Alfred

Updated with 24 new tools!
 

 

 
 
 
These are 16bit capable, this means that if you want to perform further manipulations to your rasterised layers, these will be much more precise and tones will be smoother. 

Here a simple tutorial:
 
https://vimeo.com/200846556
 
Who finds spelling mistakes may keep them.  :)

Very useful in some cases, but perhaps not that convenient when trying different styles for the whole layer, changing your mind etc.? I wouldn't mind both  ;) .

Hello Alfred, The big failed stitch resulted in 2 panoramas, a long one and the shorter end one of 2 frames. AP did that automatically as 2 separate panoramas. Those 2 I then tried to get AP to stitch but it didn't recognise them as panorama components. I did then stitch the two parts manually and accurately as far as register is concerned to make what should have been the original intention. But getting the other settings like levels and edge gradients to match proved rather more tricky, which indicates some of the more complex processes hidden in AP's automation. So I abandoned it and shall perhaps attempt to repeat the photographs sometime today.
 
That this process requires so much overlap should perhaps be mentioned in the tutorials or Help do you think? The actual overlap in my sequence was around 15%-20% for all the images so really what went for the first group should also have worked for the remainder. There is much strong common detail in the failed overlap including a leaning tree trunk, hanging branch and canal. This is the only sequence that has failed for me. That of itself is impressive. The images are 4608 x 2592
 
Possibly at some future date some way of forcing things might be useful?
 
Thank you for your reply. It does help to know.
 
Michael
 
I tried stitching the two images where the failure occurs and received the response 'no panorama found', which is strange in a way because the overlap is 25%. Obviously some other quirk at work here. There is some disjunction in exposure because the imagery passes from open landscape into woodland but all 'forms' match well. It is a 19th century English Picturesque Style Landscape park in Holland
 
Addendum: As a further experiment I tried a manual stitch in PhotoPlus just to check shapes. The overlaps are all about 25% and the shapes match easily. I also tried reducing the image size in AP but that made no difference. So it would seem that the panorama dialogue is perhaps unduly sensitive to exposure changes in imagery. The exposure difference in the above instance is not excessive.
 
I hope this is helpful. If I have time I shall try to repeat the image sequence and make another attempt. 
 
Michael
 
23rd Jan: I have now made a near perfect version stitching the 2 panoramas manually. There was plenty of overlap, quite enough to blur edges and ensure blending. So really all I can suggest is perhaps some configurations of shapes confuse the automated stitching or else what I suggested above, an undue sensitivity to exposure differences. The latter are not apparent in the final stitch. It has been too foggy to repeat the originals! Treat this as information rather than complaint.

You basically want to start with the posterization.
I scaled up your original picture. Although the resolution is low, since the final result is kind of loose as far as edge definition goes, is not a big issue.
 
Then you add a posterize, a grayscale conversion and a level or curve adjustment in order to crush the levels:
 

 
Once you get to that point, you can start having fun.
I added a blur, I used a box blur in this case.

 
At this point, you can group the layers if you want and add a wall texture underneath the group.
The stencil group needs to be multiplied over the wall texture.
I actually preferred to duplicate the group and have one first group with a Soft Light transfer and the top group with the Multiply. By doing so, you can mask both groups and play with the values revealing parts of each group in order to make the overall image less precise.
 
Theoretically, you can stop here or keep playing.
Since it's fun, I kept playing.
 
I've used these brushes to add some more spray feeling to it:
https://www.brusheezy.com/brushes/1371-hi-res-spraypaint-photoshop-brushes-set-one
 
I've used the spray brushes to add a little touch of spray paint and also to mask part of the image.
 

 
And some of these textures:
spray paint texture - Google Search - https://goo.gl/w359u2
 
One last thing.
In the ref you posted it's also noticeable the wall texture over the stencil.
So, adding some wall texture over the image as well might help to get the look closer to the ref.
I liked the grainy quality of the texture in your original ref and I tried to redo it in Photo.
Here's one way to approach it.
On a new layer, add a Perlin Noise:

 
Then add the Emboss:

 
Finally, change the transfer mode to something like hard light or overlay.
You might need to play with the values of the noise and also with the opacity of the noise layer and then, you might need to increase the contrast which you can easily do by adding a level/curve adjustment to the noise layer:
 

 
I admit that a simple wall-like-noisy-texture will do, and actually you can get a more realistic result, but sometimes playing with the filters is fun.
 
Here's the afphoto:
https://www.sendspace.com/file/eyxyp3
 
Hope that helps.
Let me know if you have questions.

I know I'm answering a staff question, but as far as what I read here, there will also be line continuation for the Pencil Tool, a brush stabilizer option, and I think an improvement on the boolean operations, or that one might come later.
 
 
How else could I have gotten my sense of humor? And confusion.

Thank you gdenby and Alfred.  Both work.  Very helpful.  Very kind of you.  Very much appreciated.
 
 
Ben

I might have guessed your birthday would fall on April Fools' Day, Brian! :D :P 

Alternatively, select the text with the Gradient Tool and change the fill type to 'Solid', or select the text with the Move Tool and click on a solid swatch in the Swatches panel.

Don't the standard [ and ] shortcut keys work for you, Tony? :unsure:

\working for me nicely now and getting faster. Could do with a brush resize keystroke or mouse function though.

So fast he even outran his own shadow! Fun image.  :D

DrawPlus has a large collection of line ends, each of which can be used as a 'Line Start' style or (rotated) as a 'Line End' style.

You can't export to PSD with editable text from Affinity apps, but importing from PSD with editable text is relatively easy. From the Edit menu, choose 'Preferences...' and then go to the General section in the Preferences dialog, where you will find a checkbox labelled 'Import PSD text as text rather than bitmap': put a tick in the box and press 'Close'.

Rediscovered this thread over the weekend and had some fun doing some experimental doodling.
 
First I painted everything in greyscale using the Photo's "greys" colour palette. I made sure everything was on it's on layer to be able to  experiment with different colours. Then added recolour layers to each and had fun playing around. On top of everything I added a white balance layer to globally adjust the tone to add some nice warmth overall.
 
Pretty excited about the potential in this non-destructive workflow to do something a little more "advanced" than this doodle. I like the idea of painting in grey tones concentrating on the form of something and not really worrying about colour as I go, then being able to play with colour and other things such as lighting/texture etc... hmmm, must get busy with a real project next.  :)
 
Most of this can be done in Designer as well, the adding global noise as a layer and lighting/texturing is only available in Photo though but recolour and white balance is possible.
 
Cheers.

Sure man!
 
I use to paint main shapes (eg. head) in a pixel layer, and than shading/texture/volume in a clipped one.
Once you've chosen your palette (I use a gamut mask to do it) the colouring process is pretty fast:
 
1) A recolour layer is used to give main hue
 

 
2) And curves to shift shadows and tune it better
 

 
This is done for each shape: body, mane, foreground, background, sky...
At the end you can decide to use a global curve too.
 
This process is non destructive and you can keep painting and adding details using a gray ramp.

Hi!
 
I'd like to share the last painting I made.
I sketched the scene and the "cat" directly on AffinityPhoto using my pencils (that can be downloaded here)
 
    This is the value painting step, I used some Gouaches from the available set and new ones I created for this specific work.     And at the end colours! I was looking for a movie-like toning. For this step I used only Recolour and Curve Adjustment layers clipped by painting layers (Foreground/Lion/Fog/Background/Sky) and applyed a bit of sharpening to enhance strokes.  

Agreed. As much as you might consider Shape Builder a basic tool, there’s something even more basic than it: the boolean operations that power it. Without getting those right first, working on a Shape Builder tool would be a waste of time and resources.

I don't see the point in having a Shape Builder Tool before the Geometry commands upon which it would be based (Add, Subtract and Intersect) are working reliably in all scenarios.

@Alfred
Thanks for your reply! However, I do need the groups to access the different tools. For now, I deleted all the other tools from keyboard shortcut J so that Inpainting Brush Tool will always be selected on J. Unfortunately, this way, I have no more shortcuts for any other tools that used to be assigned to J, though.

If the tool isn't in a group and you press its shortcut key twice, the second keypress selects the previous tool again. So if you've been using the Inpainting Brush Tool and you've pressed B to switch to the Paint Brush Tool, just press B again to go back to the Inpainting Brush Tool.
 
You can also customize the keyboard shortcuts to give the Inpainting Brush Tool (or any other tool in a group) its own shortcut.

You may not know that Affinity started off as a research project at Serif to test an idea about coding for memory-constrained hardware, & that this was done on an iPad for that reason. It was so successful that the decision was made to develop Affinity as commercial software. Since iOS & OS X use many of the same API's & (I am guessing) they probably used Apple's development tools for part of the development process, porting the Mac versions back to iOS could take far fewer development resources away from other projects than one might expect.
 
Another thing to consider is their return on investment -- there obviously are far fewer iPads than desktops in the world but there are many more graphics apps for desktops than iPads, so since the development work is already partially done, it makes good business sense to get into the iPad graphics market ASAP.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying, Rubs was giving feedback to serif saying they shouldn't advertise on their website that items will arrive within 5-7 business days to international sellers when in fact it doesn't, and that they should give tracking codes to customers so they can try to locate their package.
 
 
I had the same issue before Rubs' order - where I purchased the book and paid $20 for shipping thinking that it was priority mail when in fact it was regular shipping that took 4 weeks to deliver (approx 24 business days). I had to email serif back and forth to get updates when they could have just given me a tracking code so that I could cut out the middleman and talk directly to Amazon about my order.
 
I gave all the same feedback Rubs did a month prior to his/her purchase, but seems like no one listened. At the end of the day, the same mistakes were made - I wasn't too pleased with the whole purchase process and things could have gone a lot smoother for Rubs if customer service at Serif took note of feedback and improved upon suggestions. 
 
I'm not trying to be a prick or anything, I'm happy with my book, but slightly disappointed to see someone else go through the same frustrations I did when it could have easily been avoided with simple things like changing their website to reflect a realistic delivery estimate, handing customers tracking codes etc. 

This would be an issue with the carrier and not Serif specifically. Once it leaves their warehouse / office it is out of their hands, literally.  Were you given a tracking number to track the package, if so you could contact the carrier directly and see if they could reimburse the shipping to you that you paid.  I don't know how that works with over seas delivery but here there is a certain window and if they don't make it in that time then you can ask for reimbusement of the accelerated delivery UNLESS it is just regular mail or ground then you get it when you get it.

Oh, I completely forgot to mention in the recent new video post, but the Brushes video has also been re-recorded; I've always cringed at the original video with just the raw brush strokes on a white background, so I knuckled down and made it a bit more contextual for image editing:
 
Brushes