Affinity Designer Very Pixelated Brushes Problem in Pixel Persona

[Phyphia]

Hello!

So I got the trial version of Affinity Designer as I saw a lot of impressive vector art made from it and I really enjoy the software so far. I was going to purchase it but then I realized that I get this problem when I draw in the Pixel Persona mode - every single brush becomes pixelated.

Fixes I've tried :

1. Changing the mode to Bilinear (and all others) - Nothing.

2. Changing to 400ppi - Nothing.

3. It is the normal brush and not the pixel brush.

So I have seen tutorials and art made by people using this software that was very smooth but why can't I recreate that? Even at 400ppi it is pixelated when I zoom in a bit, it really bums me out - I was really enjoying the software and even wanted to get brushes and textures from Frankentoon to draw more.

 Is it because it is a trial version or something? I'd really appreciate some help with this issue. 

Included below is a sketch I made with some imported PS brushes (I did it with highest resolution at  however even then it comes out really pixelated) and a sample of what the brushes look like when used. 

I'd really appreciate any help and insight in the matter,
Thanks in advance!

[firstdefence]

In Pixel persona you will be using Raster brushes not the vector brush, you need to be in the Draw persona to utilise the vector brush.

  

[Frozen Death Knight]

@Phyphia

You're zooming in at 400% in your example image. Any pixel based brush will look pixelated then. Changing the dpi will not really change the pixelating of the brushes. You could have a dpi of several hundred, but if your canvas is only something like 100x100 pixels, that is the quality you are going to get.

I'd suggest working on a larger canvas if you are going to use pixel brushes, because unlike vector graphics that can scale to any size without losing image quality, a pixel will not keep its quality if upscaled. It's easier to downscale a pixel image than it is to upscale for that very reason. I work with at least 4-5k pixels in width and/or height to get crisp image quality for pixel art when I export later (either same image size or downscaled) as well as make brushes with the quality that matches that canvas size. If your imported Photoshop brushes have small textures they will produce blurry results as well, so keep that in mind.

[JamesPurlsow]

This is an interesting issue and I am having the same problem. Whilst I acknowledge the brushes will not be a sharp as vector and fully understand the reasons, they are more pixelated than they should be at 300 dpi. If you compare the same style of brush stroke at the same zoom in PhotoShop, it is not pixelated to this level. You can see the in examples posted that the bushes are pixelated without the zoomed in version.

Does anyone have any further ideas about why this might be?

Many thanks

[walt.farrell]

7 hours ago, JamesPurlsow said:

You can see the in examples posted that the bushes are pixelated without the zoomed in version.

No, we can't really tell from your screenshots.  But I have one suggestion for you. Don't start by importing brushes from PS. Start with the brushes that are designed for Affinity Designer. By using PS brushes you're throwing in another variable, because PS brushes are not guaranteed to work the same way in Affinity as they would in PS.