Help creating speech bubbles, Photo vs Designer

[andyjclarke]

I'm creating a graphic novel and the software I use for my artwork doesn't create the best speech bubbles. So I'm looking to take my completed pages and complete the lettering in different software. My first instinct was Photoshop but the cost is criminal and I'd much rather give my money to Affinity, especially while there's a 50% off offer currently.

I've downloaded both Photo and Designer trials and so far I've found one feature I need is available in Photo, but not Designer and vice versa with another feature I need.

I'm basically wanting to follow the process in this video tutorial for Photoshop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xINp7U7ykvk (forgive how unnecessarily long it is.) But as a break down the process I need to follow is below.

Create Text - fine in both Photo and Designer.

Draw Elipse with Fill and Outline around/behind text - fine in both.

Warp/Squash Elipse to better suit text - Photo Only (as far as I can tell.)

Draw and shape "tail" with pen tool and combine shape with Elipse - Designer Only (as far as I can tell.)

Is it possible I'm missing something or is it just not possible to do all this in either Photo or Designer alone?

If you don't want to sit through the video the finished product looks like this

 

Any help is very much appreciated.

[walt.farrell]

You may be missing two of the shape tools, which are present in all 3 Affinity applications:

[Medical Officer Bones]

Couple of things to consider:

- Photo has no quick method to warp objects by dragging only one corner point (CTRL-T Free Transform in Photoshop equivalent is missing). This is quite frustrating for this type of work. I speak from experience.

- Photo does not support 1bit high resolution inked art. This means you must work at 1200ppi and full RGB, and later convert in other software. Unsure whether 1.9 will have 1bit TIFF export to at least work around this hefty limitation for comic related work.

- as far as I am aware there are no non-destructive booleans/compound paths option in either Photo or Publisher. Only in Designer. This does impede the workflow somewhat in this case. Ideally the balloon and tail should be able to be positioned separately. This can be achieved in Designer, though.

- You may want to place your ink work in Designer, or use Publisher to layout your comic as a comic book. But both will convert your 1bit inks to RGB or CMYK when exporting to PDF. If you are relying on high resolution inks to be overlaid on top of multi-tone colour work, Affinity cannot accommodate that workflow at this time. Perhaps with 1.9? Unknown at this time. If you work with high-res 1bit inks, this makes it impossible to work with Affinity and (semi)professional comic publishing work at this point of time.

Disregard all this if you have no idea what I am talking about or you are not interested in actually printing your comic, and only mean to release it on the web or digitally. In that case you are probably working at RGB 300ppi anyway, even when inking. The result will be lacklustre when printed, but for web work it is fine.

 

[andyjclarke]

Hi Walt, thanks for responding.

I am aware of those, however they are too simplistic and can't be modified sufficiently. I need to be able to modify the tail separately from the bubble, as well have the tail coming from any point of the bubble.

[Medical Officer Bones]

Designer supports that: alt-click on a boolean operation to create a non-destructive merge, and then twirl open the compound, move each part separately.

[andyjclarke]

Hey Bones,

Thanks for responding. I am creating and illustrating the comic itself in completely separate software (FireAlpaca). I will then be importing the finished art (HiRes) into Designer or Photo to do the lettering. I am planning on publishing digitally.

So far I have found in Photo I can create the bubble, add and shape the tail with Pen tool and merge them together by ensuring the elipse is converted to a curve and using Geometry > Add. However if I use the mesh warp tool on the elipse before I add the tail it converts the elipse to a pixel layer and can no longer be merged with the tail. But the mesh warp needs to be done first.

When it comes to Designer, please could you elaborate on what is meant by "twirl open the compound?"

Thanks

[Medical Officer Bones]

5 minutes ago, andyjclarke said:

So far I have found in Photo I can create the bubble, add and shape the tail with Pen tool and merge them together by ensuring the elipse is converted to a curve and using Geometry > Add. However if I use the mesh warp tool on the elipse before I add the tail it converts the elipse to a pixel layer and can no longer be merged with the tail. But the mesh warp needs to be done first.

That is exactly the issue: there is no free transformation possible in Photo which maintains the vector status of the tail. It's been a much requested feature, but so far no cigar. Perhaps in 1.9. And boolean operation in Photo and Publisher are destructive, so it is not possible to keep the balloon and tail separately position-able.

It is in Designer, but there is no warp option in Designer. Which means the simple task of quickly deforming the tail and keeping it vector is (as far as I am aware) not possible. You can deform, but it becomes pixels. You can work with vectors, but not freely transform it.

Which resolution are you working at in FireAlpaca (just out of curiosity)?

[Move Along People]

-

[Medical Officer Bones]

30 minutes ago, andyjclarke said:

When it comes to Designer, please could you elaborate on what is meant by "twirl open the compound?"

When you select both the tail and the balloon in Designer, ALT-click the ADD boolean tool in the tool bar.

This creates a non-destructive boolean (something Photoshop cannot do, I believe), and the new balloon layer can be opened to reveal both components. Each one can still be moved and transformed and edited individually.

Like so:

Tip for nice looking tails:

- keep the handle lengths to 1/3 max of the curve length

- the tail root handles ideally should be kept parallel or close enough to it.

[Medical Officer Bones]

25 minutes ago, haakoo said:

Not via a meshtool but they are editable vectors.

Yes, unfortunately still no free transform of vector objects. But not really necessary to do a proper comic ballooning job. As long as we can rotate and scale it's fine.

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, andyjclarke said:

especially while there's a 50% off offer currently.

If I count correctly, it is two applications for the price of one. If I didn't have all three, I wouldn't think about the pros / cons at all, and I'm buying. Each of the applications suits something a little different, but they complement each other well.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, andyjclarke said:

Hi Walt, thanks for responding.

I am aware of those, however they are too simplistic and can't be modified sufficiently. I need to be able to modify the tail separately from the bubble, as well have the tail coming from any point of the bubble.

You can modify the tail separately, using its red node. That will let you have it come from the lower left corner or right corner.

Additionally, you can flip the callout vertically and then the tail will come from the upper left or right. Although, in that case, you will need to intersect the callout with a larger rectangle after you have it adjusted in order to reset its rotation so the text remains upright.

[Medical Officer Bones]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

You can modify the tail separately, using its red node. That will let you have it come from the lower left corner or right corner.

Additionally, you can flip the callout vertically and then the tail will come from the upper left or right. Although, in that case, you will need to intersect the callout with a larger rectangle after you have it adjusted in order to reset its rotation so the text remains upright.

The simplest and most controllable method with the best result is the method I described above in Designer. Open the page in Publisher, place all comic pages, and the Designer-made compound balloon will be available in Publisher too.

Create a couple of default balloons in your Symbols library, and when you work on a page, switch to Designer in Publisher. Drag a balloon symbol from your symbols library onto the page, and detach it. Then adjust it according to your needs.

This works really fast: Create a new page in Publisher, place your artwork. Switch to Designer mode add the balloons. Detach them. Then adjust the balloons. Return to Publisher. Next page. And so on.

[lepr]

21 hours ago, Medical Officer Bones said:

And boolean operation in Photo and Publisher are destructive, so it is not possible to keep the balloon and tail separately position-able.

Non-destructive booleans are created in all three apps on macOS by holding down opt key when clicking the command in menu or the button on toolbar. The menu items actually change from 'Add' to 'Add (Compound)', etc, when opt is depressed.

[lacerto]

(...)

[lacerto]

(...)

[wonderings]

I would say stay clear of text in Photo. If you are looking for speech bubbles I would stick to Designer, it is vector and will not lose resolution. Same goes for the text. Text will look infinitely better coming out of Designer then Photos as Photos. Same goes for Photoshop and Illustrator. I hate when people send me files and they set everything up in Photoshop. File would need to have a 1200 dpi for it to be passable by me, though I can be overly picky. Attached is a screen shot of the letter "e" font is Arial Regular. The one on the left is Illustrator, the one on the right is saved from Photoshop in jpeg format at 300 dpi. The difference is clear. You could enlarge the "e" on the left 100000000% and it would not lose any resolution. The "e" on the right only gets worse the bigger you go. 

You can get away with it, and many people might not notice, but if you only want to do text and speech bubbles I would stick with what will give you the best results and flexibility for editing and adjustments.

 

 

[lepr]

23 minutes ago, wonderings said:

I would say stay clear of text in Photo. If you are looking for speech bubbles I would stick to Designer, it is vector and will not lose resolution. Same goes for the text. Text will look infinitely better coming out of Designer then Photos as Photos

Text is vector in all three apps and speech bubbles can be created and remain as vector in all three apps, and all three apps export to the same variety of vector and raster file formats.

[lepr]

38 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Answering myself: Ctrl + Shift works, it is just that the menu texts do not change!

You can also add the Geometry group of buttons to the toolbar in Photo and Publisher.

[lacerto]

(...)

[andyjclarke]

Hi all

I've not been able to check back on this until now. Thank you everyone for your responses, you have all been super helpful. I now have the answers I need.

As Lagarto said CTRL + Shift allows a non destructive Boolean which is perfect. I have now also found how to warp the Ellipse in a non destructive way. Rather than use the Mesh Warp tool, using the Node tool allows shaping of the balloon without converting to pixel.

I'm now trying to work out how best to get this effect, where the "spikes" have to cut into the balloon.

Thanks again everyone. 

[lepr]

51 minutes ago, andyjclarke said:

I'm now trying to work out how best to get this effect, where the "spikes" have to cut into the balloon.

krrssshhkk.afdesign

 

[Move Along People]

-

[Medical Officer Bones]

5 hours ago, Lagarto said:

Answering myself: Ctrl + Shift works, it is just that the menu texts do not change!

Thanks, I tried ALT myself, and it did not work on the Windows version.

[Medical Officer Bones]

6 hours ago, anon2 said:

Non-destructive booleans are created in all three apps on macOS by holding down opt key when clicking the command in menu or the button on toolbar. The menu items actually change from 'Add' to 'Add (Compound)', etc, when opt is depressed.

Thanks, wasn't aware that would work in all three apps.