jmwellborn

Your patterns are truly inspired @firstdefence! Just for fun I downloaded your images in Photo, Mac v. 1.8.4 and promptly received a notification that the file wouldn't open. So I opened it instead in the latest Beta and wondered whether @pioneer was having the same issue. And whether brand new users would come a cropper with this as well. I decided to turn your images into Styles, just to see what would happen. I made the styles in the Beta, exported them and then imported them into v. 1.8.4 without a hitch. So here is the file, in case you would like to see them. If you would rather not have your images turned into Styles, please feel free to hide this post! Before I fiddled with your images I experimented with some reptile images from Unsplash, and created a few skin styles from them. Not a howling success but possible to do. Dex's Jurassic Patterns.afstyles

I give up @firstdefence, @Ron P. and @tongcreator!! The pen tool selection is far and away easier than the Selection Brush Tool for this dog, but it took me somewhat more than 5 minutes, having suffered the odd accidental Delete. (I had purloined @v_kyr's selection work previously.) Anyway, I got the dog to the Selection from Layer and Refine stage, to New Mask Layer. Then I used the Eraser Brush Tool with a pixel setting of about 12 p and very carefully worked around the dog's body to get a very crisp edge (which I now see missed the top of his left ear and part of his nose ☹️). Even down to 2 p around his feet. And then it was time to remove his thumping great chain collar. The Inpainting Brush Tool worked a little bit, but there was way too much concentrated silver in the way. So with extremely marginal results I used the Clone Brush Tool and tried to match the various and sundry shades of tan to sorrel. There are bits of silver still showing through. Then I used a fur brush tool set at a very small pixel size, and the color picker to try to get some hair on his chest and leg. Then I used a texture brush set at a very low opacity and brushed over the hairs. Then I used the Smudge Tool to try to blend all that stuff in. Then I thought "I will never get this right. Forget it!" and gave the idea of the shadow about 2 seconds before I threw in the towel. Hats off to you @firstdefence. Have a good weekend everybody!

Tomorrow. But I purloined @v_kyr's work and just spruced it up. He deserves the credit.

Yes, it is, but at least they don't gum up the works! There are some posts from a year or two back about how to remove the vector brushes from Photo, but I never bothered. I have enough disk space to never worry about it. If you want to use the Search button at the head of these Forums and search for this issue, you may find useful information, but it will be some time ago.

@Segno You are welcome! Enjoy your new brushes!!

Yes. You have to import brushes separately for each app. You can export your brushes from Photo into a backup file -- which is actually a very good idea in case of a major crash -- and then use that backup file to import your brushes into Designer. Unfortunately, you will have to export them one category at a time. Open the Brushes Panel in Photo, select a brush category, then click on the hamburger icon at the top of the panel, choose Export Brushes and then you choose your new backup folder. (Mine is in Finder>Affinity Brushes). One-at-a-time you can backup everything, or just what you want to later import into Designer. Then open Designer, go to the Brushes Panel, click on the hamburger icon, and choose Import Brushes. Then navigate to your backup folder, select one brush file at a time, and click on Open. Designer will automatically place the new brushes in the Pixel Persona. Tedious, but it works. Hope this helps!

Welcome to the Forums @Segno😊 The Neptune Illustration Kit contains raster brushes, which will download in Photo and also in Designer. In Designer you need to click on the Pixel Persona in order to find those brushes in your Brushes Panel. The Fine Liner Brushes and the Chunky Markers are vector brushes, and although Affinity Photo tells you that they have been imported successfully it is an idiosyncrasy of the app that it allows these brushes to "import" at all, since they cannot be used by the app which is pixel-based. They will show properly in the Brushes Panel when in the Designer Persona. I hope this helps!

@Ron P. Beautiful dogs, and beautifully photographed! The nicest thing is their happy faces. No stomach-churning, heartbreaking shots of shivering, starving, terrified animals while advertising for "only $19.00 per month" while having spent several hundreds of thousands on a glitzy TV ad. Or worse, having discovered as I did several years ago, that one of these national organizations spends a chunk of money supporting the political campaigns of certain public figures. However, I am wildly off topic of this post.

No. It was just that when @v_kyr posted a sample -- possibly to show you how you can use the Selection Brush Tool to get rid of the background -- some of that yellow stuff plus a couple of branches were left in. I was just being silly as it looked as though the branches were sticking into the rear of the dog. Sorry. Meanwhile, if you do use the Selection Brush Tool (selecting the dog), after you refine your selection you can always save your selection as a New Layer With Mask. You can then use your Eraser Tool to spruce up his edges.

Here is Fido, dutifully erased, but I must say I had a lot more success with the Eraser Tool and a wee bit of Inpainting to sort out the mud on his feet and the blotchy stuff on his tongue and under his eyes.😊

Welcome to the Forums, @lemonfish 😊 I have tried to do what you are describing and am only slightly successful. I saved a colored image from The Times of London (right click on the image, saved to Downloads folder) and then placed that image into a new Designer document. When I clicked on the hamburger menu for the Swatches Panel>Create Palette from Document>As Application Palette, I was able to get a tiny palette of only 5 colors, all shades of the same basic color. As @Old Bruce and @walt.farrell have both posted, instead of placing your image into your document you instead click on the hamburger menu and choose Create Palette from Image, you will be directed to a new submenu where you can locate your image (in my case in my Downloads folder) choose it, and then you will find a slider to choose the range of colors you want in your palette.

This is a creative bundle which you can find at the Affinity store. Currently included in the 50% off sale.

@v_kyr Ouch!!! The stick and that yellow thing are poking the poor dog. 😳. Couldn’t resist, although I really know that you were just demonstrating with a preliminary selection. 😊

@Patrick Connor can you please answer this?

Welcome to the forums @Rosa.104😊. The Affinity apps are not interchangeable between Windows and Mac. Even so Affinity has a 50% off sale at present so it will not be quite as costly. The good news is that your files created on your laptop will open smoothly on your Mac.

Bernie looks right at home with Rembrandt and suitably annoyed at capitalists enjoying themselves with Renoir. These are truly inspired!! Very very funny.

No, I was not using a previous Beta. I downloaded these RC candidate Betas on purpose to check My Account, per Patrick Connor's request. Two new things have occurred. My Photo Beta has vanished entirely from my Mac (can't find it in Finder, but it shows up on the Dock) and when I tried just now to download the very latest RC candidate for Publisher, I was presented with the login screen for My Account, filled it out, and then got the spinning beachball. It never did stop spinning, and I simply Force Quit the app. I then opened the Publisher Beta again, was not presented with the login screen, and was offered the opportunity to download exactly one of my purchases -- Lightning brushes. Which I successfully did. Except that when I tried the StudioLink option to test whether the brushes had actually downloaded, I was informed that I don't have Photo Beta. Gremlins? Update: I deleted the Photo Beta, and downloaded it again. This time I manually copied it to Finder>Applications and Publisher recognized it for Studio Link. My Account in Publisher opens without the login panel. Think I will take the dog out for a walk!!

Yes, I know that. The question I had was whether the fact that they were all downloading together could explain why the various brush packs were split up in my brushes panel. See above screenshot.

I noticed that when I was downloading everything at the same time, My Account showed percentages of progress simultaneously with every purchase. Some were downloading at 5% while others were at 45%, etc. I tried downloading the same purchases individually and they were perfect.

@Patrick Connor Here is what appears to be a new wrinkle. Using my Mac (High Sierra 10.13.6) I opened the Photo Beta 1.9.0.216 today and checked My Account. I was sent directly to my account without a login panel (which I did have to fill out with the same Beta version using my MacBook with Big Sur) . When I checked on one of my purchases, the download started, and then I was denied. I have attached a screenshot. Same thing happened with DAUB Watercolors & Washes, and other purchases. I tried closing the Beta, and then opening it again. Same thing. No login panel, and inability to download my purchases.

@Patrick Connor Have now downloaded Photo Beta 1.9.0.216 to the Macbook (Big Sur, M1 chip). Again, it was flawless. My Account is working perfectly except for a rather strange thing. I was offered 15 packs directly downloadable from my account in the Affinity Store, plus the Luminance Pack which also downloaded perfectly. The strange thing is that for the DAUB Watercolors and Washes and the two Frankentoon packages (Neptune and Concept Master Vol 1) the download split the brushes up randomly in the brushes panel, rather than downloading them in correct order. I have attached a screenshot of that part of the brushes panel for you to see. I purposely used the "Download all" option to see whether it would work. It did and with the M1 chip it took 4 seconds to download and install 5.44 GB. Not bad! As a further test, I purchased the Lightning Brushes pack just now from the Affinity store, and immediately went to the Photo Beta to check My Account. It was there, and downloaded all contents to the Macbook (didn't try the Mac, High Sierra) within less than a second! This is going to be a wonderful new feature!!!!!!!

@Patrick Connor Back from other stuff. No, there is not a "manual refresh" item, but there is a "Re-sync library" which I clicked on and got the message "Sync failed at 4:31 pm". I had closed down my Mac (High Sierra), v. 10.13.6) and returned to it, restarted it, and opened Designer Beta. No change at all from 3 hours ago. HOWEVER, I decided to test the download of 1.9.0.23 on my Macbook Pro (Big Sur, M1 chip). The download work beautifully and My Account does too. Not only that, but I have 15 brush/etc. packs listed -- several more than in Affinity Photo on the iMac, and including the Luminance Pack as able to be downloaded and which I successfully downloaded. Nice brushes!! My next stop is to try downloading Photo to the Macbook. Hope this helps!

Welcome to the Forums @Janet Smith😊 The Betas for Photo, Designer, and Publisher are all in the Release Candidate phase at this point, and it will probably be relatively soon when they will be available as upgrades to version 1.8.+. (They do need to be issued together, in order for the wonderful feature of StudioLink to function properly.) Until that point, anything that you create using the Beta for Publisher could conceivably have problems that could potentially reflect upon your work. If you need to do anything in Publisher right now that has real-world consequences, it would be a good idea to use your trial version of Publisher. You can always save a file, and open it in the Beta and see how you fare! If it is issue-free then you are ahead. If it has glitches, you will not have done all that work in vain. It can be the case that something created using a Beta is not backwards compatible to a release version. So you will want to think of that too. Hopefully, long before your free trial of Publisher has expired, Publisher v. 1.9.+ will be available for us all! Hope this helps!

@Patrick Connor I am posting here rather in the link you suggested because this is specific to Designer. I just downloaded 1.9.23 and successfully registered it then opened My Account. So far so good. But it listed only 4 options available for download, rather than several listed in the Photo My Account. Notably, one listed in Photo as unable to be downloaded but available in Designer did not appear at all in the Designer list. This time the Luminance pack was not even listed. Gremlins?

Just downloaded 1.9.116. My Account is still working perfectly, and more previous purchases from the Affinity store were included. When I checked on the Frankentoon Concept Master icon, I got a message that I had downloaded this brush pack already and they could be reinstalled and that my original installation would be given a different name. This is actually a very nice feature (in case we have fiddled with brush settings and changed the original brushes!) I am still unable to download the Luminance pack. Still incompatible.