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Pencil Effect Macro


R C-R

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This Sketch effect.afmacro is my attempt to convert the technique demonstrated in the Affinity Revolution Transform any Photo into a Pencil Drawing (Affinity Photo Tutorial) into a useful Affinity Photo macro. These are the steps I came up with:

5aa667b614e8d_macrosteps.png.12827ab22b744bf7584ded9ee8969342.png

Since the first step selects the top layer regardless of its name or type, for best results it should be the only layer in the document & a pixel layer. The macro does not alter this layer so if you don't like the effect you can delete the layers it creates. The two user adjustments adjust the radius of the Gaussian blur & the Black Level of the Levels Adjustment layer. They can be tweaked after the macro is applied in the usual way. Adding some saturation back to the HSL "_desaturate" layer creates a colored pencil effect.

 

A couple of 'before & after' examples of what you can expect:

5aa66f5c6a734_ExampleBuildings.png.271f29a0a4c868ad5f7b16438d84f1dc.png 5aa66f64205b5_ExamplePortrait.png.9b2398d2e57c218a50f8dc97f92921f3.png

 

Comments, criticisms, & questions welcomed.

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
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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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Just installed and tried, very impressed R C-R.  Thank you very much for sharing. Cheers John

AMD Ryzen 7 5800 X. Nvidia GeForce RTX3060 64Gb Ram
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2.4 for Windows • Windows 11 (23H2 build 22631 3235) Home
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2.4 for iPad Pro 10.5  • iPad OS 17.3.1

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I am glad you like it but thanks really should go to Affinity Revolution for the video -- all I did was adapt what I saw in it to a macro.

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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nice!:)

 

Affinity Version 1 (10.6) Affinity Version 2.4.1 All (Designer | Photo | Publisher)   Beta; 2.4 2.2356
OS:Windows 10 Pro 22H2 OS Build 19045.4046+ Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.19053.1000.0
Rig:AMD FX 8350 and AMD Radeon (R9 380 Series) Settings Version 21.04.01 
Radeon Settings Version 2020
20.1.03) + Wacom Intuous 4M with driver 6.3.41-1

 

 

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Hi, I am having a problem getting Affinity Photo (iPad) to recognise this macro file. Any suggestions?

M1 IPad Air 10.9/256GB   lpadOS 17.1.1 Apple Pencil (2nd gen).
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29 minutes ago, DM1 said:

Hi, I am having a problem getting Affinity Photo (iPad) to recognise this macro file. Any suggestions?

 

It’s greyed out when I try to import it ‘as is’. If I rename it from *.macro to *.macros it becomes available for import and it seems to import correctly, but I can’t find it in the Macro studio.

 

I think it may need to be exported via the Library panel rather than the Macro panel in the desktop version to make it available for use in the iPad version.

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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 if all desktop macros can be used with the iPad version but you can try this Sketch.afmacros version, which was exported from the Library panel & see if it works.

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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8 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I don't know if all desktop macros can be used with the iPad version but you can try this Sketch.afmacros version, which was exported from the Library panel & see if it works.

 

That did the trick. Many thanks!

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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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  • 2 months later...
  • Staff

Hi 1nf0t3ch,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
Since this is an afmacro file (without an "S" at the end) - which contains the steps of a single macro - you have to import it from the Macro panel (not the Library which is used to import a set of macros - an .afmacros file). So go to menu View ▸ Studio ▸ Macro to enable this panel, click the Import icon on the top right of the panel and select the .afmacro file. To add it to the Library for later re-use click the second icon on the group on the right on the Macro panel.

 
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 6/5/2018 at 5:12 PM, MEB said:

Hi 1nf0t3ch,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
Since this is an afmacro file (without an "S" at the end) - which contains the steps of a single macro - you have to import it from the Macro panel (not the Library which is used to import a set of macros - an .afmacros file). So go to menu View ▸ Studio ▸ Macro to enable this panel, click the Import icon on the top right of the panel and select the .afmacro file. To add it to the Library for later re-use click the second icon on the group on the right on the Macro panel.

  

Thank you so much. I will try this out!

It worked very well!

Thank you again!

Regards,

Ros

Edited by 1nf0t3ch
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  • 8 months later...
On 3/12/2018 at 7:20 AM, R C-R said:

This Sketch effect.afmacro is my attempt to convert the technique demonstrated in the Affinity Revolution Transform any Photo into a Pencil Drawing (Affinity Photo Tutorial) into a useful Affinity Photo macro. These are the steps I came up with:

5aa667b614e8d_macrosteps.png.12827ab22b744bf7584ded9ee8969342.png

Since the first step selects the top layer regardless of its name or type, for best results it should be the only layer in the document & a pixel layer. The macro does not alter this layer so if you don't like the effect you can delete the layers it creates. The two user adjustments adjust the radius of the Gaussian blur & the Black Level of the Levels Adjustment layer. They can be tweaked after the macro is applied in the usual way. Adding some saturation back to the HSL "_desaturate" layer creates a colored pencil effect.

 

A couple of 'before & after' examples of what you can expect:

5aa66f5c6a734_ExampleBuildings.png.271f29a0a4c868ad5f7b16438d84f1dc.png 5aa66f64205b5_ExamplePortrait.png.9b2398d2e57c218a50f8dc97f92921f3.png

 

Comments, criticisms, & questions welcomed.

nice work! Thank you!  Yes, Ezra Anderson does great tutorials. I miss hearing his cheerful voice and seeing his 'fresh from rumspringa' face that he has. His wife does just as great a job with narration though. 

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  • 7 months later...
  • 5 months later...

I have just tried this on a tileable image. The Pencil effect works well and does what I want, except that it creates a dark vignette around the image which shows clearly if I then tile the image. However, if I create my tiled image first, then apply the macro, the vignette is confines to the outsides and I can trim this off if I wish.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi R C-R,

I've been trying to use your macro to make a colour photo look like a b & w sketch, but I'm having trouble.  Would it work differently with the updated version of Affinity Photo?  It's brilliant that you have put this on the forum.

Do you have advice for doing this?  I'm trying to change a nature photo, so I want to keep a lot of the detail, but I'm really struggling.

Any help would be appreciated.

Many thanks,

Debbie

KF female, no bg.PNG

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3 hours ago, Jumblemania said:

Would it work differently with the updated version of Affinity Photo? 

When I run it in 1.8.2 on my Mac, I get a message saying that the Assistant upgraded the legacy effect, but other than that it works fine for me.

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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  • 2 weeks later...
29 minutes ago, Slotcar Bob said:

Not sure how to install. AP or AD? I have both. Thank you. Excited to try. Using Mac OS with Catalina.

Macros are exclusive to Affinity Photo. And as it's a .afmacro file (no s on the end) you import it into the Macro studio panel.

image.png.e42e8c92c4565359d185ee180c6bacf2.png

-- Walt
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5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Macros are exclusive to Affinity Photo. And as it's a .afmacro file (no s on the end) you import it into the Macro studio panel.

If you prefer to import it into a Library category of its own, you can use the macros version in this post above.

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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  • 2 years later...

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