Affinity Photo's suitability as a painting app

[Singapored]

I've been playing with Affinity Photo for some time now. I really like many aspects of its workflow, and judge them superior to PS's. However, as someone who teaches digital illustration and matte painting, it sadly won't be replacing PS yet. Reasons as follows:

 

1)  I frequently require the flow rate of a brush to be super low. This is especially important for when I clip a layer blend layer to a content layer (e.g. a multiply to locally darken an object). The brush in AP behaves oddly when the flow is set low. By rights, even with such a low flow rate, it should build up to black. However, instead I can only get a dark grey. 

 

2) The preceding point is not a deal breaker: maybe something I could get used to. But the lack of ability to set the flow with a keystroke makes painting difficult. Sure, Opacity can be set with number keys, but for blended painting this isn't enough. The brush is where all the action is, and a brush can be expected to have its values changed several times a minute.  

 

3)  The lack of ability to set the default BG/FG colours to black and white. In PS this is served by the 'D' key. For masking (super vital in matte painting) this is important. Without it, it is too easy to accidentally be using a very dark grey instead of a black, which can really screw things up. 

 

On the plus side:

 

1) The texture options of the brushes are great. I love the fact that many stamps can be loaded into a single brush. This makes the creation of natural textures a lot easier. 

 

2) The Perlin noise is great. Absolutely miles better than PS's poxy little Clouds filter. I love the fact that It scales so nicely. It reminds me of Nuke's noise node. Again, this is great for natural textures. I find myself using photo textures far less. 

 

3)  The Mesh Warp tool is great. Its workflow took a bit of getting used to (it does not automatically act upon selections) but makes sense.