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I'm using the trial version and AD seems decent thus far. My question is regarding brush strokes. They do not expand as a regular stroke. When I apply a regular line stroke and select Layer>Expand Stroke it works. When I use a brush stroke instead of a line it does not expand. 

 

Help is greatly appreciated, thanks. 

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MEB, thanks again. I just saw a tutorial on creating brushes and noticed it is saved out as a .jpg which means I still would not be able to expand it as it is an image, correct? I hope that isn't the case, as I'm really looking to get AD over Ai which I have been using, but need the brush functionality. 

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MEB, I appreciate your reply and info. I'm attempting to create a hand-drawn icon set for a specific industry and was looking to subtly rough out some edges. It looks like that may be a tad limited right now, but I do look forward to AD's brush capabilities soon. Thanks again!

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  • 4 years later...
  • 1 month later...

Hi, I am also new here. My only single problem at the moment with the a.d. is this, that "vector brushes" are not really vector brushes. They are raster brushes on a vector stroke. If you zoom in, you can see the pixels. I didn't downloaded the free version, I bought it instantly, since a friend showed me his works, and how he use the app (okay he do only pictures for the web, and some standard size book illustrations) Than I watched some tutorials people using these fines "vector" brushes, and how cool it is because you can use both vector and raster in one app.

But the truth is that you get a kind of good raster app with more advanced vector tools than photoshop has.

Now I almost spent another hundred bucks on my favorite brushes compatible with this software, but now I'm a bit skeptical about it, since the reason I bought this app is that it's vector software with additional raster options, but it isn't. So if I make this huge drawing and somehow I print it, what of course I don't know yet how it will be, than how it will look with all the pixel lines, and how it will work if it needs to change the size of my work to a huge one? Expanding them is good so I don't loose the quality of my brushes compared to my basic vector shapes, and I also have the guarantee that where the colored part of my stroke ends, it's transparent, no matter of the size, and you can also add them to a shape. You think that in the future this will change and if yes, that will be in the near future?

I tell you why, I would really enjoy to work with this software for many reasons. I do support the idea. But at the moment what I have is that I can use it like I would use photoshop, but If I buy my favorite vector brushes I use in a different app, I could use them also, but only their image, but in pixel. My original thought was, that I skip using other software for one in what I can do my vector job, my raster job, it's lighter, and much more fair for it's users. What it is more fair, if I look at the price of it, to be honest the whole thing costs like one single but serious brush pack for other software, so it's really fine, and I do respect this. 

Anyways It's a great software , but this issue with the brushes would be great to change, or else or I loose quality on my work, or I use a different vector app in what a vector brush is a vector brush.

At least if it would be more compatible with for example a.i., than it wouldn't be such a huge problem, but If I understood well, I can't simply import a full layered a.i. file in what eventually I modify in A.D.

But than again I use two or three apps not one app what is better to use for a reason or two.

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Ok, so I continued searching on this topic and since I see that this issue bothers many people since a long time, I asked a refund. Hopefully one day you will fix it. To be honest I can't do any professional work with your software until you don't offer true editable, expandable brushes of high quality. Besides the fact that your "vector brushes" are raster coated vector lines with very limited editability, they are also low quality, and your pixel persona brushes also. Hopefully you understand my problems, since like this I can't make professional work, but all I can do with your software is to keep it for hobby, what is not my case.

- Besides the fact that on any platform I was running in to you promoting this product, you promised us a vector based software, what like this it's not 100% true. And reading the forums, I have seen people requesting these changes maybe for years. -

My hope is that one day, you will fix these issues, and I will be the happiest person to buy your product again, but until than I can't use it for what I basically wanted to use.

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  • Staff

Hi ronanski, Smiling Sticks, Mateprsk,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
Affinity Designer has two brush engines: a vector based engine in Designer Persona and a raster based brush engine in Pixel Persona:
- the vector based engine in Designer Persona deals with both pure vector based brushes and "hybrid vector" brushes, that is, raster images/textures 
stretched or repeated along a vector path.
Pure vector brushes are expandable but are still quite basic at this point - currently you can't create pure vector brushes based on your own vector textures or objects nor have much option to tweak them. The only "pure" vector brushes we have (in v1.8.3) are the first two brushes in the Pens category - if you try to edit them you will see there's no texture on the bottom of the edit panel (where you set the head/tail offsets). 
The "hybrid vector" brushes 
cannot be expanded since they are based on raster data - their quality on screen and when printed depends on the quality/resolution of the raster/texture data. 
We hope to develop the vector brush engine in upcoming versions.

- the raster based engine in Pixel Persona only deals with raster brushes/data and is currently much more advanced than the vector engine (it's the same raster brush engine used in Affinity Photo). It provides quite a few options/advanced settings and allows the use of multiple Brush Noozles, Textures and even sub brushes along with several dynamic settings.

Hope this clears it a bit. For more information check the Vector Painting (vector brush engine) and Pixel painting (raster brush engine) sections in the Affinity Designer Help.

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  • Staff

Hi ronanski,
As far as i know, yes,  there's plans to develop the vector brush engine in Designer so you can create your own vector brushes as you can with the raster brush engine in Pixel Persona/Affinity Photo. But like everything else it will be only available when it's ready. I do not have any eta for this, sorry. Affinity apps are still quite recent compared to other apps on the market and have been being developed as a suite - a few features some users take for granted are still missing/in development. Hopefully we will get there.

 

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32 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi ronanski,
As far as i know, yes,  there's plans to develop the vector brush engine in Designer so you can create your own vector brushes as you can with the raster brush engine in Pixel Persona/Affinity Photo. But like everything else it will be only available when it's ready. I do not have any eta for this, sorry. Affinity apps are still quite recent compared to other apps on the market and have been being developed as a suite - a few features some users take for granted are still missing/in development. Hopefully we will get there.

 

Yes they take granted. I give  an example how it looks from the eye of a user: you go by a shop where you see a poster "Mountain Bikes at great price". So you enter, you see a mountain bike, you buy it, take it home, it lloks like a mountain bike,  than you start climbing a mountain and it isn't climbing up. You go back to the shop asking what's wrong, the shop owner say "Well this is a mountainbike under development, what we actually sell to the people, but it doesn't has the mountain biking function yet developed, so you can use it only in the city".  And that part isn't fair. Like it's really a great concept, but if I can't do vector work, I choose to use something else, and this is what I will do until it doesn't fits me. Like I would be the happiest man to have time to make my own brushes, but I don't have. So now I just hope, that they will see my request mail for refund, since I didn't got any answer yet. Than when it will be able to do what I need to do in a vector app, I buy it back.

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Wow. I have just finished design work for a book to be published and now I can't stroke my complex brush graphics. In an effort to save my work from having to start over in another application, I'm looking at third party brush pack, hoping they work 'properly'. Could you advise if these https://www.designcuts.com/product-category/affinity/   are likely to be true, stroke-expandable vectors, or just some kind of stretched raster? Specifically I want to know about  "52 Complex Futuristic Circle Brushes" by xresch, and "Drawing Brushes For Affinity"by Jef Brown. 

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Hi pastroboy,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
These brushes are based on raster images. You can easily check this selecting one of the brushes in the Brush panel, clicking the Edit Brush icon (the white one) on the right of the category dropdown and looking at the Head/Tail offset area on the bottom. If there's an image of the brush circle there - then it uses images and cannot be expanded.

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Hi Mateprsk,
I certainly understand your frustration for the lacking of "pure" vector brushes in the current version but that comparison is not quite right. All software is sold as is, that is, users purchase what's included in the software package as described in the product page. If it fulfils their needs then everything is fine, if not they can get a refund and select/move on to something else. In most cases there's also a trial available for them to try (currently 90 days/usually 10 days in our case) to check whether it does what they want or not. The software is complete and sold as is. If it "lacks" some features the user wanted then it probably wasn't the right choice in first place. So a fairer comparison would be a user buying a regular bicycle and later realise the model he bought doesn't include gears because he didn't check at the time or did not realise their importance for what we wanted to do with it. No software includes everything from the start - otherwise it would never be released - it requires several cycles of development/versions to become more capable/efficient over time. If the users keep seeing value in it and in its development they can upgrade to newer versions if they wish.

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10 hours ago, pastroboy said:

Wow. I have just finished design work for a book to be published and now I can't stroke my complex brush graphics. In an effort to save my work from having to start over in another application, I'm looking at third party brush pack, hoping they work 'properly'. Could you advise if these https://www.designcuts.com/product-category/affinity/   are likely to be true, stroke-expandable vectors, or just some kind of stretched raster? Specifically I want to know about  "52 Complex Futuristic Circle Brushes" by xresch, and "Drawing Brushes For Affinity"by Jef Brown. 

Don't do it man!!!! I almost spent a hundred bucks on my favorite brushes in affinity format, but first I tried what they gave me for extra bonus, what I also have it's illustrator version, and when I seen the pixels, I asked the guys from who I wanted to buy, they said that basically nothing works as real vector brushes since the software doesn't support them. You can do anything, and it will not work. I'm super lucky, I didn't bought them, like I already was at the checkout, but I told my self that before pushing the button I go try it and verify everything, and after many tries, I seen that basically it will not work.

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2 hours ago, MEB said:

Hi Mateprsk,
I certainly understand your frustration for the lacking of "pure" vector brushes in the current version but that comparison is not quite right. All software is sold as is, that is, users purchase what's included in the software package as described in the product page. If it fulfils their needs then everything is fine, if not they can get a refund and select/move on to something else. In most cases there's also a trial available for them to try (currently 90 days/usually 10 days in our case) to check whether it does what they want or not. The software is complete and sold as is. If it "lacks" some features the user wanted then it probably wasn't the right choice in first place. So a fairer comparison would be a user buying a regular bicycle and later realise the model he bought doesn't include gears because he didn't check at the time or did not realise their importance for what we wanted to do with it. No software includes everything from the start - otherwise it would never be released - it requires several cycles of development/versions to become more capable/efficient over time. If the users keep seeing value in it and in its development they can upgrade to newer versions if they wish.

Exactly. This is why I asked for refund. My stupidity was that I jumped directly in the deep thinking that like this I will support a very nice idea of offering a great software for people who can't afford a monthly rent for other software but they can buy and have one legally and use it for work But it's not the case. I know where I was wrong is that I didn't tried it out first. But to be honest is that I decided like this, because all the promo I found on the internet was about a vector app supporting some raster extras. And this isn't quite true. This kind of vector functions other software also have what are not considered vector software. But long story short, it's not a bad app, but it's not the app what a person needs who wants to work with vectors. What you can use this app for is work what you can do in p.s. for example, but cheaper, more limited and it comes also with quality issues, but if it's okay for you, buy it, rather then paying monthly rent for p.s.  I didn't said you can't use it. You can, but not for a complex vector work. For that it's just not possible to use.

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  • Staff

Hi Mateprsk,
If you want to create pure vector artwork using vector brushes then no, Affinity Designer isn't the best choice for this right now. If you purchased the software in the last 14 days through our website you can request a refund sending an e-mail to affinityreturns@serif.com with your name, order number and reason for returning it if you haven't done already. You may be also able to get a refund from the Mac or Microsoft App Stores if you bought the app there but you have to contact them directly - its up to them to decide if they refund you or not. Nobody wants to force you to keep software if you aren't happy with your purchase.

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You guys should remember they saying

"Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me."

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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Thanks @MEB for the explanations.

I was surprised that an artwork I did with the brushes of the "Designer Persona" looked very nice and sharp in Designer, but after export to PDF the strokes were turned into pixels and compressed which added artefacts and changed the way the artwork looked. The rasterizer seems to come to a different result than the display rendering engine, but even the optics inside Designer change suddenly with zooming.  

It really is a bit disappointing, since I was expecting the "Designer Persona" brushes to be real vector brushes -- after all, there's a dedicated "Pixel Persona" for pixel brushes... 

Thanks again for making the current situation clear!
And please keep improving this area (or tell the developers, if you're not involved in the programming side of things)! 

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1 hour ago, k_au said:

And please keep improving this area (or tell the developers, if you're not involved in the programming side of things)! 

Developers? It is a business decision. What kind of product are we making for what kind of costumers. Talk to the head. Not the tail.

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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10 hours ago, Mateprsk said:

Don't do it man!!!! I almost spent a hundred bucks on my favorite brushes in affinity format, but first I tried what they gave me for extra bonus, what I also have it's illustrator version, and when I seen the pixels, I asked the guys from who I wanted to buy, they said that basically nothing works as real vector brushes since the software doesn't support them. You can do anything, and it will not work. I'm super lucky, I didn't bought them, like I already was at the checkout, but I told my self that before pushing the button I go try it and verify everything, and after many tries, I seen that basically it will not work.

Thanks Mateprsk! This answers the question very clearly.  

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