Paint Mixer Tool - Continuous line

[Gregory-CJ]

AP Beta 1.7.0  release.   SMUDGE TOOL / PAINT MIXER BRUSH 

 

SMUDGE TOOL

As a digital painter my approach is all about laying down colours and blending them together.  Currently, in version 1.6.7 , I use the paint brush and the smudge tool for blending. (Wish the smudge tool was better at blending colours)

The smudge tool in Beta 1.7.0 performs about the same as in 1.6.7 which is adequate , but not fantastic .Using the smudge tool sometimes produces artifacts within the colour which can be eliminated with a circular brush stroke.

 

PAINT MIXER BRUSH 

I'm trying to get my head around the paint mixer brush which holds a lot of promise for digital painters. I'm assuming that one should be able to paint a continuous line of paint but for some reason I can only get a start of a  painted line then the colour falls off.  I played with the different settings but no luck.  Am  I missing something here , or should one be able to put down uninterrupted  strokes of paint and blend them?

 Thanks for this awesome software.

See screen capture

[Chris B]

15 hours ago, Gregory-CJ said:

PAINT MIXER BRUSH 

I'm trying to get my head around the paint mixer brush which holds a lot of promise for digital painters. I'm assuming that one should be able to paint a continuous line of paint but for some reason I can only get a start of a  painted line then the colour falls off.  I played with the different settings but no luck.  Am  I missing something here , or should one be able to put down uninterrupted  strokes of paint and blend them?

You've got quite a bit of spacing looking at the screenshot, so try reducing it to 0. You should be able to paint a continuous line for as long as you need to  

Note - I've pulled this into its own thread.

[Gregory-CJ]

Hi Chris, 

Thanks for the quick response.

 Using the very latest AP  version 1.7.0.111 tested the mixer brush with 1% settings on the basic brush selection and as you can see from the attachment,

two categories, round and round soft worked well but the round light brushes just sputtered and did not generate a continuous line of colour. Your thoughts.

 

[Polygonius]

I just want to say a big thank you for fixing the paint-mixer-macro-bug! Its now possibly to  to use it with "no color" and the read works. Thank you! (The smudge-tool is still un-macro-readabel as before, but the paint-mixer is good enough for my stunts). 

Maybe i´m too un-informed, but is there any option to see in the fore/back-color-indicator if this is really "no color" (the red strike) or is it pseudo-white??? Without the red-stroke this is really confussing.

And second: You said some versions before, there is now an option to save "colors" with the tool - how does it work? For normal painter i want KEEP my current colors, and for dodge/bur/eraser(mask paint) just 100% b/w and for paint-mixer "no color"... so, how and where can i set this? 

[Gregory-CJ]

As a digital painter, I started out with Photoshop #3  a few decades ago.  Simply stated, my approach to painting is and has been the laying down colours  adjacent to one another and blending them together.

 I, along with many digital painters of that time, struggled with the fact that in PS #3 there was no blending tool for us (an opinion that was expressed throughout the forums of the day). At a time before Wacom was on the scene , it was hard to create digital paintings  using a mouse  and without the necessary blending options.  PS's smudge tool was a complete disaster and did not offer any blending options.

We had to wait several years before  Adobe's release of  release of PS CS6 in which Adobe attempted to address the lack of a workable blending tool.

Adobe's solution was  the Paint Mixer Brush Tool. Many of us at the time, felt that Adobe was playing catch up with Corel's Painter software which had long offered the mixing palette. Corel's mixing palette was simply designed and worked well.  But for me there were other issues with  Painter which prevented me from becoming a user of their software. So I stuck with Adobe and explored the Paint mixer brush tool . After much time invested in "trying to make it work" , I concluded that the Mixer Brush offering was " over thought and over engineered by the programmers of Adobe.  IMO it didn't have the " pick it up and use it functionality"... You had to fight it to get it to do wanted.

Fast forward several years and Affinity Photo comes on the sense and Yes,  a great piece of software, indeed, thank you!

But I was surprised that Affinity Photo had included their version of the Paint mixer brush. Granted its still in its early stages (version 1.7.0.111)

 Now, having spent several hours exploring  the paint mixer brush, I see  the same issue plaguing  Affinity photo's paint mixer brush and did plague Adobe's offering.

IMO , it lacks the " pick it up and use it functionality" but rather  its more like " let's struggle and see what happens approach.

I do appreciate that this is version 1.7.0.111 and can only get better. 

From a digital painter's perspective  who specializes in realism, I find that the approach offered by the paint mixer brush  doesn't work for me.

I can see that abstract painters could find the Paint mixer tool useful  in creating  patterns of colour, though.

I would be curious to know many people use the paint mixer brush regularly in their work flow?

The one redeeming quality of the Paint mixer brush is how it blends with the basic round light brush.

As of today when using Affinity photo, I rely heavily on the smudge tool for blending.  

Could the AP developers improve/enhance  the smudge tool  to match  the blending functionality of the Paint mixer  brush when  the basic round light brush is selected?

You might say , just use the Paint mixer brush , but the other properties of the paint mixer brush don't work for me.   It  offers a level of complexity which I don't need in my

workflow.     Right now I just apply the paint and the smudge/blend it.. is so simple!  Just need a more robust blender/smudge tool...like the Procreate app has... superb blenders!