Vector brushes in Affinity Photo

[rnbguy]

I am trying to use vector brushes from DAUB Essential into Affinity Photo. They import alright. Affinity Photo says "Imported ** vector brushes into category ****" but the category does not show up in the category list.

[firstdefence]

There is no vector brush in Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer has a vector brush.

[rnbguy]

Umm. did I just find a bug? Because, apparently, Affinity Photo does not complain while importing vector brushes. Rather it shows a successful message.

[Alfred]

4 minutes ago, rnbguy said:

Umm. did I just find a bug?

Yes, you did, but you aren’t the first user to have found it!

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, rnbguy said:

Affinity Photo does not complain while importing vector brushes. Rather it shows a successful message.

The message itself is accurate -- the brushes are in fact imported successfully -- but they are inaccessible because there is no vector tool in Affinity Photo that can use them, so Affinity Photo never should have allowed the import in the first place. That's the bug.

I only mention this because the imported brushes are added to an existing Affinity Photo support file & therefore use file space you might want to reclaim for something more useful. I don't know of any way to do this from within Affinity Photo itself, but there is a way to do this on Macs, & probably an equivalent way on Windows.

The basic procedure is to quit Affinity Photo (important!), then find & delete the support file. On the next launch of Affinity Photo, it will automatically create a new file that amounts to a minimum sized placeholder.

On Macs, the name of the file is vector_brushes.propcol. (I assume the propcol extension stands for property collection or something like that.) It is one of the several files in the ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/user/ folder, where the ~/ prefix is the standard UNIX abbreviation for the user home folder. Note that if you have Affinity Designer installed, there is file of the same name at a similar location, so make sure you navigate to the Photo one & don't delete the Designer one by mistake, because that is where all your Designer vector brushes are stored!

A simple way to get to this folder on Macs is to use the "Go to Folder" item on Finder's "Go" menu, & enter the folder path name just as it appears above, or even simpler to copy it from this post & paste it into the text field in Finder. (Finder understands the ~/ prefix.) Click the "Go" button, locate the vector_brushes.propcol file in the Finder window, & drag it to the trash. You can then launch Affinity Photo & it will create the minimum sized placeholder file. Empty the Trash to finish reclaiming the space & your are done.

The procedure for Windows should be the same, but obviously the folder location won't have the same path name.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

I only mention this because the imported brushes are added to an existing Affinity Photo support file & therefore use file space you might want to reclaim for something more useful. I don't know of any way to do this from within Affinity Photo itself, but there is a way to do this on Macs, & probably an equivalent way on Windows.

How about Preferences, Miscellaneous, Reset Brushes? (Or pressing Ctrl while starting and choosing Reset Brushes.)

If those work (as I suspect they would) that would be simpler than mucking about in the file system.

(Of course, it will also reset the pixel brushes, which perhaps you were trying to avoid.)

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

(Of course, it will also reset the pixel brushes, which perhaps you were trying to avoid.)

Yep.

[rnbguy]

Thanks for all the helpful comments. I removed all imported unusable vector brushes.

13 hours ago, R C-R said:

~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/user/

Unfortunately, Affinity does not support Linux. So I am using Windows. The path for Windows is %APPDATA%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\user.

[firstdefence]

5 hours ago, rnbguy said:

Thanks for all the helpful comments. I removed all imported unusable vector brushes.

Unfortunately, Affinity does not support Linux. So I am using Windows. The path for Windows is %APPDATA%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\user.

That path for for Mac not Linux 

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, firstdefence said:

That path for for Mac not Linux 

I had that same reaction initially, but decided he probably knew that, and really meant that he's a Windows user because he won't use a Mac and Affinity doesn't support Linux

[v_kyr]

6 hours ago, firstdefence said:

That path for for Mac not Linux 

Strictly speaking it‘s a Unix system file path and thus would be valid in this form on all Unix based systems and derivates.

[R C-R]

28 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Strictly speaking it‘s a Unix system file path and thus would be valid in this form on all Unix based systems and derivates.

Which path & form are you talking about? I have to be missing something because it can't be %APPDATA%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\user. Among other things it contains backslashes, which in UNIX file path notation are escape characters.

[v_kyr]

Meant this path here: ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/user/, which is a common Unix file path style, since OSX is BSD Unix based.

[rnbguy]

Sorry for starting a confusion.

On 1/5/2019 at 6:25 PM, walt.farrell said:

I had that same reaction initially, but decided he probably knew that, and really meant that he's a Windows user because he won't use a Mac and Affinity doesn't support Linux

Yes, you are right. I don't use Unix system (eg. Mac). I use Affinity products on Windows.