Some questions about Designer Pro (v20, perpetual license)

[James505]

you are stuck with this i'm afraid

xara has 'smoothing' but no stabilisation in the modern sense and there is no way round it - the program seems to try to guess where you want to go next which is back seat driving at its worst when sketching

it has been like this since 2003 when I first used the program and probably since inception; xara have never shown any inclination to change it - my honest advice: use affinity designer instead if this gets in your way [as it does for me]

"Secret" to be told... Affinity Designer's brush system (unlike Affinity Photo's brush, which is very accurate) is also neither perfect (somewhat workable, though). It adds always some extra smoothing (quite increased in zoom-out situations) which makes it not fully accurate. I made my mind about it a while ago. Besides I am mostly a raster software person when it comes to painting (I am also a g. designer). When I need vector drawings, which is going to be an increasing need, next months from now, what I do is one of the following, depending on the project's type and requirements :

a) I totally "free style", wildly draw it on Clip Studio, Rebelle or PaintStorm (or Krita in the free world), or even draw on paper and scan, then just carefully "ink" it with the usual "node per node" tool that one gets in every vector app out there. "Old school".

b) The first step in (a) but I ink with Inkscape (or, directly inking with Inkscape, from scratch), the single one vector tool (with the exception of Adobe Illustrator) that seems accurate in the process of getting your ink lines just as you draw them. [But you do have to feel OK with the red highlight of the lines (some active segment) while you draw, and the "sections" it draws only while laying the stroke. Silly thing, but it bothers me, lol, when the line is very thick].

c) Like first step in (a) but in this case carefully inking as a finished inking, but just in raster (pixels). At a huge resolution, as if going to print in very large scale. So that the auto tracer that Inkscape uses (based on Potrace) will do a fine job. With certain special settings, it does a fantastic job, if the file is that big. ONLY if the optimization of nodes is not a problem for the output (not in my case, for those projects). Yet some final vector clean-up and fixing is preferable. For me it's the most enjoyable, as I am actually just working in raster, which I prefer. For many projects this technique would be (a bad decision) very crazy to use, though.

(c) is the fastest, my most probable route for next months. The best, technically, is indeed (a), a solid drawing/composition made in whatever (traditional or raster software), then carefully do the vectors node by node. I do (a) or (b) when I have the time and the project requires it / pays well enough (hehe) . (b) is a very nice compromise in terms of speed / output quality. Not great for 'fast production' (very niche use), though.

BTW, nice that you mention Affinity Designer, as I am indeed an Affinity user, for years, and many more years, an Adobe user (for the job). I guess you might have received some influx here, since the Canva's news. I'm not pessimistic about that acquirement, though, at all (one of the few). But in the first days I was, slightly, and I looked around, then one day I realized that Designer Pro is in a big discount... I had indeed wanted to buy Xara Designer Pro for a while (years), but as I only want it to have it as a fantastic companion tool (not main) the normal price (even less the case with Corel Draw) would mean not a great deal for me, as in many ways I am getting "redundancy" with tools (both raster and vector ones).

[handrawn]

no brush system is perfect

I see affinity beta 2.5 is introducing a line width tool along the same lines [is that a pun] as illustrator where you drag the node[s] on the line...

both my favourite vector drawing tool programs, toon boom harmony and painttool SAI 2, do not actually export as vectors, but both will work at very high resolution and for me that is good enough

[James505]

no brush system is perfect

True...I'd say, though, for me Clip Studio, PaintStorm Studio and Rebelle 7 come incredibly close... (and just Rebelle for traditional, other than just picking some oils, acrylics or watercolors). As, not only is it the brush system. There are always other caveats coming with each app... Rebelle can't do large canvases due to all the physics calculations it makes. But nanopixel feature can help for print stuff and huge exports in general. But that's an AI enlarger, and I dislike the concept . At least that AI only invents micro fiber of the paper or oil canvas, to look nice on 300/600 dpi prints, it does not generate anything you did not paint; no scrapping. Clip Studio can't do 16bit per channel (smoother gradients and in general more intermediate tones, most people do not notice) while Affinity Photo (and Photoshop, I think Krita too) can. PaintStorm relies too much on GPU (so you'd better off having one, even a bad one, tho it can paint CPU-only). PaintTool SAI is somewhat limited in features (fully functional for painting, though).

I have PaintTool SAI 2.x, but... isn't it fully a raster, pixel based software? (no vector export? I wish I'm wrong...). I have it and it is indeed (by my personal tests) by very far the raster painting and image editing program allowing me to paint with largest canvases and largest brushes at the same time (in raster canvases). To very crazy levels. I don't have an idea of how the author was able to get that, it's like magic. It is the favorite tool of a huge percentage of artists doing commissions (many of them still use an old 1.x beta, I think), specially among students - artists, and some more pro ones who started in DeviantArt and now are quite pro. Quite a jewel. I believe the reason why it got used by so many young ones is because it runs on any potato, incredibly optimized for low hardware (besides being available as a free beta for some time). So, cheapo school laptops with no GPU (old intel's integrated graphics) would even work (as they do currently) with it even while doing big illustrations. And super fluid.

I had NO idea that Designer beta 2.5 was introducing that feature. As I don't check the beta forums anymore. I was a beta tester, indeed, but did run out of free time, sadly.

Still, that feature does not really fix the inaccuracy when laying down the stroke (actually the smoothing gets triggered once the line is finished, curiously it is accurate while in the process, the bad thing is in the unavoidable automatic post-smoothing).

You can work around it (till some extent...) by inking at very high zoom-in. Which might be fine as the key moment to see all the composition or most of it is when you are doing the "pencil work". But even so, while inking is very good to see all at once (or at least a 50% of the canvas) to check weights, etc.

I've never used Toon Boom.. I guess Moho Pro 12.5 (got it for like 20 bucks in humblebundle, like corel painter, totally legal, btw) will have to do for me for a while... or Clip Studio Ex/Krita's animation, hehe. I'm very noob at animation, anyway.

[handrawn]

I'm not a painter - I trained as one but I found cartooning [in the modern sense] was a lot more me

Clip Studio can't do 16bit per channel

neither can xara gradients...

painttool sai is a manga/cartooning tool at heart...

[handrawn]

paintstorm studio looks interesting... rebelle looks more like artrage or corel painter, not that you can tell for sure without trying...

[handrawn]

paintstorm studio looks interesting

and then again, maybe not

[James505]

paintstorm studio looks interesting... rebelle looks more like artrage or corel painter, not that you can tell for sure without trying...

It's exactly that kind of thing.
But... I have the three of them... And Rebelle gets imo the most realistic traditional media imitation. Specially its watercolors (they happen to have now my favorite oils, too, and that was not the case before). Corel Painter is good, but that heavy UI is definitely not for me... That's a personal preference, though. Other than that, it is very powerful. Art Rage can do bigger canvases without tricks (no need of nanopixel, like Rebelle does). Corel P. can work with big canvases, high resolution, too. Paintstorm's UI is quite good and intuitive, it is learned in minutes, it does not mimic traditional media as well as the other two, but allows a lot of very good things and digital painting in a "painterly style" (if so desired. You can paint in whatever style with it) and in a way is more versatile, covers more fields. None of these are really focusing on manga/cartoons, but one could use them for such, just like you can use Clip Studio for realistic illustration -I do- although initially was created for mostly manga comics making. Pricing is another matter, as usual. Corel Painter's permanent license costing 430 dollars (but around 25$ like once a year for some days, if one pays attention to humblebundle), Art Rage Vitae for Desktop (btw, for Windows, it can only be purchased and installed as an app of the MS store!) around 80 bucks, Paintstorm around 50 (it also shows up in Humble for half that price, or did for once, recently). For comics (and animation with csp and krita), Clip studio, PaintTool Sai or Krita are quite enough, IMO, it would not make sense to get any of the others for that.

Again, thank you for the info about Designer Pro.

[handrawn]

you are welcome

xara is a great app for vector art contruction with shapes, and for basic compositiing tasks