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Raster Brush problems in Affinity Photo and Designer


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Hello! I am fairly new to Affinity Designer and Photo, but I feel that this problem isn’t due to my lack of experience. But if it is, I will be even more grateful for any expert advice and counsel comming my way.

I have been using AD and AP for illustrating and I have been noticing some bugs in the raster brush response. I have experiemented with a mouse, a Huion graphics tablet, and a XP-Pen Artist 15.6 tablet. I am finding the same problems using all three when creating art with rasher brushes (especially in Affinity Photo). 

Today it was so bad that I was unable to much of anything. In fact, AD totally crashed on me today (I was very please that it was able to recover my work though!)

With that all laid out on the table— 

In describing the bugs in more detail: I am experiencing a tremendous amount of lagging and choppiness when I sketch/stamp/paint (especially with bigger brushes or brushes that have been customized/specially made by third parties like DAUB or Frankentoon). Some brushes don’t even show up at all. All of the brushes are super small for some reason, though I am working in 300 dpi, I feel like I should be able to upsize my brushes without any huge problems occurring... I definitely cannot work a document that is any higher in dpi without being absolutely crippled in my sketch/stamp/painting performance. I am not having this problem as much with the eraser tool. I’m mostly noticing it with the paint and stamps brushes.

Any help here will be greatly appreciated.

(I can provide screenshots if requested. I felt that I wasn’t really able to convey what I’m describing in just a screenshot, but if it is helpful, let me know and I will post some.)

Thank you!

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  • Staff

Hi borose and Welcome to the Forums,

With all tablets we suggest making sure you have the latest drivers installed for that tablet.  I'd even suggest uninstalling the current drivers, downloading the drivers from XP-Pen's website and installing those.  I've had a search of the Forums and others report the XP-Pen Artist is working with Designer and Photo.  Hopefully a reinstall/update of the drivers will solve the issue. 

Failing that we may need a screen recording showing the issue.  Also is this on Windows or Mac?

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So I deleted my XP-Pen Artist driver and reinstalled it... and I’m still having the same problems. And it isn’t just when I use the XP-Pen Artist 15.6 display monitor.

I am actually finding that the delays and choppiness are even worse when I’m just using a mouse (my display monitor completely disconnected). 

I took a video of my screen using my display monitor and then using just my mouse. I played around with the pens using 192 dpi then 300 dpi. As you may notice, I am experiencing more lag problems when the brushes are increased in size or more complicated in design. Over all AD is not as bad in lag and choppiness as AP. I’ve found that even that basic brushes in AP look terrible when I try to use them.

You'll also notice that I’ve been experiencing other minor bugs in AD, predominantly.

I couldn't get the screen recordings I took to upload. I tried to compress them and upload that way and it still wouldn't upload. So I uploaded the zipped files to dropbox and have linked them below:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tfs11okehc4v1uq/Drawing with computer mouse pad.zip?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2qyowe20q5ktdv2/Drawing with XP-Pen Display Monitor.zip?dl=0

Edited by borose
grammar and punctuation corrections
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UPDATE: I am now experiencing problems with Affinity Designer Vector Paint brushes. The brushes are coming out super jagged small or not at all. I have to increase them tremendously which doesn't do much at all... I've done some more experimenting with Affinity Photo. No matter what I do in regards to the settings, the brushes all come out super jagged and choppy and are super laggy and TINY (the raster brushes are much worse in Affinity photo then they are in Affinity Design). This happens no matter what whether I am using a mouse, mouse pad, graphics tablet, or graphics monitor.

I have attached another dropbox link below. I am using a mouse only to draw these strokes. My XP-Pen Artist 15.6 is disconnected.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/36kpv0vd8jkfden/Screen Recording 2019-03-01 at 10.15.37 PM.zip?dl=0

Edited by borose
added more description regarding the issue
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Does this all happen in any other apps? Krita, Media Bang, Sketchbook

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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2 hours ago, >|< said:

The brushes look tiny because your document view is greatly zoomed out. A document measuring 6000 mm x 4000 mm with a ppi of 300 equates to over 3 billion pixels.

Considering this, it might be useful if in Affinity we could specify the pixel resolution of documents in units other than inches, for example in pixels per mm, kind of like this (very crude!) mockup:
1853182317_newdocppi.jpg.237ad8bb758caba77a792b6512a2a518.jpg

If nothing else, this should (maybe) avoid some of the dpi vs. ppi debate.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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11 minutes ago, >|< said:

You should have written pixel density. Resolution is synonymous with density in some apps but, in Affinity and some others, resolution already means the width and height.

Well, I did say it was a very crude mockup! Besides, in some contexts density is synonymous with opacity, so maybe to be a bit clearer it should say "Pixel Density (resolution)" with the two fields moved below that? There is more than enough room for that.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 5 weeks later...

Hello again. Sorry my response is kinda late. I thought I had notifications enabled, but apparently not. Anyways, in the videos I draw in different dpi's, though I do believe the canvas was kinda big. I tried drawing on a smaller canvas size and had the same problem. The brush performance got noticeably worse the higher the dpi and with larger canvases (which makes sense), but the brush performance was still terrible either way.

I returned my XP-Pen Tablet (It was way to huge for my liking) and bought a Huion Pro 11 inch display recently and I was still having the same issues at first. I tried other drawing programs like Krita, Corel Painter, and Clip Studio Pro and all work beautifully when using the brushes. Even at 600 dpi and with big canvases.

Since then though, I have recently tried the brushes in Affinity again and at 400 dpi, and the brushes seemed to be working normally as they should be. I'll update it they act up again.

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On 3/2/2019 at 12:55 AM, firstdefence said:

Does this all happen in any other apps? Krita, Media Bang, Sketchbook

No, it does not. I have tried Krita, Clip Studio Pro, Corel Painter, and Sketchbook. They are work great. Though Corel Painter and Krita seemed to be really buggy in other ways, but their brushes worked great.

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  • 1 year later...

I have an issue when creating my own raster brush...

Ive exporting the brush design as a PNG with transparent background, imported back into AD and created a new brush. This all works fine and the brush works as expected.... but when I enter the “properties” menu I cannot see the brush displayed in the preview window because my brush design is black and the background of preview is also black. 
 

I’m I doing something wrong? Does anyone else have this issue? Is there a way around this?

cheers

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9 hours ago, ra.skill said:

I have an issue when creating my own raster brush...

Ive exporting the brush design as a PNG with transparent background, imported back into AD and created a new brush. This all works fine and the brush works as expected.... but when I enter the “properties” menu I cannot see the brush displayed in the preview window because my brush design is black and the background of preview is also black. 
 

I’m I doing something wrong? Does anyone else have this issue? Is there a way around this?

cheers

Are you creating an image brush or NEW Intensity Brush?
Image brush can give you the above results! an Intensity brush should rectify your issue

 

Affinity Version 1 (10.6) Affinity Version 2.4.1 All (Designer | Photo | Publisher)   Beta; 2.4 2.2356
OS:Windows 10 Pro 22H2 OS Build 19045.4046+ Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.19053.1000.0
Rig:AMD FX 8350 and AMD Radeon (R9 380 Series) Settings Version 21.04.01 
Radeon Settings Version 2020
20.1.03) + Wacom Intuous 4M with driver 6.3.41-1

 

 

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4 hours ago, StuartRc said:

Are you creating an image brush or NEW Intensity Brush?
Image brush can give you the above results! an Intensity brush should rectify your issue

Thanks for your help @StuartRc

Yes you’re correct the Intensity brush does make it visible in the “edit brush” window... but now the brushes colours are inverted and it has a frame around it??

hmm? Stuck

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mmm...weird!

Could you upload the brush/nozzle to have a look?

 

Affinity Version 1 (10.6) Affinity Version 2.4.1 All (Designer | Photo | Publisher)   Beta; 2.4 2.2356
OS:Windows 10 Pro 22H2 OS Build 19045.4046+ Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.19053.1000.0
Rig:AMD FX 8350 and AMD Radeon (R9 380 Series) Settings Version 21.04.01 
Radeon Settings Version 2020
20.1.03) + Wacom Intuous 4M with driver 6.3.41-1

 

 

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