ongoing issues/questions

[Jason Pickthall]

Hi Guys

Really liking Affinity so far, there are a few niggles

- Odd square artifact/noise when painting 

- Can you distort when in transform? rather than rotate and uniform scale?

- if there a way of disabling alpha lock as I keep turning it on by mistake

- If there a way to combine the different work modes, or create your own I use the free lasso tool alot and paint within it but having to switch between the modes makes it a bit laborious 

 

thanks! 

[R C-R]

I'm not sure what you mean about square artifact/noise but if you are using a 100% hardness brush setting with the Paint Brush Tool, you can expect squared off stair-stepped edges because that tool paints pixels & each pixel can have only one color. To avoid that, use a less hard brush setting, which will blend the edges using what is called anti-aliasing. That will blur the edges a bit to make this less noticeable. It also helps to use documents with larger pixel dimensions so there are more pixels.

In the Transform panel, make sure the width & height aspect ratio link is not enabled (no lines above & below the chain link icon) & you can change height & width values there independently, or on the canvas just drag on a side rather than edge handle.

Alpha lock where & in which app?

I'm not sure what you mean about work modes, but each Persona should include the applicable tools for selections, painting, vector shape creation, etc., but the details depend on which app you are using.

[Jason Pickthall]

okay cheers I may have to take footage of the artefact thing Im getting (its like there is a square hole which appears then kind of fills a bit later, its sort of like a lag.  I have seen it referenced before but didnt know if it had been fixed) 

The proper name I was looking for was the 'Protect alpha' setting in Affinity Photo - its on the brush settings at the bottom and my hand always hits it

Transform wise I still cant skew it or distort the select (i.e. just pull around one of the anchors) I can only scale uniformly and non uniformly from what I can see

By work modes I did mean personas (Im still learning affinity terminology) in Affinity - It can be a slow down/break flow to have to switch between different personas when creating a selection and then painting in it. 

Thanks for the reply though!

 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Jason Pickthall said:

Transform wise I still cant skew it or distort the select (i.e. just pull around one of the anchors) I can only scale uniformly and non uniformly from what I can see

To skew a shape on the canvas, select it with the Move Tool & hover the pointer just outside one of the center (not corner) selection handles & move it around slightly until the icon changes to a pair of left & right or up & down facing arrows & then click & drag in the direction indicated by the arrows. The area where this happens is only a couple of pixels wide & tall, so you may need to be patient & keep moving the pointer around a bit slowly until you find it.

Stretching or shrinking the shape on the canvas is easier because you do that by placing the pointer directly on a selection handle, where the icon changes to a double-headed arrow indicating the direction for dragging.

To skew using the Transform panel, first select the object with the Move Tool active & then change the "S:" value in the Transform panel. The 9 anchor points on the left of the panel control the skew, rotation, width, height, etc. center point.

For either method, an alternative is to click the "Show Rotation Center" button in the context toolbar with the item selected with the Move Tool (or where applicable selected with the Node tool). The toolbar icon looks like a round crosshair target & clicking it puts a similarly shaped icon on the selection. You can trag that anywhere (even off the canvas) to change the rotation center. If you do that, do not click on any of the 9 anchors in the Transform panel, because that turns off the new rotation center, resetting it to the one for that anchor.

Also pay attention to the Status bar at the bottom of the window when doing stuff on the canvas because it shows various options & changes depending on where the pointer is on the canvas.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Jason Pickthall said:

By work modes I did mean personas (Im still learning affinity terminology) in Affinity - It can be a slow down/break flow to have to switch between different personas when creating a selection and then painting in it

You shouldn't need to switch Personas to make a selection and paint on it. You would just switch tools.