AP: Modifier keys w/brush drag to change brush size

[casterle]

I was watching a tutorial in which the author held down the Ctrl and/or Alt keys (or both) while dragging the brush on the screen to change brush width and hardness. I can't get this to work. Has this feature been removed or is it accessed in a different way?

[walt.farrell]

Press and hold the Alt key. Press both mouse buttons. Drag right/left to adjust the brush size, or up/down to adjust the hardness.

[R C-R]

You were probably watching a tutorial being run on a Mac. Holding down the CTRL + Alt keys shortcut for this only works on the Mac versions.

Long story short, this is because on Macs there is a "Command" key that is for most things the equivalent of the Windows CTRL key, so on Macs the CTRL key is available as an extra modifier key.

[casterle]

On 2/28/2019 at 3:31 PM, walt.farrell said:

Press and hold the Alt key. Press both mouse buttons. Drag right/left to adjust the brush size, or up/down to adjust the hardness.

Thank you - that works. But can you tell me how to do this with my tablet? 

On 3/1/2019 at 2:07 AM, R C-R said:

You were probably watching a tutorial being run on a Mac. Holding down the CTRL + Alt keys shortcut for this only works on the Mac versions.

Long story short, this is because on Macs there is a "Command" key that is for most things the equivalent of the Windows CTRL key, so on Macs the CTRL key is available as an extra modifier key.

I was indeed. In my limited experience, the differences between Mac and Windows keystrokes generally involve using Ctrl/Alt vs Command/Option modifier keys and not much more. This is a major change and makes me wonder how to accomplish this on Windows with my tablet. 

[walt.farrell]

15 minutes ago, casterle said:

Thank you - that works. But can you tell me how to do this with my tablet

I'm not near a tablet at the moment, do I can only guess: press Alt and the lower left corner of the track pad and the lower right corner and drag your finger.

But if you don't have the keyboard attached, I'm not sure. Other than showing the onscreen keyboard.

[casterle]

13 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm not near a tablet at the moment, do I can only guess: press Alt and the lower left corner of the track pad and the lower right corner and drag your finger.

But if you don't have the keyboard attached, I'm not sure. Other than showing the onscreen keyboard.

Thanks, Walt. I'll play around a bit.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, casterle said:

In my limited experience, the differences between Mac and Windows keystrokes generally involve using Ctrl/Alt vs Command/Option modifier keys and not much more.

In most apps that come in both Mac & Windows versions, the Mac Command & Windows Control keys are usually functionally equivalent. On Macs, the Alt key is typically referred to as the "Option" key & often has both labels printed on it, but it has the same function on both platforms, which is why in these forums it is sometimes referred to as the "Alt/Option key."

As the story goes, the Control key initially was included on Mac keyboards only to support entry of the non-printing characters of the ASCII character table for the few apps that needed that, but since in those days Steve Jobs believed a mouse should only have one button, the Control key was quickly repurposed as a modifier to enable support for a second button function, sometimes referred to as a "control-click." So until Apple finally began selling Macs with a two button mouse, a control-click was the only officially supported way to do what we now more often refer to as a "right-click."

Anyway, this means that these days the Mac Control key can be used application-wide as an additional modifier key instead of just as an alternative right-click. Since modifier keys can be used in various combinations there are more of these combinations available for use in Mac apps than in Windows ones, all because Macs did not originally ship with a two button mouse.

[casterle]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

In most apps that come in both Mac & Windows versions, the Mac Command & Windows Control keys are usually functionally equivalent. On Macs, the Alt key is typically referred to as the "Option" key & often has both labels printed on it, but it has the same function on both platforms, which is why in these forums it is sometimes referred to as the "Alt/Option key."

As the story goes, the Control key initially was included on Mac keyboards only to support entry of the non-printing characters of the ASCII character table for the few apps that needed that, but since in those days Steve Jobs believed a mouse should only have one button, the Control key was quickly repurposed as a modifier to enable support for a second button function, sometimes referred to as a "control-click." So until Apple finally began selling Macs with a two button mouse, a control-click was the only officially supported way to do what we now more often refer to as a "right-click."

Anyway, this means that these days the Mac Control key can be used application-wide as an additional modifier key instead of just as an alternative right-click. Since modifier keys can be used in various combinations there are more of these combinations available for use in Mac apps than in Windows ones, all because Macs did not originally ship with a two button mouse.

Thanks for the detailed reply. 

I didn't realize that Macs had Control, Command and Option keys. That's handy, but it doesn't explain why Affinity chose to use Alt-LMB-RMB instead of Ctrl-Alt-LMB on Windows. My tablet's pen doesn't have two mouse buttons, and even if it did it would be hard to press them both and manipulate the pen at the same time. My keyboard has Ctrl-Alt - why not use them?

[R C-R]

15 minutes ago, casterle said:

My keyboard has Ctrl-Alt - why not use them?

I don't know enough about how Windows assigns functions to the Ctrl key to answer that, but could it be that it would conflict with some system level functional assignment? A few such conflicts occur on Macs, preventing the in-app use of the Command key in shortcuts when it is already used to invoke some OS level function.

[firstdefence]

10 hours ago, casterle said:

My keyboard has Ctrl-Alt - why not use them?

Why not change them and utilise them yourself, customising options are there to suit your way of doing things. Be aware that particular keystrokes may already be set and this is indicated with a yellow triangle to indicate conflict.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Why not change them and utilise them yourself, customising options are there to suit your way of doing things. Be aware that particular keystrokes may already be set and this is indicated with a yellow triangle to indicate conflict.

Because this topic is about changing brush size (or hardness, perhaps) by dragging the brush, and the keys for that are not customizable.

(Also, the OP is trying to use a tablet (Surface Pro, perhaps) and stylus. Unlike the iPad version, the desktop version isn't really optimized for that setup.)

[casterle]

5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

(Also, the OP is trying to use a tablet (Surface Pro, perhaps) and stylus. Unlike the iPad version, the desktop version isn't really optimized for that setup.)

Well, it's the cheapest Wacom I couild find - I paid about $70 for it. I think the more expensive Wacoms have more features to help with sending keystrokes to the app and such. 

Don't most people use tablets for selections, painting and such? 

[casterle]

18 hours ago, R C-R said:

I don't know enough about how Windows assigns functions to the Ctrl key to answer that, but could it be that it would conflict with some system level functional assignment? A few such conflicts occur on Macs, preventing the in-app use of the Command key in shortcuts when it is already used to invoke some OS level function.

It can't conflict if the modifiers are applied to a mouse drag rather than a keypress. On PC's there is a Windows key (with the MS logo on it) that is used by the OS. For example, Windows + E opens Windows Explorer (the file browser). The other modifiers (Ctrl, Alt and Shift for non-textual contexts) are readily available to the app (unless you've remapped them at the OS level for hotkeys, etc).