Pixel brush tip doesn't get out of the way in Designer

[Stace]

When I draw with the pencil tool in draw persona, there's a nice little unobtrusive pencil icon.

But when I draw in pixel persona with the paint brush tool, the shape of the brush stays on the page. If I'm using a large size, the icon gets bigger too, and obscures what I'm trying to paint underneath.

I can't work out how to fix this in preferences.

Is this meant to happen? It feels like a bug. 

If not, how might I set up Affinity Designer to avoid showing me the shape of the pixel brush, or make it disappear while I put pen to paper, so to speak?

 

I'm using Affinity Designer 1.6.0 with Mac OS X High Sierra, but it's been doing this for a long time. 

[Chris B]

Hey Stace, 

This is by design but there is an option in Preferences > User Interface > Show brush previews which if disabled, should help you out. Let me know how you get on!

[Stace]

Hi Chris,

 

Thanks for your reply. That I did find. I just retried it, wondering if maybe I need to close the application and open again in order for changes to take effect, but nope. Unchecking that box does nothing. The brush head outline remains.

 

What is unchecking that box meant to look like? A crosshair? An arrow? A dot?

[R C-R]

10 minutes ago, Stace said:

Unchecking that box does nothing. The brush head outline remains.

The brush outline will always be there -- otherwise users would not be able to see the extent of what they were about to paint. Unchecking the box removes the preview of the brush's effect -- the color, opacity, etc. that will be applied inside the outline.

[Chris B]

What R C-R said... 

So with the preview off you will only get a circle. With the preview enabled, you get the circle with a preview of the brush inside. It's hard to screenshot to show you the difference because the circle vanishes whenever I try it 

 

 

[toltec]

Painting with a lovely shade of green

 

Show brush previews off

 

Show brush previews on

 

Always show brush crosshair on

Previews off

 

Both options on

 

[Stace]

RIght, okay. I see what you mean.

 

So, outline not turn-offable. I use another piece of art software which gives users complete control over the cursor. I guess I'm one of the few who is bothered by this.

[- S -]

8 hours ago, Stace said:

So, outline not turn-offable. I use another piece of art software which gives users complete control over the cursor. I guess I'm one of the few who is bothered by this.

You're not alone, quite a few of us would like the option to turn off brush outline and only use brush preview, but only the opposite is currently possible.  There have been posts before requesting the ability to turn off the outline (such as the one below), but is presumably in a queue along with all the other feature requests:

Link:

I think the most recent feature request is HERE asking for it to be added to preferences so that users have the options for:

1. Crosshair on/off
2. Brush preview on/off
3. Brush outline on/off

[R C-R]

23 minutes ago, Sima said:

I think the most recent feature request is HERE asking for it to be added to the preferences so that users have the options for:

1. Crosshair on/off
2. Brush preview on/off
3. Brush outline on/off

But surely there must be something always enabled to indicate where the brush will paint, right? I can't imagine trying to paint 'blind' without knowing where the brush is in relation to the canvas, or for that matter how large the brush is. Whether it is real world paint brush or a virtual one, how can this not be considered an essential requirement?

[- S -]

33 minutes ago, R C-R said:

But surely there must be something always enabled to indicate where the brush will paint, right? I can't imagine trying to paint 'blind' without knowing where the brush is in relation to the canvas, or for that matter how large the brush is. Whether it is real world paint brush or a virtual one, how can this not be considered an essential requirement?

Most people will set it to have at least one of the three visible, for example if the options were available now I would have it set to Crosshair on, Brush Preview on, Brush Outline off.  How the developers choose to implement it is up to them, (I.E. leave it purely up to the user to choose in preferences or something else a bit more fool-proof).  But there needs to be an option to disable brush outline if the user wants.

[toltec]

39 minutes ago, R C-R said:

But surely there must be something always enabled to indicate where the brush will paint, right? I can't imagine trying to paint 'blind' without knowing where the brush is in relation to the canvas, or for that matter how large the brush is. Whether it is real world paint brush or a virtual one, how can this not be considered an essential requirement?

 

I think having just the preview without the outline would help sometimes

 

especially if using a soft edge brush

 

The outline can be distracting

[R C-R]

8 minutes ago, Sima said:

But there needs to be an option to disable brush outline.

I still don't understand the practical value of such an option. After all, the moment a user begins to paint its effect immediately appears on the canvas, so why would anyone not want to know at least the extent of that effect before painting? If it just about the outline obscuring whatever is under the pointer, why not just move it away briefly?

 

3 minutes ago, toltec said:

The outline can be distracting

Is it distracting to see the bristles of a real brush, how much paint it is loaded with, or its orientation if it isn't round? I am not sure I understand how this is any different.

 

But if you want the outline to disappear while you are painting, there is a workaround: just turn on the new brush stabilizer. 

[toltec]

1 minute ago, R C-R said:

But if you want the outline to disappear while you are painting, there is a workaround: just turn on the new brush stabilizer. 

 

True. I can't see it really bothers me but it seems to bother some people and choice is good. 

[R C-R]

12 minutes ago, toltec said:

True. I can't see it really bothers me but it seems to bother some people and choice is good. 

Choice is good but too much choice often is not, particularly when some of those choices cause behaviors users can't easily understand. As it is, consider all the complaints we see about the UI being too complicated or something not working because some fairly obvious setting was overlooked.

 

Imagine what it would be like if every feature a relatively small number of users requested was implemented. Not only would it be a nightmare to figure out why something was not working as expected, there would still be complaints about how they were implemented. To paraphrase a dead President, you can please all of the users some of the time, & some of the users all of the time, but you can't please all of the users all of the time.

[Stace]

It's a matter of what you get used to. If you've been digitally painting for years without a massive outline in your way, to suddenly have one feels unnecessary at best and obtrusive at worst. I understand other people's preference for the outline. It would be nice in a future update to allow more user control of the cursor for those of us who don't like it at all. Note that this is really only a problem when using something like a spray paint brush at a very large size, one with lots of detail. The amount of outline really does get in the way of the canvas in such cases.

 

In a lesser known art application, Artrage, the user interface is very simple. It's designed for the casual user (though can also be used professionally if needed). Dig deeper and you can change the preferences, including how the cursor displays. I reject the idea that more choices equal more confusion, especially in software which is positioning itself as an alternative for professionals. It's all in the UI. (See attached image. It's really not confusing at all.)

 

I also discovered the workaround of turning on the brush stabilizer, but this changes the way it draws.

 

 

[R C-R]

48 minutes ago, Stace said:

I also discovered the workaround of turning on the brush stabilizer, but this changes the way it draws.

True, but if you set the length or window value to 1, the change is minimal.