My feedback (about painting features, for now)

[SrPx]

Thank you VERY much for bringing professional software at a price we freelancers can afford. I have noticed very interesting features, like shift click for joining the line from the last stroke ending, this is great for inking workflows.

 

Overall am seeing the software is really advanced, one of the criteria to label it as fully professional is that I am seeing a very complete support of color profiles, ability to work in CMYK mode, color profiles support, and a large etc. I'm really interested in the new affinity applications.

 

That said, some more useful feedback now. Testing it with the activity that keeps me more busy: painting. I am a raster based illustrator, a digital artist. I have some issues with the brush engine, I'm afraid. When zoomed out and painting fast or slow (the usual hardware limitation tends to be that a fast stroke shows jitter, but this is mainly related to the hardware, as in: Apple Pencil has no jitter(such a jewell), Wacom devices have little jitter, and MS Surface has quite jitter, including its latest Studio. ). I know my Wacom Intuos PRO XL has little jitter, much less than what Photo produces when zoomed out. tested in a A4 canvas at 300 dpi, CMYK file, FOGRA39 color profile. If I zoom in, and paint the lines then, the trembling/jittery line becomes not so noticeable, even quite good.  But i need to be able to work in zoomed out, seeing the full A4 -or other sizes- as is a must for good composition, or for quite a number of situations. 

 

Another problem I found is it seems as if it is updating constantly the strokes, like pixelizing it always that a device is moving, even without painting. This ends up quite distracting while drawing.  is like constantly trembling, as updates like every second or less.

 

I have also noticed, like others, that the preview brush lags when hovering, goes behind the cursor. Not a big issue, but... (the jitter is the biggest problem I see in the whole application)

 

Even at 100%, and in lines which were painted zoomed in, and that shows no jitter, it makes something like a preview or something, that the lines borders are not very clean, like with small artifacts.  This can be an issue too, for an illustrator.

 

Not so important, when the brush is big, like 380 pixels, the preview circle of the brush kind of shows a marque around when moving, and some times if the pen is steady, disappears totally. Again, these two issues are smaller in importance than then jitter, to me, the showstopper here.

If that huge preview of the brush circle is lagging the stroke, I'd suggest that like in other package one could opt for setting to see there just a small cursor, with shape of a brush, or a small triangle, etc. As optional in preferences, of course. It could be quite more comfortable than the trembling smooth circle.

 

And speaking of more unimportant , things of a beta, but I mention here so to help also in this: In the Spanish translation, is a bit non intuitive to name "Estudio" something that would much better be called "Panel" or "Paneles", Quite similar meaning to the word "panel", in English, but surely better idea to set it in plural. In other packages, for this specific matter they would put simply "mostrar" ("show" in English). Estudios is used for the actual meaning of "Studio" or "Essay", or "studies". Oh, I'm speaking about the menu View (Vista),  and in there, the deployable menu under the guides manager, where says "Estudios", and actually pops a menu with the panels character brushes, macro, etc...

 

Also noticed that there's actual lag, noticed when zooming in to 57.2% and trying to write small text. (or anything detailed/small) IMO, is due to the starting stroke lag, like if there it processes something and causes that delay, and the start of any stroke. Is some 1/100s of a second, but it removes quite some control and speed over the drawing, making much more difficult to draw small details.

 

My machine is a very old one, so I have the doubt if some of these issues would disappear with a much more powerful machine, but then, other 2D softwares, open source and commercial, do not have any of these issues...   :). Anyway, these are most surely typical beta status kind of issues, that's why beta versions do exist ! :)

 

Machine specs:  Core i7 860 ( intel processor is from 2009. Is a quad core with hyper threading (8 threads)), 2.8 Ghz. 8 gb ram (of that time). Nvidia GTX 275 graphic card. HD Seagate 7200 rpm. Windows 7 Home Premium, 64 bits. Works quite well with high end software, many layers print files, etc. 

 

I'm actually quite sure is issues with the brush engine, but providing all specs, anyway. 

 

I totally love the idea, that you brought the version to a massive market like Windows, I like the UI, many solutions good for workflow. If the brush engine does not change in a final version, am still very interested in its color/image adjustment capabilities, supporting so many professional specs and needs, and price philosophy (very freelance/indy friendly) , that's why I'm doing such large report. Of course, I have found a lot of nice things in the software, but for polishing a beta, IMHO is more useful reporting the issues.   :)

 

One nice thing of the brush engine : Seems to catch a wide range of pressure, from very fine to thicker, more than some other high end packages. 

 

Attaching images about the issues, I hope my bad writing on-screen is readable...

 

Oh, forgot to mention: My desktop screen size is 1920 x 108 (native).

 

Drawing at a zoom of 23%, so to see well the A4 page margins, work in global view, which is essential.

 

Zooming in and painting, so, painting at a zoom of 57.2 %

 

Screen of a zoom-in in to examine those strokes made at 57.2 % (so, looking at them in a 136,6 % zoom )

 

Actually painting at that zoom, 136,6 %. The lines are pretty smoother, now.

 

When looking at 100% zoom,  the lines which are indeed, in reality, smooth, those painted at zoom 136,6%,  in zoom 100% are seen like pixeled, a bit "artifact-ish"

 

Really hoping this can be useful, as a feedback. :)

 

EDIT: One tiny thing more, when entering in advanced brush settings, I believe that where you say "Acumulación" (Spanish), you might actually better put "Opacidad" as it is in the interface setting.  (Opacidad = opacity)

 

EDIT 2 : I wanted to check extremes, so I tried the experiment very zoomed out. Actually I never would draw at a 12% or so zoom, but to test the mechanic of the issue. Worked at several software companies, it usually helped catching issues :). As you can see, is the zoom what makes it loose accuracy -when drawing zoomed out- the more jaggy lines are the ones drawn slower, at the same zoom level :



 

 

 

[Andy Somerfield]

Thanks,

 

Brush input is always something we are working to improve - we'll see what we can do here!

 

Andy.

[Mark Ingram]

Thanks for that great breakdown SrPx, we'll investigate those jittery lines, and hopefully have a solution soon!

[SrPx]

You are welcome !   :)

 

I just added a new last edit, as I tested it at a very far away zoom, so to check an extreme, as clearly is the zoom (or the grid it uses when zoomed out) what is involved. It shows it more clearly. Just wanted to keep it all in the first post.   :)

 

It would be great, as is indeed a very complete package   :)

Softwares at an indy/freelancer-friendly price with professional features supported, like CMYK profiles.. close to none, and none in open source (in good digital painting tools, that is.. CMYK mode yep, but none support specific commercial color profiles. ) 

[SrPx]

Indeed, a very clear comparison of drawing at different zooms :

 

 

It gives me hope, as the brush stroke is very smooth when drawing very zoomed in, so, it is indeed capable...All that text is written very fast at that zoom. Is a world of difference compared to drawing zoomed out.

[SrPx]

And once exported as PNG, opening in IrfanView, the text drawn at that 335 % zoom, that hand written text (despite my horrid hand writing) is seen, at 100%, very smooth :

 

[SrPx]

Actually, meanwhile that gets fixed, I tried some workflow to compensate the issue: Working at very low res, then using your function of "changing the pixel work" (or however that translates) to 4x, using the best method among HQX and XBR -just can't remember which was best now-  , then applying a deinterlace filter x and y (you can try other noise reduction technique, too), then an unsharp max or intensity filter. (yet though, this is a reduction of the actual final size, so lines look a little better due to this) . Then do your coloring in a layer below at final big res (well, if you need to work with ink lines, comic style, that is). Is kind of ok, but very far from an ideal workflow. Still, in case somebody is in a hurry (users, I mean).

 

And sorry for the super horrid fast sketch full of drawing errors, just didn't want to loose time in making my point... :) . But  you can see ink lines are more or less ok...

 

[SrPx]

A pair of last fast notes, things probably easy to fix/change, typical of betas :

 

1) When changing document size, the little icon to keep proportional size, the ratio, that is, that if you change the width, the height changes accordingly to make a proportional change. Well, it works so only if you use pixels as unit. Is the unit is cm or mm, won't work. A fast solution is changing with pixels, but if working for print, you probably need to do it in mm or inches and at an specific dpi.

 

2) A kind of usability aspect: Every time a resize function is used, from your list of chosen resample methods , it's always selected "nearest neighbor", which is the one with less quality. It'd be best if at least it were "Bicubic" or, probably better, "Lanczos indivisible". Or, much better, that it would remember last setting, or if that's too complex, set a preference in general preferences, like in other packages. (ie, I usually have bicubic, but I believe Lanczos offers more quality. I'm not 100% sure, though.  )

 

These are kind of minor, imho, compared with the brush/zoom/jitter issue. But I thought I'd mention just to provide more data.

[Synticfaye]

Hello! 

I thought I'll just reply in this thread since I can't give much technical input - only an artist's perspective - and I can agree with SrPx on the issues.

 

Using the cintiq companion 2 (i7) I also noticed the strange jitter, the strokes don't always follow the pen perfectly and sometimes even not at all - which happened after I collected 13 different layers. At that time the bushes showed suddenly strange borders around every stroke...

Maybe i'm at fault, though I haven't figured out what may have caused this - you can see it in my test in the border around the beta and the grey scribbles and also a little in the brush comparison :/  I left the elf-sketch in to prove it is possible to draw smooth lines but sadly it's harder than it should be.

 

Also I noticed that Affinity does import Photoshop brushes - but most of them look extremely different and aren't really usable (see attached file). Older brushsets that only rely on simple bitmaps work better but don't offer much. The DAUB brushsets look nice and remind me of clipstudios brushes (not my personal favorites but thats ok) and I haven't tested brush creation yet. :)

I liked the brush options window and sliders from my quick test, as well as that loaded brushsets aren't just piled onto each other like in photoshop :)

 

Some of the other features I tested and noticed so far (Blurfilters, Layermode Preview, awesome Gradients) were really amazing. I would be great if the brush accuracy, and painting experience could be also on photoshops level.

 

Many greetings and maybe this helps a little. I'm still looking forward to Affinity Photo.

(PS: I usually use photoshop to paint but switch to sketchbook pro and Clipstudio for some functions (like lineart, live mirror, free to place and round rulers ect))

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mark Ingram]

Just to let you know, I've started work on fixing this issue, it won't be available in today's release (build 37) but should (fingers crossed) be in the one after that. 

 

The fix doesn't involve any form of stabilisation, we just use higher precision data from the Wacom device.

[SrPx]

Thank you !  

 

Indeed, sounds better to me higher precision than stabilization. 

 

I will be testing every little bit of the matter when it gets released (when the moment would arrive, no hurries)  :).  Thanks again.  :)

[Mark Ingram]

Thank you !  

 

Indeed, sounds better to me higher precision than stabilization. 

 

I will be testing every little bit of the matter when it gets released (when the moment would arrive, no hurries)   :).  Thanks again.   :)

 

I've also just added support for high precision data from any device that uses Microsoft's new (with Windows 8.1) Pointer API. This includes things like pen and touch on the Microsoft Surface devices, as well as other similar devices.

[SrPx]

Great ! Thank you very much!  All the improvement possible is very welcome in the painting department  :). As I said, I will test it heavily once is put into a beta release (again, no hurries at all :) )

[paolo.limoncelli]

Also I noticed that Affinity does import Photoshop brushes - but most of them look extremely different and aren't really usable (see attached file). Older brushsets that only rely on simple bitmaps work better but don't offer much. The DAUB brushsets look nice and remind me of clipstudios brushes (not my personal favorites but thats ok) and I haven't tested brush creation yet. :)

I liked the brush options window and sliders from my quick test, as well as that loaded brushsets aren't just piled onto each other like in photoshop :)

 

Hi Synticfaye!

 

About the PS import please notice that the concept behind AP management is totally different.

PS organisation is a truly mess, it has ABR and TPL and depending on the panel you choose to select from you have different behaviours.

(eg. You can iterate different tips keeping the same TPL stack, but if you select a tip form Brush Preset you have to start from scratch...)

 

AffinityPhoto engine has the equivalent of PS presets, but allows to import ABR only (not TPL).

When you import an ABR file it creates a new category of brush presets including those brush tips (named nozzles in Affinity) and generating one preset per tip using its default settings.

So it is perfectly understandable that the look is different since you have to refine parameters (flow/spacing/opacity etc...) to match the PS behaviour.

 

With the same nozzle, and same setting you will obtain the same behaviour

 

 

This is true for all the shared settings obviously.

 

For the white border: I bet you're using the Colour Replacement Brush Tool and not the Paintbrush Tool  ;)

[paolo.limoncelli]

Thank you VERY much for bringing professional software at a price we freelancers can afford. I have noticed very interesting features, like shift click for joining the line from the last stroke ending, this is great for inking workflows.

 

...

 

 

 

Impressive report SrPx!

Digital Painters Unite!  :lol:

[SrPx]

Impressive report SrPx!

Digital Painters Unite!  :lol:

 

Yep, these two applications would be great for any illustrator or person drawing whatever the style, imo. We just have to be patient  ;)