Curves are made of straight lines using a pen.

[albertoMartinsen]

Hi,

I'm trying to explore if my Affinity Photo is good enough for drawing and, while it draws smooth line at the first glance, when I zoom in I can see how the lines are made of small straight lines and it's not acceptable quality in my opinion. It seems like the "read" ratio from the input device is discarded way too much in my opinion.

I report this as a bug because other drawing apps I'm testing using the same tablet on the same Mac make perfectly smooth lines (without any smoothing tool enabled within the app). As an example, I share two screenshots of the same text drawn in AP and in Krita just for comparison (I've pointed areas where the issue is more visible using a red arrow):

KRITA:

 

Affinity Photo:

 

[ChristiduToit]

@albertoMartinsen 
I have had similar issues in the past. 
I can definitely say that Affinity Photo can create perfectly smooth linework, although I must admit that the brush engine is not as smooth as something like Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint at this stage - definitely an area for improvement. If they can improve the 'feel' of the brushes to be a bit more natural and accurate to the pen input, I think that it could really make Affinity Photo as much of an illustration and digital painting app as Photoshop has become (even though it initially started as a photo editing app, just like PS as well). This could really open up a lot of new doors and avenues for Affinity, as most people still view Affinity as making apps specifically for photo editing and vector work, not really digital painting.

Aaaanyway.  
The way that I fixed this (at least temporarily) was to go through all the files in my Mac's Library folder that were leftover from my previous tablet driver. 
There are some hidden files in there that are created by other tablet drivers which can conflict with the XP-Pen drivers. 
This definitely helped smooth the lines out a bit more on my side, but I would absolutely love if Affinity's desktop app brushes felt as smooth and fluid as Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, Krita, etc. 

They feel amazing to work with on iPad, but are a little bit janky on desktop for some reason, and I've tested with a few different tablet brands, so it's definitely something within the app. 
Even still, I have managed to make some totally acceptable artwork (attached). 

I've also found that when you zoom in a bit more, the lines do become more smooth. 
The further you zoom out, the more jagged the lines can be. 

As a last resort, you can download a third party app called Hej Stylus, which is a custom cursor stabiliser which overrides the pen input and makes it much smoother.

[albertoMartinsen]

8 minutes ago, ChristiduToit said:

This could really open up a lot of new doors and avenues for Affinity, as most people still view Affinity as making apps specifically for photo editing and vector work, not really digital painting.

Thank you very VERY much for your detailed answer! You gave me some clues and ideas. And I totally agree with your quote.

10 minutes ago, ChristiduToit said:

I've also found that when you zoom in a bit more, the lines do become more smooth. 
The further you zoom out, the more jagged the lines can be. 

I'll give that a try. Thank you again.

Did you made that drawing? WOW. Are you on any social media so I can see more from you?

[ChristiduToit]

Just now, albertoMartinsen said:

Thank you very VERY much for your detailed answer! You gave me some clues and ideas. And I totally agree with your quote.

I'll give that a try. Thank you again.

Did you made that drawing? WOW. Are you on any social media so I can see more from you?

Hopefully some of that info is helpful! I struggled a lot with the jagged lines, but found out that there were small, hidden files from my Yiynova tablet driver (labeled as Artisul driver files for some reason) hidden in my iMac's library folder.
It was a bit annoying and tedious finding and deleting all of the files, restarting my computer, and then reinstalling the latest XP-Pen driver, but it completely removed the weird jitter I was experiencing, and hopefully it will help you too. 

Thank you very much for the kind words! The attached image is a WIP of something I'm currently working on.
There's more on Instagram, Behance, and Facebook - thanks for showing interest (hopefully sharing social links is allowed on here).