Can I have "stroke presets" in Affinity Designer

[lineweight]

Here's something I often want to do, but Affinity Designer seems to make it as awkward as possible to achieve. I may be missing something.

I just want to draw with simple linework - no vector brushes, just with a stroke with a certain width, colour, perhaps certain pressure settings, mitre settings, etc.

Maybe in this document I want to use three "line types". One is 3pt and red, one is 10pt and black, one is 7pt and blue. Just for example.

I want to work on the document and switch between these. I'm using the pencil tool. I draw a 3pt red line, and now I want to draw a 10pt black one. Do I really have to

1) Deselect the line I've just drawn (why does the pencil tool leave it selected, by the way?)

2) Go to the stroke panel and manually adjust the width (and anything else)

3) Go to the Colour or Swatch panel and change the colour

4) Now I can draw a line with the new settings.

That's a four step process when what I'd expect is that there would be a panel somewhere with my presets, and I just choose between them with one click.

 

Like I say - am I missing something?

 

[Joachim_L]

You can set up your strokes and add them to the styles panel for later use.

[lineweight]

6 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

You can set up your strokes and add them to the styles panel for later use.

Ok, thanks - I had looked at styles but I could only see how to apply them to an object retrospectively.

In other words I can draw a line and then apply a style to it. But I can't see how to "activate" a style, so that, say, the pencil tool takes on those settings and they are then used for the next line I draw.

[Joachim_L]

2 minutes ago, lineweight said:

But I can't see how to "activate" a style, so that, say, the pencil tool takes on those settings and they are then used for the next line I draw.

Some call it annoyance, some call it feature, but the Affinities memorize e.g. the style of the last used stroke. But ... you have to draw it. You cannot apply a style to a line and expect, that a new line inherits the last applied style.

[lineweight]

2 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

Some call it annoyance, some call it feature, but the Affinities memorize e.g. the style of the last used stroke. But ... you have to draw it. You cannot apply a style to a line and expect, that a new line inherits the last applied style.

Yes, this is what I seem to have found out. I would call it more than an annoyance - I'd call it a major limitation.

So can I get around this by forgetting about the pencil tool, and using the Vector Brush instead, with a "solid" type "brush"? Because I can make and save brush types. But a brush type can't have a colour, and it can't remember things like mitre or cap settings, is that right? So it doesn't really help me either.

Is it really the case that if I want to have 3 line types that I use consistently through a document, I have to write down all the settings on a bit of paper and stick this next to my monitor to remember what they are, and then change everything manually every single time I switch between them?

 

[BarKeegan]

1 hour ago, lineweight said:

Here's something I often want to do, but Affinity Designer seems to make it as awkward as possible to achieve. I may be missing something.

I just want to draw with simple linework - no vector brushes, just with a stroke with a certain width, colour, perhaps certain pressure settings, mitre settings, etc.

Maybe in this document I want to use three "line types". One is 3pt and red, one is 10pt and black, one is 7pt and blue. Just for example.

I want to work on the document and switch between these. I'm using the pencil tool. I draw a 3pt red line, and now I want to draw a 10pt black one. Do I really have to

1) Deselect the line I've just drawn (why does the pencil tool leave it selected, by the way?)

2) Go to the stroke panel and manually adjust the width (and anything else)

3) Go to the Colour or Swatch panel and change the colour

4) Now I can draw a line with the new settings.

That's a four step process when what I'd expect is that there would be a panel somewhere with my presets, and I just choose between them with one click.

 

Like I say - am I missing something?

 

Not at a desktop right now, but I know you can save a profile for a stroke width and variance within that width (maybe not colour though)

[lineweight]

3 minutes ago, BarKeegan said:

Not at a desktop right now, but I know you can save a profile for a stroke width and variance within that width (maybe not colour though)

I'm not quite sure what you mean by save a "profile"?

[lineweight]

For what it's worth - I have been looking at the "synchronise defaults" function. I think this will be my workaround for now.

I can save my preferred settings as "styles". Then when I want to switch to drawing in a different "style", I change an object to that style, and press "synchronise defaults from selection". I think this means that any objects I draw from then on, will use those settings until I change something.

This is still a rather clunky process but better than having to change everything manually every time.

[BarKeegan]

5 minutes ago, lineweight said:

I'm not quite sure what you mean by save a "profile"?

It’s in the stroke dialogue box, above or below the Graph Editor, should be a little ‘bar’ with a line on it, click that to save a ‘style’ of line (doing this from memory, as not beside my desktop right now)

I use it for tapering lines in my illustrations, so I can continuously apply the same line style to different parts of a character design, without having to continuously recreate that style

Edited February 2, 2021 by BarKeegan

[lineweight]

4 minutes ago, BarKeegan said:

It’s in the stroke dialogue box, above or below the Graph Editor, should be a little ‘bar’ with a line on it, click that to save a ‘style’ of line (doing this from memory, as not beside my desktop right now)

Thanks - but I can't find what you mean, unfortunately.

[BarKeegan]

3 minutes ago, lineweight said:

Thanks - but I can't find what you mean, unfortunately.

When I get to my desktop, I’ll upload a sample and see if that helps

[BarKeegan]

Hmmm, this may not solve your problem entirely 😬 (thought it saved width information too...)

but it may be useful to some degree

[lineweight]

Ah I see.

Yes, that doesn't solve my problem because I want to be able to save all attributes: line width, colour, fill colour, pressure profile, etc etc.

It seems that the "styles" method combined with "synchronising defaults" as I describe above is the closest I am going to get.

I'm really quite surprised that a concept this basic doesn't seem to exist in AD. I spend a lot of my time drawing in CAD programmes - which of course don't serve the same purpose - but there, it would be very normal to set up a bunch of standard linetypes, which you can then choose between each time you draw a new object. Furthermore, once an object is assigned to a certain class or linetype - let's say I call it "thick red lines" then if at some later point I want to change all lines in that category to be slightly thicker, or a slightly different red, then I change the settings for that linetype, and every object assigned to it changes.

Doesn't seem to be anything equivalent in Affinity.

[BarKeegan]

2 minutes ago, lineweight said:

Ah I see.

Yes, that doesn't solve my problem because I want to be able to save all attributes: line width, colour, fill colour, pressure profile, etc etc.

It seems that the "styles" method combined with "synchronising defaults" as I describe above is the closest I am going to get.

I'm really quite surprised that a concept this basic doesn't seem to exist in AD. I spend a lot of my time drawing in CAD programmes - which of course don't serve the same purpose - but there, it would be very normal to set up a bunch of standard linetypes, which you can then choose between each time you draw a new object. Furthermore, once an object is assigned to a certain class or linetype - let's say I call it "thick red lines" then if at some later point I want to change all lines in that category to be slightly thicker, or a slightly different red, then I change the settings for that linetype, and every object assigned to it changes.

Doesn't seem to be anything equivalent in Affinity.

I agree saving all those attributes to a particular stroke style would be very handy

[lineweight]

On 2/2/2021 at 11:26 AM, lineweight said:

For what it's worth - I have been looking at the "synchronise defaults" function. I think this will be my workaround for now.

I can save my preferred settings as "styles". Then when I want to switch to drawing in a different "style", I change an object to that style, and press "synchronise defaults from selection". I think this means that any objects I draw from then on, will use those settings until I change something.

This is still a rather clunky process but better than having to change everything manually every time.

So... I've been using this approach with moderate success for the past few months.

One limitation I've come up against though - I can't see any way to save the "controller" setting in a "style".

For example, I can save a 2pt wide red line as a style, and a 1pt black line, and so on, but I can't save a 1pt black line with controller:pressure and another with controller:none.

In fact if I save a 'style' based on a line that's drawn with pressure control on, it saves the pressure profile for that particular line rather than the control method. I suppose that's kind of logical seeing as you can't retrospectively apply pressure control to a line that's already been drawn without it.

It seems that if I want to switch between two line types, one that's pressure sensitive and one that's not, the only way to do this is manually, changing it each time in the top bar. Is that right?

Similarly, using the "synchronise defaults from selection" button will pick up that particular line's pressure profile, and then apply that to the next line I draw, rather than letting me draw that line using pressure control.

All very confusing.

 

[stevo32]

It's actually perplexing how many simple and obvious things like this are missing from Affinity. Like, seriously, I've seen threads mention this 5 YEARS AGO and nothing has been done. All i wanna do is use the pencil tool for its incredible ease of use when it comes to drawing line art with tapering effects you can set yourself, and it's just so unintuitive and not fit for use. You can't save the width profiles across documents, the Styles workaround doesn't work because everything resets after each stroke you put down.

Seriously, Serif, pull your finger out.

[lineweight]

So... has anything changed in this regard with V2?