and led me to what I think is a problem in Affinity Designer.  To get right to the point, I opened a jpeg this morning that I downloaded from the internet.  It was a t-shirt image.  The image opened up in Affinity Designer, but was not a t-shirt.  It was a transparent shape of a hoodie, with the red t-shirt visible but cut in the shape of the body of the hoodie. The layers panel shows two masks. One is labeled "Hoodie silo".  That told me exactly what I was looking at. Whoever created this image was using a blank document, bringing in various garments then using vector paths to cut them away from their backgrounds to create images that can be overlayed on different backgrounds while having the same dimensions for the bounding box. This is a typical workflow, but I would expect to see all of this in a native Photoshop file, not a jpeg.  I proceeded to open this same file in Photoshop and all was made clear.  The masks that were active and engaged when opened in AD, were actually just vector paths in Photoshop, not active or engaged.  You wouldn't even know they were there if the paths panel is not open/visible. Someone used a blank document, imported various garments, used vector paths to cut the garment from the backgrounds.  They did a hoodie first, then the t-shirt.  When the t-shirt was saved, the vector paths for the hoodie were still in the document and were saved with the document, even in jpeg format.  When the document is opened by Affinity Designer, AD decides that those left over paths are actually active masks when actually, they're just left over junk that shouldn't be there, but certainly should not be considered active masks.  Affinity Designer sees the random vector paths and automatically converts them to active masks and presents it as shown in the attachment.

 

Colour swatches are the singly most ill-conceived, poorly designed aspect of the Affinity software suite. Working with spot colours is an absolute nightmare (and I don't use those terms lightly.) That's one thing Adobe got right, and something the Affinity devs would have done well to replicate, rather than trying to get clever and do their own thing. Gosh I hope version 2 starts to take this seriously.

Autotracing can certainly do better than fairly good approximations.  I could show some where you'd have to zoom in close to see tell the difference between the vector and the raster image.  I can consistently get results that are 95% there.  Then I'll tweak a few corners and the result is nearly perfect.  Every now and then, the results are good enough that I don't need to tweak anything at all.  Of course, you're not getting results like that with Inkscape but definitely possible with Illustrator and Vector Magic.  Vector Magic costs about $300.00.  It's safe to say that nobody is going to buy it if it doesn't give good results.
 Some of us have relied upon vector tracing for decades precisely for recreating logos where the results need to be extremely good.

The solution is like Adobe Illustrator.  A regular layer is like  a parent layer.  All the objects you draw will fall on that layer until you decide to make a new one.  You can tip the layer down and see all of the sub layers, one for each object.  After hours of work, I have maybe 3 or 5 layers.  No scrolling unless I decide to tip a layer and see all of the sub layers.  Having it expand constantly with no control over it must suit some kind of work flow that I don't know about.

Clip Studio does rotation even better than Photoshop. It doesn't have a rotation "tool" which must be used.  Screen rotation is done by key modifier and mouse or stylus drag, and no giant compass appears in the middle of the screen.  In Photoshop, I had to waste a precious button on my Wacom EK remote just for the screen rotation tool.  If Serif is going to do a proper rotation function, I hope they take notes from Clip Studio Paint and not Photoshop.    Also, if you hold the same key modifier and double tap the screen, it resets the screen rotation to default.  It's perfection.

The thing with screen print work is that it tends to be heavy on production and processing, in addition to creative work. Affinity software might handle inhouse creative work but it won't even begin to deal with the production and processing.  I know because I've tried every low cost software under the sun to see what they each have to offer for that kind of work. I worked in screen printing art dept for years.  For production work, I would say that pretty much everything I would need is missing from the Affinity stuff.  I had Affinity Designer and Photo on my Mac when I last worked at a screen print shop but there was only one use that I had for it. From time to time, I would get a file such as a webp format and Adobe Illustrator wouldn't open it, or sometimes I'd get a svg file that Illustrator wouldn't open correctly.  I would try to open those files in Affinity Designer. Other than that, it really had nothing to offer for processing customers art and preparing them for print.  The best use for low cost software like that is just creative work.  The production side needs tools built specifically for the work.

The thing with screen print work is that it tends to be heavy on production and processing, in addition to creative work. Affinity software might handle inhouse creative work but it won't even begin to deal with the production and processing.  I know because I've tried every low cost software under the sun to see what they each have to offer for that kind of work. I worked in screen printing art dept for years.  For production work, I would say that pretty much everything I would need is missing from the Affinity stuff.  I had Affinity Designer and Photo on my Mac when I last worked at a screen print shop but there was only one use that I had for it. From time to time, I would get a file such as a webp format and Adobe Illustrator wouldn't open it, or sometimes I'd get a svg file that Illustrator wouldn't open correctly.  I would try to open those files in Affinity Designer. Other than that, it really had nothing to offer for processing customers art and preparing them for print.  The best use for low cost software like that is just creative work.  The production side needs tools built specifically for the work.

That's true.  Brush tracking is difficult I suppose for raster based programs.  Corel Painter tracks and shows the last handful of brushes used so that's helpful, but there's no reason why a vector based program can't do it.  Serif's discontinued DrawPlus certainly did it and did it very, very well.  If you clicked on a brush stroke in DrawPlus, not only did it select that brush in the panel, but it also would go on to paint/draw with all the characteristics of the strok you clicked on.  Additionally, it had an option in the brush panel to show only the brushes used in the document.  That stuff was brilliant.  On the surface, the brush tools in DrawPlus and AD look almost identical, but there is a lot of differences in how they work.  DrawPlus was a lot better in this dept.

No offense, but your comment seems to imply that there is something offensive about having your own opinion and actually voicing it.

This is a good request.  DrawPlus has a super customizable workspace.  When working with just a stylus, I'm using completely custom toolbars and workspace where I've mixed and matched items from the toolbox, items from the toolbar, even items from the drop down menus into two horizontal toolbars.  Also, I moved the Help menu inside the Window menu, and other things have been moved into the View menu, to create a shorter menu on the top and leave more room for tools horizontally across the top.  This is the workspace I created for a tablet PC, but I ended up using it on my desktop with my Cintiq as well.  Look at the attached image and notice the two toolbars on the very top.  Everything is mixed and matched up there, in exactly the way that I believe I need them to be.  Of course, the undo/redo are there as well and can be repositioned, anywhere.

Clip Studio does rotation even better than Photoshop. It doesn't have a rotation "tool" which must be used.  Screen rotation is done by key modifier and mouse or stylus drag, and no giant compass appears in the middle of the screen.  In Photoshop, I had to waste a precious button on my Wacom EK remote just for the screen rotation tool.  If Serif is going to do a proper rotation function, I hope they take notes from Clip Studio Paint and not Photoshop.    Also, if you hold the same key modifier and double tap the screen, it resets the screen rotation to default.  It's perfection.

This is a good point.  Different users would have very different perspectives and needs for the same software.  Jet may be coming from an engineer's perspective, you have an Illustrator's perspective, and I would personally have a production artist's perspective.  Jet is looking at precision.  You are looking at free form drawing, while I'm looking at the clock and asking, how efficient the tool and workflow would be.  I think though that Affinity Designer is absolutely being promoted for Illustration work so the blob brush makes sense.

The Blob works better and faster than the way he did it, but even better would be to use a vector paint bucket (It was called Flood Fill in Serif's old DrawPlus) to just click once and fill the enclosed area with color.