CartoonMike

I really am enjoying AP a lot!
 
I make a basic scan of my artwork, open the TIFF in AP, color corrections, resizing and then export the image as a PNG file. Did a comparison w/photoslop and It felt much quicker and just more to-the-point in AP. And I used to teach a class on P'shop!
 
Attached is what I ended up with, original done on Bristol board, Multiliners and Copics. Will be selling prints of it, as I was able to use the Mac OS Printing to PDF to create a PDF that my local digital printer can use well. So first project w/o anything from the brick shack! 

I really am enjoying AP a lot!
 
I make a basic scan of my artwork, open the TIFF in AP, color corrections, resizing and then export the image as a PNG file. Did a comparison w/photoslop and It felt much quicker and just more to-the-point in AP. And I used to teach a class on P'shop!
 
Attached is what I ended up with, original done on Bristol board, Multiliners and Copics. Will be selling prints of it, as I was able to use the Mac OS Printing to PDF to create a PDF that my local digital printer can use well. So first project w/o anything from the brick shack! 

Kraken piece there Mike! Think that deserves a drink or two. :lol:

I really am enjoying AP a lot!
 
I make a basic scan of my artwork, open the TIFF in AP, color corrections, resizing and then export the image as a PNG file. Did a comparison w/photoslop and It felt much quicker and just more to-the-point in AP. And I used to teach a class on P'shop!
 
Attached is what I ended up with, original done on Bristol board, Multiliners and Copics. Will be selling prints of it, as I was able to use the Mac OS Printing to PDF to create a PDF that my local digital printer can use well. So first project w/o anything from the brick shack! 

I really am enjoying AP a lot!
 
I make a basic scan of my artwork, open the TIFF in AP, color corrections, resizing and then export the image as a PNG file. Did a comparison w/photoslop and It felt much quicker and just more to-the-point in AP. And I used to teach a class on P'shop!
 
Attached is what I ended up with, original done on Bristol board, Multiliners and Copics. Will be selling prints of it, as I was able to use the Mac OS Printing to PDF to create a PDF that my local digital printer can use well. So first project w/o anything from the brick shack! 

+1

Using Affinity Photo to color my scanned art is real dream and has made my life so much easier. 
 

In the pursuit of seeing just how Affinity Photo can replace that other way-too-bloated-for-its-own-good Photo sloppy app (   :P ) I'm slowing introducing AP into my workflow. One of the major uses I have for an image editor is to "clean-up" scans. This includes some minor rotation, stitching of the bottom and top halves together (for drawings that are too big for my mere letter-sized scanner) and so on.
 
This picture is scanned in using Image Capture, saved as a TIFF and then opened in AP -- where I filled in the areas on the lower part that was mottled (because of the paper) and used the auto contrast to balance out the black and white, as it's not greyscale. With a clear idea of what I wanted to do, I found that the tools and such for AP were similar enough from AD that I was able to make a nice transition. All in all, processing this scan was not only easier than in the brick hut photo editor, but faster too. Exporting was a breeze.
 
The illustration is attached to this here post. Thanks Affinity. I think you hit this one totally outa the park.
 

 
Drawn with a HB mechanical pencil, inked with Microns and Pentel brush pen on Bristol Board. Will be coloring it in with copics. Once it's scanned, I'll be using AP to color correct it. Should be fun. :D

Hi everyone
 
In case you didn't know, AFFINITY PHOTO HAS LAUNCHED and is in the Mac App Store now.
 
I could say a ton about how fantastic the app is and give you so much information, but it's already out there on our website, so I'll just give you some links!
 
Mac App Store shortcut
 
Affinity Photo web page
 
Awesome promo video
 
Affinity Photo full features page with system requirements
 
Affinity Photo blog post about the launch
 
Launch Tweet - please retweet if you can
 
Launch Facebook post - and please share too :)
 
Obviously the whole team is delighted to see today after so much work, the devs have done an incredible job. Thank you all too for your part in helping the app grow during the beta test.
 
Dale.

@Peter: I wonder how it synchs up with "welcome to the machine" (from Wish you were here), hmm...?  It's kinda interesting how the story is a variation on Campbell's "Hero's Journey" in many ways, but is its own thing.
 
(PS Peter, check out the tags. Made one just for you! :P )

Purpose: Fixes
Status: Release Candidate
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Designer
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download: https://s3.amazonaws...stomer Beta.dmg
 
To use this beta, simply download the file from the link given above and double-click on the file to open the installer. Follow the instructions to install the beta version. The beta sits alongside the Mac App Store version and will not interfere with it.
 
This beta is another small update to the previous one as our public-facing efforts are currently concentrated on the impending release of Affinity Photo and making sure that Affinity Designer works alongside it smoothly.
 
Improvements, Features, Fixes
 
- Further printing improvements.
- New branding (icons, splash screen, etc.)
 
- Final help.
- Final documentation.
- Final localisations.
 
- PDF import improvements.
- SVG import improvements.
 
- Another attempt to fix colour picker.
- Numerous stability improvements.

I may be working on the second and final part later on in July/August. I've been working like crazy to get stuff for an open submission for a comic publisher (Oni) and the window for the submissions closes on the end of this month (June). FYI, it's a series about intelligent salamanders, space travel, water shenanigans, murder and octopodial sphere ships tearing apart pirate air-ships. Y'know, the usual. :P
 
Along with the conclusion, will be an updating of the first part to reflect the changes/improvements and other stuff in the most recent released (not beta) App store version.
 
Now I just have to deal with my newly acquired addiction to Copic Markers. Is there a 12 hue program for it?
 
later.

Okay all, here's what I've been up to: it's 35 pages, almost 100 images, tutorial on beginning to use Affinity Designer. It one of my "In Action" tutorials, where we start right off creating new documents and learn all kinds of stuff along the way. It's not just a "How to do this" tutorial, it's a "How to do this because..." tutorial. Sometimes it's good to get the whys of things as much as the how. Hopefully, this tutorial begins to do it.
 
Here's the link to the box folder where all the files live:
 
https://app.box.com/s/gltgu7u2wscuxxra1e1y
 
It contains the PDF and PNG file and the ZIP file, which contains the pdf and png, incase somebody doesn't like to download ZIP files from an unknown source.
 
this tutorial was written for newbies, but old-hands at Vector apps may find it good.
 
I"ll be working on finishing it as the week progresses, but I gotta get working on my comics. Daddy's gotta make money.
 
 
Any comments or such, post 'em here or send me an message via this board. 
 
thanks!
 
 

Hi all. I'm alive and kicking.The , um, recent unpleasantness is all over and I'm none the worse for the wear.  
 
And then there's this: here's good news and bad news.
 
Bad news, is that I have no freaking idea when the final part of the tutorial will be done. 
 
Good news, is that now that I'm hale and healthy (so to speak), I'm experiencing an unbridled rush of creativity and energy. And it's all directed at my comics. Unfortunately, the art is strictly raster and not vector. So my use of AD is limited. And since it's comics, I'm using Manga Studio and not AP -- as I enjoy having my entire story open at once (from 24 to 130 pages) and being able to effortlessly go from page to page. Again, it's that using the best tool for the job at hand thing. 
 
Over the past two weeks, I've written and laid out a 130 page Graphic Novel. The longest sustained narrative I've ever done, btw. It's a story that's been clamoring to get out of my mind-maze for some time and I just let loose and let it out. It's one of those things, artistically, that I cannot let go of and it is all-consuming until I finish it. All. 130+. Pages. Of. It. 
 
If I could be excused, this once, and post work not done in an Affinity product, I'd like to share a bit of the work with y'all. This is from what I plan to use as a back cover of the story and (maybe?) as a promo piece for the Graphic Novel (it's title is Hard Rock Candi, btw). The art is still WIP, but the text is "golden" as in finished. 

 
Going just a titch current-event-y, I began writing this story before the brouhaha in Indiana, US began and as time passes, the story becomes more relevant. Art should always strive to shake up the status-quo, whenever possible, ya know. 
 
Anyway, backing away from completing the tutorial is not a decision I made lightly. I gave it much thought. It would take about 2-3 weeks to complete (and some time to catch up with the changes in AD and the introduction of Affinity Photo) and at this time, it would be time that needs to be used to work on the graphic novel and two other stories that I'm con-currently working on. IOW, my heart's in doing my comics and not in the tutorial. 
 
I'm sure most here understands how the creative river flows and understands my decision. And if you don't, my sincere apologies. I do suggest checking out everything Ronnie McBride's doing. His tutorials are really good and he's worked up a good backlog of stuff on his YouTube channel that every one should get caught up on.
 
I'll still be around, but not to the extent I was last year.
 
See y'all around these parts, fellow pixel-pushers!

OK. It sounds like stuff we'll be doing anyway.

Hi all. I'm alive and kicking.The , um, recent unpleasantness is all over and I'm none the worse for the wear.  
 
And then there's this: here's good news and bad news.
 
Bad news, is that I have no freaking idea when the final part of the tutorial will be done. 
 
Good news, is that now that I'm hale and healthy (so to speak), I'm experiencing an unbridled rush of creativity and energy. And it's all directed at my comics. Unfortunately, the art is strictly raster and not vector. So my use of AD is limited. And since it's comics, I'm using Manga Studio and not AP -- as I enjoy having my entire story open at once (from 24 to 130 pages) and being able to effortlessly go from page to page. Again, it's that using the best tool for the job at hand thing. 
 
Over the past two weeks, I've written and laid out a 130 page Graphic Novel. The longest sustained narrative I've ever done, btw. It's a story that's been clamoring to get out of my mind-maze for some time and I just let loose and let it out. It's one of those things, artistically, that I cannot let go of and it is all-consuming until I finish it. All. 130+. Pages. Of. It. 
 
If I could be excused, this once, and post work not done in an Affinity product, I'd like to share a bit of the work with y'all. This is from what I plan to use as a back cover of the story and (maybe?) as a promo piece for the Graphic Novel (it's title is Hard Rock Candi, btw). The art is still WIP, but the text is "golden" as in finished. 

 
Going just a titch current-event-y, I began writing this story before the brouhaha in Indiana, US began and as time passes, the story becomes more relevant. Art should always strive to shake up the status-quo, whenever possible, ya know. 
 
Anyway, backing away from completing the tutorial is not a decision I made lightly. I gave it much thought. It would take about 2-3 weeks to complete (and some time to catch up with the changes in AD and the introduction of Affinity Photo) and at this time, it would be time that needs to be used to work on the graphic novel and two other stories that I'm con-currently working on. IOW, my heart's in doing my comics and not in the tutorial. 
 
I'm sure most here understands how the creative river flows and understands my decision. And if you don't, my sincere apologies. I do suggest checking out everything Ronnie McBride's doing. His tutorials are really good and he's worked up a good backlog of stuff on his YouTube channel that every one should get caught up on.
 
I'll still be around, but not to the extent I was last year.
 
See y'all around these parts, fellow pixel-pushers!

@MastroPino: saying that ComiCraft's YaddaYaddaYadda or Blambot Casual is like ComicSans is like saying that The Last Ship TV series is like the Titanic Movie because they both take place on ships.  While I'm quite aware that studies have shown that sans serif fonts don't have the retainability of serif fonts, I chose the fonts I used because:
I'm a comics guy. Love me good hand-drawn comic styled typefaces It fits my "voice" and the visual style of the tutorials. I did try a few other typefaces: Berkeley Oldschool, Cason 224 and others. I kept going back to the ones I used because it just felt better to me. On the next to last page of the tutorial document there's a colophon that lists all the fonts I used. The tutorial is meant to be read while working on the exercises, so the goal is to build up "muscle memory" in the exercises. The text is merely an end to a means, so the actual retention of its contents isn't important compared with the practice of the contents.  The basic style and font choices were based on my illustrations I did for my book, Manga Studio 5 Beginner's Guide published by Packt Publishing. My editors loved it and encouraged me to use it throughout the book. When I showed my editor the basic format for my "In Action" series of tutorials (of which The Pumpkin Tutorial is just one of a few I've done so far), He really liked it.  ​The fonts I use have excellent Kerning and Leading along with other OpenType features that just blow ComicSans out of the water. I would suggest that you duplicate some of my text in ComicSans and actually compare them. You'll see right off that there's major differences between them.
 
While I'm normally a relaxed guy there's subjects that'll get me riled up. ComicSans is one of them. I absolutely despise that font with a passion that is totally out of proportion to any logic. The thing I hate most about ComicSans is how it has made a lot of typographic "sins" acceptable to those who don't really understand typography and, especially, comics. So while I do admit I made my font selection to be different than most other tutorials, I did spend hours picking and choosing the specific fonts I used to make the tutorial look the way I wanted it to. 
 
So that's that. Let's not speak of this specific subject again, 'kay? 
 
Glad you liked it and I'm planning on completing it in the next few weeks. 

One app that I'm getting ready to test with Affinity Designer is called Patternodes (by http://www.lostminds.com ). It's a cool little app that can export seamless tiling patterns as raster or vector. Its interface is interesting and based on Nodes (like how Blender does texturing and such). I picked it up because I wanted something to jazz up the backgrounds for some of my comics. While you will still have to dupe (cmd-J) the imported object, at least when you're aligning them, the pattern should be seamless. 
 
hth

Having lived though the "dark times" of the Mac (around the late '90s), I cannot count the times the Mac (and Apple) were left for dead and the heralds of doom and "don't trust Apple" crowd were proven wrong.
 
The OP seems to be just stirring up a bunch of FUD* and, IMHO, has absolutely no place in this forum. It's a distraction and a bit of ephemera to entertain me over a bout of insomnia. 
 
 
-----
*Not Elmer, silly wabbit, but Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. A practice a certain maker of an OS and office software perfected the practice of in the 80's. 

I'd rather wait for a great tool, than get a wonky one now. :D

Fun thread to read, but basically nothing more than a wouldja-couldja collection of opinion posts. 
 
Here's mine.
 
IMHO, Affinity Designer being Mac only is what it is. If the usability and feature set (even in its 1.x incarnation) is any indication, a metric ton of thought was put into the app and the direction of development. Right now, anything outside of feature requests (which doesn't include OS migration/porting) or bug reporting is just idle speculation and not really productive at all.
 
I'd rather see AD develop into a killer vector drawing app and then expand its range. Having a sound foundation before adding on that extra bedroom, so to speak. 
 
But then my vector drawing needs are modest, lettering comics, creating art for fliers, stickers, posters and such. I'm sure that, in time, AD will excel at a lot more than my meager needs. At that time, it's Affinity's call to port to another OS or not. 
 
We have a newborn baby here and this thread is all about which degrees and colleges he/she will go to. It's too early. Let AD grow up a bit and then see where it (Affinity/Serif) wants to go.

Okay all, here's what I've been up to: it's 35 pages, almost 100 images, tutorial on beginning to use Affinity Designer. It one of my "In Action" tutorials, where we start right off creating new documents and learn all kinds of stuff along the way. It's not just a "How to do this" tutorial, it's a "How to do this because..." tutorial. Sometimes it's good to get the whys of things as much as the how. Hopefully, this tutorial begins to do it.
 
Here's the link to the box folder where all the files live:
 
https://app.box.com/s/gltgu7u2wscuxxra1e1y
 
It contains the PDF and PNG file and the ZIP file, which contains the pdf and png, incase somebody doesn't like to download ZIP files from an unknown source.
 
this tutorial was written for newbies, but old-hands at Vector apps may find it good.
 
I"ll be working on finishing it as the week progresses, but I gotta get working on my comics. Daddy's gotta make money.
 
 
Any comments or such, post 'em here or send me an message via this board. 
 
thanks!
 
 

One app that I'm getting ready to test with Affinity Designer is called Patternodes (by http://www.lostminds.com ). It's a cool little app that can export seamless tiling patterns as raster or vector. Its interface is interesting and based on Nodes (like how Blender does texturing and such). I picked it up because I wanted something to jazz up the backgrounds for some of my comics. While you will still have to dupe (cmd-J) the imported object, at least when you're aligning them, the pattern should be seamless. 
 
hth

Today I deleted the wacom drivers and re-installed the most current version (as of 7april15 -- making sure I save the old settings and re-apply them, as per Wacom's online suggestions). The same issues with pressure sensitivity persists. It's like the APB brush doesn't register light touch and goes to a medium pressure right off the bat. After trying for 20 minutes, I've been unable to consistently get a smooth thick to thin or thin to thick line. It's mostly a medium (like half the width the brush is set to) to thick. All other apps do not exhibit this behavior. 

Hello Mike,
 
Thanks for the feedback - I'll have a go at addressing some of these things:
 
"First off, for some reason selecting a brush requires 2 clicks if another tool is active. This resulted in a bit of fun as I had used the blur tool to smooth out some highlights, then (so I thought) selected the brush tool to strengthen a line. Even though I clicked on the brush tool, the blur tool was still active until I clicked on the brush tool a second time."
 
​I struggle to reproduce this - clicking between the brush tools seems fine for me. Are you using a Wacom pen? I do find that they often fail to register single clicks.. but more about them later..
 
"And the blur tool, instead of blurring the 2 colors on the canvas toghether, did some funky town stuff. I was blending a light brown and dark brown colors for skin tones and the blur tool came up with some green and dark purple colors. So either there's settings I need to adjust or the blur tool doesn't do what other blur tools do. "
 
The blur brush tool has a colour precision problem - I've fixed it for the next beta, so please let me know if you can still reproduce these issues in the build released later this week.
 
"There's a lot of stop-start in using a wacom. Sometimes it's smooth, most times it's like my tablet has developed parkinson's. I cannot, for the love of Mucha, do a smooth curved line."
 
We've got a number of Wacom devices here - from the cheap and cheerful (relatively speaking, that is), to the Cintiq - we've had a number of problems with performance and accuracy in the past, but we were under the impression that we'd got through most of that - I'm sure Matt will be interested to hear more information about the problems you are having (he deals with our tablet support - I personally cannot stand the things - your "swear at the screen" comment springs to mind ;) ). I would be very surprised if there was a difference between Photo and Designer here - but I could be wrong..
 
"And the only plug-in I use in Photoshop, isn't/doesn't or won't work or show up in APB. That plug in is Magic Picker ( http://anastasiy.com/magicpicker ) which I love as it helps me create custom color palettes. "
 
That sort of plugin will never work with any app other than something in the Adobe suite - it's a UI plugin - not a filter plugin. Unfortunately, we'll never be able to support those things. The plugin itself looks pretty similar to our colour panel in "wheel" mode - they have nice things like complementary, triadic, etc. - but I think AndyT mentioned somewhere that he intended to implement those someday anyway.
 
"When I choose the paint brush tool, I then have to re-select the specific brush I had just used before using another tool (like the blur tool, for example)."
 
This is caused by how Photo shares your selected brush between brush tools. I've added some options into the Assistant Manager for the next beta - so you can tell Photo to a.) Never share brushes between tools, b.) Always share a single brush between all brush tools or c.) Do what it does now (similar tools share a brush).
 
"Having to hover over a brush in the brush palette to see what (or if) it's been named and then figure out if that's the tool I want/need to use. While it's ... okay... to have a "one method to create all tools" -- One thing that other drawing/painting apps do get is that the interaction of different tools (pencil, ink pens, chalk, watercolor etc) on the canvas/paper are different enough to warrant actual categories of tools. "
 
​I'm surprised you need to hover over them - we though the brush preview strokes should be sufficiently large and detailed. You did give me an idea though - I've added a new feature for the next beta whereby you can "tag" a brush preset with a tool - so when you choose that brush preset, the appropriate tool is automatically selected. This means that once you've set up your stock presets with tagged tools, you could get rid of all the other UI completely and just have the brush panel and colour panel visible - no need to even have the tools palette visible. Let me know if this is useful!
 
"So used to hitting the "delete" (backspace) key to clear the current layer (Manga Studio, Sketchbook Pro and Mischief) that I was unprepared to have the current layer I was on being deleted."
 
I struggle a bit with this one - "Delete" should delete.. if you have a marching ants selection, that will be deleted. If you don't, your layer will be deleted. If by "clear", you mean clear the contents of the current layer, just do Cmd-A, then press delete. If you mean clear the current selection, just hit escape. I've not used the other apps you describe, but changing the behaviour of Photo to anything other than what I've just described would blow a lot of minds - and not in a good way!!
 
"While I'm sure that there's a method to blending colors, I haven't found one that actually blends instead giving me one color on one side of the stroke and the other on the other side with both sides blending, but not blending what I've already painted. I've not seen an airbrush tool, or what ever it may be called in APB."
 
We have a couple of ways to blend colour - the blur brush is one, the smudge brush another and the paint mixer the third. Maybe try the paint mixer brush, but press "C" when using it - to clear the tip of any paint. This should allow you to pull existing paint around properly. It mixes using an RYB (primary school) model - so you should get some pleasant results with say, blues and yellows.
 
About icons and such - I'm inclined to agree about the eraser icon - but we get a lot of noise about icons and if we tried to fulfil each request we get to change them, we'd either end up with a single set which nobody liked, or about 20 different sets. We'll address it all one day, but it's not high up the list at present.
 
Hope this helps,
 
Andy.