Affinity Photo: Fine tuning rotation jitter and problems when using shift modifier for horizontal/vertical lines

[veles]

I'm trying to create this in AP:

I made this in PS with four parallel, horizontal lines, using a basic, square brush with minimal angle jitter and moderate shape and size jitter. Very basic.

The goal is to create subtle variations that will make the arrangement of the rectangles appear handmade and not mechanic.

 

This is the closest I could get to it in AP:

Obviously, this is unusable for my purposes. I'm wondering if I just don't know how to adjust the brush settings to achieve the desired effect.

 

Here are the brush settings I used:

 

The problems I've encountered:

1. The 'Rotation Jitter' setting doesn't seem to do anything on its own. It looks like it has to be combined with 'Rotation'; however, when combined with 'Rotation' everything is either rotated in only one direction or the angle variation is too great.

2. I'm either using it wrong or the shift modifier is glitching when used in combination with the brush tool for straight vertical and horizontal lines.

I've tried: click>shift+drag, shift+click+drag, shift>click+drag. None of the key combinations work correctly and the closest result is this:

For some reason Affinity insist on connecting the end of the fist line with the beginning of the subsequent one.

I don't see a shift key modifier option under the 'Brush Tool' in the 'Keyboard Shortcuts' menu, so it's possible that, technically, this function isn't available in AP.

 

Any suggestions and workarounds are welcome.

I'm on Windows and using a mouse but have access to a drawing tablet.

[PaulEC]

22 minutes ago, veles said:

Obviously, this is unusable for my purposes.

To be perfectly honest, it's not obvious to me! The results look quite similar!

What makes the Photoshop version right and the AP version "unusable"?

[iconoclast]

In my experience, the Dynamic "Rotation Jitter" with "Random" should cause this minimal rotation that is shown in your Photoshop-Sample. But 83% may be too much. Think about: if you rotate a square 50%, you will see no difference to a square that isn't rotated or that is rotated 100%. Something like 10% should be enough, I think.

That the start point of the second line is connected with the end point of the first line may be caused by that you hold the Shift key. If you click on one point and then click on another, holding Shift, you will get a straight line, as far as I remember. So click without holding Shift to start the second line.

The Shape Jitter only works with Basic Brushes, in my experience.

[Lee_T]

Hi Veles,

Something like the following settings should allow you to achieve your aim. 

Note the blue bar on the rotation setting, you can see range of rotation for which the randomness of rotation occurs. If you turn reduce the jitter value, you can preview the rotation for setting your range.

Lee.

Result:

 

 

[veles]

22 hours ago, PaulEC said:

What makes the Photoshop version right and the AP version "unusable"?

The placement of the tiles looks too rigid and artificial in my AP example.

22 hours ago, iconoclast said:

That the start point of the second line is connected with the end point of the first line may be caused by that you hold the Shift key. If you click on one point and then click on another, holding Shift, you will get a straight line, as far as I remember. So click without holding Shift to start the second line.

Doing it the way you suggested works, but because I'm using positional jitter and the tiles are not supposed to touch or overlap this involves a lot of trial and error. I have to make hundreds of rows of these tiles and creating them this way would be too time consuming.

5 hours ago, LeeThorpe said:

Hi Veles,

Something like the following settings should allow you to achieve your aim. 

Note the blue bar on the rotation setting, you can see range of rotation for which the randomness of rotation occurs. If you turn reduce the jitter value, you can preview the rotation for setting your range.

Lee.

Result:

 

 

Thank you very much. This is exactly what I was looking for. I'll experiment with this setting.

This brush setting in combination with grid snapping should get me close enough to what I'm looking for. Now I just have to figure out how to use grid snapping for horizontal lines 😅.

[iconoclast]

Quote

Doing it the way you suggested works, but because I'm using positional jitter and the tiles are not supposed to touch or overlap this involves a lot of trial and error. I have to make hundreds of rows of these tiles and creating them this way would be too time consuming.

You could create guidelines for the tiles or simply use a grid.

[veles]

1 minute ago, iconoclast said:

You could create guidelines for the tiles or simply use a grid.

👍Yep, that's what I figured:

5 minutes ago, veles said:

This brush setting in combination with grid snapping should get me close enough to what I'm looking for.