Quick select brushes with previous settings

[Ian R]

Hi,

I've been using Affinity photo to create garden illustrations for a couple of years now and keep running into an inefficiency where I need to change brushes alot - it's just a part of producing a handrawn looking image. When I do this I must use either a set of custom brushes or, as I mostly do, spend some time to create a brush from a basic (often one from the Daub sets)... when I need to switch brushes I must lose this setting and then go back to a standard one. IS there a way to have a shortcut to switch between sizes/previous brush settings? This would speed my work up greatly. Even the fact I have to go to the menu and select the basic brushes breaks the flow of my work. If there were a short cut to swap between 2 brushes or settings then it would be great.

[Lee D]

Hi Ian R,

You can use [ ] to decrease/increase the brush sizes however Affinity doesn't have a shortcut to switch to a previous brush or settings. Sticky settings are on our development roadmap to be added in a future update, meaning previous tool settings will be remembered when switching between tools. 

[Ian R]

That's great news.

If this 'history' of previous brush settings were set within a sub-brush UI,  effectively replicating the way the swatch palette 'previous colour used' options work ..It would be superb if previous brush settings were basically set within a UI to allow us to create a custom brush palette from this history. A real flexible way of  creating your own creative tools...  Thanks for the attention.

[Polygonius]

I never had PS but by looking YT-PS-vids - I sometimes get envious, there are SOME things, what PS handles REALLY better than AP. Eg: the whole "brushes" (preset- and working) system seems more smart, faster, dynamically...

Beginning with this "more" button (in PS a brush...symbol) : A window with your current brush-category appears with the brushes shown as big “one-picture”, which is much more better for searching than this "strokes/lines-view" which looks all most the same. For "texture-painter" the “stroke-view” is 87% complete useless. 

The “more”-PS-window shows your current set of brushes (as big “one-click” and also all the special-settings you can do in one smart combine-window). Much more handy than "brush-studio (for just selecting a "stroke") and the second separate-anywhere-window for customize this brush on the other side of the screen.... In PS “booth windows” are nice compressed in one place/view. 

Your “Studio” could hold eg your palette (instead of “brushes”) and you could paint with 3 important “windows” at the same time

1. the brush-selection itself

2. the brush-settings-windows

3. In your studio whatever you want/need instead “brushes”

(in AP this would need 3 “windows” , 2 of them anywhere on the screen , which not disappear when switch to another tool… 

In PS this “window” seems connected to brush/eraser/brsuh-like-tool… and disappear by using another (non-brush-like) tool and appears only if brush-like tool is selected and only if this “more-symbol” is tapped).

This is much more smart/compressed/fast/sorted… than this confusing and mouse-miles-libre-office-module-windows-everywhere and evreytime in AP.

 

Next thing: PS seems to decide between “global brush” and “just for current”. In AP all changes in the “brush-properties” will overwrite the old one WITHOUT asking or special “save”. This is (for me) also in 84% not the behaviour I wish. I need eg. a rectangle-switch very often during a current brush work, but not as an unasked overwritten new “brush”. 

In PS the changes here are temporally as long as you EXPLICIT save this current setting! Otherwise the current brush keeps just a current brush and your old brush keeps intact!!!!

In MOST cases this is what I want! 

 

 

Really great is also this "make a brush" from current layer, selection, computer-buffer... and this will create, without any extra steps (save picture and navigate and load via finder/explo...) .. a new (current) brush… As said above just “temporally” for using just now, but, with the option to “global” just by “save”. 

 

Booth AP and PS cranks on “advanced-dynamic-functions”: lets say I set a brush to 34pix and 69% opacity… and its blendmode to ”screen”…. With HARD-rotation-dynamic (no one has) by 90 degree…. set also a “keep-setting-option” and all next brushes will appear with 34pix and 69% (and and and..) Booth do not offer this simple but really useful feature….

 

However, i´m quiet happy with AP-brushes, all basic (or function work) is very stable/correct/solid…

Just the gui/effiency/fun... is missing some luxury, but its version 1 and i hope/convieced they will make at least industry-standard in the next updates. But thats not the goal, the goal is “over-industry-standard” (I have lot of ideas)….

 

 

PS: In the EDITOR here i can change lot of not so useful stuff, like underline/italic, color, type of points..... but neither the font nor the size