Brush settings RMB + CTRL

[Fantomasas]

Hi, I would like to ask for the Brush settings shortcut, which is fairly standard on many apps like Photoshop or Substance Painter.

If you hold CTRL and Right Mouse Button, you can change brush size moving the mouse horizontally and brush hardness moving the mouse vertically. I think Photo is lacking a fast brush adjustment shortcut and tapping [ ] is not a fluid workflow, it is very primitive and slow.

[Fantomasas]

Reading that ALT + RMB is supposed to give the drag-control to the brush settings, but it doesn't work. Can someone confirm that it ever worked on Windows?

[walt.farrell]

You're probably missing LMB in there.

It's a Drag that you start while you have Alt and RMB pressed, so, any of:

• RMB + Alt + Drag (which requires LMB)
• Alt + RMB + Drag
• Alt + LMB (or LMB + Alt) then RMB, then drag.

You can release the RMB as soon as you start dragging.

[Hephaistos]

Hi,

I'm a recent Win Desktop Affinity Photo user (1.6.9 and 1.7 now)

Please, make it a single mouse button : ALT/CTRL + RMB or let user assign a shorcut key.

I use a Huion tablet and am unable to to assign ALT + LMB + RMB to any buttons of my pen or tablet. Why 2 buttons ? You made all these great live brushes and performance features, I don't understand the choice of this shortcut for a basic operation as resizing a brush unless you consider painting with a mouse device is acceptable.

- The brackets shortcuts : not enough precision.

- Changing the brush size in with the slider breaks the drawing workflow and you loose the visual feedback of the brush size on your document.

Thanks.

[eobet]

On 5/19/2019 at 9:23 PM, Fantomasas said:

Reading that ALT + RMB is supposed to give the drag-control to the brush settings, but it doesn't work. Can someone confirm that it ever worked on Windows?

 

On 5/20/2019 at 8:18 PM, walt.farrell said:

You're probably missing LMB in there.

It's a Drag that you start while you have Alt and RMB pressed, so, any of:

• RMB + Alt + Drag (which requires LMB)
• Alt + RMB + Drag
• Alt + LMB (or LMB + Alt) then RMB, then drag.

You can release the RMB as soon as you start dragging.

 

I am also missing these shortcuts in the status bar at the bottom of the window. None of what either of you are saying works to resize the brush (same for the clone tool).

This has worked since CS4 or earlier, and I honestly don't think I can go back to not using it...

[walt.farrell]

19 minutes ago, eobet said:

I am also missing these shortcuts in the status bar at the bottom of the window. None of what either of you are saying works to resize the brush (same for the clone tool)

No, they're not on the Status Bar.

They do work for me (just tested on Photo 1.7 on Windows 10.

[Hephaistos]

@eobet It's ALT + RMB(Hold) then + LMB(Hold with RMB) then  drag. I found it by accident. Well, to put it simply, it's not user friendly at all and most importantly I cannot Hold 2 buttons on my pen device. the ALT + RMB doesn't do anything so why didn't they use this shortcut to let us resize brush. I don't get it.

 

Edited June 7, 2019 by Hephaistos

[Frozen Death Knight]

I want this keybind changed really badly. It's the same with the Lasso tool, where you have to hold down R click + L click to add to a selection, which are not good controls for tablet users. I can make workarounds to these because I own a Wacom Cintiq, but I really shouldn't have to, since every button I use to fix something is one less button I can make for something else.

Please devs, change these to more sensible commands. Lasso add should be on shift, not R click, and Brush size to alt+R click.

[Fantomasas]

Ok, I can confirm that ALT + HOLD RMB (or release after holding LMB) + HOLD LMB works, but there is no reason to have it this way.

 

[Hephaistos]

@Fantomasas Agreed. I never thought it would be so complicated to do this resizing action when i bought it. As it is it's unusable for me.Disappointing.

Please, change this binding quickly.

[k_au]

+1 for ctrl-RMB-movement without LMB as a simpler way of changing the brush size

Also, the keyboard shortcuts should automatically be changed relative to the language used. On a german keyboard, [ and ] need two keypresses: AltGr+8 / AltGr+9. This is not convenient I've changed the command to , and . which are pretty much where the same keys are on an US/UK keyboard. The english [ ] are next to "P", at which location would be "Ü" and "+" on a German keyboard.

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, k_au said:

+1 for ctrl-RMB-movement without LMB as a simpler way of changing the brush size

Also, the keyboard shortcuts should automatically be changed relative to the language used. On a german keyboard, [ and ] need two keypresses: AltGr+8 / AltGr+9. This is not convenient I've changed the command to , and . which are pretty much where the same keys are on an US/UK keyboard. The english [ ] are next to "P", at which location would be "Ü" and "+" on a German keyboard.

Just want to point out that there is a big difference between the German language and the German keyboard. The keyboard has different 'key codes' for the keys, you can type English language words on the keyboard but the key codes may be different even though the text file uses the same unicode character for [ (English keyboard) and [ (German keyboard).

[Distill7]

I can't believe this is no where to be found in the official help.

I click on: alt + (lmb+rmb at the same time) and it gives me good and easy control. I don't have to click on rmb first then lmb. But I still prefer using alt+rmb only.

For tablet users, try holding alt+rmb then press the pen and drag. This might work.

[walt.farrell]

5 hours ago, toutou123 said:

I can't believe this is no where to be found in the official help.

Near the bottom of the Help for Painting Brush Strokes:

Quote

Modifier keys

The following modifier (s) can be used:

    ....

• Press the right mouse button, Alt-key, then left mouse button and drag on the page to decrease or increase the brush width, respectively. Drag up or down to respectively decrease or increase the brush hardness.

 

 

[Hilltop]

6 hours ago, toutou123 said:

I click on: alt + (lmb+rmb at the same time) and it gives me good and easy control. I don't have to click on rmb first then lmb. But I still prefer using alt+rmb only.

For tablet users, try holding alt+rmb then press the pen and drag. This might work.

You can use left [ and ] brackets to change the size of the brushes.

[Frozen Death Knight]

I made a thread about how to change the functionality of the modifiers to something that would work better overall and would be more useful for tablet users:
 

I really want to see brush size, hardness, and rotation split up as separate modifier keys that you can adjust with R click dragging. Also made a couple of other suggestions as well, but the R click commands I laid out are to me top priority when it comes to fixing the current shortcuts.

[Hephaistos]

7 hours ago, Hilltop said:

You can use left [ and ] brackets to change the size of the brushes.

Yes, we know but lack of precision on the brush size. We could also type the brush size but software should help user not make user to adapt to it.

 

13 hours ago, toutou123 said:

I can't believe this is no where to be found in the official help.

I click on: alt + (lmb+rmb at the same time) and it gives me good and easy control. I don't have to click on rmb first then lmb. But I still prefer using alt+rmb only.

For tablet users, try holding alt+rmb then press the pen and drag. This might work.

Still dont understand...so much work/actions to do a simple brush resize.

A reply from the Affinity team would be much appreciated here.

I still hope they will fix that soon as i'm sorry to say that..nobody do serious painting with a mouse...

[eobet]

I understand finally!

The super confusing thing with a pen is that you need to actually draw a stroke, at the same time as holding down the right-click and alt!

That's essentially the equivalent of holding down the left and right mouse buttons at the same time, plus a third key, which is why it was so confusing to me.

It works now, but it will still take time to get used to.

 

EDIT: On a similar note, is there a color picker modifier shortcut? In Photoshop, it's Alt...

[Frozen Death Knight]

@eobet It's the same in Affinity. It's alt.

Yeah, it works, but it is far from optimal. Some tablets don't have the ability to press R click and L click at the same time on the pen itself because of it lacking that functionality, so for some models it is just impossible to pull this off. Controls should be changed to alt+R click being brush size, ctrl+R click being brush rotation, and shift+R click being brush hardness/softness.

[eobet]

9 minutes ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

@eobet It's the same in Affinity. It's alt.

Hah, thanks. Again, it doesn't show up until you drag.

Here's an interesting UI tidbit on this:

The requirement that you begin a dragging motion, instead of just hover (resize) or click (picker) means that for the artist there's basically an extra input step and probably an extra quarter of a second he has to wait until he sees the results he wants to achieve.

Doesn't sound much, but it adds up (both time, tediousness and annoyance) and it was the reason why I didn't even discover that these commands existed!

Photoshop has streamlined this for a reason.

[Frozen Death Knight]

9 minutes ago, eobet said:

Hah, thanks. Again, it doesn't show up until you drag.

Here's an interesting UI tidbit on this:

The requirement that you begin a dragging motion, instead of just hover (resize) or click (picker) means that for the artist there's basically an extra input step and probably an extra quarter of a second he has to wait until he sees the results he wants to achieve.

Doesn't sound much, but it adds up (both time, tediousness and annoyance) and it was the reason why I didn't even discover that these commands existed!

Photoshop has streamlined this for a reason.

It's not a matter of the colour picker itself being slow. It has to do with Affinity lacking a visual indicator when pressing alt from the start.

Read this. I made a tutorial on how to create a fast colour picker with some precision.

It is a temporary solution until the developers add a proper indicator, but it does in fact work.

[Hephaistos]

All this is so confusing. Even more now . Quantum physics looks easier to understand.

[CharlesB]

ctrl-RMB-movement with LMB click/drag is useless when using a tablet to edit. I don't know any commercial photographers/editors that don't use a tablet (although I'm sure some exist). This feature seems a small thing but dramatically effects workflow. It's the one of only a few issues that keeps me from switching from Adobe to Affinity or teaching it to my students. 

[Fixx]

On 7/3/2019 at 1:52 PM, Hilltop said:

You can use left [ and ] brackets to change the size of the brushes.

That is available only in english keyboards, I think.

It is a problem that brush size is only available with mouse (as I do often quick fixes on the go with trackpad only and use also XP Pen often) and I have not really learned to use this feature naturally with mouse either.

[Hilltop]

2 hours ago, Fixx said:

That is available only in english keyboards, I think.

 

You could assign custom keyboard shortcuts. Go to Edit/Preferences/Keyboard Shortcuts, select 'Photo' and, in the drop-down window underneath, one of the brush tools. When ticking 'Apply to all', all brush tools will respond to that keyboard shortcut.