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Pen workflow needs improvement


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Hi, first of all thank you for this amazing application. It's the first serious Photoshop contender I've come across and boy, we need one so badly.

That said, I tried to get a little deeper into the Affinity workflow recently, but unfortunately found the pen workflow to be so severely broken to the point where it was easier to pain with my laptop trackpad. Most issues should be relatively easy to fix, so I decided to submit them here. Some (most) of these things have been reported before in one form or another, but I get the feeling that the individual reports are scattered too broadly across the forums, so I created a little collection.

I have an Intuos 4 Wacom Tablet with the latest 6.3.38-2 drivers and I am running Affinity 1.7.3.481 on Windows 10.

 

Issue #1: Brush dynamics

This one's a really small thing and may be a novice issue, but I find it not very optimal from a usability standpoint to have no brush dynamics at all by default. I would have expected at least some pressure-sensitive size or flow dynamics enabled out of the box. This way I had to google first if Affinity supports brush dynamics at all, because if it didn't it'd been a ditch for me from the start.

Issue #2: Menu placement

I still find it extremely irritating that menus appear on the left-hand side of the point where I click. I know this has to do with my Windows Ink settings, but no other application does this, not even Photoshop. Setting my workspace to left-handed is a workaround, but since I am right-handed, it's a really bad one.

Reported previously here:

Issue #3: Brush cursor invisible

This is the first real deal breaker. As soon as my pen enters the detection zone of my tablet, Affinity stops updating its brush rendering. As a result, I have either no brush cursor (i.e. normal cursor only) or I have a brush cursor, but it doesn't respond to any size, opacity, or hardness updates. It's basically impossible to draw with this, because I do not see where my cursor is or what amount of "ink" will be emitted. Using the mouse for drawing does not trigger this issue.

Similar, but not the same issue reported here: 

Very similar issue, but with a non-solution here: 

Issue #4: Scrubby zoom is jerky

I don't know if this is just me or my Hi-DPI screen, but the scrubby zoom with a pen seems jerky and  insanely slow. Perhaps the zoom factor per moved distance has to be increased a notch and perhaps it needs some performance optimisations also.

Issue #5: Scrubby zoom with a pen requires hotkey release

I often cycle through my tools via hotkeys, particularly the brush and zoom tools. I am very used to Photoshop's amazing temporary tool selection by holding down the tool hotkey (e.g. Z for scrubby zoom) and then releasing it afterwards, which switches me back to my original tool (usually the brush). In Affinity, this doesn't work, but at least the tool already responds while I hold down the hotkey. I only have to remember to manually switch back as an additional nuisance. Unfortunately, this is not the case when I use a pen. Scrubby zoom with a pen does not work until I fully release the Z key.

Issue #6: Tool hotkey cycling getting the best of me

This is connected to the previous issue and amplified by my habit of holding down hotkeys, but it's a real deal breaker for me. Pressing a tool hotkey multiple times cycles through all sub tools. I am constantly battling against the application trying to make me draw soft masks with either the colour selection brush (which creates pretty much the opposite of a "soft" mask) or the pixel tool instead of the normal brush. Having to check each time if I have the right kind of brush selected is a huge no-go as it slows me down massively and often I don't even notice the error until the edges of my drawing are starting to fray.

There is a previous report here, but the only "solution" was to manually remove or reassign all the tool shortcuts:

Issue #7: Changing brush size and hardness almost impossible

I know that the hotkeys for changing the brush size are [ and ], but those are not very practical to use while drawing. First, because they are on the right-hand side of the keyboard (on non US/UK keyboards, they may not even be accessible with one hand), secondly, they are pretty clunky, since you can control the size only in discrete steps, and lastly, they only control size, but not hardness.

The Alt + press-all-the-buttons-on-your-mouse-at-once shortcut is an Affinity speciality, which I myself find very weird and error-prone and it is entirely impractical for any tool that is not a three-button mouse (e.g. a pen). Despite some posts on the forums here saying otherwise, it is NOT possible to change the size or hardness with Alt + right-click drag on my graphics tablet. No matter the order of the buttons, I only get the magnified eye dropper tool, which is insanely annoying, because it messes up my brush colour. Neither Alt + right click + pen drag, nor Alt + pen drag + right click works. Finally, setting one of my pen buttons to Left+Right click wouldn't even be a good solution if it worked (spoiler: it doesn't).

Reported here, but without a working solution:

Issue #8: Pixel layers and the aggravating assistant

After a while, the "Painting with no layer selected" assistant setting got on my nerves so massively, that I chose to disable it. This is a minor usability issue, but it's quite annoying that new documents start without a base layer. With the assistant disabled, I have to manually create one or always wonder why I cannot draw anything. I would prefer having a base layer from the start, especially since the viewport shows a white background rather than a checker board, implying the existence of such a base layer. I definitely prefer this nuisance over tons of random pixel layers added in my layer hierarchy, but it would still be nice to have this fixed.

Thanks for reading and (possibly) your consideration!

 

 

Edited by phoerious
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1 hour ago, phoerious said:

Issue #6: Tool hotkey cycling getting the best of me

This is connected to the previous issue and amplified by my habit of holding down hotkeys, but it's a real deal breaker for me. Pressing a tool hotkey multiple times cycles through all sub tools. I am constantly battling against the application trying to make me draw soft masks with either the colour selection brush (which creates pretty much the opposite of a "soft" mask) or the pixel tool instead of the normal brush. Having to check each time if I have the right kind of brush selected is a huge no-go as it slows me down massively and often I don't even notice the error until the edges of my drawing are starting to fray.

Sounds like you should enable this option in Preferences, Tools:

image.png.8fdedb447529c2ee3326c0d101a91c36.png

With that enabled, the tools in a group won't cycle unless you also have Shift pressed.

-- Walt
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Hey phoerious,

Thanks for the post. I've tried to answer as best as I can. If you need any more info for any of my comments, please let me know.

 

Issue #1: Brush dynamics
- Sorry, I'm not sure I follow you. Brush dynamics are dependant on the brush and its settings and works out of the box for me as long as Windows Ink is enabled. 


Issue #2: Menu placement
- I'm not sure what to suggest about this. The beta has had quite a bit of work done to it with regards to Windows Ink. In the retail, we always advise to disable it as it causes issues. With the beta, we recommend turning it on.


Issue #3: Brush cursor invisible
- I cannot reproduce this in the beta with Windows Ink enabled, but I can on the retail version. 


Issue #4: Scrubby zoom is jerky
- This is okay for me on my 4k monitors—do you have any screen recording software that could display this?

Unless you mean when it snaps to 50% and 100% etc. Then maybe that's what is causing the jerkiness.


Issue #5: Scrubby zoom with a pen requires hotkey release
- I think this is more of a feature/improvement request than a bug. I would recommend posting in the correct section of the forum for this. I do see your point though.


Issue #6: Tool hotkey cycling getting the best of me
- Walt has covered this one


Issue #7: Changing brush size and hardness almost impossible
- I believe this is something that is being worked on. Left-click with a tablet is pen-down but when you right-click, the pen-down command is lost before the right-click. This is something we need to work on.


Issue #8: Pixel layers and the aggravating assistant
- I'm not sure why there couldn't be an option somewhere to start new documents with a pixel layer. Of course, it would have to be an option as not everyone necessarily wants to start with one.

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Thanks for your reply.

Quote

- Sorry, I'm not sure I follow you. Brush dynamics are dependant on the brush and its settings and works out of the box for me as long as Windows Ink is enabled. 

This is more a usability issue than a technical issue. Brush dynamics do work, but only after enabling them manually in the brush's dynamics settings (which are all off by default). Photoshop has at least transfer dynamics enabled by default, which is convenient and shows me as a new user that brush dynamics are working, whereas in Affinity I wasn't so sure about that and had to google it first.

Quote

- I'm not sure what to suggest about this. The beta has had quite a bit of work done to it with regards to Windows Ink. In the retail, we always advise to disable it as it causes issues. With the beta, we recommend turning it on.

I will test the beta when I find the time. In 1.7 it feels very rough.

Quote

- This is okay for me on my 4k monitors—do you have any screen recording software that could display this?

It's not horrible, but it doesn't feel smooth either. Perhaps the main issue is that it's too slow, i.e. the zoom factor is too small. It may also be an issue that the zoom factor is constant and not adaptive.

Quote

- I believe this is something that is being worked on. Left-click with a tablet is pen-down but when you right-click, the pen-down command is lost before the right-click. This is something we need to work on.

Yeah, this was one of the main pain points.

Quote

- I'm not sure why there couldn't be an option somewhere to start new documents with a pixel layer. Of course, it would have to be an option as not everyone necessarily wants to start with one.

If you start an entirely new document, there could be an option as to what background to set (transparent, white, black, none). The setting should be remembered. In general, I don't think it makes much sense to start with no layer at all, but perhaps that just comes down to personal preference. In fact, there is already an option to have a "transparent" aka checkerboard background, but that only controls the visual representation in Affinity and doesn't actually create a new layer. I think this is particularly confusing, since for me, a checkerboard implies no background (or a transparent) layer, whereas a white background implies that there is an opaque background layer already.

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