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Just bought Affinity Photo from the Black Friday Sale - really enjoyed trying it out with the lockdown trial. Been experimenting with some of the brushes I got in the BF sale., working on an idea for a fanzine inspired by The Beach Boys song Angel Come Home. Gold Photo painted over mostly using Frankentoon Neptune & DAUB Watercolours & Washes brushes and multiple layers. Blue - flattened gold image painted over with various brushes (mostly from Frankentoon Nature, but I installed Xenon & Powder Blast brushes at the same time so prob also used some of them) Original photo - paper angel on a Hawaiian shirt napkin background. (Photo of Dennis Wilson is one I found online, taken by Ebet Roberts. Wings are from digital scrapbooking kit Broken Wings {elements} by Little Butterfly Wings. Napkins were from Tescos 😀 )

There are websites that offer brushes with .abr extension. How can you tell if the brush being offered is a vector brush or a raster brush? I downloaded a few and all of them turned out to be raster brushes which do not scale. I am a new AD user and I have 1.8.5 for Windows.

Illustration created with brushes with Affinity Designer

Just purchased Photo and Designer and could use some clarification on a couple of things. Getting the free (thank you) included "Fine Liner Affinity Brushes" by The Artifex Forge brushes working was a bit of a challenge. Just double clicking them loaded them into Photo, not designer, because Windows has apparently associated the afbrushes extension with Photo, not Designer. I've since learned they don't show up in the Photo Brushes list because they're vector brushes and won't work. So why does Photo import them instead of serving up a dialog box explaining why it won't import them? More importantly to me right now: Since they don't show up in the Photo Brushes list, how do I delete them from Photo? The collection of Panels at the side is apparently called the Studio? It's nice that that can be detached from the main image window on its own, and resized, but it's mildly infuriating that selecting a panel within the studio immediately resizes it to its default width. Do I report that as a bug? Is there a toggle somewhere I'm not finding? The Studio maintains it's new width when resized while still attached to the main image window. Thanks. It's clear that these programs have a lot of powerful features, but there looks to be quite a learning curve.

3 things that would save me a lot of time would be: 1. A "recently used brushes" panel. 2. When I select a brush and then adjust its size, the brush I'm using is no longer highlighted in the brushes panel. Sometimes I forget which brush I'm using, so keeping the brush highlighted would be very helpful. 3. Organization options in the brushes panel. When duplicating a brush, I would love to have all of the duplicates located directly below the original brush but slightly indented.

I'm a recent convert to Affinity but I seem to have a problem with Affinity Designer on Windows. Assuming I have a new document and the first watercolour brush is set to a width of 100px, size variance 81%, opacity variance 100%. Select the first water colour brush and select the Vector Brush tool. (Context menu bar shows 100px width). Change the width in the context menu bar to 10 px. Paint a line (which appears at 10px wide, as expected). Type 'A' to select the node tool. The nodes in the curve are selected and the context bar correctly shows 10px: Click on the brush preview to the right of the fill and stroke to get the brush properties Click the properties button The brush properties dialog opens (called Brush - Document Defaults) with a brush width of 100px, size and opacity variance of 0% so it doesn't match either the selected stroke OR the document defaults! Start to change the Size Variance slider and the line in the document immediately jumps back to 100 px wide. So how do you change the properties (e.g size variance) of a brush stroke after drawing it without setting the other properties it back to other values? I assume that double clicking on the brush in the brush palette is supposed to edit the document defaults for that brush and that selecting the properties via the context menu bar should edit the properties for the selected brush stroke(s)?? Or am I doing something wrong? Thanks.

Paint black on black like Pierre Soulages Affinity Photo beginners tutorial. In this Digitally Fearless Affinity Photo beginners tutorial I experiment with oil painting black on black in the style of artist Pierre Soulages. This tutorial can give you ideas on how to come up with creative and interesting backgrounds and artwork. It uses layers, 3d and lighting FX. https://youtu.be/1pYmtpC77ng

When I first started using Affinity Designer, I wanted to create a field of stars. However, all my searches for "star field brushes" or "starfield brushes" lead me to tutorials on using granulated diffusion gradients to create the illusion of a dense background of stars. That wasn't want I wanted at all. I wanted a background of (slightly) cartoony stars against a black backdrop. Since I'm a hobbyist, with zero formal training, I didn't really understand how to ask for what I actually wanted. So ... I puttered and played with the tools and ... finally (after far more time than I'd like to admit), I figured out what I wanted. What I actually wanted, was: A Pixel Layer, Intensity Brush, with Multiple Nozzles. My work here is hardly complex, or spectacular, but it does provide a solution to the problem I was having, and I like to think that maybe it might also provide some help to others. So, in the hopes that others might find my brushes useful, or at least be able to use them to figure out how to make their own, here they are: Starfield brushes.afbrushes

One of my students had all of her brushes in Affinity Photo disappear. She is unable to install any brushes. Any help? PM

Hi can anyone please let me know the steps in creating a vector custom brush from an image in Affinity Designer? Please note the image i want to create the custom vector brush is attached herewith. Appreciate your support and assistance in this regards.

Hello, a suggestion that has been on my mind for a long time: it would be really nice if one could sort the brush categories in the brush palette afterwards. That one can sort the brushes within a category is good so far. Please go one step further and make it possible to sort the categories itself. Maybe this is already possible and I just haven't found it yet. Cheers, Puck

Hello there, I was trying to enjoy using the Frankentoon Illustration brushes (on Windows Designer) but every time I switched back and forth between eraser and one of the more complex brushes I had to reselect and therefore reset brush size and changes I've made to the brush. After some testing I figured out the texture option is causing this problem because the textures won't get applied after switching back to the brush tool. However if I press "Invert" twice in the texture brush settings the brush works as intended again, but that just kills my workflow so is there any fix for this? I couldn't find anything about it after skimming the forum. Explanation of the pictures: 1.: stroke with brush; 2.: switch to eraser and erase a bit; 3.: switch back to brush and do another stroke After some more testing I found that this issue only occurs in brushes with more than one Texture applied, also non- Frankentoon brushes are affected too (tried with "Watercolours" defaults). I'm running the latest stable designer build on a AMD Ryzen 4700u, 16GB RAM Kind regards, RK

Dears my project is 3000x2000 points and has over 200 vectors and several reference images in that, the project file was always about 20 mb. I then decided to add some textures and grain so I switched to the pixel persona (I’m new to that) and add about 10 pixel layer where I used several different brushes. The project file suddenly reached 500mb which is a lot to save and backup on cloud drives. how is that possible? Few pixel layer can make such difference? Is there a way to downsize them since they contains only grain and light textures, no real details? What is the best approach with pixel layers to avoid that? thank you very much!

I felt like wanting to give something back to the community, so I created a free to use starter pack for artists who want to get into Affinity but don't know where to start. This brush pack contains a mixture of hand made brushes as well as brushes I like to use from Affinity's own collection. FDK's Artist Brushes Starter Pack.afbrushes A bunch of them are standard bread and butter brushes that are expected from a typical art program. Since I have been a long time Photoshop user I have done my best to recreate the typical round brushes that are used for painting, whether they are hard or soft brushes (also including a couple of square brushes). There are also some other custom brushes I have made to speed certain things up while working on concepts and such, like a chain brush, multiple hair brushes, and more. It also contains Affinity specific brushes I particularly like and are there primarily to add some extra texture to your work in the various stages of a production, whether it is sketching, painting in textures, or specific tools like the Smudge Brush Tool and Sponge Brush Tool. Here are some examples of what you can do with the brush pack: I hope you enjoy! Happy brushing! --- This brush pack has been approved and endorsed by the original owners of the brushes I picked out from their hand tailored collections. Credit for these brushes go to the Serif team behind the Affinity Suite and Paolo Limoncelli (DAUB), the artist behind the brushes. Thanks for your support!

When iam using my huion h950p graphics tablet it was very laggy with the brushes and also the performance ..why is it so slow ..please improve the prformance of brushes while using using them with pen tablets ..still not impressed by affinity photo ..and also i cannot fully switch like these issues still on. Please make a update which fix mainly this issue . So many creators use designing softwares with graphics tablets.

Here is my issue. I've been starting to learn digital art, as a random hobby, so don't worry if there is a lot of fine detail involved in solving my question or if "just find what works for you" is the proper way to go, please just try and give me an answer to the following question, as I'm sure others have struggled with this before and the solution probably isn't that hard, I just can't find it. I included the settings for the most important brush at the end of this post, both for PS and Affinity. Problem: I downloaded some Photoshop brushes for digital painting and they feel great in photoshop but nothing like that in Affinity Photo. I know I have to tweak settings, but I'm feeling lost. I don't necessarily want to keep these brushes, if anyone can show me what Affinity brushes would help me do the same thing, I would consider that a solution. (Technically, I may be able to do the same thing with the regular hard brush but I also can't figure out the right settings for it to feel the most natural way possible) Basic actions I want to carry out: Digitally sketching on my ipad, digitally shading a greyscale base for painting over, digitally painting + blending + refining the art. These are the brushes I downloaded. This is what the brushes feel like in photoshop: https://imgur.com/a/5SHKv2U - It feels natural, pressure sensitivity makes sense and the "paint" builds up over time, both from pressing harder and from lifting up and going back down (aka. opacity). Overall this feels like what you see any artists on youtube using, be it a regular hard brush or a super custom brush, the general "feel" seems to be what im getting in this video. However, this is what they look like in Affinity Photo: https://imgur.com/a/kh4bfAH BRUSH SETTINGS Photoshop https://imgur.com/a/VkzHfpH Affinity Photo https://imgur.com/a/ANDVhLX Thanks everyone!

Hi, so I have quite a strange issue. I was making a logo for my friends winery. I painted it and then digitalized it so she would get vector to use right. I was just in Designer persona for vectors using brushes from this library. The issue is that when I am in the affinity designer the logo itself looks ready, with transparent background etc. but when I export it to eps, white backgrounds behind the shapes appear. I was doing a little research, ticked all the boxes which was supposed to be ticked nothing helped. Then I tried to put the bad eps file back to Affinity and see what is the problem. What I found out is that some of the curves changed to images. When I tried to delete the "white squares" it will automatically delete part of the logo and it is just such a mess. I was wondering if that is because I though I used vector brushes but it somehow transferred to pixel brushes? The thing is it took me a lots of time to find out how to digitalize the painting itself and it was painted with watercolors which was hard to imitate. I was so happy when I finally found out that I can make it in affinity with the vector brushes but now I cant export it. My friend will use the logo in a big size to be printed on a wood. To understand how it was made maybe it will be clear why this is happening for somebody else. I used curves to make the outlines of all the shapes than filled them with color and then I used a mask layer for the filled ones, where I was using vector brushes to imitate the "texture" so It would not be so flat just with a plain color and look like it was painted. I tried to change the option as well for the eps but it resulted in loosing the strokes sizes. i tried to put it in Illustrator as well but the same thing appearing. If somebody knows what to do with it that would be awesome. UPDATE: I tried to just basic shape and the same mask with brush as I used in the logo and it has the same problem. When I export it and put it back it has the white background and it is rasterized. Second option to export it without rasterizing at all results in that the used watercolor vector brush is just black.. So that means it has problem export the vector brushes like vector and it rasterizes them - which i do not get, when it is a VECTOR brush. Or maybe I am idiot and understand the base of vector brushes badly? Here some pictures so you can see what I meant. This is finished logo for export All the layers are curves in this EPS version put back in Aff - curves became images This is to show you how was it made - basic shape filled with basic color and then mask with just brush stroke to make the texture This is the last option I tried but it resulted in the image below - all the stroke sizes, option, brushes deleted. LOGO.FINAL.BEFORE.EX.afdesign

There is no indication, either in the brush selection list, or even in a brush properties UI, which brush is selected/ in use. Please add this support. I have to keep manual notes and screenshots of what brush I'm using. Would also be a great feature to be able to assign a color, like you can do to a layer, to a brush.

Hi guys, here's the 2nd part of how to make your own brushes in Affinity. I add 2 more things about how to make brushes that I forgot to tell you in the first video. I hope you enjoy and found this video helpful. Thank You!

I'm working with a set of Photoshop brushes and experiencing a bit of an issue with the shape of the brush. It's a cartographic coastline brush, so it's meant to hold the distance between its three points as you move and drag it in different directions. Is there a setting to make the brush function correctly in Affinity Photo? I've included examples of how the brush looks in both APhoto and Photoshop.

Greetings I just created a few new cool pixel brushes for Affinity Designer. However when i tried them out I can't change the color. if i create a brush with a black .png it only brushes in black. If i load a whited .png it only paints white. Can someone educate me on what i am doing wrong? Thanks Dave

In Affinity Designer, under the vector persona, on a vector layer, using the vector brush I have the option of using some pencil brushes. Are these truly vector? I draw a line, the line itself is editable but is it truly generating vector texture or applying raster texture to my vector line work? IF say, I want to create hand lettered logos in vector with a realistic pencil texture is this the way to go or will that texture actually be unscalable raster? I’ve tried selecting drawn lines and “creating curve” and “expanding stroke” but either way, it just looks like the texture is not converting to a shape, instead it appears raster... Any insights appreciated! Thank you!

Hey everyone, I am creating an website just for mock-ups of affinity files. Every file that is uploaded must be free of any CC to ensure everyone can use the files without and issue. I will be uploading all of my mock-ups there and I will be allowing user submitted content to help grow the affinity mock up community. The site will be similar to graphic burger, mock up world, etc. I am personally looking for some people to help me test the website to ensure there is no issues before launch (end of August launch). I'm currently working on a custom post type and taxonomies for user submissions right now but everything has been going super smooth. If you'd like to help let me know!

Hi, I'm new with Affinity Designer, with the Ipad too. I'm trying to duplicate a brush but when I press the button duplicate after pushing the name of the original brush, nothing happens, there is not a copy of the brush, so I don't know how to continue. Is this a bug? I closed and reopened the Ipad just in case something changes but not... Thanks a lot if you have an answer.

I'm working with a PowerMac laptop. My OS is High Sierra. If this matters. I'm just learning Affinity and have never made a brush before, so I'm new to this. I've encountered this issue In Designer 1.8.3. I'm trying to create a new Textured Intensity Brush. I'm using the .png file shown. When I create the new brush I have white bars at either end of the brush stroke show up in my brush (as shown in screen shot). What am I doing wrong? What can I do to eliminate those bars at either end?