Pixelated line with drawing tools

[Henry1]

Whilst using any line drawing tool (pencil, pen, or brush) the line appears pixelated whilst drawing. On lifting off the screen and finalising the line, it then gains smooth edges. Such an effect is not present in the tutorial video on using the pencil tool. 

 

This is makes drawing difficult, as it’s not possible to see where the line with begin or end. Is there a solution to this? If not, why does the video tutorial  not suffer from this?

 

[Gabe]

Hi @Henry1,

Welcome to the forums. 

Can you please re-upload the video? It seems to be broken. 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

[Henry1]

Should work now.

 

another video attached if not

 

[SrPx]

I think this has always worked so, you paint it in raster (sort of), then it "vectorizes". I have some arcane post about it, very long ago. Indeed, IMO the issues are more in the "vectorizing" part.

[Henry1]

Thanks, it could be that, but it appears the video tutorial  appears not to suffer from this. Maybe it’s just not visible on the video?

[SrPx]

I believe it also works in raster, and then it "vectorizes". Anyway, I am not familiar in any way with which improvements that might have been added in this regard in the iPad version. Could the full canvas size be affecting the quality of the initial/preview raster stroke ? Has no sense in vector based apps, but after all, that preview is in raster. I don't know if it might be related, you could test that on your end....

[gdenby]

I don't have enough experience w. the iPad version yet, but in the desktop version this typically happens when there are many layers of fx being rendered. On the desktop version, I see this when I have a maybe a couple of hundred layers with various raster fx applied.  For my purposes, the second or two for complete rendering haven't been a problem. Have not experienced this yet w. the iPad version, but most of my work has been rather simple.

[R C-R]

@Henry1 I think what you are seeing is normal for the Designer Pencil Tool -- in your screen recordings it looks like it is behaving the same as in the Pencil Tool video.

In your second screen recording, it also looks like you have a stabilizer option enabled with a very short stabilizer length. Is this what you intended for that recording?

[Gabe]

@Henry1, That behaviour is normal. It happens in the video, but you just can't see it. The line would be "pixelated" for a split second, but it will then become sharp. 

[Fred70]

I purchased Designer yesterday after reading many good reviews about it and examining its abilities and UI. I'm still pretty new to the app, and although it looks very promising, something struck me from the very beginning. As explained in this thread, the vector drawing is initially pixelated (rasterized) then converted to vector. Even if for a split second, it has a huge negative impact on the drawing experience in my view. I already have Concepts and Vectornator apps and none of them appear as such. Affinity clearly has not been able to utilize iPad's (at least iPad Pro's) full hardware resources. I think this is fixable in future updates (hopefully soon) before people like me start mentioning it in their App Store reviews.

I have iPad Pro 10.5 with iOS 11.4.1 and Apple Pencil.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Fred70 said:

I already have Concepts and Vectornator apps and none of them appear as such.

I don't have Concepts but I do have Vectornator Pro. It does the same thing as Affinity Designer but you may not notice it unless you are zoomed in far enough to see paths transition from pixelated to smoothed edged when the tool is lifted. Besides that, regarding fully using an iPad's resources, the app doesn't even provide realtime updates when you edit a path (like is shown in this video at around 1:50), just a 'ghost' outline reminiscent of 1990's era drawing apps that did the same thing because the hardware could not support on-the-fly screen rendering fast enough for that.

It has some great features I wish Designer for iPad had as well, but making better use of the hardware is not among them.

[Fred70]

On 7/17/2018 at 12:34 PM, R C-R said:

I don't have Concepts but I do have Vectornator Pro. It does the same thing as Affinity Designer but you may not notice it unless you are zoomed in far enough to see paths transition from pixelated to smoothed edged when the tool is lifted. Besides that, regarding fully using an iPad's resources, the app doesn't even provide realtime updates when you edit a path (like is shown in this video at around 1:50), just a 'ghost' outline reminiscent of 1990's era drawing apps that did the same thing because the hardware could not support on-the-fly screen rendering fast enough for that.

It has some great features I wish Designer for iPad had as well, but making better use of the hardware is not among them.

I have to say even after the latest update the pixelating effect still exists, and it isn’t for “split scond” but a good second or so! ...and not only during drawing, but also reshaping. Such a lag does not exist in Vectornator at all. Affinity needs to redesign its rendering engine to address this issue.

[Merton Dot]

I just noticed this same kind of thing in the raster brushes on the latest update for Affinity Photo on the iPad and posted about it as a bug, but maybe it’s how Affinity’s brush engine works and not a bug? Thanks for the heads up / ideas on this.