Quality of life improvements I would like to see in AP

[Frozen Death Knight]

Been playing around with Affinity Photo the last couple of days and I have a list of things I would like to see get added/changed/fixed. In no particular order, here is my wish list:

1. Add the option to disable changing brush hardness when using ctrl+R click+L click or simply separate it from brush size altogether. While I can live with the current version, it is a bit annoying that brush hardness and brush size are buttoned to the same command when you want to solely change the brush size.

2. I don't know if this is a bug or not, but of some reason the Shape setting does not affect custom brushes when using Brush Editing for customizing your brushes, only for New Round Brush and New Square Brush. Because of this some of my Photoshop brushes were unable to get the shape I wanted them to be.

3. Add the option to have more than one setting for stuff like Size Jitter, Accumulation Jitter, Flow Jitter, etc. when using Brush Editing. While the current settings are solid, not being able to mix stuff like Pressure, Random, or Direction for each of them makes me unable to replicate a few brushes from Photoshop.

4. The Smudge Tool when at 100% Strength creates white (and sometimes black) pixels when using it. This was just an option in Photoshop, but in AP that is not the case. There is also a lack of options to affect only specific shades of pixels like midrange, highlight, and dark.

5. You don't seem to be able to switch between Saturation and Desaturation for the Sponge Tool by using the alt key as a shortcut. On a similar note, the Free Hand Tool doesn't allow you to add more to your selection by pressing shift or any other command, but it still allows you to cut out stuff using the alt key.

6. The Free Hand Selection Tool should have your settings saved when you use Refine. I keep having to change the settings every time I want to make a new selection, but it keeps resetting back to the basic settings which I don't want to use.

7. There is no way to create a shortcut for deleting layers using the Del key in Keyboard Shortcuts. 

8. Add alt+drag as a shortcut option when duplicating a layer like how it is in Photoshop. While we are on the topic of layers, when right clicking selected layers, add in the option to use Merge Selected in the pop-up window alongside options like Merge Visible and Merge Down. I know there is a keyboard shortcut for it, but I find it odd that this isn't visible when using R click.

9. When using Masks to make one layer mask another layer, make the Mask automatically adjust to any changes done to the original object that the Mask is taken from. Right now if I try to make any changes to the silhouette of any object, I then need to reapply the mask to the layers if I want to avoid it from being outside of object I want the layer to be inside.

10. Make ctrl able to center the selection when using the Marquee Tools, the same way it is done for the Shape Tools like the Rectangle Tool, Heart Tool, etc. etc.

11. Add a pop-up box for your brushes when using R click or another way to quickly switch brushes on the fly.

12. Add the option to drag adjustment layers directly into the Layers window from the Adjustment window to apply them to the canvas or to individual layers.

13. When pressing shift while using the Brush Tool, make it so that it creates a ruler across the canvas that the brush follows, the same way that Lazy Nezumi Pro has that option (AP would truly benefit having full LNP support while we're on that topic). This would allow you to use tablet pressure to adjust the thickness of your brush lines with more control. If that's not feasible, I would like to see the option for locking your brush to move vertically or horizontally while using the shift key.

14. Coolorus plug-in support. By far the best colour wheel plug-in I've ever used in Photoshop and I would like to see it compatible with Affinity Photo.

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These are the things I can think of as of now. If I have any more ideas, I will post them in this thread some other time.

[Petar Petrenko]

Maybe it's better if you make a numbered list of your wish list for simple referencing on them?

[Frozen Death Knight]

4 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Maybe it's better if you make a numbered list of your wish list for simple referencing on them?

You mean like how it is now after I edited the post?

[Petar Petrenko]

Yes, now it is OK.