Pencil, Pen and Node Tool improvements

[Patrick Connor]

Apps: Designer
Platforms: macOS, Windows and iPad

Pencil Tool improvements

Affinity Designer’s Pencil Tool now includes several new options on its context toolbar.

 Auto Close

Up to 2.6, we’ve only offered a proximity-based auto-closing option when making a closed shape from a pencil curve. As a reminder, a red ‘dog bone’ indicator popped up when the active end of a pencil curve approached the stroke’s starting point. This design aid suggested that the curve could be closed by clicking.  

In 2.6, we’ve now introduced an Auto Close pop-up menu that offer a choice of options:

• Off - the curve is never closed.
• Near - the curve is closed when end points approach each other (this is as per the [2.6 release; the ‘dog bone’ indicator still shows).
• Far - similar to Near but the distance between end points is greater.
• Always - the curve is always closed irrespective of distance between end points. 

Auto close behaviours when using the Pencil Tool: Off (A), Near (B), Far (C) and Always (D).

Smoothness

Smoothness can be applied in advance of pencil drawing or to pencil curves you’ve just drawn. By design, further smoothing is no longer possible once the curve is deselected.

The feature works by repositioning, adding or removing nodes on the curve to affect the smoothing results. You can decrease or increase smoothing by dragging the slider left or right from the default value (50%), respectively; nodes are removed or added as a result.

Note that this is not to be confused with the smoothing you’ll see when using the Stabiliser option on the context toolbar. It would be beneficial to switch this off while testing Smoothness.

Use line style

Prior to 2.6, the Pencil Tool presented the Use fill option as a check box on its context toolbar. This is now presented as an icon, and is accompanied by a new Use line style option, also an icon. This lets you adopt the currently set stroke properties (width, dot/dash, pressure) you have currently set up on the Stroke panel for new pencil strokes.

Applying Use line style as you draw a pencil stroke.

Pen Tool improvements

The Pen Tool also benefits from the new Use line style option described above.

Node Tool improvements

Converting nodes from Sharp to Smooth requires a visit to the Node Tool context toolbar or right-click menu. In 2.6, Affinity now lets you double-click (or alt-click) a node to cycle between these node types, keeping you more focused on the curve. 

As another addition, either control handle on a Bézier curve’s node can be removed by double-clicking on its handle; the associated node becomes a sharp (cusp) corner

[Affinity Info Bot]

Known Issues in this feature
A list of unresolved issues for this feature, reported by users

• AF-4771 - Pencil Tool has conflicting modifiers on Windows so a node cannot be converted.

Released Fixes
A list of issues for this feature, available in the current beta build

• AF-4700 - Pen Tool: Use fill/Use line style icons are missing on macOS Photo and Publisher
• AF-4756 - Style Settings on context toolbar gets out of sync with other panels if buttons are toggled before drawing curve.
• AF-4781 - The Stroke Style is not Maintained when Toggling Use Line Style Off and On…

[postmadesign]

This is what I hoped Affinity would add! Thanks a lot, this give me much more control and makes it much more useful.

Although the new curve algorithm was great for smooth curves, it was often too smooth for my taste when I wanted a more handmade feel.

[Bryan Rieger]

This is a really welcome change, thank you!  🎉

Any chance we can get a 'smoothing' slider with the brush (pixel and vector) tools as well? I find with the smoothing slider I now don't need to worry about the stabilizer as much as (if at all).

Edit: One thing I have noticed is that the stroke colour and width values in the top toolbar are often out of sync with the stroke and colour values found in the Colour and Stroke panels. I almost feel it would be beneficial to remove these values from the toolbar, and have them set via the panels if it's impossible to keep them in sync.

Edited October 22, 2024 by Bryan Rieger
Stroke colour and width values out of sync.

[EmT]

Hi @Bryan Rieger

27 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

One thing I have noticed is that the stroke colour and width values in the top toolbar are often out of sync with the stroke and colour values found in the Colour and Stroke panels. I almost feel it would be beneficial to remove these values from the toolbar, and have them set via the panels if it's impossible to keep them in sync.

Could you please send me a video of this behaviour? 

[Bryan Rieger]

Sure thing @EmT.

In this video the toolbar starts with a black stroke and a width of 5.5, while the colour panel also shows the black stroke, the stroke panel indicates no stroke. Drawing with this results in a curve with no stroke or colour applied. Applying a colour (green) to the strokes makes them visible (0.2 stroke width), yet then drawing another line with a green stroke, 5.5 width in the toolbar results in a no stroke displayed in the stroke panel, and a curve drawn with no colour or width.

 

 

 

[kaffeeundsalz]

21 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

Prior to 2.6, the Pencil Tool presented the Use fill option as a check box on its context toolbar. This is now presented as an icon, and is accompanied by a new Use line style option, also an icon.

For the record, this is not consistent across applications. Affinity Designer shows buttons with icons; Photo and Publisher both show buttons with text. For Publisher, the latter is even true when switching to the Designer persona:

how it looks in Designer

how it looks in every other Affinity application

[Sean P]

9 minutes ago, kaffeeundsalz said:

For the record, this is not consistent across applications. Affinity Designer shows buttons with icons; Photo and Publisher both show buttons with text. For Publisher, the latter is even true when switching to the Designer persona:

how it looks in Designer

how it looks in every other Affinity application

Thanks for letting us know - this is a bug with Photo and Publisher. It is logged with development.

[Juhani]

Very nice quality of life improvements for the pencil and node tools.

On 10/21/2024 at 9:19 PM, Patrick Connor said:

• Near - the curve is closed when end points approach each other (this is as per the [2.6 release; the ‘dog bone’ indicator still shows).
• Far - similar to Near but the distance between end points is greater.

I played around with the Auto Close feature and found that the minimum distance between end points for the auto close to kick in was quite minimal between Near and Far methods on macOS, definitely not as much as you show in the diagram above.

[retrograde]

On my mac, re the node improvements, I've noticed that with the pen tool active if you invoke the node tool by pressing the command key, you need to also press the option key and click just once on a node to convert it and one more click to return it to the original state and vice versa. It also is a little touchy and doesn't always work right away requiring a few more single (not double) clicks. But if I just press the command key to activate the node tool temporarily and don't press the option key as well, nothing changes with the node... hopefully that's clear enough of an explanation.

Is this the intended method with the pen tool active?

[Robert Hansford]

WOW! Guys these new additions to the pencil tool are really cool! Thank you!

[EmT]

14 hours ago, Juhani said:

I played around with the Auto Close feature and found that the minimum distance between end points for the auto close to kick in was quite minimal between Near and Far methods on macOS, definitely not as much as you show in the diagram above.

Hi @Juhani

Thanks for your feedback, the diagrams above are quite zoomed in, which is why the pencil icon is also quite large. However I understand this is quite confusing and I will feed that back to the team. 

[EmT]

6 hours ago, retrograde said:

I've noticed that with the pen tool active if you invoke the node tool by pressing the command key, you need to also press the option key and click just once on a node to convert it and one more click to return it to the original state and vice versa. It also is a little touchy and doesn't always work right away requiring a few more single (not double) clicks.

Hi @retrograde this is the expected behaviour, when holding down CMD the status bar will update to show the modifiers for the node tool, these modifiers work in conjunction with CMD being held down. You need to hold down CMD to toggle the Node tool then CMD+Alt to convert the node. 

The node needs to be selected to convert it, whilst holding Alt, so the double click sounds like you are:

• First Click - Selecting the node
• Second Click - Converting the node

I hope this helps.

[HCl]

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[EmT]

Apologies @Return I wasn't clear enough in my last post, I've now updated this. 
You need to hold down CMD/Ctrl to toggle the Node tool then CMD/Ctrl+Alt to convert the node. 

[HCl]

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[EmT]

15 minutes ago, Return said:

But this only works for the pentool not for the penciltool.

Thanks I'll get this logged up

[Hangman]

The Stroke Style is not Maintained when toggling Use Line Style off and on…

Steps to Reproduce

1. Set the Stroke panel settings to create a dotted line e.g.,

• Style: Dash Line Style
• Width: 12 pt
• Cap: Round Cap
• Join: Round Join
• Align: Align Stroke to Centre
• Dash Gap Pairing: 0 - 2 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0

1. Set a Stroke colour
2. Select the Pencil Tool
3. Select Use Line Style in the Context toolbar and enable Keep Selected
4. Draw a line
5. Select the Move tool and deselect the line
6. Re-select the Pencil Tool
7. Turn Use Line Style off in the Context toolbar
8. Draw another line
9. Turn Use Line Style on in the Context toolbar
10. The stroked line now uses the Butt Cap instead of the Round Cap

Drawing a shape with the Pencil Tool when Use Line Style is off switches the Cap from Round to Butt once the mouse is released if selecting the Move Tool between drawing the two shapes. Subsequently turning Use Line Style back on after drawing the second shape displays the stroke with the incorrect Stroke Cap if still selected…

Note: This affects both the Pen and Pencil Tool on Mac and Windows across all three apps...

[mxm]

@Hangman Thank you for the reply. You explain it in a very clear way! 🙂

[Frozen Death Knight]

Holding down alt and with any other modifier key combination still breaks Auto-close for the Pencil Tool in this version, which is something I reported on in previous Betas. Shift+alt still forces the colour picker to get activated as well when you start a stroke.

I suppose these are known issues and they just haven't been addressed yet?

[Frozen Death Knight]

Clicking the Use Fill icon doesn't work on Windows it seems. It just resets back to having it deactivated.

Forgot to add, really nice changes! Makes working with these tools feel like a breeze with each little improvement.

A small future request, would it be possible to allow us to change the Smoothness value for the Pencil Tool using numbered keyboard shortcuts like how it works with raster brush settings like Opacity, Flow, etc. in Photo? Since the Smoothness values are set from 0-100% being able to quickly type down a specific number without touching the top bar would make the software behave more consistently with these settings.

[HCl]

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[Frozen Death Knight]

3 minutes ago, Return said:

Care to explain why you hold down the Alt key?
The fill button just works fine for me.

 

 

Auto-close doesn't work when holding down alt at any point on my Windows PC. Don't know if that's the case on Mac, but my image is pretty self-explanatory by just looking at the settings and having a shape that remains open.

The button keeps resetting back to not having fill activated when I click it on my end. It doesn't behave like it does for you.

[Frozen Death Knight]

Okay, so I figured out why Use Fill doesn't work. When the fill colour is empty it just resets it back to having it deactivated.

When I manually added a fill colour the button started working again. I would consider this a bug, since it seems to affect new shapes with no designated fill colour upon its creation.

I also somehow got it to activate and not produce any fill colour at all after further testing. Odd.

[HCl]

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