Direct control rotating a brush

[Kiarian]

Can you directly rotate a brush to suit in Affinity Photo, or is the only control you have with the rotation in the dynamics section of the brush?
It would be handy if I could rotate a brush in real time to get a specific angle, instead of relying on the rotation dynamics setting.
I'd like the same control with rotation that I have with the size of a brush. 

[Lee D]

Hi Kiarian

Within the Brush Dynamic settings you could Rotation Jitter to Direction or Angle before using the brush. However we don't have any other way to control those options apart from those in the dynamics. Different ways to adjust this have been requested and may be in a future update.

[Kiarian]

Thanks for the reply. I can more or less get what I want with dynamics, would be nice to have absolute control though.

[NandoM]

There is a way to rotate a brush manually. Hold the SHIFT key down and press the left arrow or right arrow to get 15 degree rotation increments.

If a Brush is tall and narrow the rotations will lengthen the brush size, evidently because the width and height are not kept constant for rotation. The ability to rotate a Brush works great for any brush (even ones with dynamics) where you want to controlled randomness ... such as blades of grass, tree branches, and hair that needs combing.

Photoshop can do 1-degree rotations on a click of SHIFT (holding SHIFT gives 15-degree jumps). Affinity Photo seems to be limited to 15-degree rotations. Regardless, it is a good feature in AP.

[carl123]

From the help file...

• Press the Ctrl and Alt keys together and:
  • Click to cycle between width and hardness, shape and spacing, and rotation attributes.
  • Drag left/right or up/down to adjust the corresponding attribute. For example, with width and hardness attributes selected, drag left/right to adjust the first attribute and up/down to adjust the second attribute.

[NandoM]

Thank you for the update, carl123. It is still faster to use the SHIFT and the arrows to resize a brush. I did find out after my post that clicking and releasing the SHIFT key, and not holding it down as I always have, allows for 1-degree fine tuning. The SHIFT method is not in the help files. Either way, these shortcuts are great time savers. 

[Lamityville]

On 11/14/2023 at 9:29 AM, NandoM said:

Thank you for the update, carl123. It is still faster to use the SHIFT and the arrows to resize a brush. I did find out after my post that clicking and releasing the SHIFT key, and not holding it down as I always have, allows for 1-degree fine tuning. The SHIFT method is not in the help files. Either way, these shortcuts are great time savers. 

Thank you so much for this!! I couldn't find any keyboard shortcuts in the help files for brush rotation and hated having to always go into the individual brush dynamics. It always took so much time to get it where I wanted it. 

I wish they'd put this in the help file and the keyboard shortcut pdf. It's really invaluable and shocking that it's like a hidden feature. 

[HappyDoom]

I'm a bit late to the party, but is there actually also a way to tilt the brush like in photoshop?
Painting shadows in perspective for example, is way more easy that way. Cheers.

[NandoM]

The forum sent me an email that a new post was created in this thread. 

A few months ago I started playing around with brush settings. There are many brush tweaks available. Hardness, jitter, rotation, textures, and (I just check) tilt. Dynamic tilt may be what you are looking for,

You can take a any brush and modify it. To see the settings double click a brush. You can test what the options do. If you like the modified brush you can save it with a name you chose, and place it a special brush folder. 

I looked up Photoshop's brush tilt at the link below. This was to see where the tilt was being set. Affinity Photo has the same settings. Under the Dynamics tab, every brush has a variable tilt adjustment. Set tilt for one setting and move the slider to see what the result is in real time. There is a reset option (bottom right) if you want to start over.

There might be free preset brushes available online. Brusheezy.com has some free, and some for sale. You can install any brush (or brush pack) with an "abr" extension into Affinity Photo – if a brush (or brish pack) was in a zip/rar extract it first, right-click the "abr" file and see if it is set to open in Affinity Photo, then double-click it to install it. (At least on my Mac it works this way.) 

https://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/photoshop-brushes/brush-dynamics/shape-dynamics/

Edited May 3, 2024 by NandoM

[HappyDoom]

14 minutes ago, NandoM said:

The forum sent me an email that a new post was created in this thread. 

A few months ago I started playing around with brush settings. There are many brush tweaks available. Hardness, jitter, rotation, textures, and (I just check) tilt. Dynamic tilt may be what you are looking for,

You can take a any brush and modify it. To see the settings double click a brush. You can test what the options do. If you like the modified brush you can save it with a name you chose, and place it a special brush folder. 

I looked up Photoshop's brush tilt at the link below. This was to see where the tilt was being set. Affinity Photo has the same settings. Under the Dynamics tab, every brush has a variable tilt adjustment. Set tilt for one setting and move the slider to see what the result is in real time. There is a reset option (bottom right) if you want to start over.

There might be free preset brushes available online. Brusheezy.com has some free, and some for sale. You can install any brush (or brosh pack) with an "abr" extension into Affinity Photo – just double-click the brush pack (extract it from a zip/rar first) if "abr" is set to open in Affinity Photo (at least on a Mac). 

https://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/photoshop-brushes/brush-dynamics/shape-dynamics/

Hey there. Thanks for your quick reply. In the meantime I finally managed to do it. It's like carl123 wrote, CTRL + ALT and then with a simple left mouse click and you're cycling through the different modes, including for the tilting. I was just too clumsy. This quick shortcut is just what I needed to work with, but thanks for your response anyway. Might be useful to have presets of tilted brushes the way you described. Cheers 🤘

[NandoM]

Over time I have found that Affinity Photo can do many of the things Photoshop can do. Look in the Photoshop forums for how something works (shortcuts) and try them out Affinity Photo. If the shortcuts are explained for a PC there is often a way to get an equivalent on a Mac using CNTL, OPTION or COMMAND. Sometimes the arrows key add some unexpected adjustment, as well as long key holding versus key tapping.