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In Affinity Designer, under the vector persona, on a vector layer, using the vector brush I have the option of using some pencil brushes. Are these truly vector? I draw a line, the line itself is editable but is it truly generating vector texture or applying raster texture to my vector line work? IF say, I want to create hand lettered logos in vector with a realistic pencil texture is this the way to go or will that texture actually be unscalable raster? I’ve tried selecting drawn lines and “creating curve” and “expanding stroke” but either way, it just looks like the texture is not converting to a shape, instead it appears raster... Any insights appreciated! Thank you!

7726A764-3384-4EAC-9D2A-B848F4DD8F93.png

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The “solid pen with pressure” is the only brush that I have found that will let me expand the stroke to create a vector object from the line work... how can these be called vector brushes if they aren’t true vectors? ...just raster brushes following editable vector line work... I sure hope I am doing something incorrectly... 

FC35564F-9925-4CF3-910B-2C94A0193676.png

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  • 1 month later...

Recently purchased Affinity Designer as a full featured an polished alternative to the Adobe.

I must confess that I just discovered this limitation and it really disappoints me. At some level there seems to be a vector description of the brush shape (you can zoom in arbitrarily close to the the stroke in AD), but the line gets rastorized with any sort of export (PDF, SVG, etc. ). The two attached figures show this using the Fineliner Brushes included in my purchase of AD

Why is there no actual vector export?

Looks like I need to find another illustration tool.

test1.png

test2.png

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  • 4 weeks later...

I just discovered this disappointing truth too! 

Honestly, I feel lied to by Affinity. 

Im new to vector artwork and was really impressed by their video where they infinitely scroll into a piece of vector art and it never loses quality. Obviously they didn't use vector brushes for any of those impressive videos because they would have got a blurry mess if they had!!!

So I just spent £40 on "vector" brushes with organic textures to give visual interest to my vector logos. I had no reason to believe affinity designers Draw Persona and vector brushes weren't true vectors. It definitely isn't clear from any of Affinitys advertising. 

So basically I have £40 worth of jumped up raster brushes. Waste of money. 

Glad I found out before I made logos and other "vector" artwork, promising my client that they could print it on large posters or banners without any worry. 

Really disillusioned and disappointed. 

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4 minutes ago, Artsketch said:

You know that affinity designer’s raster brushes have the blob bug and are useless too?

Yeah. I already knew their pixel brushes were rubbish. I've never used such awful brushes (but I am spoilt by Procreate) so I was excited to buy vector brushes instead so I didn't have quality issues. 

I've been duly punished for my ignorance! Now I see Affinity Designer is literally only good, or true vector if you only use the shape tool, pen tool and colour fills. 

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  • 1 year later...

The Pencil Tool draws a vector curve/line but if a Vector Brush is most Vector Brushes (but not all) are applied to that vector curve/line it will not produce a vector result; it will be a raster/bitmap applied along the length of the vector curve/line. The underlying curve/line will still be a vector but the 'whole thing' (when exported) will be a raster/bitmap.

Edited by GarryP
Clarification.
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2 hours ago, GarryP said:

but if a Vector Brush is applied to that vector curve/line it will not produce a vector result;

Only if the vector brush contains a texture, I think. There are a few (4, perhaps?) supplied vector brushes that do not have a texture (at least on the desktop applications). There are a few more available in the Legacy 1.7 brushes for Designer that are available from Affinity Spotlight: https://affinityspotlight.com/article/get-legacy-affinity-brushes/

But most "interesting" vector brushes behave as you mentioned, and will produce a raster export.

-- Walt
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Thanks Garry and Walt, this helps me choose the right brush/pencil for those projects where I want to be able to scale it really big (or at least know that it can be easily done if I wanted to). A few other questions:

1.  How about if a Layer FX (such as Gaussian Blur) is applied to the pencil stroke? Does the true vector turn into a bitmap/raster applied along the path?

2.  Do all Layer FX do this?

3.  Is there any indication on a vector brush that tells me it’s a true vector brush?  I try not to zoom in to the extreme because that causes the app to automatically close on me sometimes.

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10 hours ago, OC3 said:

Thanks Garry and Walt, this helps me choose the right brush/pencil for those projects where I want to be able to scale it really big (or at least know that it can be easily done if I wanted to). A few other questions:

1.  How about if a Layer FX (such as Gaussian Blur) is applied to the pencil stroke? Does the true vector turn into a bitmap/raster applied along the path?

2.  Do all Layer FX do this?

3.  Is there any indication on a vector brush that tells me it’s a true vector brush?  I try not to zoom in to the extreme because that causes the app to automatically close on me sometimes.

As far as I know, all layer fx applied to vectors/shapes get rasterized upon export (so all layer fx applied to vector curves are not true vectors). There are no true vector brushes beside the two brushes you can find in the “Pens” category in Brushes: Solid Pen with Pressure and Solid Pen with Pressure and Opacity. There might be more in previous versions but all true vector brushes in Affinity are essentially the same: a simple curve with pressure, opacity or both. Anything more complex than that is not true vector brush. (Again, as far as I know).

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Thanks iuli,

Just to be safe, I think I’ll stick with the pen, pencil, and shapes tools when I want absolutely nothing to be rasterized.  I guess that also means stay away from layer fx, transparency gradients, and fill gradients— right?  In other words, do gradients look pixelated when resized and printed to a large scale?

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@OC3 

Edit — You’re right, pen, pencil, and shapes tools are definitely the only way to work to be sure nothing gets rasterized.

Both transparency and fill gradients get rasterized when exporting (as SVG, for example — but, as you know, this is not Affinity’s fault, all vector software I know of act the same). What I know for sure is that I cannot use any kind of fx when dealing with vector files for cutting machines — but for other uses (such as making art for printing, etc) many Affinity ‘vector’ brushes (even if they are raster files applied on vector curves) are high quality and can be resized many times until they get pixelated. I think that you should experiment, export at the desired size, compare results etc. 

Sorry for not being of any help — all the best!

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Thanks iuli, 👍 I’ll keep that in mind.  It would be silly of me not to try out all that AD offers just because it’s not technically a true vector.  I’m starting to explore what vector art is all about, and I’m totally mindblown by what this app can do.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 10/8/2020 at 7:12 AM, SprindigoJo said:

Honestly, I feel lied to by Affinity. 

YEPP!

Heres another one: 

"Serious business

No bloat, no gimmicks, just all the tools you need, implemented how you always dreamed. Affinity Designer is a stripped back, pro-end workhorse that will always get your job done."

Hopefully a placeholder for future potential, but in it's current state, A MASSIVE FAT LIE - really misleading and needs to be shelved until it's capabilities actually live up to to statement  

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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11 hours ago, Craig Luce said:

Anyone know how to convert rastered lineart to shapes in ADesigner?

Not possible from within Affinity - I use ImageVectorizer daily which is really great and copy pastes into Designer, also does some really good half tone stuff - Mac only tho' available on MAS  - dug me out of a thousand holes

Screen Grab 2022-04-30 at 1.16.04 pm.png

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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