Import custom brushes on Ipad Illustrator

[Michael325841914n45]

July 2024 and still nothing??? I guess I will switch over to Affinity for the project I'm currently working on. I don't even know why I decided to try illustrator. 

[Monika Gause]

Illustrator on the iPad does support art brushes and calligraphy brushes.

To use the brushes you will need to have them in an AI file that you open on your computer. https://youtu.be/Y-iQ9LwK0fg

Good luck with using Affinity Designer. The only vector based brushes it has are calligraphy brushes. All other brushes are pixel based.

[Michael325841914n45]

You are incorrect. First off, using brushes on iPad is ridiculously laborious to the point that it's useless. Second, I have a plethora of brushes I use in Affinity Designer that are vector brushes, are used on vector layers, and are purely vector in nature. I have scaled them by huge percentages to test them. They function exactly as brushes do in illustrator on a desktop, so I'm not sure why you continue to persist in claiming something that is not true. They are super easy to use as well and do not require the ridiculous process illustrator for the iPad requires.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

This from the Affinity documentation:

I would assume they know how their app works. The base images in the brushes are usually quite huge, so you think it's vector. But maybe you want to expand the brush. Then you'll see.

[Michael325841914n45]

First off, I guess you're not aware of how brushes are made in Illustrator? They're made the same way they are in Affinity Design. You always start with a raster image. The app then converts the image into a spline, using math to plot all the points of what "used" to be the raster image but is now a mathematical equation that can be stretched, quashed, bent, curved, and magnified indefinitely. Do you honestly think people create custom brushes in illustrator by meticulously trying to digitally replicate what a traditional brushstrokes looks like using only native illustrator pen tool and gradients? 

And all the 3rd party sellers of custom brushes out there - do you think they create purely digital vector brushes for illustrator, then sell scrappy knock-offs that look exactly the same for Affinity? Please. They create one set of brushes, then tweak the parameters to meet the requirements of the different applications. That's why you can buy the brushes and select whatever application you want to use them for. 

I don't claim to be an expert, but I've been using photoshop and illustrator pretty much daily since 1997, since the days of OS9. That's only 27 years, so what do I know?

[jane-e]

First off, I guess you're not aware of how brushes are made in Illustrator? I don't claim to be an expert...

By @Michael325841914n45

Monika is an expert and is very aware of how brushes are made in Illustrator. She is an author, has YouTube videos, and is a speaker at major conferences such as Adobe MAX and Creative Pro.  She is giving you correct information.

While you can create a brush from a raster image in Illustrator for Desktop, this wasn't always so. I think it was within the last 10 years, but Monika may remember the exact version.

Jane

[Monika Gause]

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@Michael325841914n45  schrieb:

First off, I guess you're not aware of how brushes are made in Illustrator? They're made the same way they are in Affinity Design. You always start with a raster image.

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I've written 9 books about the subject, produces a couple of LinkedIn Learning coruses and I'm running a YouTube channel (which also contains a lot of tutorials about brushes). 

And no, you do not "aleays start off with a raster image". Quite the contrary. You can also make brushes from raster images, but that has only been the case since Illustrator CC (version 17). You might want to watch my YouTube channel, I'm demonstrating it there.

In Affinity Designer on the other hand brushes do not only start as raster images. They stay raster images.

[Michael325841914n45]

Even if what you were saying were true (regarding Affinity Designer), of which I'm dubious, because I've got plenty of 3rd party brushes that I've scaled from, say, 2500 pixels square to 10k pixels square and they look every bit as crisp and sharp as they did at the smaller size. BUT... even if you were correct, unless you're creating work for billboards, it's really not an issue.

All vector art gets rasterized before it gets printed, so as long as it out looks as good as you would like it to at print size, it's a non-issue. Anything done for a magazine, book cover, cereal box, toy packaging, etc... is not going to be affected in the least. From what I've tested, I could print what I've done big enough to put on a car and it would still look perfect, so what's the issue?

Is this just about the idea of it all, or are you really doing jobs for billboards? I mean there are people who still do that. Plenty. I've done it. So what? There are tricks to that anyways. Plenty of billboard prints look like old fashioned print jobs up close, where you can see the CMYK print dots, but it works. Or they use illustrator's live trace function to create something no one would notice from a distance. But I digress...

I've seen you continue to make these arguments against Affinity and push for Illustrator when the only way to use brushes on the iPad version is too laborious to be practical in any way, but having used illustrator for years and having now used Affinity and seen the results, unless you're printing at huge sizes, your argument is acedemic. Teaching classes and writing books is great, but I do jobs for clients and see my work in print. I care about what is practical. That's the only thing I care about.

If Adobe wants to remain relevant, I suggest they start thinking a little more about what is practical and not only about what they think the standard should be. They could cater to both and let intelligent creators choose what they need when they need it rather than trying to gatekeep what they think is the way things should be. If they want to act that way, I'm happy to take my business elsewhere.

More and more creatives like/need to be mobile. I've got a Mac pro. I don't want to have a bulky laptop for when I need to be mobile. The iPad pro is amazing for letting me anywhere and still work, whether it be just me working when I'm with family, or when I'm with clients. Other companies seem to understand this. Adobe clearly does not. Photoshop is even more of a joke on the iPad than illustrator is. Maybe, just maybe, Adobe needs to go back and streamline their code so their programs aren't such data and memory hogs. Maybe then they could actually make iOS apps that are worth something.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

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@Michael325841914n45  schrieb:

Even if what you were saying were true (regarding Affinity Designer), of which I'm dubious,

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So you do not believe what Serif is writing in their documentation? Interesting.

And also you think it's unreasonable to expect that you can use a brush and then expand it and then send this to your laser, engraver or plotter? To have something that you can then apply to your storefront? Yes, you could paint that with your nice brushes in Affinity Designer and then you can still autotrace it ... oops, no, it still can't trace.

https://youtu.be/NFAzIqbIPPk

Using a brush to create something can be an intermediate step (and I have seen these questions coming up regularly in this forum) and you then need to further process the results as vector art. Or it can actually be made for plotting. Ever heard of hobby plotters? That has been a trend for a couple of years now. Brushes are not just for painting. I would even assume that in vector art, painting is what they re least used for. And then also you might want to create artwork that you then use in (vector based) Adobe Animate.

You are accusing me of being too academic? Running out of arguments?

[Michael325841914n45]

No, I'm not running out of arguments. I'm being selfish, I guess, and only thinking about the practical applications for professional illustration. That's what I do.

For the other purposes you're talking about, especially engraving, you wouldn't want to use brushes anyways. Brushes are an expression laid on top of a line, and in both applications, they can get rendered differently every time you try to print them. The only way to be absolutely sure (which you'd want to be for an engraving) would be too use object fills and strokes only. Again, I know this from practical experience.

So fine, for some uses, affinity might not be suitable, but for some it's great. Depends on what your needs are. You go ahead being an expert, loving Adobe and singing its praises and bashing all other apps, but you're not presenting an objectively, open minded picture of what's out there and why these other options have value, and that doesn't do anyone here, or Adobe, any favors.

[jane-e]

You go ahead being an expert, loving Adobe and singing its praises and bashing all other apps, but you're not presenting an objectively, open minded picture of what's out there and why these other options have value, and that doesn't do anyone here, or Adobe, any favors.

By @Michael325841914n45

This is a forum for Adobe applications. We are here to answer user questions about Adobe products. There are other forums you can use to discuss pros and cons of other vector apps. 

Please be careful to follow the forum guidelines to be kind and respectful, or you risk being banned.

I've branched your post from a four-year-old thread because it has strayed from the original purpose of that thread.

Jane

[Monika Gause]

For the other purposes you're talking about, especially engraving, you wouldn't want to use brushes anyways.

By @Michael325841914n45

As I said: an intermediate step.

After drawing what you need, you expand them and then send to production. Floral designs are made that way. Much easier to create with brushes (but only when you have pure vector brushes obviously). 

I have done these kinds of things. Looks like some people despise educators because they think that we do not have any practical experience. That is not the case.