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  • 8 months later...

I know ensuring nice UI and UX design would not be an easy task, but just imagine having the full power of Photo and Designer on iPhone. When I think of the new Procreate Pocket 2 that was just released, running Procreate, Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, with the common .psd file format, maybe even including Files.app integration, on iPhone would create a _beast_ to work with that fits into a pocket.

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18 hours ago, shushustorm said:

I know ensuring nice UI and UX design would not be an easy task, but just imagine having the full power of Photo and Designer on iPhone.

All I can imagine is how incredibly tedious it would be to try to do almost anything precisely or quickly on a relatively tiny iPhone screen that does not have enough room to display the workspace & studio fly-outs (or much of anything else) at the same time. The reviews of Procreate Pocket 2 that mention using that app on an iPhone are not very encouraging in this respect -- there are a lot of positive reviews, but they are often tempered with 'what did you expect?' qualifiers about the small screen limitations or that it is a 'credible' but much simplified version of the much more practical iPad app.

Maybe if you have a plus-sized iPhone & needle-sharp fingertips it would be different, but with my blunt fingertips & iPhone 5s it is hard enough to select what I am aiming for on the tiny menus on an edge of the screen that an iPhone version of Affinity Photo would be just about unusable.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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10 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Maybe if you have a plus-sized iPhone & needle-sharp fingertips it would be different, but with my blunt fingertips & iPhone 5s it is hard enough to select what I am aiming for on the tiny menus on an edge of the screen that an iPhone version of Affinity Photo would be just about unusable.

Given that the iPad Mini 4 is really just an iPad Air 2 with a screen size of 7.9" instead of 9.7", the fact that the latter is supported but the former is not tells us all we need to know about minimum practical screen size.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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11 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

Given that the iPad Mini 4 is really just an iPad Air 2 with a screen size of 7.9" instead of 9.7", the fact that the latter is supported but the former is not tells us all we need to know about minimum practical screen size.

As it is, I am very glad that my new 9.7" iPad supports the Apple Pencil, because doing anything in Affinity Photo that requires precision is tedious to do with my fingers. That is because my finger covers much more of the image than the tip of the Pencil, making it hard to see what I am doing. The little magnified helper view that some tools display is a reasonably good workaround for that but it is not available for everything.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

doing anything in Affinity Photo that requires precision is tedious to do with my fingers

Working with any kind of stylus is undeniably helpful, but the main point is that if everything would already be a bit too small on a 7.9" screen it is unreasonable to expect that an Affinity app on a 5.5" or 6" screen would be a usable product, even with a stylus.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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37 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

Working with any kind of stylus is undeniably helpful, but the main point is that if everything would already be a bit too small on a 7.9" screen it is unreasonable to expect that an Affinity app on a 5.5" or 6" screen would be a usable product, even with a stylus.

FWIW, I have tried using a passive stylus with my iPhone 5s, but those things are still blunt instruments not much smaller than my finger & just about as imprecise. So together with the small screen size I just don't see how an iPhone version of the Affinity apps would be worth developing.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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20 minutes ago, R C-R said:

blunt instruments not much smaller than my finger & just about as imprecise

Yes, using one of those is not much better than using a finger, but there are alternatives which offer more control.

 

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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I don't know. Maybe this is rather subjetive, but I am in fact using an iPhone 5S, which has the smalles screen size available at the moment (which is included in the iPhone SE). I am doing a lot of work on this device using Procreate, especially since version 2 has been released. It works incredibly well. And I could make good use of both Photo and Designer on this device.

Personally, I don't think precision should be an issue, since you can always zoom in and dragging sliders has its own mechanic that lets you set precise values (slider speed reduces with distance to original tap position). Procreate also found good ways to integrate their UI so that it's not in the way and there is an automatic UI hide feature while painting.

When my iPad charges, I keep working on iPhone. In fact, the only thing I prefer about working on iPad is that my music library is on there and not on iPhone. (Mind you, I am using iPad mini 2, which, unfortunately, does not have access to Photo either.)

I am even waiting for a new iPhone of that screen size for upgrading. And I was thinking about buying a new iPad so that I could finally use Photo without transferring to macOS, but the lowest screen dimensions supported by Photo are just kind of big, which makes it uneasy to hold and the movements to interact with the device longer.

In the end, I guess this just comes down to personal preference.

 

About the reviews, I am not sure if you read the reviews that were referring to Procreate Pocket 1. Version 2 has just been released and I guess there aren't many reviews on this yet. Version 1 was very limited, but version 2 is very much capable and it almost offers everything that is included in the iPad version.

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58 minutes ago, shushustorm said:

Personally, I don't think precision should be an issue, since you can always zoom in ...

Having to constantly zoom in & out so much is what makes it so tedious, particularly for doing fine detail work that spans a lot of the document. If you get a chance, try comparing how quickly & easily you can do things with Affinity Photo on a larger iPad that supports the Pencil vs. what you can do with the iPad mini, the Procreate app, & your finger.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I know what you mean and I do understand that issue. But in the end, it's a trade-off between zooming on small displays and long ways to access UI on bigger displays.

I have been using styli for drawing, but to me, it was too tedious to always switch between stylus and fingers (for example, when trying to rotate the canvas or for undo / redo). Maybe you place the device on a flat surface for drawing? Then, you have the second hand free to do things like that. Personally, I am holding the devices in one hand and draw with the other. If I need to use two fingers, the pencil is in the way.

 

However, I did not use the Apple pencil yet, which may be interesting due to pressure sensitivity.

I'm not sure, though, if pressure sensitivity is included without specific styli via 3d touch for newer devices anyway.

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7 minutes ago, shushustorm said:

But in the end, it's a trade-off between zooming on small displays and long ways to access UI on bigger displays.

It isn't a very long way to access Affinity Photo UI elements on iPads, even the largest ones, & It is still much quicker than doing all that zooming.

9 minutes ago, shushustorm said:

I'm not sure, though, if pressure sensitivity is included without specific styli via 3d touch for newer devices anyway.

If I understand what you mean, 3D touch is a two level thing (regular & 'deep' presses) sensed by the iPhone's hardware. Pressure sensitivity provided by the Apple Pencil is much more fine grained, sensed in the Pencil itself & transmitted to the iPad over Bluetooth. Apple isn't saying how many levels it senses but it is probably at least 512 & likely twice that or more.

Also, the Pencil is slender & well balanced, so even one handed it is easy to hold it so you can still use a finger & thumb for two finger gestures. It goes by very quickly in this brief Affinity video, but there are a few places you can see that being done.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Well, it really depends. Procreate has shortcut gestures to zoom out to fit the screen and to rezoom to the last zoom. For me, though, this isn't even a zooming issue, but rather a panning issue, because when I work on details, I would zoom in on a larger iPad as well. But I have to pan more on smaller screens. Then again, I rotate the canvas a lot anyway, so I might as well pan while doing so?

 

I'm not sure, since I don't have a device that uses 3D touch, nor am I currently developing for iOS, but it seems the sensors that make use of 3D touch can in fact read more than just two steps, because you can set its sensitivity in the settings:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht205056

I don't know whether the full sensor is exposed to developers or not, though.

_

EDIT:

Sensitivity seems to be accessible:

https://developer.apple.com/ios/3d-touch/

_

But even then, the pencil probably also has tilt recognition, which probably hasn't been extrapolated from force touch data yet?, which may be interesting to some people.

 

Thanks for the link to the video! Quite interesting!

0:34 to 0:47 shows what I mean when talking about reaching UI quickly. Of course, it's sped up so it looks even more dramatic, but the smaller the display, the less of a hassle to interact with the software.

About the pencil, maybe I try one of those to make sure, but the ones that I used before were similar in size and more of an obstacle than helpful.

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1 hour ago, shushustorm said:

0:34 to 0:47 shows what I mean when talking about reaching UI quickly. Of course, it's sped up so it looks even more dramatic, but the smaller the display, the less of a hassle to interact with the software.

I am still not sure of what you mean by this. If you mean moving a shorter distance to activate some UI element is less of a hassle, then compare that to the hassle of constantly having to zoom in & out & pan more to do anything precisely once you do activate that UI element. Affinity Photo iPad users typically spend a lot more time using the tools, adjusting filters, etc. than they do selecting them, so there is a substantial net time savings even if they have to move a little farther to select one.

BTW, there are quite a few other Affinity Photo for iPad videos you can check out at https://vimeo.com/search?q=affinity+photo+ipad.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 6 months later...

I bought a 9.7 inch iPad (2018) a few weeks ago due to the growing performance difference between the current iPads and the iPad mini series, which hasn't been updated for a while now. While the better performance is a huge aspect for working efficiently, and Affinity software is only available on iPads with a certain screen size (those applications are very helpful, though!), I would still go for an iPad mini 5 for painting if it had comparable specifications. I just cannot hold the 9.7 inch screen as comfortably as an iPad mini and after working a few weeks with the 9.7 inch iPad, I still think the ways to reach the UI are too far.
After some testing, I do understand why Serif locks the mini series for the Affinity apps. There are quite some small hitboxes, even on 9.7 inch displays. For smaller displays, especially iPhones, the whole UI would need an overhaul. That said, the new iPhones do have quite some screen real estate.

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