Everyone has a different way of painting and drawing. But I kept trying with Affinity Photo until I decided that Clip Studio Paint had just about everything I needed in an art program. The layer has just got to be selected in the correct place or something else will happen. It cost me some loss of work (2 hours worth) the first time, and the second time I had something happen where I ended up with a pixel layer saying (pixel) 3 times in the layer. Affinity Photo still has some quirks going on with its layers I talked about this in another post. It came down to Affinity Photo (great brushwork) and Clip Studio Paint. Sketchbook Pro has always been one of my favorites programs, but I could see some of its limitations. Metibang Pro (Free) had a slight delay in the brush stroke (with a few other flaws). But trying to zoom in and use a 3-pixel brush was not the best representation. Photoshop had one of the best brushes and brush feedback (except for the cursor, I was always trying to find).

For this, I tried Affinity Photo, Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, Metibang Pro, and Sketchbook Pro working with a Wacom Intuos 5 tablet. I love Affinity Designer for vector work, but not for this. Believe me, when I say, I support a lot of different software's out there. I decided to try different programs to see how they worked for me.