[Preview PDF for the 102 Lightning Brushes by xresch (Affinity Store)]

Hi walt,

thanks again for creating and providing the PDF preview.

[Invisible brushes]

Hi @walt.farrell,
thanks for creating the PDF and providing it here for the community.
Hope Serif will provide better previews of the brushes through the UI with a future version.

Thanks and Regards
xresch

[Brush Tool: Previews too small]

Linking following issue, as it similar to this one:

 

[Affinity Designer: Create a Multi Image Brush]

In this tutorial I will show you how you can create a colorful brush with multiple images using Affinity Designer.

I created 5 brushes like these in this tutorial and you can go and download them from my freebies page:
  -  https://www.xresch.com/design-freebies/

 

 

[Prepare scanned Drawing for Bitmap Tracing]

(This is as well a workaround for auto tracing, until Affinity Designer will include it in an upcoming version.)
In this tutorial I will show you how you can prepare a scanned handdrawing with Affinity Photo for bitmap tracing, to get a result with smooth lines and less speckles. As Affinity Designer is currently not shipped with a built in feature for tracing bitmaps, I will use InkScape for vectorization of the image.

[Affinity Photo: Electricity Effect Tutorial]

Created a new tutorial to show you how to use the new lightning brushes you can find in the affinity store:

• Brushes >> https://affinity.serif.com/de/store/product/102-lightning-brushes/
• Tutorial >> https://www.xresch.com/tutorial-create-electricity-and-lightning-effect-908/

 

[Brush Tool: Previews too small]

Hi Affinity Support,

do you already have a plan if you take this up in you roadmap and if yes, in which version you will release it?

Thanks in Advance
xresch

[Styles Panel: Styles are not displayed Properly]

Thats already better wiht 1.7.3, at least we have now something displayed.
Thanks to the team for the workaround!

Still would be cool to have some preview for styles that were created on pixel layers using the Layer Effects Panel.
Maybe just using a default shape like a rectangle and showing the different layer effects on it like in Photoshop?

[Importing .ABR Brushes Error]

works for me again with version 1.7.3.
Thanks to the team for fixing this issue. :-)

[Importing .ABR Brushes Error]

I found two worarounds for the time being:

• Either downgrade to a previous version like 1.7.0 and wait for the issue being fixed in a future version.
• Or convert the brushes to PNGs and as described here, and import them using ""Brush Panel >> Menu >> New Intensity Brush". Downside to this method is that you are losing all the brush settings, also you have to import every brush on its own, as there is no batch import. I created a feature request for a batch import here.

 

[Brushes: Import Multiple PNGs as distinct Brushes]

Using the option "Brush Panel >> Menu >> New Intensity Brush" and selecting multiple PNGs will result in a single brush containing the selected png images as nozzels.
If I want to import several PNG files as distinct brushes, the only way is to select each and every single PNG file and create a brush out of it.

I would like to suggest the following:

• Change the option "New Intensity Brush" to "New Multi Nozzel Brush".
• Create a new option called "Create Intensity Brushes" and allow multiple pngs be imported as distinct brushes.

[Bug: CYMK Sliders black selection issue]

When opening the Color Chooser and using the CMYK sliders,
when you click and drag the point on the colorful rectangle,
pure black cannot be selected.
The selection will go to the below values.
If pure black is desired, the for sliders have to be used to get it.

This issue is not present for RGB Sliders, there the mechanism of dragging the point on the rainbow area works fine.

[Affinity Photo: Fire Effect on images]

Hi everyone,

I just created a tutorial that was requested by several people who bought my 180 Smoke and Cloud Brushes from the Affinity store.
In the following tutorial you learn how you can use the smoke brushes to create a fire effect on regular images.

Hope you enjoy it! :-)
https://www.xresch.com/tutorial-fire-effect-on-images-876/

 

[Styles Panel: Styles are not displayed Properly]

Hi GabrielM,

I have them as a free download on my website, you can get them from there >> https://www.xresch.com/design-freebies/

I could imagine that the Radius of 0.2px I'm using for this effects are not big enough for showing up on the preview.
Maybe the preview would work with some "blurred", "soft" or "partially transparent" parts, not sure about that.

Cheers
xresch

 

[Flame Effect]

Hi Jak,

I made as well a small tutorial on how to colorize the smoke with layer styles in affinity:
https://www.xresch.com/fire-effect-smoke-brushes-and-layer-styles-529/#toc_anchor_5

Also you can find some predefined affinity styles including fire effects for free on my website:
https://www.xresch.com/design-freebies/

Just be aware that the styles might not displayed properly in the styles panel, as described in the bug I have reported here:

 

[Styles Panel: Styles are not displayed Properly]

Affected Version: 1.7.1

I tried to reproduce some photoshop styles I used to color smoke like fire.
This actually works quite well.

The issue here is that I cannot distinguish between the several styles I have created, as the previews in the styles panel is empty.
Screenshot: There are actually 18 styles in the selected category, all selectable through a transparent square that hightlights blue when clicked.

[Brush Tool: Copy Brush Settings to other Brushes]

I'm currently converting some photohsop brushes to affinity format.

For brushes with dynamics I have to select each brush manually and change the parameters to the desired values.
It would be much easier if I could:

1. Right Click a Brush >> Copy Settings
2. Select Multiple Brushes using Ctrl+Click and/or Shift+Click
3. Past the copied settings.

This would also be really useful when affinity users are creating brushes and want to do changes to all brushes very fast.

[Brush Tool: Previews too small]

The Previews of the brushes are too small.
When you have a lot of similar brushes, it is actually hard to find the one your are looking for:

In Photoshop you can choose different ways of displaying brushes.
Here the biggest previews are 64x64px(in CS6), but 128px would be my preferred display size.

My suggestion:
I would give option for display style and display size:

Display Style:

• Text only
• List
• Thumbnail
• Thumbnail with (Stroke) Preview

Display Size:

• Small (16x16px)
• Medium (32x32px)
• Large (64x64px)
• Extra Large (128x128px)

I used this technique for some dashboard on a monitoring website.
In your case, you would just need to use a variable for the size factor and multiply the base size(e.g. 16x16px) with it and calculate the height of the preview, while the width would depend on the brush view size.

With this you would handle most needs a brush user could have for displaying the brushes. :-)

 

 

[Brush Tool: Settings not always saved]

I'm currently converting some of my photoshop brushes to affinity.
While doing this, the changed parameters do not always change properly.

For example, I adjusted the parameters to the following settings:

 

Then I proceeded to the next brush by selecting it and do the changes.

Afterwards I sometimes see, that the settings I did on a previous brush did not apply and were reverted.

[Brush Tool: Photoshop Import Bug]

When importing brushes from Photoshop, dynamics can have a higher value than the GUI actually allows.

In below image Scatter X / Y is on 570%, normally only 400% is possible through the UI.

I actually would love when this setting has a slieder to 1000%, or there is a very high limit like 5000% on the textbox.
This would help create more versatile brushes that come closer to what I already have in Photoshop.

[Alignment Spacing in Context Menu / Toolbar]

Hi MEB,

that's super, exactly what I needed. =)

Thanks for the fast support! 

Cheers
xresch

[Bulk Export in different formats]

Hi dominik,

that looks exactly for what I'm looking for, I will check it out for sure!
Thanks for the fast support!

Cheers
xresch

[Alignment Spacing in Context Menu / Toolbar]

I often have to use the function "Layer >> Alignment >> Space Vertically/Horizontally".
Currently I only see this in the menu but not in the right click context menu or in the toolbar.

Would be really cool to get this in either the toolbar or the context menu.

 

[Bulk Export in different formats]

I often have to create a lot of files in various formats for my customers.
What would be a really good feature would be a "Bulk Export" Dialog, were I can choose:

• the formats I want to save with checkboxes
• The location to save
• A name for the files

I think the best way to do this regarding settings would be to take the last export settings from the regular export dialog.
 

[Remember Export Settings]

I often use the Export Setting "Area >> Selection without Background".
The issue with this is that Affinity Designer does not remember the setting and it has to be chosen each time again.
It would be cool if the setting would be remembered, this would make it easier when you have to save a lot of designes you keep in a single document.