Pencil tool improvements

[dogshank]

Hi there. I'm trying to move my work over to Affinity Designer but the way the pencil tool works is making it difficult for the kind of thing I do. If I'm missing something I'd be grateful for a pointer.

1. There needs to be the option to automatically deselect a freehand line after it's been drawn, otherwise you can't see it properly to check that it's OK.

 2. Illustrator has an incredibly helpful feature: to draw on top of a selected line with the pencil tool to adjust its shape. I know you can drag handles and curves, which is fine, but for freehand illustrators like myself, the other way is more intuitive and much faster.

Mike

[Alfred]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, Mike. 

1. Press the Escape key on your keyboard to deselect the object, or hold down the space bar to hide the selection outline.

2. This is not currently possible, but it’s already on the wishlist.

[gdenby]

In its current iteration, AD has a stabilizer tools for the pencil. From what I can tell of the AI feature, it averages repeated strokes to nudge the line closer to what is needed. The stabilizer removes some of the need for that upfront. With practice, I'm getting to where I only need to adjust a node or two. 

From a tracing I'm doing, you can see the lines are fairly smooth, and I think they are reasonably accurate to the underlying image.

[dogshank]

Thanks for your replies, I appreciate it.

Adobe Illustrator annoys the hell out of me but this is one thing it does right! When I trace a rough I try to be pretty loose about it, knowing that I can fiddle around with it until it's right. I really hope the developers can make these changes in upcoming versions.

[MEB]

Thread moved to the Feature Requests section.