（Affinity Photo) How to draw straight line?

[pjwaixingren]

I use the SHIFT ,But no USE!~~!!!! It`s Not Staright LINE!!

HOW to do that?? THANK YOU!!!!

[HVDB Photography]

View > Show Grid

click somewhere, then SHIFT click somewhere else

 

[firstdefence]

39 minutes ago, HVDB Photography said:

View > Show Grid

click somewhere, then SHIFT click somewhere else

 

That ain't going to work, try it.

[HVDB Photography]

22 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

That ain't going to work, try it.

I did ...works fine for me !!!

 

 

[firstdefence]

I'm on Mac and there seems to be an issue with this, glad it works for you on Windows though.

[RNKLN]

I got straight lines on my Mac by using Cmd+Shift clicking. Just a Shift didn't work.

Normally, i'd use the Pen tool, though.

[R C-R]

I don't know about Windows but on Macs, the Shift key works (kinda) as indicated in the Status Bar: ; that is, to "continue last stroke." But there are several problems with that:

1. From what I can tell, it actually continues the last brush stroke -- just clicking without dragging isn't considered a brush stroke as far as this feature is concerned, even though that creates a spot of paint on the canvas.

2. There is an exception to this: on the first use of the Paint Brush tool on a new document, a click without dragging is considered a brush stroke, but after that it is not ... so AFAIK, it is once per opened document, with no way to 'reset' it so the next click without drag will work.

3. As long as the start of the (brush) stroke is done with a drag, shift-clicking on another point will connect the end of the dragged stroke with that point with a straight line, & it will continue to work like that for subsequent shift-clicks.

4. But there is also a problem with #3 -- if you manage to get a straight line segment by shift-clicking & then shift-drag for the next segment, creating a gap with an unconnected segment.

I think that covers everything, or at least enough to say it is well & truly broken! 

[pjwaixingren]

Why draw Staright line can`t like the PHOTOSHOP  just press the SHIFT KEY to draw ??

Thanks you : )!

[Ballonseide]

On 10/27/2018 at 11:44 PM, R C-R said:

I think that covers everything, or at least enough to say it is well & truly broken! 

Indeed!

And yes, you can use the Pen tool... unless you're trying to draw something exotic – like an arrow... (And no, the Arrow tool does not make it easier either.)

Please fix the Brush tool's "continue last stroke" feature so we can use it for quick and basic pixel line drawing! It can't be that difficult.

[keximus]

Still broken.
To be honest, the fact that such a simple feature doesn't work and/or needs to be explained says a lot about the effort that has been put into a Mac version...from my point of view, there have been to many things that should normally work which I've had to look up online because they didn't.

[Yamanote]

I don't understand why the Paint Brush and Pixel tools have different settings?

[Ballonseide]

This seems to have been fixed in 1.7.0.

[Judith82]

I was looking for the same thing.

I finally found out by try-and-error.

Instead of the brush tool use the Pen Tool (in the screenshot example in the tools list 4 further below from the brush).

In the tool bar you can activate the line, select line type and  choose line properties.

Here you can even create arrows.

 

 

[Ballonseide]

Yes, the Pen tool works as a substitute for some purposes. But Pen will generate a vector object, with all that entails. This thread is about the Pixel and Brush tools and about being able to lay down lines on a rasterized layer (i. e. drawing pixels directly). This was broken before because "Continue last stroke" (when holding Shift) had erroneous behavior (at least on macOS). That was fixed in AP version 1.7.0, as I wrote above. You can now click with the Pixel/Brush tool to lay down an origin object, hold Shift, click somewhere else and get a proper line between both points.

What's still missing, though, is an option to constrain a line to right angles. Right now, to draw a perfectly horizontal pixel line, you have to zoom in to 400 % or so and carefully place the second pixel at the exact same image height as the first. Very tedious. I think Shift+Alt would be an obvious candidate for this as it is not currently used, at least in the Mac version. (Or it is, but it just duplicates what Alt alone does (color picking). I don't think there's any use for having color picking on Alt+Drag and Shift-Alt-Drag as well.)

Also, a visual preview of the line you're about to draw would be very useful (when holding down Shift). Right now, you're basically drawing blind – you only know what the line is gonna end up like when you've drawn it, meaning you have to do a lot of undo/retry.

[RoberthStones]

I have the straight line issue. I come here to find a solution, and I realize that there have been two years of people complaining and nothing has changed. The same happened with a different issue. I’m starting thinking that I lost my money buying Affinity Photo. 

[Ballonseide]

5 hours ago, RoberthStones said:

I have the straight line issue. I come here to find a solution, and I realize that there have been two years of people complaining and nothing has changed.

As I wrote above, the basic straight line pixel drawing (using Shift = "Continue last stroke") was fixed in the Mac version in June 2019. What issue are you experiencing exactly?

[RoberthStones]

The bug is fixed. What is not fixed, is the idea of only having straight lines as continuous lines. What if you want to draw a bunch of parallels lines quickly?
Is there a way to quickly draw non-continuous but straight lines? 

[walt.farrell]

16 minutes ago, RoberthStones said:

The bug is fixed. What is not fixed, is the idea of only having straight lines as continuous lines. What if you want to draw a bunch of parallels lines quickly?
Is there a way to quickly draw non-continuous but straight lines? 

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Do you mean that you want a dashed line, like:

If so, I think the only support is via the Pen Tool. Click to create the left end-point. Click again to create the right end-point. Adjust the Stroke style to be a dashed line, with the parameters you want. Then, if you need it in raster form rather than vector, right-click on that layer in the Layers panel and choose Rasterize.

[lepr]

34 minutes ago, RoberthStones said:

What if you want to draw a bunch of parallels lines quickly?
Is there a way to quickly draw non-continuous but straight lines? 

click the start of a line, shift+click the end of that line

click the start of a line, shift+click the end of that line

click the start of a line, shift+click the end of that line

...

[RoberthStones]

How about “ I I I I I I I I I”?
I know there are ways to do that. The issue is that none of them are quick and easy as hand drawing should be. 
And I wonder why is that? 
Why not make such an easy change like that? Why not adding a preference option? Like ”shift - continuous lines” ”shift - straight lines”

Some other drawing tools work with straight lines, then it is possible and not difficult to achieve. 

I understand that the name is Affinity Photo and not Affinity Draw, so it doesn’t work as actual drawers and painters do. But, come on...

... this is an easy opportunity to improve, take it  

 

[walt.farrell]

48 minutes ago, RoberthStones said:

How about “ I I I I I I I I I”?
I know there are ways to do that. The issue is that none of them are quick and easy as hand drawing should be. 
And I wonder why is that? 
Why not make such an easy change like that? Why not adding a preference option? Like ”shift - continuous lines” ”shift - straight lines”

Some other drawing tools work with straight lines, then it is possible and not difficult to achieve. 

I understand that the name is Affinity Photo and not Affinity Draw, so it doesn’t work as actual drawers and painters do. But, come on...

... this is an easy opportunity to improve, take it  

 

If you would like to see a change, there are specific forums for requesting that. This forum is for asking questions, not requesting changes, and the Serif staff that look at user requests are not looking for them here.

However, for a set of parallel lines like you showed:

1. Create one of them.
2. Ctrl+J (Windows) or Cmd+J (Mac) to duplicate it.
3. Move the duplicate the distance you want.
4. Ctrl/Cmd+J to create a third one with the same spacing. Cmd/Ctrl+J for each additional one you want.

Or, create as many as you want by using Ctrl/Cmd+J repeatedly to duplicate the first one, then select them all and use the Alignment functions to distribute them with the spacing you want.

[Ballonseide]

58 minutes ago, RoberthStones said:

I know there are ways to do that. The issue is that none of them are quick and easy as hand drawing should be. 

I believe the core issue here is that there is no support for constraining the line drawing – be it parallel, angled, or based on a previous trajectory. Instead, you're supposed to use the Pen tool for that (i.e. vectors), which is itself not exactly straightforward. Raster-based drawing is basically possible only slightly above MS Paint level. I share your disappointment that AP doesn't give the user the freedom to draw however he wants but requires learning the ins and outs of its often quirky special-purpose tools.

9 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

However, for a set of parallel lines like you showed:

1. Create one of them.
2. Ctrl+J (Windows) or Cmd+J (Mac) to duplicate it.
3. Move the duplicate the distance you want.
4. Ctrl/Cmd+J to create a third one with the same spacing. Cmd/Ctrl+J for each additional one you want.

Except that this duplicate-move-duplicate method doesn't work too reliably. Just now I tried to create various repeating lines in the way you described, and sometimes it would work, but sometimes AP would quickly forget the movement of the duplicated piece and duplicate the next one in-place, or somewhere unexpected.

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, Ballonseide said:

Except that this duplicate-move-duplicate method doesn't work too reliably. Just now I tried to create various repeating lines in the way you described, and sometimes it would work, but sometimes AP would quickly forget the movement of the duplicated piece and duplicate the next one in-place, or somewhere unexpected.

If that is happening (which I have never seen) you might want to create a bug report about it.

[RoberthStones]

In conclusion, there is no way to sketch straight lines quickly. I guess I’ll have to work on Sketchbook Pro and then use AP as the second step. It’s a shame I can’t use it exclusively because I find it powerful. 
Can you imagen making a drawing like this using, ctrl, Copy, Pasting, vectors, etc.?  
Well, I'll start asking for the change. 
Thank you! 

 

 

[Ballonseide]

33 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

If that is happening (which I have never seen) you might want to create a bug report about it.

The problem is that I don't see any pattern. It just sometimes fails. Just as many other tools sometimes fail or confuse me for no reason that I can discern. I've pretty much given up on trying to understand why. I'm an irregular user of AP and don't have the time (nor the nerve) to file reports every time, or watch tutorials or ask around in the forum. If stuff that seems fundamental to me doesn't seem to be working reliably (or sensibly for that matter) even years after first using the software, that indicates to me I should just suck it up and put my money elsewhere next time.