Affinity suite for comics

[trialanderror]

With its interacting tools for drawing/painting, page layout etc., I’d love to replace Clip Studio with the Affinity suite for comics. I’ve given Clip Studio several tries, but I’m a graphic designer in my main job, hence used to Adobe apps (and Quark before that), and using Clip Studio only ever goes well for an hour at most before HULK SMASH CINTIQ …

Two things (mainly) I’d love to see:

1 – 1-bit support. I know, I know, this has been discussed here at length:

Apparently there’s not too much hope for 1-bit editing, but maybe at least for export?  
(For those who don’t know why not use normal grayscale mode – 8/16-bit grayscale images are rasterized in print, 1-bit images are not.)

2 – Publisher could use a (really) simple drawing tool. Why? Because Affinity Photo only works on one spread page at a time. (Alternatively, this restriction could be lifted.) 
It would be handy to sketch rough thumbnails while zoomed out in Publisher, with ten, twelve pages in view; then later zoom in on single spreads and do the finer sketching in Photo.

[walt.farrell]

24 minutes ago, trialanderror said:

Because Affinity Photo only works on one spread page at a time.

Just to clarify, are you talking about only having one spread visible at a time, as opposed to the zoomed-out view you mention that you can get in Publisher? Because Photo can work on multiple spreads, but only one is visible at a time and you just need to navigate between them using the page navigator on the bottom left of the window, next to the Status Bar.

Also, for working on comics, I would expect that Designer would be a better match than Photo.

[trialanderror]

You have just solved one issue for me! I hadn’t really noticed the page navigator.* (I was on the look-out for something like Publisher’s big palette with the actual thumbnails.) 

Page visibility is not an issue when you switch to the Photo persona inside Publisher – all the pages remain in view just as before, but you do indeed need the navigator to jump to another spread for drawing. (I had to jump between personas before – Publisher to navigate, Photo to sketch.)

Designer gets his part too, for speech bubbles, text boxes etc., but I prefer sketching in pixels.

*addendum: A native drawing tool in Publisher would still be nice, because then you wouldn’t even have to go to the navigator – just scroll through the pages.

Edited April 3, 2020 by trialanderror
addition

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, trialanderror said:

Designer gets his part too, for speech bubbles, text boxes etc., but I prefer sketching in pixels.

OK. Glad to have helped with the Page Navigator info

By the way, as far as I know. Photo and Designer have exactly the same capabilities for speech bubbles and text boxes. What Photo is missing is Text on a Path (which Designer and Publisher have).

[SrPx]

My first reaction to your thread, before reading it was "YES, Affinity suite can be used for comics, in several ways".   

Luckily, your post has more interesting depth. Yep, the 1-bit has been requested before, useful for a lot of yet current procedure for printing comics (and some other workflows). When I have published in indy comic magazines, humor gags for computer magazines, or just web comics, I have not been that technically advanced (or industry standard), and it just worked fine, for the output that it was, but for serious comic printing workflows, yep, it'd be very nice to have a TIFF and PDF export in true 1 bit. I vote for that.     Or... that a 1-bit tiff layer can be overlaid in publisher (I don't follow Publisher progress... maybe it is possible already?)

In the meantime it could be useful for some ( I dunno), to use a nice little app (available for Mac, Windows and Linux) : XnConvert. I tried first with XnView MP, and as was quite in a rush (still am), didn't investigate more, just went ahead to XnConvert, and it seems to save the day. I have NOT made a full test, neither a real scenario project, but IMO, till we get the feature, this could be useful till a limited extent, without needing to purchase expensive software ( It's freeware.  "If you intend to use XnConvert in a company, you must purchase a license"...but it's 15 euros, zero issue for 1st world countries at least) :

- Unless is an already scanned (with your scanner set so or filtered so) as 1 bit (which is the usual in comics), you can apply any of several possible operations to make it B/W only, even if can only save in APhoto as RGB or etc, not 1 bit. Or if you are directly drawing the lines in Photo (for example), then, besides you will need to work in very zoomed out for such a hi res file,  in Affinity, in that case the brush stabilizer (I like "Window" mode) is a total must, you could draw using the "1 pixel" brush thought for pixel art, as you can increase the size of it as needed, and also make the size sensitive to pressure (obviously ONLY that, not for opacity neither other matters!). This way you would be painting your lines with hard edges, pure bitmap way.

- Then you save normally as an RGB TIFF (for example).

- Open the thing in XnConvert. 

- Actions tab, click Add Action. Then "image". Then 'Set DPI' (1200 ) . As I have NOT made a full test, I am not sure if it'd be just enough to leave the tiff with the dpi it comes with from Photo. Most surely yes, but just in case you have any issue, am adding this step. Ideally, better if you don't have to add the DPI action. It WONT (tested) produce any resampling, but could perhaps make "the pixels bigger" (u know what aI mean..." xDD )

- Add another action,  "change color depth".  In its options, choose "BINARY". Important : In dithering, set NONE.

- Now... it respects the format it is in, it will output as a tiff, if came as a tiff. But if you saved as other format in Photo ( I recommend tiff, tho) , just go to "output" tab. In "format" area, set TIFF.  I set all compression to none. You have a ton of options there and in all the tabs, so review all well, to really get the output you desire. It's really complete, this little tool. If by mistake you set JPG as output...well, that's not what you want.  . The bottom status bar saying the time remaining seems to be wrong; only care about the time it says in the upper part (in my arcane 2009 machine a 12k x 10k takes about 5 secs).

- PDF export... seems to be based in Ghostscript. Dunno if embedded in XnVIEW / XNConvert (commercial license)  or if it is taking my Ghostcript AGPL installation. The thing is, after setting both XNConvert and XnView to display PDF (in global settings, formats, PDF) in read-view as 1200DPI instead of 72, it seems to partially work: It wont be a PDF/X ( I believe it's PDF 1.4), and it makes a very weird thing of making the canvas be 1x1 pixel smaller (in my test, 12800x9600 would become 12799x9599, no idea why). And it'd become a 24 bits file.

So, I guess  this workflow is useful to get a free (or 15 euros license) way of exporting from Photo (the 24 bits tiff) , and converting to a 1 bit TIFF in XNConvert, and u can batch convert one entire folder with a button click with XnConvert. In that sense, only A. Publisher would need support for such layer to overprint (I guess). But would be much nicer to also already export a 1 bit  TIFF from Photo. Maybe the latter is more complex to implement, I don't know. I don't know either enough about publishing matters (I mean, software of the InDesign and Quark type) to know if the other thing would be enough, in Publisher.

So, at least doing this you get a 1200 dpi TIFF, 1 bit depth color mode (checked the output with Irfanview and XnView), which you could have "inked" (1px (much bigger base width) special brush, size variance with pressure) in A. Photo. Or just scanned it as 1 bit.