More custom hotkeys needed for drawing tablet workflow to be efficient.

[jmrain]

I am a heavy drawing tablet user (by tablet I mean a wacom or other similar device for drawing/painting with a pen, not an ipad) and I love the idea of using affinity designer for a hybrid vector/raster art experience, but until more hotkey functionality is added painting and drawing are just too cumbersome for me to really consider daily driving affinity.

There are a few key actions that tablet users need to have at their fingertips at all times to work with any real efficiency:
Rotate (and reset rotation)
Zoom
Pan
Alter Brush Size
Toggle Eraser/Brush
Color Picker

The most ideal setup for this to have your non-pen hand on your keyboard where you can access a small cluster of hotkeys that alter the effects of your pen drag while held.
Currently the 'Pan' functionality in Affinity is perfect!
While holding space and dragging, I can pan with my pen and, on release, return to my previous tool. 
The problem is that, unless I'm missing something here, there is no matching functionality for those other actions. (color picker works, but I can't reassign it to the key I want)

 

For example in my custom Krita setup, I was able to easily set up custom hotkeys and now I can perform all of these actions without moving my hands into a new position.
space + drag = pan
shift + space + drag = zoom
fn + space + drag = rotate
fn + shift  = reset rotation
shift + drag = alter brush size
E = toggle eraser/brush
command + drag = color picker

I can transform the canvas almost as quickly as I can think and immediately have my brush or eraser back.

the difference this makes is immense.
after working this way in Krita and Blender, having to move my pen hand to my mouse wheel when I want to rotate the canvas feels like a car crash in the middle of my workflow.
Krita has incredible hotkey customization options that could serve as references for the Affinity team. It lets you create pretty much any key combinations you want and just warns you if that shortcut is already assigned somewhere else.

Thanks for reading and considering!

[fde101]

Does your tablet support touch gestures?

Most of the "modern" Wacom tablets do, and you can just reach down and rotate, pan, and zoom the canvas quite easily without ever touching the keyboard and in most cases barely need to move your hand at all...

[jmrain]

6 hours ago, fde101 said:

Does your tablet support touch gestures?

Most of the "modern" Wacom tablets do, and you can just reach down and rotate, pan, and zoom the canvas quite easily without ever touching the keyboard and in most cases barely need to move your hand at all...

alas no, and as far as I can tell the vast majority of tablet users are using tablets that lack this functionality. wacom is still selling $1000+ tablet displays without touch controls and I believe most anything you can get from xp pen or huion lacks touch as well. I would imagine that the vast majority of tablet users are on sub $500 tablets and you can do great things with them thankfully! 

[deeds]

It's almost as if nobody at Affinity has tried Procreate and then taken the time to think: "how can we do all this better, knowing a keyboard is at hand?"

[fde101]

1 hour ago, deeds said:

Affinity has tried Procreate

First of all, the company is Serif - Affinity is a product line.

Secondly, that is not really their target as far as I can tell.

Procreate falls into more of the category that Krita and Painter are in, being primarily focused on creation of original artwork using methodologies mimicking physical media to varying degrees.

While Affinity Designer does have a focus on the creation of original artwork, it is primarily a vector app (yes, it does have raster capabilities, but they are relatively weak and not particularly focused on the same types of use cases that these other apps are), which targets a very different way of working.

Affinity Photo is more geared toward the use cases of applications like Photoshop and GIMP - retouching *existing* artwork rather than creating new artwork.

While I am certainly not opposed to learning from apps with focuses in other areas (particularly related ones), the notion that Serif is missing the mark somehow by not having examined the way that applications with related but distinct focus areas work and trying to mimic them with their own app which is intended to serve a somewhat different role, feels like criticizing a metalworker for not adhering to standard woodworking practices.

[deeds]

16 hours ago, fde101 said:

Procreate falls into more of the category that Krita and Painter are in, being primarily focused on creation of original artwork using methodologies mimicking physical media to varying degrees.

there's little to no evidence that anyone shouldn't learn from other related fields.

Except for lockdowns. Nobody should look at any kind of lockdowns of healthy people as any kind of good idea, ever.

[fiery.spirit]

Quote

There are a few key actions that tablet users need to have at their fingertips at all times to work with any real efficiency:
Rotate (and reset rotation)
Zoom
Pan
Alter Brush Size
Toggle Eraser/Brush
Color Picker

If this isn't helpful, please ignore, but,

Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer Pixel Persona keyboard shortcuts:

ctrl+ += zoom in

ctrl + - = zoom out

ctrl + 0 = zoom to view canvas

shift = pan

] = increase brush size incrementally

[ = decrease brush size incrementally

quickly typing a number = opacity 

b = brush

e = eraser

 i = color picker

v = move tool. While active, you can rotate/scale with your pen freely. Can also bring up the transform toolbar and manually type in rotation angles, or click on the transform toolbar to rotate or flip in 90 and 180 degrees, respectively.

 

Quote

and I believe most anything you can get from xp pen or huion lacks touch as well.

Even the most affordable decent Huion tablets have programmable buttons along the side, and often additional "soft keys" (assignable areas along another side) if that fits your workflow. I don't use them-- prefer keyboard.

By default, not every action possible has an assigned keyboard shortcut active, but everything I've needed can be assigned in the keyboard shortcuts under Preferences.

[fiery.spirit]

Ah, I just realized what you really meant.

There is an option to assign keyboard shortcuts here, though!

Edit > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts
Select Pixel Persona, View.
Scroll down to see options for Rotate Left and Rotate Right. Resetting the Rotation already has an assigned shortcut, but you can change it if you'd like too.