Improvements to raster brush/eraser?

[postmadesign]

I would like to see some improvements to the brush engine in the affinity programs. I have been using the latest beta, but was disappointed that there seems to be hardly any improvement in this area. The most prominent bug has to do with the custom wet edges setting. Many lovely dynamic brushes have these, but these properties do not work when erasing: so when I want to use the same brush to erase (which is my normal workflow, paint/erase with the same brush) the brush is completely different, soft and blurry. I find this to be very annoying when trying to use AD or APh for drawing and painting. I have to create a workaround with masks or switch to a hard normal eraser, which does not look as nice. A related bug is that when I switch back from eraser to brush, the wet edges setting of the brush does not work, and I get a soft blurry brush. I have to switch back and forth between brushes for the real brush look. I really hope you can improve this, as it is pretty groundwork stuff when using these apps for raster illustration. The brush engine has potential, but this is holding it back. 

 

I use an iMac 2011 with 12 GB ram, el Capitan (no Metal) and and iPad Pro 12.9

 

PS I posted this in the normal suggestions section, but got no response, so I hope someone from Serif can respond here....

[Old Bruce]

I have to admit that I am having a very difficult time trying to imagine how this would work. Is the outer edge of the brush going to erase more than the middle? As I move the brush across the pixels wouldn't the outer edge clear everything it passes over? 

[postmadesign]

Please check out, as an example the "ink brush small" from the "pens" category: it has wet edges set, which creates the appearance of the ink slightly running on paper. The actual brush tips are rather soft. It is the wet edges setting that creates the specific effect. Now if you use this brush to erase, which I normally would, and you get a soft brush without the edge effect. I would say the eraser setting of the brush should be the same, just a negative version of it.

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, postmadesign said:

I would say the eraser setting of the brush should be the same, just a negative version of it.

That is where my problem with conceptualizing the result is. I just can't imagine what the result should look like. Also I think we have different pens as well.

[postmadesign]

In Clip Studio Paint, there is the option to paint with "transparent pixels", which basically makes every brush into an eraser directly. One can easily switch between color/transparency with a hotkey. Instead of adding pixels/alpha it removes alpha, which is really all there is to it. If I use a hard edge brush, it gives a hard edge eraser, a soft airbrush gives a soft airbrush eraser etc.

This is what I would like to see in Affinity, and is also standard in other painting software, for instance in Art Studio Pro & Procreate. Paintstorm has an eraser button on the brush setting which turns every brush into an eraser. This is why I find it hard to work with Affinity's system, it just seems counter-intuitive, and the wet edges settings sometimes not working on tool switch is just very annoying...

[postmadesign]

Could anyone from the development team tell me something about this? Is this an area you are working on? @Ben @MattP

[Ben]

Sorry, MattP and I both work mainly on vector tools.  We'll see if someone from the raster team can comment...

[fde101]

On 3/19/2019 at 3:12 PM, postmadesign said:

it just seems counter-intuitive

Not sure that I agree here.

If I tried to paint with transparent paint over top of red paint, I wouldn't be able to see through my canvas - I would still be looking at my red paint.

[postmadesign]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

Not sure that I agree here.

If I tried to paint with transparent paint over top of red paint, I wouldn't be able to see through my canvas - I would still be looking at my red paint.

The word "transparent paint" is certainly confusing, I agree: it is a term Clip Studio Paint uses. What I mean is, that the brush adds alpha/pixels and the eraser removes it, but the mark made should be the same. I can use brush sharing in Affinity, which is a great feature, but when brush and eraser versions of the brush are different, this is not very useful.

[fde101]

11 minutes ago, postmadesign said:

The word "transparent paint" is certainly confusing

That is two words, and no, they are not confusing at all.  I'm talking about physical paint.  The tools involved loosely mimic real-world counterparts.  If I paint with real-world transparent (clear) paint that does not mean that I can see through what is underneath it.  It makes sense that the a computer program for artists would mimic the behavior of the physical tools those artists might use.

[postmadesign]

I have to disagree, whilst these programs mimic some properties of real-world tools, to archieve a naturalistic result, but they will always be computer programs that have features that real-world tools can not archieve and vice-versa.

But this is not really the point, I don't compare Affinity to Real-World media, but to other digital art programs. Affinity does some things differently than other programs, but the basics are comparable. In the programs I mentioned, the eraser behaves in a same way the brush works, in Affinity it does not (in cases where the wet edges are involved). This is what I hope they will change.

[fde101]

15 minutes ago, postmadesign said:

In the programs I mentioned, the eraser behaves in a same way the brush works, in Affinity it does not (in cases where the wet edges are involved).

To be clear, I have no issues with the recommendation that the eraser tool work with a larger set of the brush features defining its shape and behavior.

I was responding to the suggestion that normal brushes should act like erasers and replace content with reduced opacity rather than using the opacity to blend with the existing content.