{"id":3385,"date":"2022-02-03T20:42:42","date_gmt":"2022-02-04T01:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/?p=3385"},"modified":"2022-02-03T20:45:33","modified_gmt":"2022-02-04T01:45:33","slug":"its-martini-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/?p=3385","title":{"rendered":"It’s Martini Time!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Setting up the new Mini<\/a> and sorting out the Great Monitor Mystery<\/a><\/strong> was actually the fun, easy part; the real work started when it came time to start learning the software that would be replacing Adobe Creative Suite<\/a> after 30+ years as an Illustrator and Photoshop ninja. I managed to faceplant a time or two on those proverbial stumbling blocks,<\/a> but things ended up working out quite well, and I’m closer to getting back to producing cartoons than I thought I’d be at this point.<\/p>\n

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The source art for this exercise was the ink and graphite-stick drawing I used as the base art for a quick’n’dirty Illustrator tutorial I did about 8 or 10 years ago…<\/p>\n

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Installing and learning Affinity Photo<\/a> and Designer<\/a> went fairly well; they were pretty much equivalent to Photoshop and Illustrator \u2014 except without the onerous cloud-based, skull-crushingly expensive rental\/subscription model. One purchase, one download, one product key, install on as many computers as I have in the house, no cloud bullshit.<\/p>\n

The only issue was the lack of autotrace capability in Photo and Designer, which sent me scouring the Web for a utility which could convert my scanned ink and graphite-stick drawings <\/a>into editable, scaleable “vector” or PostScript\/SVG\/EPS images. This keeps Affinity Photo\/Designer from being 100% perfectly sweet; right now they’re only at about 98%, but I could still happily recommend them to any old Illustrator jocks or other Adobe refugees, with Inkscape<\/a> filling the “autotrace gap” until Affinity incorporates it into Photo and\/or Design \u2014 and you know they will, ‘cos the Affinity user forums are full of people asking “where’s autotrace?”.<\/p>\n

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And now, while this stoned old dog gets to work reinforcing all the cool new tricks he’s learned, it’s Martini Time!<\/a><\/p>\n