LCamachoDesign Posted November 19, 2018 Posted November 19, 2018 There is still no Pen Mode option anywhere in this application, this makes drawing and illustrating on Surface Pros, Wacom Cintiq, etc very annoying as you'll leave unwanted marks when you lay the hand on the screen. For anyone wondering, Pen Mode is an option that disables touch drawing. All I ask is a simple if statement: Fingers are touching the canvas, are they zooming/scrolling? If yes, do the scroll/zoom, if no do nothing. That's it, no further logic needed. Can we do this one thing? It would help massively all illustrators out there. Thanks! lynzrand and Wiredframe 2
LCamachoDesign Posted December 17, 2018 Author Posted December 17, 2018 Bumping this again, it's an important usability feature. Can we get a word from developers on this? Thanks!
LCamachoDesign Posted December 21, 2018 Author Posted December 21, 2018 Illustration is one of the things where Affinity Designer really excels. To the best of my knowledge no other software, Adobe or otherwise, does vector shapes + bitmap brushes + global colours. It's a unique selling point that makes it stand out from everyone else. Investing a bit of time in adding a Pen mode feature would really help cement Designer as a 'go to' software for illustration purposes.
LCamachoDesign Posted March 4, 2019 Author Posted March 4, 2019 I've looked into this and it seems like an option to do this kind of palm rejection already exists in the iPad versions, it's called Touch for Gestures Only. Can we please get this on Windows too? The API to do this is dead simple, it literally tells you if the input is a finger touch or a pen. Here I'll even point you to it: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/api/winuser/nf-winuser-getpointertype Can we have a word from the developers if this is being added in 1.7? Or are we supposed to keep doing the following dance: draw draw more draw a bit draw yet some more realize that between 1. and 2. a stray mark was done under your hand undo everything until 1. redo all your work until point 4. again hope that this time no stray marks were done otherwise it's back to 1. get frustrated that something this simple is overlooked Thanks! lynzrand and barrettorama 2
Wiredframe Posted March 4, 2019 Posted March 4, 2019 +1 for this. I keep disabling the touch panel just for using Affinity Designer with my Surface Pen ^^ LCamachoDesign 1
LCamachoDesign Posted March 4, 2019 Author Posted March 4, 2019 1 hour ago, Wiredframe said: +1 for this. I keep disabling the touch panel just for using Affinity Designer with my Surface Pen ^^ That's a work around, but then you can't pinch to zoom anymore…
Wiredframe Posted March 5, 2019 Posted March 5, 2019 Right, I'm using a bluetooth mouse to zoom via click+space. It's a workaround and I don't draw too often. But I agree pen mode should be implemented. LCamachoDesign 1
barrettorama Posted March 13, 2019 Posted March 13, 2019 Agreed! I picked up an ideapad to use the pen feature for drawing. It's nearly impossible to use in Affinity Designer/Photo. If you go in a the wrong angle or lift the pen too high, you get marks or new boxes under your hand. Here are some other posts requesting the same feature: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/63156-how-do-you-disable-touch-drawing-on-affinity-photo/&do=findComment&comment=427164https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/58505-disable-just-finger-drawing/ (This mentions Krita; an open source drawing program that toggles this feature via "Enable Touch Painting") https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/51014-option-to-disable-touch-input-on-tools/ https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/48625-disabling-the-touch-on-the-surface-book/ https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/30004-pen-sensitivity-with-touch-rejection/ https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/40151-toggle-painting-with-touch-when-using-touchscreenstylus/ https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/50407-option-to-disable-tool-input-with-touch-on-windows/ Unfortunately evidence shows that windows does not handle this well (with the "disable touches when using the Pen to draw" feature) on it's own and Microsoft has added software like Sketchbook and Sticky notes, that disable touch and only respond to pen on the drawing surface (These work great). Hope this is something we can have added. As mentioned above, there is an open source painting project called Krita that handles this beautifully, maybe they can be a source of inspiration. It's a pain to switch back and forth between drawing and design. Thanks! -Ryan
LCamachoDesign Posted March 13, 2019 Author Posted March 13, 2019 2 hours ago, barrettorama said: Unfortunately evidence shows that windows does not handle this well (with the "disable touches when using the Pen to draw" feature) on it's own and Microsoft has added software like Sketchbook and Sticky notes, that disable touch and only respond to pen on the drawing surface (These work great). Windows handles this just fine, you're just misunderstanding what that option does (it's not very well worded to be honest). With that option enabled what happens is, if you start drawing with the pen first you won't be able to interact with the applications using fingers at the same time. For example, if you start drawing a line with the pen in an application you won't be able to pinch to zoom with your other hand until you lift the pen off the screen. If you disable that option you'll be able to draw lines with the pen and pinch to zoom with your other hand just fine. This option exists only to lessen issues with old and unsupported legacy applications. It's not meant to, and it actually could never, solve all pen + touch interaction situations. The correct way to handle touch + pen is how softwares like Sketchbook Pro do. When a user interaction happens the software asks Windows "what was this interaction?", and Windows will reply saying it was a "mouse clock", a "finger touch", a "pen tap", etc. There's no secret magic for this to happen either, the Windows function to do it is well documented and accessible to anyone, it's called GetPointerType and I've linked to it in a previous post. It's not new either, it's been around since Windows 8.0, that is for 7 years now.
Mark Ingram Posted March 14, 2019 Posted March 14, 2019 Knowing what API to call is not the issue. LCamachoDesign 1
LCamachoDesign Posted March 14, 2019 Author Posted March 14, 2019 5 hours ago, Mark Ingram said: Knowing what API to call is not the issue. Ok. Then is there something else you can tell us about this? So we can request it in a form that works with for you and your team?
OneClickAway Posted March 14, 2019 Posted March 14, 2019 I am in the imminent process of purchasing a replacement computer. Ideally a 2 in 1 and in particular the MS Surface Pro 2 in the hope that I can remove an external Cintq stylus by using the tablet feature with the MS stylus. I bump this topic as it is critical for my photo editing and illustration.
LCamachoDesign Posted March 15, 2019 Author Posted March 15, 2019 17 hours ago, OneClickAway said: I am in the imminent process of purchasing a replacement computer. Ideally a 2 in 1 and in particular the MS Surface Pro 2 in the hope that I can remove an external Cintq stylus by using the tablet feature with the MS stylus. I bump this topic as it is critical for my photo editing and illustration. While 2-in-1 computers like a Surface Pro are the most obvious devices to benefit from this, let's now forget there are pen displays that also support touch, like Cintiq 22/27 touch or the Dell Canvas 27. They also benefit greatly from this. OneClickAway 1
OneClickAway Posted March 22, 2019 Posted March 22, 2019 Good point. Think about the stylus/pen in the broadest sense of what hardware requires programming for it to function. Cheers! Scott LCamachoDesign 1
johnkrajewski Posted March 22, 2019 Posted March 22, 2019 I am using a Surface Studio 2 and am constantly removing elements drawn unintentionally when I am trying to move or zoom the document. This is a workflow killer. Being able to disable gestures from altering the canvas content would be a huge productivity improvement. LCamachoDesign 1
LCamachoDesign Posted March 29, 2019 Author Posted March 29, 2019 On 3/22/2019 at 4:30 AM, johnkrajewski said: I am using a Surface Studio 2 and am constantly removing elements drawn unintentionally when I am trying to move or zoom the document. This is a workflow killer. Being able to disable gestures from altering the canvas content would be a huge productivity improvement. Yeah, I forgot about the Surface Studio, but yes that's also a use case. Anyway, I have good news! One of the changes in beta 1.7.0.284 was: "Added 'Touch for Gestures Only' option in Preferences" I've just tested the said option and it works perfectly! No more stray marks! Thank you Affinity team! You've just made the workflow of all illustrators using Designer (and Photo) much easier and faster! This issue can now be marked as closed and archived away. Thanks again to everyone! lynzrand, Mark Ingram, adirusf and 1 other 4
barrettorama Posted June 16, 2019 Posted June 16, 2019 On 3/29/2019 at 6:47 AM, LCamachoDesign said: Anyway, I have good news! One of the changes in beta 1.7.0.284 was: "Added 'Touch for Gestures Only' option in Preferences" I'm a little late to the party (I had not tested the beta versions since I'd commented.) Thank you Affinity Dev Group! The pen feature is working absolutely perfect now. -Ryan LCamachoDesign and Mark Ingram 2
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