Transition from Affinity Designer 2 to Canva Studio 3.2

 

After quite a long period of hesitation I upgraded from Affinity Designer version 2.0 to version 3.2. I admit that I was not exactly thrilled by the way in which the acquisition of the Affinity suit by Canva had taken place. In addition to which I dislike the AI component subscription model that the 3.2 version is included. After testing it however, I decided to implement the upgrade anyway. The transition was handled in quite a logical way, I must say; The vector, pixel and DTP modules are now combined into a single program, about which I was often puzzled why Affinity had not done that when they still owned the entire suit, particularly since most of the necessary conditions to make an assembly work, were already in existence. I have fiddled with the Canva version for a day or two and I admit their Studio version makes a lot of sense and speeds up the time to complete a file or document significantly, regardless if it is a vector or pixel file or a DTP document.

Canva Studio logo

I still think Serif (the company that originally built the Affinity suit) could have done a similar thing by themselves. But now we will never know if that would at some point have taken place. Around the time that the acquisition took place Affinity's technical head honcho wrote that there will be no subscription model, but that strategy did not emerge. It is one of the things that bothers me most, simply because it went on to the subscription path anyway. That could be expected to be honest, but it would show dignity if the buy and own the program would have been extended. But Affinity is of course much smaller than Canva and they would probably not have a feasible opportunity to continue what they seemed to have in mind. Outside of that, smaller companies get overtaken by bigger ones all the time when they have developed interesting programs. But that could have been shared with the Affinity user base in a more honest way, which explains my hesitation to upgrade. It just shows that in modern times it requires to take promises of the smaller business before the acquisition with a grain of salt.

First file created in Canva Studio.
The black & white photo of Carl Jung
was coloured with Canva's AI module.

However, the upgrades that are implemented under the Canva flag are too effective to ignore. Users must obviously accept that the overtaking of a small company's project by a larger player is what today's business world reflects. The dog eat dog mantra just whacks good intentions and leaves users with no choice then to deal with the result of an acquisition, if they want to profit from regular updates of the program they chose to use. In this article I am not going into the details of the improvements of functionality; I need more time to make a sensible effort in that direction and may do so in a not too distant future. I wrote this post mainly because I felt the urge to express what bothered me about the events surrounding Canva's acquisition against the promises made by Affinity around the take over.

Second image edited in Canva Studio,
after having created it in Affinity
Designer version 2.0 many years
ago. The dragon's colours were
made vibrant and saturated.

I am not pleased by the way the acquisition went, but I am satisfied with the functionality of Canva Studio and rather displeased with the subscription model aspect of it. But the newly introduced function upgrades allow me to work faster and better, partly because of an increased AI integration, while offering a suit that includes functions that give Adobe a pain in the rear end. Since 3.2 is significantly improved over version 2.0, I am curious what the future of Canva Studio will bring; will they go head on against Adobe and just keep adding functions that makes the more attractive for graphic designers or have they a few surprises that will surprise the future of graphic design and DTP. Bearing in mind how relatively fast Canva Studio introduced the upgrades to compared to Affinity Designer, we will most likely not have to wait a long to find out, I would guess.

Oh and by the way, I think Affinity and Canva have created a program that absolutely is going to destroy the shamelessly greed ridden Adobe empire. The software design and price are infinitely better what Adobe offers, that besides the huge subscription cost, has created a frustratingly complex path to get rid of Adobe products. Once users join Adobe, they are in a prison. Perhaps joining forces was the modestly concealed objective of the Affinity and Canva teams, that witnessed all of Adobe's competitors being bought over the years and then disappeared by the strategy of the (soon to be former) design market behemoth. The Affinity Canva Studio program's fantastic functionality - integrating vector, pixel and DTP in a single environment without ancient algorithms and UI like many Adobe programs have - already is well on its way to accomplish Adobe's much needed obliteration. In addition many Affinity processes take place in real time, so that users can actually see (unlike Adobe) what the result of their effort manipulation will actually look like while doing it. In the next blog entry I have made a simple exclusively vector modification to Benda's Napoleonbob motorcycle tank, that was entirely created in Affinity Canva Studio. Go take a peek and check it out.

Art Nouveau practice drawing 01

I've always been attracted to Art Nouveau imagery, particularly that of the utterly brilliant Alphonse Mucha, who is largely accredited for starting that appealing movement, although he did not like the word movement. I wanted to wrap my mind around the specific aspects of the craft of which this practice drawing is the first attempt. I plan to do more Art Nouveau all vector drawings in the future, unlike this image that contains both vector and bitmap embedded files, because this image is a mere test. Technically this image is some sort of blend of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, the latter being the successor of the first art movement, I guess.

Alphonse Mucha was a gifted graphic designer, an illustrator and (sadly) also under appreciated painter, who deserves much more acclaim for his oil paintings than he has been given so far. His work in each of these categories is characterized by amazing technical skill and a keen eye for well balanced, appealing compositions. Even in his incredibly detailed black and white line art he was able to create a stunning - almost Rembrandt like (....) - play between light and dark areas of his work. An oversight of his mind blowing art oeuvre you find here. A documentary about the interesting man Mucha was, you find here. And his son recounting aspects of Mucha's life you find here.

In his graphic (poster) art Mucha exclusively drew with colour pencils and painted with water colours) beautiful women, because they are much more pleasing to watch than men and this type of work served to earn him a living. In some of his work symbolism has a more or less dominant presence, with which Mucha was familiar since he had at some point in his life become a freemason. His outlandish skill allowed him to integrate symbols in a subtle yet unique and stunning way, which makes his art rise above and beyond the compartmentalization that linear time relentlessly imposes on life.

In the 60's of the previous century Art Nouveau experienced a revival, be it in different forms for different purposes, but this originally and essentially commercial type of art's appeal has never faded, because figurative beauty simply never starts to bore audiences that don't know of or don't care about the opinions of a certain variety of prejudiced art critics and 'experts'.

Later in life Mucha decided to return to his area of birth Moravia, that today is part of the Czech republic, to dedicate his art to the Slav history and culture. When the German troops invaded what was then Czechoslovakia in the second world war, the Gestapo almost immediately arrested (the patriot) Mucha, who was in his seventies at the time, but they released him a few days later. Mucha was already ill then and a few months after his arrest he passed away.

The composite drawing

Embedded flower motive

Mandala background

The images above are part of my first attempt to mimic the essence of Art Nouveau works. They are created in Affinity Designer version 2, that oddly crashed on me once in this relatively simple image. I am not sure if it is Designer or the Windows system that is to be blamed for the crash, but the directory I had just created, to store my Art Nouveau artwork, did not give me full access, which was likely the cause for the crash. After changing the access permission I experienced no more crashing. I experienced a similar type of problem when trying to install Affinity Designer version 2, which is kind of weird. i described it several blog entries ago - 'Serif released version 2 of the Affinity programs'. So, for Windows users of this program, this may be a thing they should perhaps check before they start to draw, particularly since I read threads on the forum about the Affinity version 2 programs crashing and having problems saving files.

Vector Celtic Motive

Celtic motives have always intrigued me for some reason. It probably is the effect on the subconscious mind of symbols. I quickly doodled one in Affinity Designer to see if a reasonable effect could be accomplished in a vector drawing program without ending up with an image that is too flat. I hate flat design; it just reflects a lack of skill, dedication and attention in my perception, regardless if it's promoted (shoved down ignorant people's throats) to be trendy and therefore some sort of 'must' to follow (for those with malfunctioning brains).

The deeper reason probably being that I hate trends that basically just are veiled traps in which artists are conjectured to do their thing. In other words: follow my hallucination or you're not a member of the club. I couldn't care less for such clubs of mindless followers under corrupt leadership to be honest. So here are some versions of my non-flat Celtic doodles:

I haven't yet figured out how to go about some details that bug my eyes in this doodle, but I'm confident I'll find a solution for them at some point. I will probably run into some function 'by accident' and be informed by an impulse of unknown origin that this is the way to work around functional limitations. This is how I commonly stumble through life, chafing as that may be.

The thing about Celtic motives is their continuity and connectedness in a patterned complexity, I guess. It may be some type of artistic metaphor proving the correctness of the Mandelbrot fractal patterns that are everywhere in everything at all times in this universe. Metaphors being the crux of symbolism, the latter seemingly making language redundant in the perceptional process and various kinds of human communication.

In the absence of the need for language, there still are mathematical descriptions that shape the objects in the symbolic metaphors. The magic of form in numbers. Some would say math is just an other language that is simply detached from culture and tradition. That could give cause to question the necessity of culture and tradition, which is perhaps best suggested in a visually spectacular way by the Celtic culture / tradition.... This is just an other paradoxal situation that sadly crams this realm of limitation and bewilderedness.

Where as language is not capable of proving its own redundancy, certain types of images apparently are. Which brings me to something else I profoundly dislike, apart from the flat imagery I mentioned earlier, namely 'experts' explaining art to people whom they most likely consider to be uneducated bonkers peasants that clutter this planet for no reason at all.

These would-be connoisseurs annoy the crap out of me, because when analysing the bunk they blabber, it makes no sense whatsoever and in addition it gives me a rash, that is how pathetic it is. They usually surround themselves with retards that don't know their head from a hole in the ground, who are very good at giving not so smart people the impression that they are very knowledgeable about matters concerning art. Such brain dead yokels never disagree with anything that is spread by fellow idiots, so a much needed attitude correction never takes place.

I am relieved I got that off my chest. Long live the Celts and have a nice day.

How to create a vector woodcut portrait

I've been experimenting with creating vector woodcut portraits, which is a bit of a nuisance. I knew it was possible in programs for pixel pushers, but I wanted to see if it could be done in a vector drawing program. Of course I used my favorite Affinity Designer for this. It is Microsoft's developer award winner of 2018! Many things to consider when constructing such drawings. Still a tad confusing at this point. After approximately four trials and errors I arrived at this level of design complexity. I used my vector portrait of Abe Lincoln (its exported png of course) as the image for this test. The images were duplicated several times and to each a different 'Threshold' setting was applied, which exposes more or less of the original image. After applying these values, the images must be Rasterized in order for this woodcut effect technique to work properly.

The image Threshold values are
indicated in the Layers panel

Below you see various versions of the portrait with layers turned on or off. Click on the portrait to see the different versions in Google's lightbox for better comparison. For those seriously interested in mastering this technique, I would urge them to study this article all the way to the end; Affinity Designer has so many options and each of them can add to the quality of the artwork. The appropriate options for this particular technique are all described here.

Abe Lincoln vector woodcut portrait
with all layers visible

In the Layers panel all layers are marked
visible which results in the image above

*****************************************

The portrait with the zero degrees Curves turned off

This is what you see in the Layers panel
with the 0 degrees Curves turned off

****************************************

The portrait with 0 and 30 degrees turned off

This is what you see in the Layers panel
with the 0 and 30 degrees Curves turned off

If you do exactly what it says below in Affinity Designer, you should get a proper result. For this portrait I created 6 different sets of sine lines that mask the image and rotated them 15 degrees relative to the previous one, starting a zero degrees. The sine stroke width was as thick as the space between the strokes. The image size is 1000 x 1000 pixels.

Working method:

1. Create a sine line, using snap to grid and standard grid lay-out
2. Duplicate it until entire page is covered 
3. Select all lines and ‘Expand Stroke’ 
4. Combine all expanded strokes – after which they will show as a single ‘Curve’ in the Layers panel 
5. Duplicate a number times of your choice 
6. Rotate each of them to different angles, making sure they cover entire page – you have to enlarge them until they do 
7. Import an image 
8. Duplicate it to the same number of combined strokes / Curves that you duplicated in step 5 
9. Apply a different ‘Threshold’ level to the original image and duplicates 
10. 'Rasterize' all images 
11. Drag each image inside a curve so that the Curve serves as a mask 
12. Make sure none of the Curves has a fill or stroke width assigned 

The 0 degree sine lines Expanded Strokes
that were combined, given an outline for visibility.
Note: The final result should have no outline or fill
assigned to any of the Curves!

This is what shows in the Layers panel
when only the 0 degree Curves are visible,
that have the above settings applied (temporarily)

Remarks:

• The initially drawn wavy sine line is duplicated to cover the entire page, then Expanded Stroke (under Layers in the menu bar) was applied, after which they were Combined which results in a single Curve in the Layers panel
• The rotated Curves must be enlarged to cover the entire page
• The Curves, as described in the previous point, were duplicated and rotated in increments of 15 degrees
• The combined strokes shown as Curves will show up over the images. Hit the Magnifier Zoom tool to see the result without the Curves overlaying them 
• Each Curve containing the rasterized image can be manipulated in several ways – opacity, type of filter
• I gave the Curves a 3% Gaussian blur to make the portrait more realistic, also selecting Scale with Object, hence the fx shown in the Layers panel. This is a function not present in Illustrator or CorelDRAW. It opens up a world of possibilities the competition is incapable of
• The Rectangle shown in the Layers panel can be switched on or off and given any desired colour fill. The document itself was given a transparent background
• I started this portrait with wavy sine lines, but any shape of curve could of course work
• The rotation angle of the duplicated Curves is in the names of the layers; I used increments of 15 degrees, but also here different angles could give the desired result
• When a satisfying construction of Curves is found, probably any image could be used to turn into a woodcut portrait or drawing
• This was a first experiment for this type of drawing, when more effective constructions of the Curves are found I may update this blog entry

Improved result
 
Some further improvements applied to make it look more woodcut like - is as in the image below:

Improved result of vector woodcut portrait

This was done by editing the original image that is on top of all layers, as shown in the Layer panel below to 54% Opacity and using the Add filter. The values are displayed inside the red rectangle.

Layer settings for best result

The idea is to simply stop at nothing to achieve the desired effect. 

A Great Tip!

If you click on one of the Curves in the Layer panel, that basically are the containers of the rasterized images, and then select Lock Children in the Interactive menu bar below the Main menu bar, you can move, resize or rotate the Curve container while its children - the rasterized image - remain in place, do not resize or rotate while you are editing the container Curves. This allows you to alter the effect of the Curves containing the rasterized image in the portrait, dramatically changing its appearance instantly without any hustle, allowing you to make the image look exactly the way you want.

The beauty of Affinity Designer is that 99% of all actions can be undone or re-done. It is non-destructive and parametric and has a huge number of undo levels (set to 1024 standard). It also has a history panel that allows you to change any action at any time. These functions (among a great number of others) really set Affinity Designer apart from its competition - qualities that graphic artists most definitely appreciate.



Final result

And here's what Abe Lincoln's vector woodcut portrait may look like when framed after some more tinkering was applied - background fill with 100% noise and a 36% opaque rectangular overlay with 100% noise and a Glow filter. The frame was drawn in 3D in Rhinoceros:

And here's an other one. Monsieur Voltaire. In this one I did not rasterize the images, which allowed me to experiment with even more parameters - Threshold, fx and rotation angle of the Curves masking the images.

When using the above mentioned settings, it allows endless tinkering that often results in very different results of the same subject in this type of portraits. Affinity Designers parametric qualities make it possible.

Another magnificent function

When clicking an image in the Layer panel that is contained inside a Curve (or not) a button appears in the Interactive Menu Bar that read 'Change Image'. Clicking this button does exactly that; it will open a dialogue box that allows the user to choose another image that will replace the original one, keeping the centers of the original and replacing image aligned. If the image are roughly similarly sized, this means that in the case of creating woodcut portraits or other types of artwork, the existing Curves can be used as a template in which different images can be placed! An absolutely brilliant option of Affinity Designer.