GothicLolitaAngel Posted January 22, 2020 Share Posted January 22, 2020 I'm new to affinity designer and had for about two weeks but what been holding me back is I cannot figure out how to color in this software. I'm just completely frustrated when it comes to using the software. I drew a poster design in clip studio paint and taking into affinity to color. That what I would like to do which won't happen now. But it could be helpful for next time please can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong because coloring feels to complex here when I dont feel like shouldn't. Also is there a way to prevent affinity from crashing kept crashing on the image. Can't seem to work in higher files sizes without it tensing up on itself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarryP Posted January 23, 2020 Share Posted January 23, 2020 Welcome to the forums. Since your image is mostly transparent – apart from the black lines – you can use a similar technique to that used by traditional cartoon animators and create the fills ‘on the back of the acetate’. See my very crude attached examples where the filled shapes are put behind the image to create the fills. To do it properly you will have to be much more careful than I have with my quick sample. Does this help? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted January 23, 2020 Share Posted January 23, 2020 14 hours ago, GothicLolitaAngel said: I drew a poster design in clip studio paint and taking into affinity to color. If the output of clip studio paint is a raster (bitmap) image then it has no separate vector objects that Affinity Designer can fill in with color -- it is just a bunch of pixels. To do what you want most easily you would need either a vector version of the drawing or maybe to use Affinity Photo & its Flood Select ('magic wand') tool to define pixel areas you can paint over with its pixel brushes or fill with its Flood Fill tool. Affinity Designer has only limited capabilities for pixel level work, so it is not a good choice for this. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GothicLolitaAngel Posted January 23, 2020 Author Share Posted January 23, 2020 8 hours ago, R C-R said: If the output of clip studio paint is a raster (bitmap) image then it has no separate vector objects that Affinity Designer can fill in with color -- it is just a bunch of pixels. To do what you want most easily you would need either a vector version of the drawing or maybe to use Affinity Photo & its Flood Select ('magic wand') tool to define pixel areas you can paint over with its pixel brushes or fill with its Flood Fill tool. Affinity Designer has only limited capabilities for pixel level work, so it is not a good choice for this. This is in vector actually. I did a complete vector drawing in clip before bringing in affinity. Oh really is designer not good for this? I got it because I wanted to use it for creating shirt designs and using the patone colors because I do want these printed right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GothicLolitaAngel Posted January 23, 2020 Author Share Posted January 23, 2020 11 hours ago, GarryP said: Welcome to the forums. Since your image is mostly transparent – apart from the black lines – you can use a similar technique to that used by traditional cartoon animators and create the fills ‘on the back of the acetate’. See my very crude attached examples where the filled shapes are put behind the image to create the fills. To do it properly you will have to be much more careful than I have with my quick sample. Does this help? I see I was trying to do something like that but when I move the layer it still showed on top of it. So I don’t know what you exactly did to get it like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted January 23, 2020 Share Posted January 23, 2020 56 minutes ago, GothicLolitaAngel said: This is in vector actually. I did a complete vector drawing in clip before bringing in affinity. How specifically did you 'bring' Affinity Designer into this? Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted January 23, 2020 Share Posted January 23, 2020 4 minutes ago, R C-R said: How specifically did you 'bring' Affinity Designer into this? For “bringing in” read “bringing it into”: On 1/22/2020 at 9:00 PM, GothicLolitaAngel said: I drew a poster design in clip studio paint and taking into affinity to color. Quote Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
v_kyr Posted January 23, 2020 Share Posted January 23, 2020 Dependent on a used tracing software, an autotracing would also redraw curves in a coloring manner ... Quote ☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan ☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted January 23, 2020 Share Posted January 23, 2020 1 hour ago, Alfred said: For “bringing in” read “bringing it into”: What I mean is how (in what format) was the file exported from clip studio paint to bring it in(to) AD. Alfred 1 Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GothicLolitaAngel Posted January 24, 2020 Author Share Posted January 24, 2020 4 hours ago, R C-R said: What I mean is how (in what format) was the file exported from clip studio paint to bring it in(to) AD. The file was brought into Affinity Design as a PSD file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GothicLolitaAngel Posted January 24, 2020 Author Share Posted January 24, 2020 4 hours ago, v_kyr said: Dependent on a used tracing software, an autotracing would also redraw curves in a coloring manner ... I still need to figure out what tools to use to do what you did here. That what I’m having trouble with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted January 24, 2020 Share Posted January 24, 2020 18 minutes ago, GothicLolitaAngel said: I still need to figure out what tools to use to do what you did here. That what I’m having trouble with. What does your Layers panel look like? Is it similar to the one @v_kyr shows or does it have a lot of short, open curves? Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
v_kyr Posted January 24, 2020 Share Posted January 24, 2020 58 minutes ago, GothicLolitaAngel said: I still need to figure out what tools to use to do what you did here. That what I’m having trouble with. I used a vectorization (also called tracing) software, it's a software which takes a bitmaps (raster file like: JPG, PNG) as input and vectorizes the bitmap drawing into a vector drawing (file formats like: SVG, EPS, PDF). For your above image an online tool like (autotracer) would generate the following as SVG and when loaded into AD and saved as an Affinity Designer file ... Alexanderad2020.svg Alexanderad2020.afdesign See also for example some other threads about such vectorization tools themes ... Image Tracing in Affinity Designer? Image Trace to Vector Path Converting Pixel drawing to Vector? Auto Trace In AFFINITY DESIGNER Best Image Vectorizer for Mac with Affinity Designer ... and so on ... Some vectorization and autotracing software for Win + Macs: Super Vectorizer 2 (commercial, Mac) TracedLines (commercial, Mac) Intaglio Vectorize (free to use, Mac) DragPotrace (Mac) + Potrace (free, Win + Mac) Potrace (free, Win + Mac) AutoTrace (free, Win+Mac) Inkscape (free, Win + Mac) Online in a webbrowser usable tracing tools: autotracer vectorizer vectorization ...etc... Quote ☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan ☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarryP Posted January 24, 2020 Share Posted January 24, 2020 @GothicLolitaAngel To go back to the question you asked earlier, all I did was move the "Background" layer to the top of the layer stack in the Layers Panel, so I don’t know why you had problems with doing that. Have you checked your layer Blend Modes to make sure they are all set to “Normal”? You may have to keep moving the "Background" layer to the top of the stack after you add each new ‘fill layer’. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GothicLolitaAngel Posted January 24, 2020 Author Share Posted January 24, 2020 12 hours ago, v_kyr said: I used a vectorization (also called tracing) software, it's a software which takes a bitmaps (raster file like: JPG, PNG) as input and vectorizes the bitmap drawing into a vector drawing (file formats like: SVG, EPS, PDF). For your above image an online tool like (autotracer) would generate the following as SVG and when loaded into AD and saved as an Affinity Designer file ... Alexanderad2020.svg Alexanderad2020.afdesign See also for example some other threads about such vectorization tools themes ... Image Tracing in Affinity Designer? Image Trace to Vector Path Converting Pixel drawing to Vector? Auto Trace In AFFINITY DESIGNER Best Image Vectorizer for Mac with Affinity Designer ... and so on ... Some vectorization and autotracing software for Win + Macs: Super Vectorizer 2 (commercial, Mac) TracedLines (commercial, Mac) Intaglio Vectorize (free to use, Mac) DragPotrace (Mac) + Potrace (free, Win + Mac) Potrace (free, Win + Mac) AutoTrace (free, Win+Mac) Inkscape (free, Win + Mac) Online in a webbrowser usable tracing tools: autotracer vectorizer vectorization ...etc... Wow I didn’t know I would have to do something like that. I will deftinely try those online tools. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted January 24, 2020 Share Posted January 24, 2020 (...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
v_kyr Posted January 24, 2020 Share Posted January 24, 2020 4 hours ago, GothicLolitaAngel said: Wow I didn’t know I would have to do something like that. I will deftinely try those online tools. It's just one way of coloring and in this case filling vectors with colors etc. Instead one could also color a bitmap drawing with brushes etc. - So it always depends o what you prefer to work with. Quote ☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan ☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted January 24, 2020 Share Posted January 24, 2020 You could even use the flood fill tool and set the tolerance to about 80% to get a clean fill, create a pixel layer above the line drawing and set the flood fill tools source to Current layer and below. Use a separate pixel layer for each character. example.afdesign Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GothicLolitaAngel Posted January 24, 2020 Author Share Posted January 24, 2020 Thanks for all the help guys. I don't want to make a topic for this since I'm getting help for my first problem which I have started testing out more things since opening the post. Does affinity designer normally crash a lot. I'm just trying to do other stuff in it and it would easily freeze up. This happen several times I'm just want to know if its normal or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted January 25, 2020 Share Posted January 25, 2020 (...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GothicLolitaAngel Posted January 29, 2020 Author Share Posted January 29, 2020 On 1/24/2020 at 7:20 PM, Lagarto said: That's an interesting question I would say "normally never", and "sometimes always"! i use alternatety the release versions and the latest beta versions of all three apps, and some operations cause repeatable / non repeatable crashes in the former, and some in the latter. I am in the forum much because of finding out how stable and reliable Affinity apps are for professional use and I must say my confidence is increasing even if there are some issues that seem to be slowly getting fixed or improved. But I'd certainly give each of them a chance. Well I am it just that it’s hard to use it without it freezing. I can’t even do a line it in could it be a Windows 10 issue? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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