[AD & AP] Managing Brushes

[R C-R]

Between Affinity Designer & Affinity Photo I have a lot of brushes to manage. Accordingly, help with or info about any of the following would be appreciated:

 

1. Is there a list somewhere of the default brush categories for each app, ideally with the names of (or at least count of) each brush in each category?

2. Are the same-named default AD raster brush categories identical to the same-named AP brush categories?

3. To date, are the default brush categories of the Mac retail & beta versions the same for each pair of apps?

4. Is there any way to tell if an .afbrushes file contains vector brushes (usable only in AD) or raster brushes (usable in both AD & AP), other than by importing the file into one of the apps? For instance, is there a different characteristic header string for each of the two types that could be identified in an app like TextWrangler that can display the file as text?

5. Is there any way to reset the vector & raster brushes in AD independently, or must they both be reset at the same time?

6. I have not checked recently, but at some point in the past it was possible to import vector brush categories into AP, but of course they were unavailable in that app. Is that still possible, & if so, what is the best way to remove them?

 

Why I ask: I have exported what I hope are all the different default brush categories for each app into a backup folder full of .afbrushes files. I am trying to reorganize it into a subfolder containing all the vector .afbrushes files, & a second subfolder containing all the raster .afbrushes files. I would like to eliminate any duplicates in the raster subfolder, make sure I have not missed any of the defaults, accidentally exported a category I had edited so it is not identical to the factory default, etc.

[Leigh]

1. I've put together a list of all the Brush Categories from both apps below*
2. The Categories with the same name contain the same brushes
3. They appear to be the same in both the beta and retail version
4. I will ask about this - would be useful. When importing brushes into the app it will tell you if they're vector or raster.
5. Not possible in the app but you can move/delete raster_brushes.propcol and leave vector_brushes.propcol to reset Raster brushes (the app will regenerated the file on run up if it's missing) and vice versa. They can be found here: /Users/{username}/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/user/ & /Users/{username}/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner/Data/Library/Application Support/user/
6. This is still possible. AFAIK, the only way to delete vector brushes in AFP would be to remove the vector_brushes.propcol from the folder above.

Hope that helps!

 

*Brush Categories including number of brushes:

 

Affinity Photo:
Basic: 21
Painting: 19
Drawing: 6
Spray Paints: 10
Texture: 13
Effects: 4
DAUB Bristles: 12
DAUB Dry Media: 12
DAUB Gouaches: 10
DAUB Inks: 11
DAUB Markers: 12
DAUB Watercolours: 12

 

Affinity Designer (Raster):
Assorted: 16
Painting: 19
Drawing: 6
Spray Paints: 10
Texture: 13
Effects: 4
Basic: 21

 

Affinity Designer (Vector):
Assorted: 16
Textured: 14
Image: 7
Basic: 21
 

[DonnaB]

How can I tell the difference between raster and vector brushes when they have the same file extension? I only have Affinity Photo right now and do not want to unload a bunch of vector brushes I can't use. and there's no way to see the vector brushes in AP list to delete them.  Thanks.

[Leigh]

It's not possible within the app but see point 5 in my last post about manually removing them.

[Alfred]

It would be better if Affinity Photo simply refused to import vector brushes in the first place! As things stand, you get a message about the brushes being successfully imported (but they’re nowhere to be found within the app, of course).

[Leigh]

9 minutes ago, Alfred said:

It would be better if Affinity Photo simply refused to import vector brushes in the first place! As things stand, you get a message about the brushes being successfully imported (but they’re nowhere to be found within the app, of course).

 

I logged the request with our developers back in January. Hopefully they'll sort it in a future update.