Features for digital painters

[simonsanchezart]

It would be nice to see features for digital painters in affinity photo:

 

Blend brushes

Being able to control the opacity with the pressure

More brush configuration options

Symmetry

Improvements in the color picker

Textured canvas

thick paint

perspective helpers

Have references outside the canvas

Improvements on the color selector

 

etc...

 

<3

 

[Pšenda]

Why in Affinity Photo? It is application for photography.

[Alfred]

12 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Why in Affinity Photo? It is application for photography.

Try telling that to users who do nothing but digital painting with it! There is a strong emphasis on tools for enhancing photographs, of course, but Serif themselves describe it as a ‘image editor’.

Some of the features on the OP’s list (such as blend brushes and the use of pressure as a controller for opacity) are already available. Others are rather vague.

[Pšenda]

6 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

Try telling that to users who do nothing but digital painting with it!

I would expect it in the drawing application, thus in Designer.

[Alfred]

 

[simonsanchezart]

8 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Why in Affinity Photo? It is application for photography.

it's a raster software, it works like photoshop, photoshop used a lot for digital painting.

One of the selling points of affinity photo is the 

[SrPx]

Been lately trying again a bunch of dedicated, specialized digital painting software. First of all, literal tons of digital painters do use Photoshop instead of Corel Painter. There used to even be software wars about it. Amazing Pros in each side. And rarely AI for digital painting (yep for line art and other type of illustration), to make the same comparison. Painter is the other one highly used, but that's nothing like AD, either. It is a raster editor in the line of Art Rage or Krita (better said, those two follow its trail). Or like Rebelle or Paintstorm Studio. And yet, I've reached today to the conclusion that I do WANT to use AP as my digital illustration package, and not any of those. At least in a regular basis. I'l explain in this post.

This is not a hobby, I work professionally in digital painting, and done so for long in many different fields (anything drawing, painting and graphics related, not just digital painting).

And I would only declare as urgent/essential/shows stoppers 2 features, not a list. Indeed, more of a a refinement/improvement/addition to a pair of existing ones. For digital illustration it would need a little optimization that would mean a world :

1) - Is not really an  "improvement" so to speak, IF considering a Photography-only focus in AP (but why loosing a ton of potential customers for avoiding just a pair of slight (well, we can't know that, but is what it may seem) changes? ). The color picker, if it would be only an alt + click action without magnifying, (this is neither well done by Krita, btw, and a show stopper there, too, for the so common glazing technique) ,  not bringing a magnifier, as this slows down very significantly the act of painting, as you are, in the most common technique for blending while painting (is faster and more productive to blend as you paint than over-paint later on with a blending brush!! ). Apart from the actual widget  being faster more or less depending on the machine, the procedure itself is slower. Instead, you would just press alt or your side pen button as you click on canvas (as a PS habit, a lot of painters I know do have "alt" there, I do) , it picks instantly whatever the color is under the cursor. Also, pen click + side mouse button, a ton faster than drag + click, as well. And because the implemented mode it is very helpful for photographers, my only suggestion is that it would be an option one could change in preferences, even if left the amplifier lens is the default, as anyways, I (and I guess any serious graphic artist) configure heavily any application to my needs and workflows.

2) The cursor... I believe this have been mentioned often. Today, doing some more advanced digital paint test, is very clear to me. PS has a lot more options for a cursor, but really, to a bunch of us, would be more than enough to disable, again, as an optional setting that hasn't got to be the default, disable the brush outline, leave as cursor-only a cross hair. In PS you can use a big dot, a small triangle pointing -45º (or maybe am mixing what I remember of CSP, as I use it a lot, lately), or a simple crosshair. This is important, as even slightly zoomed out (needed for painting), the outline of many brushes does cover entirely the detail you are drawing, when painting  not super zoomed in. Giving the ability of totally hiding that outline, leaving only the crosshair, is more than enough. And doable in most apps out there with a brush in it, even if not digital painting focused.

 

With those two, I'd be a happy camper, and I guess a huge amount of people more. I know I've said there are issues with lag when inkining line art, but fact is, I am not noticing any issue in the very different task of digital painting. Anyway, I've also tried inking today a bit and have seen a much better experience than what I remember from older versions. Pretty usable, even without smoothing activated (and in digital painting that's better if fully OFF, even if in line art inking is often a total need). Also, all this test using a fairly common canvas size for me, 5.000x5.000 px (usually from there up). In this arcane (the oldest) i7, only 8GB, no SSD, super bad card,... no issues, all smooth. I am not sure what version is the trial in download these days (just haven't looked), the very much current trial as of yesterday, but it runs pretty well for digital painting, now ! .

As a digital painter, you get a ton of benefits in using the  usual image editing software. Even if you are solely painting. Also, I dunno others, but I do a ton of work besides painting, and often, it means integrating with graphic design UIs, fonts titles, OR doing painterly work over UIs, specially in games and related. No matter how you put it, but my opinion is, unless you have all your freelancing super well covered with clients who pay very well for traditional-like art, ALL your source is in making oil-pictures-like stuff (IMO that's not the big market in digital painting, tho) that almost need to smell like oils and watercolors, and "feel" the canvas grain, and  in that case, then you'd be heading only to Art Rage and Rebelle, mostly, but for all even very high end digital painting , I prefer a PS-like, any day. And that is an outstandingly huge market, too.

For blending, all is needed is even just a basic brush, with flow reacting as pressure and at a very initial low level of flow, not touching the opacity (I even leave that at 100%) . then is all about true advanced digital painting techniques (in ANY software), playing with brush size change, etc. I've been doing tests in AP, just setting brush size to be changed by my wacom touch ring, etc, all works like a charm, but those two things do harm the workflow quite. I "could" work like that, but I may loose a lot for producing way slower, as even the cursor problem is not just about comfort for the eyes, is also a time waster issue.

If I just am missing sth crazily basic, please, say so !  As if there are tricks for this, am all ears.  But I did not find a way to make those two work as I mentioned I'd need (and also will need a lot of painters, comic colorists, concept artists, 2D texturing people,  and etc)

And the reason why I believe these two are the really important, and no other of the typically requested (seen these lists not only here: In many  graphic related forums), I'll try to explain also here: 

- Blend brushes --> As i said,this would be useful, but far from critical, if you paint like a lot of people do, using a glazing technique and making a good use of "flow". As a lot of people do in PS and other tools.

- Being able to control the opacity with the pressure --> We do have this already, although for a pure painting output, I'd go for mostly controlling flow, and setting the initial value as minimal. tested that just choosing a good starting BASIC brush (the others are amazing, btw. I just need basic with certain settings that I set), you can go changing directly flow, size (best if you have a touch ring for this, to speed up a lot) , even opacity, up there in the tool bar, is more than enough, and very productive. Usually, you'll paint without changing any for a while until you enter another stage, ie, detailing more, or etc.

- More brush configuration options---> With all respect, it has a ton already. More than some digital painting tools ! . The more the merrier,  ofc , but imo, you need badly before the other two issues to be addressed, which I mentioned (and have popped in the forum very often)....

- Symmetry --> yes, I agree. But not essential, tho. When you paint on a real canvas, you don't have this, and even is discouraged by teachers to do so, for important reasons. You can always do the traditional mirror of one part as well, if it's for crucial speed up reasons. If you need to see fast a mirrored illustration as it helps to catch errors -is how the brain works- I've proved to be instant making a canvas flip, just hit ctrl + alt + shift + left arrow, or configure a simpler shortcut if you wish, at preferences.  Doing 100% frontal portraits, or totally symmetrical buildings is not that frequent, and you can overcome it with mirror and transforms. And the checking, with that shortcut.

- Improvements in the color picker ---> I AGREE. if those are the ones I mentioned, that become super obvious to anyone who has worked in illustration, concept art, comics creation, textures, etc, etc.

- Textured canvas --> this need would be for a very specific type of painting (mimicking traditional art, but in a faked way...the output is flat, not grainy anyway). Not sure if then is what some people understand by digital painting, as a ton of that is not implying to mimic a canvas texture. Not even real life water colors or oils. Not necessarily, with all respect to those beautiful outputs.

- thick paint ---> same explained as above, and we would be really trying to entirely compete with Art Rage (you are describing Art Rage and (tho not so much) the already free Sketchbook , here...) We very badly need first the color picker  "feature addition", and the ability of removing the cursor outline, leaving only a cross hair or tiny triangle (alla CSP).  Then we'd at least would have a fully functional painting solution as part of the image editor (IE: Like PS).  Also, thick paint is a fake, one is faking the 3D volumes of the dense painting,  and the lighting direction of those bumps, can become an issue,. In Painter, you can change this direction, and you can use some tricks for other issues that thick paint does generate no matter what for certain outputs, but are mostly hacks. 

- perspective helpers ---> I always say this, but one can make perspective by hand, if well trained... Plus, you have straight lines already, only a lil training in real drawing would suffice for that.... You can even just lay some transformed rectangle flats as a layers base/ref, that's all you need ! If can't draw perspective without helpers, it'll reveal sooner or later, anyway, no matter the helpers used. Like with almost everything... Again, this would be trying to force too much the development and get AP be more of a Krita/Rebelle/Art Rage...

- Have references outside the canvas ---> Hmmm....sorry, not really "essential". It is helpful, tho, even for photographers and general image editing/compositing, concept art..  BUT... looks to me its implementation wouldn't be trivial, is sth I suspect. (while disabling the cursor outline, and just adding an alt click, no magnifier (and I guess then, no delay) in color picking, seems to me more easy to implement, less earth breaking, and over an existing base of a feature. Tho we don't know anything about how the internals really are, so, we cant know what is harder to make than what.)

- Improvements on the color selector --> ok, I believe you don't mean the picker now, but the color wheel or sliders... Again, any improvement there is welcome, tho I've handled pretty well with the HSL sliders (not RGB) and the below rectangular color spectrum.

With the 2 small changes (actually, is adding options to existing features, but in both cases simplifies/improves usage) I listed, any pro can work much more comfortably than as it is now. And be happy to choose AP as THE painting tool. As a lot of us need mainly a solid set of features, very basic, but solid. Not all the bells and whistles those digital painting tools come with (I've talked about this a lot in the past with very pro friends, they are of the same opinion).  That said, AP as it is, it can be already be used for any pro illustration and related works. TOTALLY. The problem is, without those 2 minimal (but workflow critical) improvements, most people -with exceptions- might not purchase a license (and AP will have it way harder to be known as usable and good in digital painting and any other field painting/drawing related). As there is a bunch of digital painting applications. The thing is, if provided with these two, for people doing a lot of work in several graphics fields, they will use AP without hesitation. Not having the super cool digital painting very advanced features is compensated by AP's versatility in everything. But is needed a basic workflow at least. IMO, at least in the current trial I tested, digital painting is now good enough in AP. And with a package as immensely complete in everything as A. Photo is, that'd be super amazing for any professional. IMO.

BTW, I'm sure that the less developers want to hear is yet another one telling them that could help as a tester, but in case these 2 features, or any other related to digital painting is now on the works (or related to Photo but directly affecting painting), I offer my testing feedback, whether if provided publicly or privately...

I apologize for the wall of text, in any case.