Disappointing experiences with Brush Tool

[LucasFlicky]

So i got Affinity Photo as a replacement candidate for Adobe Photoshop, as i presume most of people here did it too. 

The premise really made me think of it as such, there are plenty of features i wanted for years in PS that Affinity comes with it built in.

 

BUT

 

The first tool of all that i tested, was an unfortunate surprise, this illustrates what i'm saying:

 

 

 

At first i thought it was something that i should configure at the preferences, or at brush options, but there was nothing there. This antialiasing is just awful. Photoshop also lacks some quality with the default brush on precision or sharpness but... the curves at least look somewhat smooth,

 

 

Other artifacts relating to the brush tool i've noticed, is that it has a random kick-in lag. Which is when I draw a line, it takes some millisseconds to start responding to direction and pressure, e.g. if i draw a circle, the beginning of the line will be a flat straight line instead of a curve. sometimes it happens, sometimes not. The only situation where I see this happening is when i try to draw at online web applications with my wacom, this has never happened to installed software before.

 

I'ts hard to believe it is something system related, since Photoshop from CS5 to CC worked perfectly at this workstation, as well as many other tools, then if it is not a hardware problem, it is a software issue, since others can perform well here.

 

I'm aware this is a beta, this is why I think it is just unfair to just discard the software because of this, so i'm dropping some feedback here. I really wish that Affinity pose a real threat for Adobe, may be this way some competition will grow and none will stay in idle.

 

 

 

System Specs:

Intel Core i5 quad

16GB RAM

Windows 10

Graphics card is a basic GeForce310 just to have some GPU which is better than none.

 

The Graphics Tablet is a Wacom Intuos 

 

All drivers are up to date.

[Mark Ingram]

Thanks, a couple of users have reported seeing jittery lines with their Wacom devices, so I'll take a look and see what can be done.

[SrPx]

I just had already reported this yesterday (the developers answered very kindly and very fast), and some other used added his experience , so, in case you are interested in my findings and some other users' about it, you can check my thread about it. 

 

To summarize a bit, the aliasing, if you set the brush hardness/softness to a 50% or so, is fine, and then, what might look like bad aliasing, could be jitter while drawing at a zoom higher than 25% (i see you were working at 100%) or so, and that when seen in a sort of preview mode(zoomed out) can look like bad aliasing, but zoom in, and if softness is 50%, the lines will be seen smooth (but jittery lines).... is because drawing at 100% is still kind of like zoomed out, not looking at pixel level or something...So, a zoom in will let you totally work with smooth lines, with no jitter, or not noticeable, and in a more controlled way, and actually with the lag quite reduced. Just not totally. And of course, working only in zoomed in, so, with pixeled lines, and then resampling the image, apply some filters to de-noise/median/sharpen, is not ideal. But I made an ugly(because i drew it ugly) test drawing at low res and worked, included the sketch to prove it.  I'm sure that it will be fixed. :) . Actually, the brush counts with a lot of settings to modify, which is quite convenient, and what I also noticed is that the pressure range is the correct one, it has more sensitivity to pressure than other tools, even the very high end ones. So, my theory is that with all the brush probs solved, this can indeed provide a more realistic inking than what you get with other older applications. And yep, in terms of pro specs, (cmyk, color profiles and management, etc) this is the only software I believe can compete with the established dominant tools, among the ones not costing many hundreds of dollars.

 

Sorry, the actual thread :   https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/27833-my-feedback-about-painting-features-for-now/

[LucasFlicky]

I see, at first i thought it was some default configuration on antialiasing (since Affinity is designed to have best performance, i thought that AA was set up either as off os with some non-aggressive algorithm) and it wasnt.

 

i zoomed to 100% exactly because most of jaggy lines issues on PS are due tu zoomed out views, mostly with broken numbers such as 63.9%, etc. at 100% i'd expect the true pixel view of the doc, this is why i used this zoom to cross-check.

 

Affinity's brush hardness is actually better than PS, since PS never achieves a truly hard-edged brushtroke. unfortunately AP achieves it quite too much, hahahah. 

 

 

I guess this may be just an AA issue that shall be fixed anytime soon.

 

About the kick-in problem though, for what i've seen here it is a known issue, i'll keep an eye around here.

[Rafal]

Other artifacts relating to the brush tool i've noticed, is that it has a random kick-in lag. Which is when I draw a line, it takes some millisseconds to start responding to direction and pressure, e.g. if i draw a circle, the beginning of the line will be a flat straight line instead of a curve. sometimes it happens, sometimes not.

 

I'ts hard to believe it is something system related, since Photoshop from CS5 to CC worked perfectly at this workstation, as well as many other tools, then if it is not a hardware problem, it is a software issue, since others can perform well here.

 

This is exactly my problem too. Though for me It happens almost every time when i start new stroke. I dont have such problem with PS, Krita, or Gimp at all. For me this disqualifies Photo completaly.

 

Of course i know its in beta tests now, that is why i am hoping this will be roselved quickly by dev team, so we can enjoy using AffPhoto as soon as possible.

 

[Herbert123]

I can confirm the issues with drawing smooth lines on Windows. I tested Photo on a Asus EPE121, which has a Wacom built-in, and the lines are squiggly and show kinks. 

 

I have experienced this behaviour in other bitmap drawing applications that run on Windows, and it always turns out to be interpolation problems between the canvas (pixels on the canvas) and the screen resolution (physical pixels of the display). 

 

The relation is easy to test: create an A4 document at 300ppi, and zoom out. Draw with a 1px brush. Zoom out more. Draw again. You will notice that the more the canvas is zoomed out, the worse the interpolation - which results in abysmal looking lines with kinks all along the strokes when you zoom in to view the results at 100%. I believe this problem does not exist on Macs - this is an issue on a Windows OS level.

 

Surprisingly enough, I noticed that this effect is even visible at 100% in Affinity Photo (1px canvas equals 1px screen resolution) - which is the first time I have experienced the kinks appearing at 100% in any bitmap drawing application on Windows. Ordinarily the interpolation should be fine at a one-on-one px drawing. But in Photo it is not, which is strange.

 

Other applications have solved this issue in various ways. The best method (in my opinion) is to use a stroke stabilizer algorithm - with parameters, something like Lazy Nezumi. Many brush engines in alternative bitmap editors have this built-in nowadays - excepting Photoshop and Affinity Photo.

 

As it stands, this beta of Affinity Photo is unusable for digital drawing for me. Suggestion to the developers: add a stroke smooth function with weight settings. Look at Krita, Gimp, Clip Studio, Photoline, and Lazy Nezumi for inspiration.

 

Unfortunately, a second issue exists: the screen anti-aliasing quality of the drawn strokes. Thin strokes partly break up at certain zoom percentages, and zooming out to 25% on an A4@300ppi with 1px strokes results in a pixel mess. It is by far the worst of any digital drawing software that I have used so far on Windows. The BY FAR best on-screen anti-aliasing is on offer in ClipStudio - nothing comes close.

 

I realize this is a beta version. I hope it will be resolved - in its current state Photo is unsuitable for drawing (for me at least).

 

Tested on a EPE121 1280*800px Wacom pen Tablet PC.

[SrPx]

I'm not sure that a stabilization would be the solution... that works great for actual hardware pen/screen jitter.... But I believe this is mostly a programming thing. I mean, when you paint in very zoomed out, if you later zoom in to check what you painted, you totally see a grid. This I bet is a big clue. Is like if zooming out, it looses the actual resolution, and instead, treats the image as a very lower resolution, to handle the whole scene fast.  It should force the pen to draw over the actual pixel density or a better approximation, average of the real pixel density that is really present there.  You see how the lines almost are drawing over a very coarse grid (not doing diagonals, but bordering grid cells) of very big quad cells. So, IMO, is more a matter than when is zoomed out, and the pen gets to action, it should paint over the actual pixels existing there, not over a very low res canvas, probably even lower res than what you see as the whole canvas in reduction, even. Because the grid shown while painting with those lines at that zoomed, seems to be of lower resolution than a bitmap of that zoomed out canvas. This does not happen in other packages.

 

IMO, the bad aliasing can be compensated by decreasing hardness up to 50%. Works well for me. I'm more frustrated by the pixelating/trembling pixels that happen all over the line strokes and dots while just even moving the cursor. Distracting to a point of non usability.

 

I strongly disagree (peacefully) about the "no use" point...That's what I thought, totally after discovering the painting issues. My disagreement is because you can actually paint in other tools, like Mypaint, or Krita, which are amazing and free, and very professional for what is actually painting, and use Photo for what I can see will excel : An actual photo/image preparation tool, the needed tool to finish and prepare your illustration to industry standard specs. Because there's a huge issue if you work professionally as an illustrator, with the non high end cost softwares : Simply no tools handling cmyk color profiles in depth or at all (among many other pro features for this). Of those you mentioned, only Krita supports cmyk mode while painting ! (but no color profiles support for cmyk, so...) This is HUGE, as a lot of serious printers work with offset, and even some digital will require your files in an specific cmyk profile. As indeed, is the only fully accurate way to send an illustration to print, other than if using a professional photo lab.

 

Gimp support of cmyk is through a plugin, not while painting. You NEED to be able to fix the color variations and loses once you convert from RGB if you worked in RGB. Or like, me, paint from the start in CMYK, with the exact target cmyk profile. Also, Gimp painting capabilities are clearly inferior to Krita's, while Gimp is superior (though krita 3 is a huge jump) in what it allows in image editing, but then again, still lacks of the important pro part for printing. 

 

Clip Studio / Manga Studio, yep, that one has great painting features, and CMYK good support. Still, not of the depth in photo and image editing that Photoshop has in some areas, and even Gimp has. Photoline, I believe it has some support of cmyk... Not sure till what extent. Lazy nezumi is only an external line stabilization utility. Which is good, but maybe not the best. Perhaps, from what I have seen, internal stabilization of Clip Studio, and SAI could be a bit superior to Nezumi's. But you can't beat nezumi's price and the fact that works with  many Windows painting applications (not with all).  Of those you mentioned, you included one that can make the perfect combo which am certainly going to use: I will totally purchase Affinity Photo (and Designer), AND will use Krita for painting (as I am already doing) . That kind of joins the best of two worlds. Meanwhile, Affinity will keep improving every area, eventually painting, too. The color management and editing capabilities of Photo (if people realize this is an uber young application growing at full speed) are very on par of what Photoshop does, at least for freelancers. What I need is what is implemented in Photo, just needs usual beta polishing and the room for improvement several years (imo, probably just one year or less) will make to it. My 2c at least, opinions about workflows are infinite...

[Angie M A]

I am also having this problem painting on my Wacom cintiq companion. I used to get it on PS too but they fixed it eventually. I use this type of software almost exclusively for painting so until this gets fixed affinity photo is fairly useless to me because I don't want to be painting in one program and finishing in another when I currently can do it all in PS. 50% hardness still looks horrible on a A4 300 dpi canvas. Fix it and I could consider affinity as an alternative because I'm not a fan of app subscription. Top half is drawn full screen, bottom half drawn while zoomed in is ok but I like to work out my ideas full screen.

[Herbert123]

I'm not sure that a stabilization would be the solution... that works great for actual hardware pen/screen jitter.... But I believe this is mostly a programming thing. I mean, when you paint in very zoomed out, if you later zoom in to check what you painted, you totally see a grid. This I bet is a big clue. Is like if zooming out, it looses the actual resolution, and instead, treats the image as a very lower resolution, to handle the whole scene fast.  It should force the pen to draw over the actual pixel density or a better approximation, average of the real pixel density that is really present there.  You see how the lines almost are drawing over a very coarse grid (not doing diagonals, but bordering grid cells) of very big quad cells. So, IMO, is more a matter than when is zoomed out, and the pen gets to action, it should paint over the actual pixels existing there, not over a very low res canvas, probably even lower res than what you see as the whole canvas in reduction, even. Because the grid shown while painting with those lines at that zoomed, seems to be of lower resolution than a bitmap of that zoomed out canvas. This does not happen in other packages.

 

The stroke Stabilizer resolved the identical issue in PhotoLine. Even in Photoshop, despite the interpolation algorithms used while drawing, thin strokes wind up looking odd when painting on a high resolution canvas at a high zoom out level. It also happens in Windows Paint, ArtRage 3,  

 

IMO, the bad aliasing can be compensated by decreasing hardness up to 50%. Works well for me. I'm more frustrated by the pixelating/trembling pixels that happen all over the line strokes and dots while just even moving the cursor. Distracting to a point of non usability.

 

I feel we should not have to change the softness of a brush to compensate for Photo's flawed screen anti-aliasing. On the other hand, the developers of Krita spent an inordinate amount of time and energy on getting it right: quality screen anti-aliasing is not as simple as it sounds to develop. 

 

I strongly disagree (peacefully) about the "no use" point...That's what I thought, totally after discovering the painting issues. My disagreement is because you can actually paint in other tools, like Mypaint, or Krita, which are amazing and free, and very professional for what is actually painting, and use Photo for what I can see will excel : An actual photo/image preparation tool, the needed tool to finish and prepare your illustration to industry standard specs. Because there's a huge issue if you work professionally as an illustrator, with the non high end cost softwares : Simply no tools handling cmyk color profiles in depth or at all (among many other pro features for this). Of those you mentioned, only Krita supports cmyk mode while painting ! (but no color profiles support for cmyk, so...) This is HUGE, as a lot of serious printers work with offset, and even some digital will require your files in an specific cmyk profile. As indeed, is the only fully accurate way to send an illustration to print, other than if using a professional photo lab.

 

Absolutely agree - up to a point. I would never consider doing a digital painting in Photo, PhotoLine, or even Photoshop at this point: Krita and ClipStudio are my two favourite applications for that task.

 

But often I just need to do a simple quick sketch or line drawing while working on a comp, or write text. That is currently not an option for me in Photo: the kinks and squigglies are too distracting, and unusable even for a simple rough sketch. I would have to add that I generally work at high resolutions (for example A4@600ppi, 16bpc), and zooming out is essential while sketching.   

 

Gimp support of cmyk is through a plugin, not while painting. You NEED to be able to fix the color variations and loses once you convert from RGB if you worked in RGB. Or like, me, paint from the start in CMYK, with the exact target cmyk profile. Also, Gimp painting capabilities are clearly inferior to Krita's, while Gimp is superior (though krita 3 is a huge jump) in what it allows in image editing, but then again, still lacks of the important pro part for printing. 

 

Yep, agreed: I prepare my prepress work in an image editor. Since I also work with comics since a couple of months, I require support for creating a press-ready PDF that consists of a 300ppi colour art layer, and a 1200ppi monochrome 1bit black and white layer for the line art. Support for that is hard to find, though.

 

As far as I can tell from my testing, Affinity Photo does not support this - similar to Photoshop the base resolution of the document decides the resolution of the layers, which is a shame. In Photoline any layer can have any dimensions, bit-depth, colour mode, and each layer can be individually colour managed. It also means conversions between colour spaces are non-destructive: the information in a layer is kept intact: a colour space change from RGB to CMYK to grayscale, and back to RGB retains all colour information.

 

Problematic is the lack of support for monochrome 1bit in Affinity Photo and Design. Even if I wanted, I cannot use either one to prepare 1bit line art output.

 

Hopefully these limitations will be resolved at some point. Perhaps Serif intends this to be possible in the upcoming Publisher, though - it would make more sense.

 

 

Clip Studio / Manga Studio, yep, that one has great painting features, and CMYK good support. Still, not of the depth in photo and image editing that Photoshop has in some areas, and even Gimp has. Photoline, I believe it has some support of cmyk... Not sure till what extent. Lazy nezumi is only an external line stabilization utility. Which is good, but maybe not the best. Perhaps, from what I have seen, internal stabilization of Clip Studio, and SAI could be a bit superior to Nezumi's. But you can't beat nezumi's price and the fact that works with  many Windows painting applications (not with all).  Of those you mentioned, you included one that can make the perfect combo which am certainly going to use: I will totally purchase Affinity Photo (and Designer), AND will use Krita for painting (as I am already doing) . That kind of joins the best of two worlds. Meanwhile, Affinity will keep improving every area, eventually painting, too. The color management and editing capabilities of Photo (if people realize this is an uber young application growing at full speed) are very on par of what Photoshop does, at least for freelancers. What I need is what is implemented in Photo, just needs usual beta polishing and the room for improvement several years (imo, probably just one year or less) will make to it. My 2c at least, opinions about workflows are infinite...

 

Krita and ClipStudio are great for drawing and painting. Love both! I feel image editors ought to avoid competing with dedicated painting and drawing applications. Even Photoshop can't compare to these.

 

I agree: as far as workflow goes, use whichever software gives you the best result. In particular as freelancer (me too) we have more freedom of choice.

 

Photoline, I believe it has some support of cmyk... Not sure till what extent.

 

Very good support - about on par with Photoshop. Fully colour managed, and even on a per-layer basis if needed. Linear colour workflow supported in 32bpc. ICC profiles can be set, and conversions are also possible. Tools work directly with CMYK channels if required. Spot colours are supported as well. Also works on Linux with WINE - an alternative CMS (Little CMS) is available that is compatible on Linux.

 

Custom transfer curve is not available like the one in Photoshop - but we should not mess with those anyway. 

 

I'm not sure that a stabilization would be the solution... that works great for actual hardware pen/screen jitter.... But I believe this is mostly a programming thing. I mean, when you paint in very zoomed out, if you later zoom in to check what you painted, you totally see a grid. This I bet is a big clue. Is like if zooming out, it looses the actual resolution, and instead, treats the image as a very lower resolution, to handle the whole scene fast.  It should force the pen to draw over the actual pixel density or a better approximation, average of the real pixel density that is really present there.  You see how the lines almost are drawing over a very coarse grid (not doing diagonals, but bordering grid cells) of very big quad cells. So, IMO, is more a matter than when is zoomed out, and the pen gets to action, it should paint over the actual pixels existing there, not over a very low res canvas, probably even lower res than what you see as the whole canvas in reduction, even. Because the grid shown while painting with those lines at that zoomed, seems to be of lower resolution than a bitmap of that zoomed out canvas. This does not happen in other packages.

 

 

IMO, the bad aliasing can be compensated by decreasing hardness up to 50%. Works well for me. I'm more frustrated by the pixelating/trembling pixels that happen all over the line strokes and dots while just even moving the cursor. Distracting to a point of non usability.

 

I strongly disagree (peacefully) about the "no use" point...That's what I thought, totally after discovering the painting issues. My disagreement is because you can actually paint in other tools, like Mypaint, or Krita, which are amazing and free, and very professional for what is actually painting, and use Photo for what I can see will excel : An actual photo/image preparation tool, the needed tool to finish and prepare your illustration to industry standard specs. Because there's a huge issue if you work professionally as an illustrator, with the non high end cost softwares : Simply no tools handling cmyk color profiles in depth or at all (among many other pro features for this). Of those you mentioned, only Krita supports cmyk mode while painting ! (but no color profiles support for cmyk, so...) This is HUGE, as a lot of serious printers work with offset, and even some digital will require your files in an specific cmyk profile. As indeed, is the only fully accurate way to send an illustration to print, other than if using a professional photo lab.

 

Gimp support of cmyk is through a plugin, not while painting. You NEED to be able to fix the color variations and loses once you convert from RGB if you worked in RGB. Or like, me, paint from the start in CMYK, with the exact target cmyk profile. Also, Gimp painting capabilities are clearly inferior to Krita's, while Gimp is superior (though krita 3 is a huge jump) in what it allows in image editing, but then again, still lacks of the important pro part for printing. 

 

Clip Studio / Manga Studio, yep, that one has great painting features, and CMYK good support. Still, not of the depth in photo and image editing that Photoshop has in some areas, and even Gimp has. Photoline, I believe it has some support of cmyk... Not sure till what extent. Lazy nezumi is only an external line stabilization utility. Which is good, but maybe not the best. Perhaps, from what I have seen, internal stabilization of Clip Studio, and SAI could be a bit superior to Nezumi's. But you can't beat nezumi's price and the fact that works with  many Windows painting applications (not with all).  Of those you mentioned, you included one that can make the perfect combo which am certainly going to use: I will totally purchase Affinity Photo (and Designer), AND will use Krita for painting (as I am already doing) . That kind of joins the best of two worlds. Meanwhile, Affinity will keep improving every area, eventually painting, too. The color management and editing capabilities of Photo (if people realize this is an uber young application growing at full speed) are very on par of what Photoshop does, at least for freelancers. What I need is what is implemented in Photo, just needs usual beta polishing and the room for improvement several years (imo, probably just one year or less) will make to it. My 2c at least, opinions about workflows are infinite...

 

[johnsawan79]

Mine is worst, I'm not getting the pen pressure brush interaction despite me setting the brush with pressure control. Found the other brushes...

[SrPx]

 

The stroke Stabilizer resolved the identical issue in PhotoLine. Even in Photoshop, despite the interpolation algorithms used while drawing, thin strokes wind up looking odd when painting on a high resolution canvas at a high zoom out level. It also happens in Windows Paint, ArtRage 3,  

 

 

Well, I checked with Nezumi demo, doesn't solve it. So... I don't know, I feel is some sort of averaging needed to be done by internal code, or something. This (the jittery-grid line when drawing very zoomed out) is by far my biggest issue with the application. Yet though, am ready to use it only as an image editor.

 

 

I feel we should not have to change the softness of a brush to compensate for Photo's flawed screen anti-aliasing. On the other hand, the developers of Krita spent an inordinate amount of time and energy on getting it right: quality screen anti-aliasing is not as simple as it sounds to develop. 

 

 

Yep, but krita (which is my  fav painting tool) is focused quite a lot in painting, obviously they focused on that the most, while A. Photo  totally seems to be willing to be a general image editor, with professional attention to details that set it apart from a mountain of  editors that wont solve a pro individual issues when needing to deliver with certain specs. MyPaint, Krita, Art Rage Lite(is free), Sai, Open Canvas (the old free never ending beta still floats somewhere) are amazing for painting. So much that, specially in the case of krita, hardly are going to be surpassed (other than by MAYBE Corel Painter). BUT...fully professional (my latest check of Photoline revealed I was missing several important features and specs, plus having quite some crashes) , there are very few. Even if Photoline were one, the competition in the other side is huge, and dominant. So, the more jewels in the image editing field, the better. But so far, IMO this one is/could be the real deal...

 

 

Absolutely agree - up to a point. I would never consider doing a digital painting in Photo, PhotoLine, or even Photoshop at this point: Krita and ClipStudio are my two favourite applications for that task.

 

 

I agree that those are my first preference, too... But in many companies I have needed to adapt, and even used pre-alpha internal tools to make artwork... IMO, anything can do, with some adapting. They are just brushes. But if i am going to paint with worse brushes, there must be some advantage that compensates it.  It depends, in my case, if the other advantages of the package are or not critical for an specific project. So, while I have my regular tools (Krita is obviously among the first choices) I go in a per case way. My heading now is clear: Krita for painting, Photo for everything else could be a good future combination.

 

But often I just need to do a simple quick sketch or line drawing while working on a comp, or write text. That is currently not an option for me in Photo: the kinks and squigglies are too distracting, and unusable even for a simple rough sketch. I would have to add that I generally work at high resolutions (for example A4@600ppi, 16bpc), and zooming out is essential while sketching.   

 

 

Fully agree. Is my main issue here. I can't stand drawing with the trembling/pixelating while moving the cursor, the ugly aliasing, well, I'm ok with increasing the softness, but yep, far from ideal, and the delay/starting lag, actually reduces accuracy. I do also work at print resolution and need to work zoomed out. Any artist has to, is the "get far from the picture" they teach you in every art school.. ;) Working in zoomed only is why an iPad pro, at 12,9 inches is not yet ready for being a professional tool, despite having -by far- the best tracking and pen technology invented to date.(this I know very well, not a random statement...). Well, that and being on iOS (instead of Mac OS, Windows or Linux), but I could deal very well with just procreate and sketchbook pro, with a 15" -17" size.

 

ep, agreed: I prepare my prepress work in an image editor. Since I also work with comics since a couple of months, I require support for creating a press-ready PDF that consists of a 300ppi colour art layer, and a 1200ppi monochrome 1bit black and white layer for the line art. Support for that is hard to find, though.

 

As far as I can tell from my testing, Affinity Photo does not support this - similar to Photoshop the base resolution of the document decides the resolution of the layers, which is a shame. In Photoline any layer can have any dimensions, bit-depth, colour mode, and each layer can be individually colour managed. It also means conversions between colour spaces are non-destructive: the information in a layer is kept intact: a colour space change from RGB to CMYK to grayscale, and back to RGB retains all colour information.

 

Problematic is the lack of support for monochrome 1bit in Affinity Photo and Design. Even if I wanted, I cannot use either one to prepare 1bit line art output.

 

Hopefully these limitations will be resolved at some point. Perhaps Serif intends this to be possible in the upcoming Publisher, though - it would make more sense.

 

 

 

Wow, they still work with 1200dpi 1bit for lineart in comics? I have done some comic related gigs now and then -as my field is different, though in illustration, mostly-  but haven't been required to deliver so, maybe since the 90s...

 

I have handled in some occasions manga Studio/Clip Paint, and tested demos (quite a bit, as to know it's absolutely great). Does it allow that mix of modes, being so comic focused ?

Yep, PS does not allow it, makes you think....

In your very case, you seem to have Photoline as the only option....

 

 

Krita and ClipStudio are great for drawing and painting. Love both! I feel image editors ought to avoid competing with dedicated painting and drawing applications. Even Photoshop can't compare to these.

 

 

I agree they are great. But many painting folks do look PS under a very negative light, (curiously, also happens with old skool pixel artists, and they're wrong there, too, I've done full games (as a job, with a nice salary) with PS, pure pixel art) and have checked in detail how most of them don't know it really deeply. I have handled it at companies since 95, and I can tell you it can do digital art just as well as any of those, if know how to configure it and use it well... Still, I do agree that out of the box, Krita does feel better than anything I've tried. Except in some aspects(some painting effects), Artrage. I have not used Corel Painter so long and deeply as to reach to a conclusion, but am inclined to think that Painter could easily be the best thing for artistic painting. (but if in the painting side, I don't miss anything in Krita, that must mean something...)

 

SrPx, on 12 Nov 2016 - 12:22 PM, said:

Photoline, I believe it has some support of cmyk... Not sure till what extent.

 

Very good support - about on par with Photoshop. Fully colour managed, and even on a per-layer basis if needed. Linear colour workflow supported in 32bpc. ICC profiles can be set, and conversions are also possible. Tools work directly with CMYK channels if required. Spot colours are supported as well. Also works on Linux with WINE - an alternative CMS (Little CMS) is available that is compatible on Linux.

 

 

Sounds like it deserves a second glance, then... hoping is not a world of crashes (with the demo they had for trial, back then) like the last time, though...And I tried hard, as worked years as a support guy, am not scared by the first two crashes....

[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.

[Ian R]

I think an issue that I've found is related to the pressure recognition lag.  If I shift-click for a straight line there is no discernible pressure recognition at the start of the line, but at the end.  Experimenting with this I realised you need to move the pen ever so slightly for Photo to recognise the pressure, so accuracy is compromised and also it takes longer...

 

Double checked this against Ps performance and right enough Ps instantly registers the pressure.

 

I also see a lag when drawing curves - as in - the start of the curve isn't a curve...

 

Look forward to the version where the fix is included!

 

Thanks for, so far, a superb product.

[Wargasmic]

Attached is a side by side comparison of AP and PS showing line quality and pen pressure with a HUION 1060 Plus.

 

As you can see, the quality and pressure in AP isn't very good. So is this a bug? Will we eventually get quality like we see in PS?

[SrPx]

They are working at several of the issues , for now. It has the painted zoomed out issue (being fixed already), the pixelation while you move the cursor or do some action (IMO is what you are noticing in that screenshot), the slight delay when starting a stroke,  and the line aliasing is to be improved (but I have managed to see that a brush hardness of 50% leaves it just ok for now). That in my personal order of importance, starting with the more important at the beginning, imo. as far as I understood, the painted zoomed is being solved, the  pixelation while you move and paint, can't be solved as is how it optimizes the image handling to get the needed speed. The slight delay, probably not impossible to fix, but some people with some very good hardware have mentioned not to notice it (IMO, due to a great graphics card). The aliasing, I bet they will improve that with no problems, at some point.

 

Yesterday I managed to set all up in a quite confortable way for painting, and for now, am making a test  with how the tools are now. I had to pause it for working in my gigs, but will keep at it in free time to keep evolving the painting workflow when using AP.

 

Probably the next version is coming with the zoom out painting fixed. I'll be sure to test updates related to painting.  :) (well, and many other features, just prioritizing painting myself.)

[Mariano Iannelli]

After months from this topic no improvement yet. Still waiting to use what i paid for. 

[Mark Ingram]

Have you tried the new high precision input in the latest beta?

[Arvraepe]

I came to this topic since I'm having the same issue, it's pretty frustrating... is there a setting I am missing? I've used the stabilization, but it's not ideal in my workflow, and the bad anti aliasing is very real...

Are there any 2019 tips?

[SrPx]

The 1.7x customer beta is way better for painting, IMO.

About anti aliasing, I solve it (WHEN it's an issue, but I've dealt with it since long)  by using certain basic brush that is like specially smooth. Is of the default ones. That and setting hardness to zero. No problems if doing so, in my experience.

Stabilization: IMO, a need if draw/ink in full canvas (zoomed out to fit a large canvas on desktop). As this avoids some stair case and some "jumps" or polyline effect. Zoomed in don't see this problem. usually full canvas is when I sketch the whole thing, and then I don't care that much about line stability. Inking final line art, at least a bit zoomed-in, to avoid issues. 

In full canvas, if painting, digital painting, painterly style... not so much of an issue, but again, for high end detailing I go zooming in, to get fully accurate paint daubs.

I hope is not just placebo effect, but I get a much better sensation and performance in painting with the customer beta. So much that, while highly NOT recommended, I do even do painting stuff for production. I know the risks, so, wont blame 'em (in my mind, as legally I wouldn't be able, anyway , lol  ;D )

Right now is for me fully workable. But I had a big issue with the color picker and fast picking, solved it with a certain "home made" trick. So, happy camper.

The brush system and all has gone evolving. This is quite an old thread, stuff changes....