Adding or merging eps files

[EkJohnson]

Hi there, near total noob here...

I'm being duly challenged with eps files used for textures and I'm guessing there has to be a better way than what I've been trying. I've bought some grunge textures from creative market and wound up with eps files for each texture which consists of multiple groups with each containing hundreds, if not thousands of layers with one curve (like a single speck) per layer. Not exactly helpful for pasting into another drawing.

On the smaller files I can start adding the shapes together until I get to a single layer that I can copy & paste but for the larger files, Affinity can't seem to Add hundreds of layers/curves together, it just sits there when I click the Add button. It's not totally surprising as trying to manipulate hundreds or thousands of items at a time would choke just about anything. But trying to add them together a few dozen at a time is just way too arduous to be of any use. My end goal is trying to use these eps textures as cut outs to apply textures like simulating cracked or distressed tee shirts.

Is there a better, simpler way to make this work or do I need to lose hours trying to merge all those layers and groups? If that's the case I'd probably give up and deal with the wasted money as it's just *that* bad.  😛 

Thanks in advance!

[v_kyr]

See a related design article for distress effect aka vintage look ...

• The Distress Effect: How To Create a Vintage Look for Your Custom T-shirt

Do you first of all need vectors of these? - I'm asking since most creative market etc. Illustrator (Ai) based/generated EPS vector files are mostly useless for Affinity apps and also aren't parsed that well in (imported) in ADe etc.  In case of vectors -instead of buying such EPS files- you maybe better autotrace some free grunge bitmap textures as PDF/SVG vectors here instead. Or if vectors are not absolutely necessary (?), then I would try it with some higher-resolution bitmaps instead.

See and search also here in the forum about grunge/distress effect ...

• Distressed look on a vector image
• Designer: Distressed look
• Using Textures in Affinity Designer
• Brushes
• etc.

[EkJohnson]

Thank you for this, I'll give those links a try.

 

I was sticking on the vectors as I wanted to be able to subtract it from the artwork so that the background/shirt would show through. It didn't even occur to me to try using brushes. See what I mean about being a noob?  😛 

Also, thank you for the information about the poorly parsed eps files, that makes a lot of sense and I'm glad to know that I wasn't missing something obvious.