Need some Photo and Designer panels and brushes clarification

[MattT]

Just purchased Photo and Designer and could use some clarification on a couple of things.

Getting the free (thank you) included "Fine Liner Affinity Brushes" by The Artifex Forge brushes working was a bit of a challenge. Just double clicking them loaded them into Photo, not designer, because Windows has apparently associated the afbrushes extension with Photo, not Designer. I've since learned they don't show up in the Photo Brushes list because they're vector brushes and won't work. So why does Photo import them instead of serving up a dialog box explaining why it won't import them? More importantly to me right now: Since they don't show up in the Photo Brushes list, how do I delete them from Photo?

The collection of Panels at the side is apparently called the Studio? It's nice that that can be detached from the main image window on its own, and resized, but it's mildly infuriating that selecting a panel within the studio immediately resizes it to its default width. Do I report that as a bug? Is there a toggle somewhere I'm not finding? The Studio maintains it's new width when resized while still attached to the main image window.

Thanks. It's clear that these programs have a lot of powerful features, but there looks to be quite a learning curve.

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by MattT

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @MattT

You should normally import brushes via the Import Brushes functionality, see attached image.
To remove an individual brush, right-click the brush and select “Delete Brush” from the menu.
To remove a category of brushes, select the category in the Brushes Panel and choose “Delete Category” from the same ‘hamburger menu” you can see in my attached image (top-right).

I don’t know what you mean by “selecting a panel within the studio immediately resizes it to its default width”. Can you give more information, preferably a video showing us what happens?

If you can also tell us which OS you are using then that might help.

[MattT]

Thanks for the reply, @GarryP. Yup, forgot to mention I'm on Windows 10.

Regarding the “selecting a panel within the studio immediately resizes it to its default width” , while trying to make a video to show you the problem, I realized what is happening. I was early enough in the process that most of them were still at their defaults. I've fiddled with it enough know to realize that each panel retains its previous width and adjusts to that when selected. I can still attach a video if you want, but it's displaying the expected behavior so I think it's okay.

As for the brushes... I get how to delete individual brushes and brush categories. The problem is Photo will import vector brushes (via the import menu also), but because they are vector brushes that Photo can't use, they don't show up in the Brushes panel:

Took a couple of tries to get a decent recording, so as you can see there are now 9 or 10 copies of those brushes in Photo, so they've got to be kept track of stored somewhere. But because they're not listed in the menu, they can't be deleted.

I'll probably just reset the brushes, since this is a new install. I guess my main frustration is with Photo being allowed to import brushes it can't use. It can tell they're vector brushes well enough to prevent listing them in the menu, so why can't it tell vector brushes well enough to prevent them from being installed in the first place?

-Matt

 

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by MattT

[GarryP]

I don’t import brushes much myself so I’m probably not the best person to give judgement but I would say that if the user cannot use a certain brush in Photo then they shouldn’t be able to import it. Maybe a pop-up warning can be given, or something.

The brushes panel has some ‘quirks’ that have been raised as issues – sometimes difficult to tell different types of brushes apart; sometimes difficult to know which brush is selected; cannot know name of brush without hovering the mouse pointer; etc. - so maybe this functionality will improve soon.

Keeping backups of your non-installation brush sets and doing a reset every now and again might not be a bad idea to keep things ‘fresh’.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, GarryP said:

but I would say that if the user cannot use a certain brush in Photo then they shouldn’t be able to import it. Maybe a pop-up warning can be given, or something.

It is useful for the Photo Persona in Publisher to be able to import vector .afbrush files, so one can import them from either the Designer or Photo Personas without having to figure out what kind of file it is. But no, it's not useful to do that in the Photo application. I'm sure someone has created a Feature Request for that.

 

[MattT]

Thanks @GarryP and @walt.farrell. I'll just reset the brushes.