Is this program unlearnable, or am I an idiot? (1 of many)

[jstnhllmn]

I am short on patience, so I am keeping this short. I am trying to follow another tutorial, and it's yet another tutorial that's really simple that doesn't work in Affinity. I tried to follow it verbatim, then I tried to make it work by reshuffling all the layers in every possible combination. Nothing works. It's increasingly difficult to conclude that, for purposes of actually producing work with any kind of efficiency, Affinity is too specific and idiomatic to be effective. 

This one is really simple: Blur, Threshold, Texture, Displace. If you don't know how the very specific mental model of how Affinity works (which I can't decrypt out at all, despite all the links here and endless hours on youtube and baseline work book), you can't do it. Nothing works. It's too fickle and unexplainable. And it's infuriating. 

 

[RNKLN]

Well, given that many people in the forum have been able to learn how to work with it … 

[jstnhllmn]

You may be right. I'm still working on shapes.

[Ron P.]

8 minutes ago, jstnhllmn said:

You may be right. I'm still working on shapes.

I tried following that tutorial. One problem from the start, the Threshold adjustment can only be applied to color and it seems more than one color needs to be present. I could not get it applied to the text even if I rasterized it. I don't know what in AP to substitute for the threshold. Sorry..

[firstdefence]

OK had a play around with the basic components and came up with this...

The order of the filters plays a big part in the effect and I loaded an image to use as a displacement map. Obviously that loaded image plays a big part in the overall effect and the way the live displacement filter acts on everything but I think this looks pretty cool and it's all editable which is very useful. The settings are quite sensitive so you can knock all of this out of whack very easily, I clicked in the numbers boxes and used the arrow keys and the Alt key to increment the numbers by .1 units in the filters dialogue, a lot more precise than the sliders.

This is the image I loaded to the displacement filter...

...and finally this is the file for you to play with kids... 
Ink Bleed.afphoto

[firstdefence]

Some more funky effects can be had from using textured brushes and painting or stamping onto the Threshold filter layer and to a lesser degree the blur and displacement filter layers and also layering pixel brush layers a couple of examples below...

Aqualicious

More bleed and distress

 

[h_d]

... One of the problems with following Photoshop tutorials using Affinity Photo is that you have to be pretty familiar with both programs in order to understand the concepts - and the differences between them. Not saying it's not possible, it's just an added layer of complexity, which may not be ideal if you're of an impatient persuasion. 

[loukash]

9 hours ago, jstnhllmn said:

Nothing works

This does:

 

[Scungio]

Enrique (Frankentoon) has a video tutorial on his site that is well worth going over to learn about how to use creative layer effects and such with text.

/https://frankentoonstudio.com/design-school/creating-realistic-textures-using-a-single-image/

It may not be specifically what you are after in terms of getting an ink bleed, but it may give you some clues on what you could use, get you familiar with how Affinity does things that may be different.

Olivio Sarikas also has quite a few tutorials on text, using displacement, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svaIoTqIWdU 

Iamrensi also has a nice text tutorial here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQf97tJkXJQ

There are so many people now producing great tutorials/videos on youtube specifically about the Affinity apps, seek them out, they are not hard to find.