William Overington

Hopefully what I am suggesting is a fail safe way to proceed. I remember that because around 1980 it was decided that two digits was adequate to express the year that by the 1990s there was a big problem looming before the year 2000 because the expiry date of an insurance policy would seem to a computer system to be before its start date, and so on. Converting software to have dates as four digits was a huge effort. That problem could have been avoided if four digits had been used in 1980. So if any AI is kept in separate apps in the Affinity suite then any future problems not apparent at present could be resolved more easily. William

Well, I have put forward this request to the Affinity team. Whether the Affinity team chooses to discuss this request is a matter for them. If the Affinity team does discuss this request then what, if anything, the Affinity team decides about this request is a matter for them. Management must manage. William

Well, in my opinion it is about providing those customers who want them with the tools they want to enhance their creative processes yet also not requiring those customers who do not want them to have their work potentially deemed to be using them. William

How do you mean please? I am an independent person. Affinity is not owned by Apple. My only connection with Affinity is as a customer, an end user of Affinity products, and a participant in these forums. William

Well why not? Management must manage. Surely if management wants to keep the present three apps free of AI then that is possible. I have AI generated images custom generated for me as a result of a text prompt that I had authored. There is a ban on mentioning them in these forums, but I have bought prints of some of them and framed them. I am not at all against AI, I do however opine that it needs to be kept separate from the existing Affinity programs so as to provide provenance that it has not been used when that is the case. William

Thinking about this, is there any evidence that Gutenberg ever got ink on his fingers? Operating a printing press was a two man operation, one inked the type, one kept his hands clean and pulled the lever. It is entirely possible that more than two people were involved. Maybe a third person handled the paper, both before and after printing. It is thought that Gutenberg was born around 1400. He was a goldsmith before he invented printing with moveable type. William

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not advocating that Affinity does not use AI. I am advocating that if Affinity does use AI that it is done n separate programs in the Affinity suite of programs and not integrated into any of the existing three programs. So there could be, say, five Affinity programs. Affinity Publisher, Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, Affinity Enhancement AI, Affinity Generator AI. Affinity Generator AI could be produced such that an AI engine is bought in as totally untrained and then the Affinity team train the AI themselves using only artwork generated by staff artists while at work in the Affinity premises on computers not linked to the internet. That way, anything generated using Affinity Generator AI would have provenance of being both lawful and moral towards all artists. In addition, the other three programs would be AI free, with provenance of that. Some people could choose to not have the AI programs on their computer. In addition, if someone using, say, Affinity Publisher, were to want an original picture to include in a document, he or she could link through to Affinity Generator AI and use a text prompt and receive an original picture. I consider that this would be a sensible, balanced approach, introducing AI in a lawful and moral way while also providing provenance of it not having been used at all for those end users who want that. William

How can I use those effects on my disc design please? In the physical version the thirteen items shown here as light orange discs are 3d yellow plastic, I used pale orange here as I thought that yellow would not show up well on the web. William

What I was trying to do was, that having started with an A3 size canvas and the picture has end bits against white at the edges, to use a nice part out of the middle as the picture, so none of the end bits. I was trying to do that by having a rectangle of the desired size at the desired position and exporting the selected area. I had tried to have a filled white rectangle with no border at the back, but having got one layer for each colour I could not get the filled rectangle to the back. William

Yes, upon checking, that is the brush that i used. But with the name Light Glazing Oil 04, am I using the wrong brush to paint? William

Well, I had tried that and it did not work for me, no fill, no stroke, it disappeared! William

That someone could be you. Then you could be skilled both with paint and brush and with Affinity software. William

There is a website for the products. https://affinity.serif.com William

Hi, thank you for posting. Basically, Affinity is a set of three software programs for producing electronic output. They can be used alone or together, as desired. Affinity Publisher is basically for text publications, maybe, indeed often. for more than one page. Affinity Designer is for producing artwork from a zero start, either vector art or bitmap art, or a mixture of both. Affinity Photo is for editing photographs and the like. These forums are for discussing the software and its applications. This particular section is for posting what one has produced, or edited, using these products. The moderators are very strict about not posting anything that has been generated using AI (Artificial Intelligence) software. The participants include professional artists and hobbyist artists. It is a polite, good-natured forum. The really good thing about Affinity software is it is NOT a pay a subscription product. If you buy a licence, that is it. If they produce a later version, well, that is another payment if you choose to buy it, but you don't have to buy it. For example, Affinity Designer is on version 2. I am still using version 1. William

Some readers may have noticed the thin line around the pictures. I did not want it there but I could not work out how else to get a section of the image of a known size as a png file. I looked up crop but I did not find it quickly obvious how to do what I wanted, so I made a copy of the .afdesign file, added a rectangle with no fill and a 1 point Stroke and then exported the png of the selected area. Checking now it appears that the colour of the line is not the default black. The colour seems to have been carried over from the oil paint, and Is different in the large version and the small version. William

Oh, that is rather too big for the forum screen. I'll try it at 501 by 501. William

I have had a go, it took from 2:02 pm until 2:20 pm. I used an A3 landscape canvas and a separate layer for each colour. I used Affinity Designer version 1 and I used the last of the brushes under Oils that is listed as 200. I am thinking that I can try to select an area from the middle and it might look better. William

Yet whichever way, or even both, this thread has encouraged me to try using the oil brushes in Affinity Designer. Maybe other people too. William

For the benefit of readers who do not as yet realize why Alfred laughed at that reply, here is a link to a chapter of my second novel. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/localizable_sentences_the_second_novel_chapter_048.pdf William

Possibly. William

@Alfred Well, you could have noted that you altered what I wrote by changing some of it to be in bold. William

In the first picture, I like that sky with the orange and the blue. Can one produce that effect using Affinity Designer? William

Yes. I am just saying that I consider that it will serve no useful purpose to remove the first post of a new participant in these forums. The strongest trees sway in the breeze. William