Brush Strokes appear broken, both in brush selector and on the canvas

[Inalisk]

As the title says, my brush strokes are broken and inconsistent, typically with patterned brushes. It can be coloring something in or just drawing guide lines. I have attached an image to show what I'm referring to. Is there a setting I've missed or is this just something that is busted in the program?

 

Thank you


Edit: I have added the images that helped get the settings right for this brush specifically and worked for most of the others though "Rotation Jitter" may or may not need to be adjusted depending on the brush's intended purpose and how it should look on the canvas. Thank you to Iconoclast for helping me work through things to try and come up with a way to get them working. Additionally, thank you to all of the others who chimed in and helped get things going in the right direction and get this issue mostly resolved and working.

[walt.farrell]

Did you make that brush, or did you get it somewhere? If so, where, and was it intended as an Affinity Photo brush?

Please click on the More button in the Context Toolbar so we can see the other brush settings.

Also, what device are you using to draw?

[Inalisk]

It was purchased somewhere and it was designed for PhotoShop (which Photo advertises as being able to use .abr files).

 

I have attached a second photo with more of the settings and details opened up as well as a second with the Dynamics opened. I had to turn Rotation to 100 to keep it from flopping the brush around while I was using it.

As to what I'm using to draw, this was done with just a mouse.

[cgidesign]

I am no expert, but maybe reducing spacing helps.

Not sure what you mean by "brush is flopping" but try to set rotation jitter to none ?

[Inalisk]

2 hours ago, cgidesign said:

I am no expert, but maybe reducing spacing helps.

Not sure what you mean by "brush is flopping" but try to set rotation jitter to none ?

I tried the suggestion to reduce spacing, and it made it darker, but didn't remove the skipping effect of the brushes. That was a good suggestion though.

As for the brush flopping, this brush is supposed to have the thin line always on the outside of the thicker one. When Rotation Jitter is none (default setting), then the thin line will fall in line with the large line when going in a vertical direction, and then cross over the thick line when I go the opposite direction (such as with coast lines as this brush was designed for).
Thank you for the suggestion though.

[iconoclast]

I'm not an expert too, but I made a lot of experiments with creating brushes during the last weeks. Even you can use Photoshop Brushes in Photo, you often have to change the settings a bit to adapt them to use them in Photo. Maybe it could help if you would upload screenshots of the different sections of the Brush Editor (Dynamics, Textures, Subbrushes). There can be different reasons for the behaviour of your brushes. E.g. the Scatter X (Dynamics), a special Brush Nozzle or changing Brush Nozzles or even Sub Brushes.

[Inalisk]

3 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

I'm not an expert too, but I made a lot of experiments with creating brushes during the last weeks. Even you can use Photoshop Brushes in Photo, you often have to change the settings a bit to adapt them to use them in Photo. Maybe it could help if you would upload screenshots of the different sections of the Brush Editor (Dynamics, Textures, Subbrushes). There can be different reasons for the behaviour of your brushes. E.g. the Scatter X (Dynamics), a special Brush Nozzle or changing Brush Nozzles or even Sub Brushes.

Not a problem. The first two (General & Dynamics) are a couple of comments up. Attached here are the remaining two. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

[firstdefence]

We are going to need the ABR file to check this.

[Inalisk]

2 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

We are going to need the ABR file to check this.

I can certainly provide the link for purchase, but as it was a purchase sharing such files does violate terms of service on that end. If you need the link, just let me know (posting links is a funny thing on some forums).

[firstdefence]

Post the link please.

[iconoclast]

8 minutes ago, Inalisk said:

Not a problem. The first two (General & Dynamics) are a couple of comments up. Attached here are the remaining two. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

OK, I'm surprised that the brush seems to be so simple. I suspect that the effect that irritates you comes from the Brush Texture. So, you could duplicate the brush (to be save not to overwrite it) and remove the Brush Texture in the duplicate.

I'm not sure what result you want to see, but I think you want two lines without gaps, right?

[Inalisk]

1 minute ago, firstdefence said:

Post the link please.

https://mapeffects.co/map-builder

Here you go.

[Inalisk]

2 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

OK, I'm surprised that the brush seems to be so simple. I suspect that the effect that irritates you comes from the Brush Texture. So, you could duplicate the brush (to be save not to overwrite it) and delete the Brush Texture in the duplicate.

I'm not sure what result you want to see, but I think you want two lines without gaps, right?

I want the two lines with a gap. I would like to be able to have it form a border (two strokes, one movement).
Deleting the texture is an interesting way of going about it. It won't be my first option (I have to figure out how to duplicate just a specific brush) and then go from there. This also won't be the only brush I have to do it with as some aren't even showing up which could be as you suggest an issue with the texture.

[iconoclast]

8 minutes ago, Inalisk said:

I want the two lines with a gap. I would like to be able to have it form a border (two strokes, one movement).
Deleting the texture is an interesting way of going about it. It won't be my first option (I have to figure out how to duplicate just a specific brush) and then go from there. This also won't be the only brush I have to do it with as some aren't even showing up which could be as you suggest an issue with the texture.

There can also be other reasons. For example the Sub Brushes are very interesting. If you create one and set it to "Erase", the Sub Brush will be subtracted from the brush stroke. If you choose e.g. the same nozzle as Sub Brush, it will completely erase the stroke. That doesn't seem to make sense, but if you play a bit with varying settings of Accumalation and Flow of the Sub Brush, you can create e.g. watercolor effects this way, because the erasing sub brush works like the thinner in painting with water colours.

The Brush Texture always is a static texture as a sort of canvas that only becomes visible if you paint with the brush. If you delete it in this case, I think, you will loose the gaps.

 

[Inalisk]

3 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

There can also be other reasons. For example the Sub Brushes are very interesting. If you create one and set it to "Erase", the Sub Brush will be subtracted from the brush stroke. If you choose e.g. the same nozzle as Sub Brush, it will completely erase the stroke. That doesn't seem to make sense, but if you play a bit with varying settings of Accumalation and Flow of the Sub Brush, you can create e.g. watercolor effects this way, because the erasing sub brush works like the thinner in painting with water colours.

The Brush Texture always is a static texture as a sort of canvas that only becomes visible if you paint with the brush.

Those are interesting, and I assume that you mean this would work regardless of the brush being used, so that could be a way for me to make some customs on my end when I get this matter sorted out.
As to this one, unless I'm missing something, there don't seem to be any sub brushes set up for this brush so I wouldn't think that's the cause, though I could be missing something too so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[iconoclast]

The Sub Brush was my first suspect, as I didn't really understand what your problem is. But now I saw, there isn't one. So it was only an additional information.

So only to understand what you want to see: am I right that you only want the thin line on the outside? In this case you would only need to rotate your brush head (Nozzle) in the General Settings (Rotation), so that the small point of the Nozzle turns to the top (50%).

Edit: Or draw from the right to the left. This will result in a stroke, turned upside down, too.

As explanation: the Nozzle in fact is only an image with two black points on white or transparent ground. You could easily create it yourself, save it as PNG and load it as Textured Intensity Brush (so that it can be recoloured). In the Brush Editor, you can manipulate how this image will be stamped on the canvas if you paint with it.

[firstdefence]

Have you contacted the creators of the brushes?

[Inalisk]

23 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

The Sub Brush was my first suspect, as I didn't really understand what your problem is. But now I saw, there isn't one. So it was only an additional information.

So only to understand what you want to see: am I right that you only want the thin line on the outside? In this case you would only need to rotate your brush head (Nozzle) in the General Settings (Rotation), so that the small point of the Nozzle turns to the top (50%).

As explanation: the Nozzle in fact is only an image with two black points on white or transparent ground. You could easily create it yourself, save it as PNG and load it as Textured Intensity Brush (so that it can be recoloured). In the Brush Editor, you can manipulate how this image will be stamped on the canvas if you paint with it.

That's what I thought, but I wanted to make sure.

As for the creation of a brush, I'd prefer to use what I have purchased at this point and make it work. The creator did a good job in making the various brushes, but I feel there is something on Affinity's end that is causing some of the brushes to not display correctly (you can see in the screenshots that some of the brushes don't even have a preview for what they are, or are so broken as to be unusable).
The creator has produced a brush that follows the stroke of the mouse or pen so that it is always facing out regardless of the direction.

[Inalisk]

16 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Have you contacted the creators of the brushes?

I have, but as of yet no reply as to how to proceed. They aren't familiar with the program and said I could give it a try, but since the giving it a try I've heard nothing back from them yet. That could be because it was a little later when I was using them and they may have decided to be done for the day.

[iconoclast]

6 minutes ago, Inalisk said:

That's what I thought, but I wanted to make sure.

As for the creation of a brush, I'd prefer to use what I have purchased at this point and make it work. The creator did a good job in making the various brushes, but I feel there is something on Affinity's end that is causing some of the brushes to not display correctly (you can see in the screenshots that some of the brushes don't even have a preview for what they are, or are so broken as to be unusable).
The creator has produced a brush that follows the stroke of the mouse or pen so that it is always facing out regardless of the direction.

Yes, I like the brushes you purchased too. But I still don't understand the problem. That Photoshop Brushes don't work from scratch in Photo and other apps is not unusual, because Photoshop is a different program with different functions. But normally one can almost adapt them.

So what is the exact problem? If it is that the thin line is always on the inside - change the direction of drawing from clockwise to the opposite or rotate the nozzle. I can't see anything different in the video of the manufacturer of the brushes.

[Inalisk]

4 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

Yes, I like the brushes you purchased too. But I still don't understand the problem. That Photoshop Brushes don't work from scratch in Photo and other apps is not unusual, because Photoshop is a different program with different functions. But normally one can almost adapt them.

So what is the exact problem? If it is that the thin line is always on the inside - change the direction of drawing from clockwise to the opposite or rotate the nozzle. I can't see anything different in the video of the manufacturer of the brushes.

The exact problem is that the two lines in Photo are not solid, that they are dashed (and in the case of other brushes, there is nothing displayed at all).

If you watch the manufacturer's video again, you'll see him using the brush in question to create a coastline and those lines are solid. Later, he creates an ocean texture (in my screenshots that were attached to comments, they are the first two with a size of 50) and those brushes don't show a preview nor do they work at all on the canvas. The same goes for the rivers (20 & 35 that look very dotted in the same screenshots) which he adds later still and are crisp and clean lines.

I understand that the programs are different in function, but at the core they are very similar. The manufacturer also says that brushes work with the program and this seems to be more of a "you can import brushes into the program, but maybe not use them" which feels dishonest to put it kindly.

[iconoclast]

41 minutes ago, Inalisk said:

The exact problem is that the two lines in Photo are not solid, that they are dashed (and in the case of other brushes, there is nothing displayed at all).

If you watch the manufacturer's video again, you'll see him using the brush in question to create a coastline and those lines are solid. Later, he creates an ocean texture (in my screenshots that were attached to comments, they are the first two with a size of 50) and those brushes don't show a preview nor do they work at all on the canvas. The same goes for the rivers (20 & 35 that look very dotted in the same screenshots) which he adds later still and are crisp and clean lines.

I understand that the programs are different in function, but at the core they are very similar. The manufacturer also says that brushes work with the program and this seems to be more of a "you can import brushes into the program, but maybe not use them" which feels dishonest to put it kindly.

There are two ways to make the lines solid: one is to decrease the spacing, the other thing that causes gaps could be the texture. Instead of removing the texture you could also set the Mode to "None" or decrease the Scale to get a more subtle texture. Edit: You need to drag the slider to the right for this, what is a bit confusing. I can't see any other settings at the moment that could cause your problem. Possibly also a little more Hardness could look better, but that is your decision.

And yes, you can use Photoshop Brushes in Photo (also in GIMP and other apps), but as I already said, because of the different functionality of the programs, they will not always work from scratch. You often have to do some adjustments to get them work as they should. I'm not sure if Photoshop has any functions concerning their brushes that are definitely not supported by Photo. But I don't think so in this special case.

I installed a lot of Photoshop Brushes in my Photo version too, and it was a lot of work to adjust them so that they do what they are developed and I wanted them for.

Why some of your brushes don't show up anyway is a mystery to me. Possibly screenshots of the Brush Editor Sections of a certain brush could be helpful. Or don't they even appear in the Brushes menu?

A general thing you could try - just to check it out - is to disable the OpenCL acceleration in the Preferences (menu Edit > Preferences > Performance > uncheck OpenCL). Don't think that it will help, but it does in some cases and... - who knows.

[Inalisk]

8 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

There are two ways to make the lines solid: one is to decrease the spacing, the other thing that causes gaps could be the texture. Instead of removing the texture you could also set the Mode to "None" or decrease the Scale to get a more subtle texture. I can't see any other settings at the moment that could cause your problem. Possibly also a little more Hardness could look better, but that is your decision.

And yes, you can use Photoshop Brushes in Photo (also in GIMP and other apps), but as I already said, because of the different functionality of the programs, they will not always work from scratch. You often have to do some adjustments to get them work as they should. I'm not sure if Photoshop has any functions concerning their brushes that are definitely not supported by Photo. But I don't think so in this special case.

I installed a lot of Photoshop Brushes in my Photo version too, and it was a lot of work to adjust them so that they do what they are developed and I wanted them for.

Why some of your brushes don't show up anyway is a mystery to me. Possibly screenshots of the Brush Editor Sections of a certain brush could be helpful. Or don't they even appear in the Brushes menu?

A general thing you could try - just to check it out - is to disable the OpenCL acceleration in the Preferences (menu Edit > Preferences > Performance > uncheck OpenCL). Don't think that it will help, but it does in some cases and... - who knows.

I appreciate your help and I know I've come across as  frustrated, but it's not at you. I prefer to buy things that work. I already have enough projects that I work on and tinker with and I'd hoped that this would be something fun to do, not a new headache. It was my original reason for purchasing the program in the first place given that I'll sometimes take months away from a program when I don't have time.

Again, the false advertising on Affinity's end is seemingly the issue and I'm outside of my 14 days so moving on from that one.

I've tried the Open CL and turning the Mode to "None" under the texture, but I can't reduce the scale to less than the 10% so it seems that neither of those are hanging out at the root.
My last option may be to delete it and see if I can make it work, but in my head the texture I suspect is what makes the brush what it's supposed to be.

[iconoclast]

32 minutes ago, Inalisk said:

I appreciate your help and I know I've come across as  frustrated, but it's not at you. I prefer to buy things that work. I already have enough projects that I work on and tinker with and I'd hoped that this would be something fun to do, not a new headache. It was my original reason for purchasing the program in the first place given that I'll sometimes take months away from a program when I don't have time.

Again, the false advertising on Affinity's end is seemingly the issue and I'm outside of my 14 days so moving on from that one.

I've tried the Open CL and turning the Mode to "None" under the texture, but I can't reduce the scale to less than the 10% so it seems that neither of those are hanging out at the root.
My last option may be to delete it and see if I can make it work, but in my head the texture I suspect is what makes the brush what it's supposed to be.

You have to drag the slider to the right to downscale the texture (maximum 1000%). Forgot to say that. A bit confusing.

I absolutely understand that you are frustrated. I often was in similar situations. Computer topics are often very abstract and not as intuitive as promised. And we also have to remember that companies like Adobe and Serif are in competition, and they may not be be very interested in sharing their valuable secrets with each other. So unfortunately not everything that is developed for the one app also works without problems in the other one. But I'm convinced that it almost should in this case. Because the brush is not too complex. It's not easy for me to give specific advice from here without being able to test the certain brush myself. Unfortunately it's not possible to share it.

But as I said, if you minimize the Spacing and decrease the texture, the gaps should usually also be minimized. It's logical. And I wouldn't give up so soon.

I attached a somehow similar brush I quickly created. Maybe it helps somehow to study its settings.

Coastline.afbrushes

[Inalisk]

14 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

You have to drag the slider to the right to downscale the texture (maximum 1000%). Forgot to say that. A bit confusing.

I absolutely understand that you are frustrated. I often was in similar situations. Computer topics are often very abstract and not as intuitive as promised. And we also have to remember that companies like Adobe and Serif are in competition, and they may not be be very interested in sharing their valuable secrets with each other. So unfortunately not everything that is developed for the one app also works without problems in the other one. But I'm convinced that it almost should in this case. Because the brush is not too complex. It's not easy for me to give specific advice from here without being able to test the certain brush myself. Unfortunately it's not possible to share it.

But as I said, if you minimize the Spacing and decrease the texture, the gaps should usually also be minimized. It's logical. And I wouldn't give up so soon.

Okay, after making the changes that you mentioned and explained, I can get most of them workable (not all, but that's a different problem). The static ones work perfectly well as shown in the new screenshot. It appears to just be the ones that are dynamic and change based on direction and the like.

I will call this a win for now as I need coffee. If you (or anyone else) comes up with something to try and improve the results further, that would be a great help. (Wet edges help too I just saw.)

Thank you for the help with this and for dealing with my frustrations.