Constraint Paintbrush

[LilleG]

Is there any way to constrain a paintbrush stroke?  I'm not fond of the drop-shadow that one can create with Outer Shadow when used with a rectangle.  I could do a much better one with the proper paintbrush at the proper opacity...IF there was a way to constrain the brush to a straight line.  Have I overlooked a way to do that?

[anon1]

just use the shift key like it also works for all brush tool, clone stamp, healing, paintbrush you call it ;)

 

you click , press shift and click again 

[LilleG]

Thank you!  I was skipping the first click and getting strokes connecting to previous strokes, etc.

[Alfred]

The Shift key gives you a straight line, but (unlike the sides of a rectangle drawn with the Rectangle Tool) it won't necessarily be a perfectly horizontal or vertical straight line. We would need a second modifier key for horizontal, vertical or diagonal constraint, and I don't think we have one.

[LilleG]

I just discovered that, Alfred.  It prolly wouldn't have helped in this case anyway.  What I am trying to do is create a realistic drop shadow around a rectangle, the effect you would get looking at a real photograph mounted and front-lighted on a white background board.  Affinity's Outer Shadow has a hard edge no matter what you do with opacity or noise.  I'd really like to be done with my ancient Photoshop but it's just so much easier and quicker to go back to it for Resize the Canvas, Stroke (Affinity's Outline), and Drop Shadow (Outer Shadow.)  I could live with the extra steps in Affinity but that hard edged outer shadow is just plain ugly.  And I don't know how to fix it.

[anon1]

well just leave the intensity at 0% and there is no hard edge whatsoever 

 

instead you can still duplicate the layer, desaturate is and blur it or make a selection from the layer, fill it with black and blur it 

- but the fx works just fine so....

[LilleG]

I'll try that, MBd.  I do appreciate all the helpful suggestions that I'm getting from you guys.

 

Edit: Should have tried it first.  I've always had Intensity at 0.  And there is most definitely a hard edge if you look at it at 100%  It's not an even edge but it is a definite, here-I-stop edge instead of dithering into invisibility.

[gdenby]

Outer shadow, intensity 0 with a large-ish radius and offset seems to work comparable to what I can get in Photoshop Elements 11.

 

For comparison, images, both zoomed to 500%

 

 

[LilleG]

Well, color me embarrassed!  I just looked back at some of my older photographs processed in Photoshop and you're right!  Very little, if any, difference.  Apparently, I need to stay out of 100%. ;)   Now, If I can just remember how to create a sig brush in APhoto, I'll quit complaining and go do some actual work.

 

Thanks to everyone for their sometimes un-properly appreciated suggestions.

[anon1]

great

 

and you know that you can also manually type in larger values than where the sliders max out, right?

 

most times, all sliders at max does not look good (for example unsharp mask, glow filter, shadows fx....)