The JixiPix extravaganza of plugins

While experimenting with Affinity Photo and Designer, I wanted to create some effects for backgrounds and buttons. These would be something for desktop wallpaper, and messing around with images for Slack and email. As well as unique login images for each of my Macs. This lead to a slew of tutorials on adding effects using Photoshop. While most everything translates right over, I ended up discovering something a hundred times better and it integrates right into Affinity. A company called JixiPix, has taken all the work out of building effects by hand by developing a slew of plugin tools. JixiPix has tools for creating effects that look like watercolors, oil painting, chalk drawings, cartoons, pastels, crayon, colored pencil and dozens of other styles. They also have plugins for adding rain effects, snow, grunge, tint and many more. There is an amazing variety of choices and they are all extremely well priced. They can run as a stand alone app, or […]

Getting (mildly) creative with the Affinity Suite

After watching the excellent Lockdown series by Affinity, I have taken up the digital paintbrush and have been playing around with Affinity Photo. Getting a behind the scenes look at how professionals use the product was just what I needed. I am no artist, and no expert. But after seeing some examples, dozens of pieces came together and I understood how to approach a couple of simple tasks. My use of masks and layers was slightly incorrect and seeing the different tools in action was eyeopening. It has been an extremely fun learning process. I am still only doing simple things, but things make so much more sense now. Having a tool is one thing, seeing the right way to use it is another. Once you see the proper way to outline an object, or use a gradient, or combine layers, dozens of possibilities open up. Not only do I recommend watching their tutorial series, I also recommend picking up […]