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Quality of life changes for illustrators.


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Hey :)
I've been trying your app for some time now, especially in area of illustration. I'm glad to say that your product is capable to compete with photoshop, but unfortunately it's lacking in quality of life area. Below I'll list few things I miss the most:

1. Right mouse button Contextual menu with brush choice when using brush tool.
2. Choosing your default brush category or option to change the category order so you can put your favourite on top. The same goes for other categories in assets, styles etc.
3. More options for texture handling in brush options (now we have scale and what it'll be aplied to), that way you could get much more to your brushes variety.
4. Currently your interface is cluttered with many different panels and I would like to have the option to turn them on and off whenever I need to, that way I'll get much more of actual working area. To do that I have few ideas: More options for keyboard shortcuts including turning on and off separate panels; Different panel presets i.e. for painting, edditing etc.; Docking floating panels into one (This + more keyboard shortcuts could work magic for showing only the panels you actually need. By turning off one floating panel you'll turn off all panels that are connected with it.)
5. In brush tool, while holding alt for color picking, hide the brush preview when color picking preview circle apears, currentlu it's on top of that wheel obscuring the vision.

Keep up the good work! :)

Edited by IDT Adrian
I forgot to add 5th one :)
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I would add what I miss the most, ux-wise:

  • edge scrolling (while editing curves, creating selections etc. - like in every other app)
  • better keyboard accessibility (when editing values via input fields in panels and windows using keyboard, you tab to the box, enter value and, and instead of jumping to the next input box by one single tab, you have to tap tab twice - first hit deselects the current field, second one jumps to the next input field...)
  • an optional panel for adjusting power duplicate values (number of steps and other options)
  • arrow key nudging for selections
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/20/2019 at 8:01 AM, IDT Adrian said:

4. Currently your interface is cluttered with many different panels and I would like to have the option to turn them on and off whenever I need to, that way I'll get much more of actual working area. To do that I have few ideas: More options for keyboard shortcuts including turning on and off separate panels; Different panel presets i.e. for painting, edditing etc.; Docking floating panels into one (This + more keyboard shortcuts could work magic for showing only the panels you actually need. By turning off one floating panel you'll turn off all panels that are connected with it.)

You already can do that. Just double click on the title of each window and they will be minimized. To get the desired effect, you can undock all the windows so when you click on them, they minimize like they look like menus. Here's a quick demonstration:

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Thank you! I already knew that, but if you could have it under keyboard shortcut you could do a panel with all the necessary things right in the middle of the screen (i. e. Color, brushes, layers) and turn it on and off really quick. That way, without much programming, you would get functionality really close to what you have in dedicated programs like Krita or Corel painter. 

I know you could say "use those programs then" and believe me I do, but I also would like to promote this program in areas I'm working in. I strongly believe Serif can be way to go for Digital painting and can easily outclass programs I just mentioned. It just need a little more time put in the development 

 
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32 minutes ago, IDT Adrian said:

Thank you! I already knew that, but if you could have it under keyboard shortcut you could do a panel with all the necessary things right in the middle of the screen (i. e. Color, brushes, layers) and turn it on and off really quick. That way, without much programming, you would get functionality really close to what you have in dedicated programs like Krita or Corel painter. 

I know you could say "use those programs then" and believe me I do, but I also would like to promote this program in areas I'm working in. I strongly believe Serif can be way to go for Digital painting and can easily outclass programs I just mentioned. It just need a little more time put in the development 

 

I wouldn't mind seeing new customization options personally. Don't really know how such a panel would look like, since I don't use either program. I come from a Photoshop background, so I am more used to that kind of workflow.

You can get some of that functionality like brushes, other tools, and colours as a floating window actually. You can double click the toolbar on the far left to undock it, and if you go to View -> Customize Tools, you can change your entire toolbar to fit in more features and sort stuff. You can also make a shortcut to toggle toolbar visibility by going into Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> View -> Show Tools to assign a hotkey to it, so it isn't in the way all the time. Hope that helps. :)

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51 minutes ago, IDT Adrian said:

I made you a quick video with commentary showing what kind of workflow I'm looking for. 

movie_2019-06-02_20-57-04.mkv

Very interesting! I'll get back to you once I've explored the program a bit more to see if I can get this to work. Will be a fun challenge for sure. :D

Will try to make a video tutorial if I crack the code.

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@IDT Adrian, I finished the tutorial on how to set up your Photoshop panel workflow in Affinity Photo, along with explaining some additional stuff you can do with panel shortcuts and settings. Sorry for the audio being in only one ear, since it recorded in stereo instead of mono through Nvidia's ShadowPlay (only did my video in one try :P).

 

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I tell you man, my left ear never was as satisfied as it is right now :D
Thanks a lot, I was so focused on turning on and off a single panel (which I did previously and it dissapointed me that it didn't turn off whole group), that I never thought that I actually can just turn off them all , because I don't use anything else :)

I hope we'll se the other points implemented one day, especially 5, because it seems to be pretty easy to do and it would improve the color picking with medium size, "perforated" brushes by quite a lot.

Thank you once again :) It reminds me I have much to learn.

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15 hours ago, IDT Adrian said:

I tell you man, my left ear never was as satisfied as it is right now :D
Thanks a lot, I was so focused on turning on and off a single panel (which I did previously and it dissapointed me that it didn't turn off whole group), that I never thought that I actually can just turn off them all , because I don't use anything else :)

I hope we'll se the other points implemented one day, especially 5, because it seems to be pretty easy to do and it would improve the color picking with medium size, "perforated" brushes by quite a lot.

Thank you once again :) It reminds me I have much to learn.

You're welcome! It was fun checking out new types of workflow. :D

As for your last comment about suggestion number 5, I am not sure what you mean by it being in the way. I have "Show brush previews" enabled in Preferences -> User Interface and the preview brush disappears for me and only shows the magnifying glass to get a better idea what colour you're picking (you can remove the crosshair there as well).

You should maybe report that as a bug if the preview is ontop of the magnifying glass, since that doesn't sound like normal behaviour. Alternatively you can just disable the feature completely if it is hindering your colour picker until the developers fix your issue.

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3 hours ago, IDT Adrian said:

I just tried to disable it and it seems that it's not working :D thanks for the advice, I was certain it's just a lack of functionality rather than a bug.

AP bug 2019-06-04 15-49-57.mkv

I'll report it right away :)

That behaviour is so strange. Btw, if you want to post a video, just drag the file you attached into the white text box where you type stuff, and it will turn into a video player.

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