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Coloring Architectural drawings in Affinity photo


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Hi All,

A newbie query, But ..I guess, something that should  helpful to large Architectural community...

What shall be the better way to color Architectural drawings ( exported form autocad as PDF files ).

We use shadows for the furniture to give depth illusion ...

And also use pattern fill (in Photoshop) to give texture to different type of flooring patterns( carpets , wooden floor ,tiles etc.) ...or highlighting some areas .

The pdf drawings  imported have lot of text and dimensions at times . ...

Having better flood fills selection easily and fast is important .

If we get the same or better workflow as Photoshop , I shall be able to convince my office to  give this software to everyone in the team.

 

Regards.

kay

 

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Welcome to the forum and Affinity community.

I know that there are a number of architects on this forum ( @Tom Schülke springs to mind). Perhaps search for some their old conversations about architectural plans?

I am sure it would be helpful to have a small example PDF for users to look at, then we can suggest appropriate methods.

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3 hours ago, Y kay said:

exported form autocad

Is not the vector CAD output better ADesigner?

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24 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Is not the vector CAD output better ADesigner?

I my limited understanding  , The quickest way for ever changing layouts is to have flood fill and pattern fill .  We need a workflow which is fast and easy for most of the team  memebers who may  have limited  knowledge of graphic softwares as their core expertise is Autocad .

There are various Tutorials for Photoshop, but cant find any for Affinity Photos .

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Thanks @Aammppaa !

I saw your reply to the thread by @Tom Schülke  ...and I can confirm  that he is speaking for the large Architectural community worldwide which can be the potential User base for Affinity Photo if :

a) There are proper tutorials to address the most common Architectural firms' workflows ...

b) Affinity photos makes some concession in the product development  for Architects as our requirements vary fro mthe the phtographers or Ilustrators .

Cheers!

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19 minutes ago, Y kay said:

There are various Tutorials for Photoshop, but cant find any for Affinity Photos .

Just go to the Tutorials section from the home page of this forum (near the bottom). There are hundreds of tutorials provided  by both Serif and by users.

John

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Hi, Y kay,

As Pšenda said, it is likely Designer is a better choice than Photo. Both do flood fills and and bit-map pattern fills. But both require the areas to be defined, and I know almost nothing about how AutoCAD makes those. 

2 hours ago, Y kay said:

b) Affinity photos makes some concession in the product development  for Architects as our requirements vary fro mthe the phtographers or Ilustrators

I can not speak for Serif at all, but here is my understanding. Serif as a company is at least an order of magnitude smaller than Adobe. And the Affinity suite is very "young" compared to about everything else comparable. There is much to do for the people already using it.

Nevertheless, as already mentioned by Aammppaa, a small sample of what you would like to work on would let the users here what might be done. 

I also suppose anyone who is proficient w. AutoCAD could pick up the necessary skills for the fills very quickly. 

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On 9/30/2018 at 9:26 PM, gdenby said:

as already mentioned by Aammppaa, a small sample of what you would like to work on would let the users here what might be done. 

Thanks to everyone for sharing your suggestions .

Here are some examples of what we generally  do . The Plan is exported from Autocad as a PDF  and thru magic-wand/flood fill the patterns are introduced .

If there is any step-by-step  Tutorial which once can refer to ?

(Sorry for Low-res as I don't have source file on Laptop right now).

 

plan01 (2).jpg

 

 

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Just a quick tip: instead of using the traditional flood fill colouring approach, you may want to investigate Krita's Colorize Mask to speed up this type of work. Things have moved on a bit since the advent of the flood fill tool ;)

At least twice as fast and much more controllable. Colorize in Krita, then import the colour layer for easy selections, isolations, and pattern fills.

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If a .pdf file is created w. the vectors available, both Designer and Photo will do the fills. I don't use Photo much, but at this point, there isn't a pattern flood tool. Both programs doing pixel flood fills must have areas that are already at least at different grey levels, which is the same as any bitmap flood fill I have ever used.

Attached, a very quick Designer plan, using techniques you want. It was really trivial.

Quicky.thumb.jpg.9a9a11bb7ec4e1a8434bda85863ce46e.jpg

 

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HI @Medical Officer Bones

Nice name :) .   Krita Colorise mask is interesting . Shall try it out and report. Need to see how it works with complex/large drawings..and if it has become stable enough for windows .

But the issues is it needs another program to handle a small task . I am  looking for a faster and easier way...

maybe something like this :

17 hours ago, Medical Officer Bones said:

you may want to investigate Krita's Colorize Mask to speed up this type of work.

 

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17 hours ago, gdenby said:

If a .pdf file is created w. the vectors available, both Designer and Photo will do the fills

Hi @gdenby , It was so nice of you put your time to create an example to help someone  . Shall check the same and revert after trying the same.

But the problem is that the shapes are not closed vector boundaries  in Autocad most of the times . And the layout plan example I shared was 1/15th  part of the whole floor plan , and making boundaries for each item is difficult in ever evolving layout plan drawings .

17 hours ago, gdenby said:

at this point, there isn't a pattern flood tool.

 

Pattern fill shall be hugely useful..whenever it becomes available in Affinity-Photo .

There is an option in Gradient-fill for bitmap ....but that is giving me some un-intended results ....maybe mostly due to my lack of knowledge about Affinity Photo.

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16 minutes ago, Y kay said:

Hi @gdenby , It was so nice of you put your time to create an example to help someone  . Shall check the same and revert after trying the same.

But the problem is that the shapes are not closed vector boundaries  in Autocad most of the times . And the layout plan example I shared was 1/15th  part of the whole floor plan , and making boundaries for each item is difficult in ever evolving layout plan drawings .

 

Pattern fill shall be hugely useful..whenever it becomes available in Affinity-Photo .

There is an option in Gradient-fill for bitmap ....but that is giving me some un-intended results ....maybe mostly due to my lack of knowledge about Affinity Photo.

Not a problem. Didn't take much time at all.

I haven't worked w. Autocad output in at least 20 years, and wondered if the vector shapes were closed. Back then, they weren't, and so were useless to me.

I know the tiling fill issue has come up before from people who have been using Photoshop, and there were some work arounds, but I don't recall what they were. I spend 10X more time in Designer than Photo, and the gradient tool in it is very different than the fill tool in Designer.

iMac 27" Retina, c. 2015: OS X 10.11.5: 3.3 GHz I c-5: 32 Gb,  AMD Radeon R9 M290 2048 Mb

iPad 12.9" Retina, iOS 10, 512 Gb, Apple pencil

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Update:

Was able to improve on workflow by creating shapes or Pen tool for the floor areas which require bitmap pattern . 

Developed styles for various types of flooring to drop on these shape fills in fill gradient tool(with bitmap option in drop down menu)

These flooring layers were kept below the furniture layers stack.  Furniture layers was rendered without any pattern ,so used magic wand (or brush selection) there . To do this base layer was created by importing PDF and exporting it out in higher resolution. the base layer (line work) was kept on top with Multiply blend mode.

Another thing to try shall be to keep text and line work separate ...and maybe avoid raterising text layers ...esp for smaller fonts .

 

Krita colorize mask worked well in smaller plans...after splitting layers colour wise.....But, failed miserably in larger complicated layouts having tons of details .

 

Cheers !

 

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  • 3 months later...
  • 4 months later...
On 1/8/2019 at 1:20 PM, Tom Schülke said:

@ Kay P.

I´ve uploaded to youtub a actual workflow film..   that might interst you...
 

 

Thank you for your video. But you can select faster if after rasterizing you use Select -> Select sampled color. In PS we don't need to rasterize, I hope one day AP will also do it.

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