With Affinity Photo’s modifier keys, you can access additional tool settings on the go, allowing you to make alterations as you work.
Altering brush strokes
Let’s start with the brush tools.
A simple trick for altering your brush tools is to press the Ctrl and Option keys (Mac) or Ctrl + right-click + drag (Windows). This will reveal your current brush width and hardness settings.
By clicking and dragging to the right, we can instantly increase the width of our brush. By clicking and dragging to the left, on the other hand, we can decrease the width.
Clicking and dragging up decreases the brush’s hardness, while clicking and dragging down increases the brush’s hardness.
In addition to this, we can toggle the brush settings to make further tweaks on the go. A single click displays the shape and spacing options instead of the brush width and hardness.
Dragging left now decreases the shape of the brush. Dragging right increases the shape of the brush.
Dragging up decreases the spacing, while dragging down decreases the spacing.
Another single click toggles the settings again, now revealing the Rotation setting.
Colour picking
When using a brush tool, you can use the Alt key to pick up colour as you go.
Fine tuning selections
With a selection tool active and a selection made, you can easily tweak your selection by pressing Option and dragging (Mac), or by pressing Alt and dragging (on Windows).