Pen interface lacking

[kfriis]

Hi

 

I've tried the Affinity Photo Beta 1.5.0.38 (and earlier) on a Surface Pro 4 with pen. I prefer a pen interface in many situations, when editing photos/images/drawings.

 

Affinity Photo is not really pen oriented.

 

Without keyboard/touchpad, you have to resort to extreme pen-picking-in-menu-massage, which is not really that productive. I really, really miss some pen or finger oriented buttons on the toolbar - most required are Undo and Redo buttons (I know history exists, but it's like using a cannon for removing a twig) enabling you to quickly compare two states.

 

History is not a replacement, due to the abysmally small "interface", when using HiDPI interfaces and i.e. fingermode (in a quick and dirty last second editing situation with the keyboard/touchpad back in the hotel). My large sausages have no chance in hell using history, and you need the fine motoric dexterity of a card shark to handle much of the right part of the user interface - even using a pen.

 

I would suggest, that you create a selectable option for a fingers only situation (pen lost, back in car, forgotten in hotel).

 

What I miss the most is palm-rejection (in reality it is fine to reject/ignore "one-finger moves" only - also applies to Windows Designer) and allow two-finger zooming, move, rotate (currently it is not really working, but most often acts as a one-finger draw which should not be possible at all).

 

It would be nice to have a special preferences menu for the pen, finger, palm handling on a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 or similar devices. They're not going away, it seems.

 

I'm not totally happy with using the default rubber brush for deletions (pen in "rubber" mode). It would be nice to have an option to select how "rubber" mode on "pen-rubber" should behave - in contrast to a specifically selected rubber action through the user interface tool bar.

 

An option to "enable/disable" automatic pen/finger-handling switch between tablet and keyboard mode would also be appropriate.

 

When using a pen, I have extreme difficulty reading (even showing) the element "texts" for each interface button, menu etc. Some options are hard to show/activate (i.e. pulldown menus). Playing Woody Woodpecker does help - some of the time - but mostly... sigh.

 

I would not recommend using the Photo for Windows for anyone relying on using pen mode on i.e. Microsoft Surface Pro 4. I looooove the pen approach for image editing. Lying in a sofa, creativity enhancing drink within reach, music in my noise reducing headphones, tablet use with pen in hand, and just getting things done.

 

This is not really a solution with Affinity Paint for Windows. There's too much of a Jobs restricted ("nobody used a pen" ;-) Mac user interface present and not enough Windows pen interface.

 

Regards

 

 

[Chris_K]

Hi kfriis

 

I think you raise a good point here, especially with how a lot of computing has moved to be tablet based and I don't see this slowing down anytime in the future. As machines such as the surface us the same OS as the desktop, I doubt we would make a separate version specifically for touch. However, we are currently developing the apps for the iPad which is obviously touch orientated so we are creating a UI to suit this. I think it would be a fanstatic idea if once we got that UI locked down we created a similar setup for Windows touch devices and had an option in the app to switch between a desktop and a touch interface without needing another app. This would be quite the large undertaking so i would not expect to see anything like this soon but I definitely think it would be a fantastic feature and would help us keep ahead of the curve!

 

I shall suggest this to the relevant people, but in the meantime I shall move this to the feature requests section as this will not be part of the initial release

[kfriis]

Hi Chris_K

 

OK. I've removed the Affinity Photo Beta from my machine.