F_Kal

Thank you @crabtrem! It was indeed what I was looking for!

Hi! This must be quite basic, but I didn't know how to go about it: - I have a top level curve (parent), that has a few other curves as children in its hierarchy. - How can I move/scale/rotate the parent without affecting the position/scale/rotation of the children? I guess I could always break the hierarchy and re-instate it after the transformation; but I was hoping for some other way Thank you, -Fotis

I've used flux, but using it is very misleading when working with color, so eventually I've stopped using it ;-) But it was good. I use the built-in color inversion in OSX non-stop. I've found that if I alternate between black-on-white and white-on-black whenever I feel the mildest strain (some days every every few minutes), it is very soothing. I tend to press the Cmd+Shift+8 shortcut rather subconsciously nowadays... Similar with the brightness - I reset it trying to maintain a screen brightness that is just a pinch above the global lighting that is reflected the environment. As for the forum, it's one of the most functional forums I've used. I wouldn't call it dated, only a bit on the generic side, which is fine by me. The team has proved on more fronts than one, that they are not generic! I also prefer the white theme; apple computers nowadays have only(?) glossy screens, and the white background hides the reflections much better than the black ;p

+1 from me aswell! I felt there was something fishy with the saving location, but I wanted to make sure it is the case before I make a report about it! What you suggest, is indeed the intuitive-expected behavior so you totally nailed it!

@pxls2prnt is so right about the logo having to be discernible from distance - Very insightful comment!

hi @BHIP, you may wish to send a png/jpg of your logo aswell; On my system the font "Kleymissky" wasn't found so probably the text didn't render as intended. I liked the ornament+star design a lot though! well done! -Fotis btw. an idea for the affinity team (if it hasn't been requested before): For the cases where a font is missing, it would be nice if there was an auto-generated curve substitute of the text. Llike on PS: If you choose to edit it, it should warn you and then have it replaced with an existing system font!

It is fixed indeed! Thank you!! -Fotis

+1 from me too! it's very beautiful!

@thank you MEB! Glad to know about Layer>Geometry>Divide; very useful! -Fotis

Here's another question regarding Affinity Designer: When in the Node tool (A), one can shift+click to select multiple nodes. Is it possible, to copy such a selection (of sequential nodes), and paste it as a new curve? A simple usage example would be the following: You have a compound curve (destructively created) consisting of two closed curves, one is enclosed inside the other and you wish to extract the inner one into a new object (see image at the end). Even though I could select the nodes of the inner curve, I couldn't find a way to copy/cut them. The only way I could find was: 1.duplicate the compound object 2. select all the nodes that I don't want and 3. have them deleted... Am I missing something? Thanks, -Fotis PS. btw I realized that I couldn't find a way to invert the selection of nodes - what if I had a complex object with 100s of nodes, and wanted to copy a strip of 5-6 nodes? would it be possible?

Hey @MEB, I've been getting the same "this upload failed" error message this afternoon while trying to upload a 50kB .png screenshot... I logged out, logged in, tried the "basic uploader" tried other files but it won't work - maybe it's some glitch?

Thank you @A_B_C, that is a very good idea indeed! -Fotis

I just realized that in Affinity Designer it's not possible to align the stroke of an open curve in any setting other than align stroke to center. Logically, it does make sense: How would you define the inside and outside of an open curve? Still, it's sometimes a desirable effect if you substitute the inside/outside with one-side/other-side. Anybody having any idea on how to achieve this? I can only think of 1.closing the curve, 2.applying the desired curve alignment, 3.expanding the stroke, 4.deleting the excess points - but this looks rather cumbersome and irreversible(destructive) as a method; any better ideas?

@MEB, you just rock! wow, that was some feature! thank you!!!! -Fotis PS. I think next time before posting an essay, I'll start by asking a short question ;P

+1 for consistency! I agree with Tim on this; that's why I'm here making a post on this (plus that I have too much free time, and enjoy AD too much ;) projecting my ideas of the perfect piece of software on it) What's to be noted is that until today I couldn't tell where shift was needed and where not; I just had this constant feeling that shift doesn't work properly. Until coming here, I thought that consistency was broken in more places beyond the type tool, and that I'd never be able to understand when it works (or not). But what's more, is that the unease of this non-predictable behavior was lurking in the subconscious for 2-3 months, before finally reaching the surface and causing a conscious thought "ok, something is broken, I need to report that". As soon as it became conscious, I searched the forum, and found that the issue pertains only to the type tool, and that there is some reasoning behind this decision. Still, for a few months it was a cause of unconscious stress. Of course, I'm not saying that I couldn't sleep at night :P I'm merely making a friendly remark based on the little UX design experience I have: Consistency is important, it makes the user feel the program behaves as expected; when this feeling of predictability is not there it causes stress and frustration and detracts from the user experience. In retrospection, after all this discussion, I doubt any of us participating in this discussion will have issues with it again: It's become a rather conscious thing now :P The team's decision certainly makes sense, but I still think the team should consider a more consistent approach. How I would go about it: Personally I'd make constraint aspect the default across all tools: You'd need to press shift to transform freely (unlock the constraint). I'm stating three reasons that IMO support that: 1) While in theory curves have no inherent "aspect ratio" as @Dave Harris states, in practice they often do: it's the aspect ratio that you decided for the shape the moment you put it on canvas. In other words, if I interactively drew a rectangle as a square using the WYSIWYG rectange tool, it's more probable that I wanted it to be a square than not; The same applies to a freehand curve - eg. a spiral. If I make it prolonged, maybe it's because I wanted to emulate perspective. If I make it circular, it's probably because I wanted it circular. If instead of a WYSIWYG, I was creating a shape by entering numeric parameters or by pasting template basic shapes on the canvas, it would be safe to assume that free transformation would probably be the next step. But in our case, I think it's not. 2) If I want to quickly transform something without adhering to the aspect ratio, I can already use the top/bottom and left/right handles of the bounding box, without resorting to pressing the shift key. Why not have the corner handles default behavior a bit different? 3) Personally (though I suppose other people have different work styles), I don't think I ever "freely" transform something on both axes. I either want it wider/narrower, or taller/shorter so I go directly to the respective handles (top/bottom,left/right) for added control. And now that I dumped my thoughts for the day, I'll get back to work ;-) -Fotis PS. I wouldn't want to give the impression that I don't like what the team does for AD: Far from that, they are just amazing and they certainly know best! Even the fact that the forum has space for us to express our ideas and be in direct contact with the team, is a beautiful privilege that I am very happy for! If I get too passionate, is because I feel like I'm becoming an Affinity fanboy! :rolleyes: Thank you guys!

I do that all the time, but I'm in my early-thirties! With all these full-HD 20+inch monitors, text on most web-sites appears too small - not to mention that whole paragraphs end up in a single text line. Why strain your eyes when you can simply pump everything up to fill this 20+ inch monitor of yours? If they end up too big, you can always lean back in your chair and read from a further distance ;-)

@MEB, absolutely; Both a 2x image and an SVG address the same problem: it will look better on retina displays (but also on conventional ones when zoomed above 100%). Hinting is certainly not being tackled at all with my suggestion - and as you insightfully point out, the browser will have to do the downscaling and this will probably be less intelligent compared to that of AD, leading to somewhat less crisp edges. Still, I think the difference in our POV lies merely on our different interpretation of what @RKTodd was asking in the first place: Was his complaint regarding the sub-pixel aliasing, or was it something more trivial? My assumption was the latter. When I viewed his site on 100% zoom in my 120dpi monitor, there was nothing ugly about the letters; they were equally crisp as the menu buttons. Different weight, size and style, but equally crisp. Of course this is very subjective and I am no expert in typography so others with a more attuned mind to hinting quirks may be able to see a serious problem where I see none. But for me the big issue was zooming in, and this had to do with resolution, not hinting. So I took the easy route and presumed that @RKTodd was also the victim of zooming-in (or maybe some retina mac/tablet) - Of course I may be mistaken! I suppose @RKTodd could shed some more light on the exact nature of his issue. He may wish to try Cmd+0 to reset the zoom level back to 100% on his browser,and see if it's any better too. Would also be helpful if he posted the exact model (year/model) of his mac+monitor and maybe a screenshot of how his website appears? hope this helps! -Fotis PS. As a sidenote the text in the circular stamp logo is too fine to be legible with the available pixels in my monitor, but it couldn't be otherwise - make any font less than 9px and you enter the same murky waters.

I must also agree with @crabtrem! Of course hinting is an issue here, but the resolution of the image is the big issue imo: Like the OP explained, when zooming in, it doesn't look sharp enough. No matter what the hinting, you wouldn't get this to look any better while zoomed in. This is because the rest of the elements (text, divs) can rescale gracefully (being dynamically generated), but the image doesn't. This is an apparent problem with hi-dpi screens (tablets, apple retinas etc) - Other than using SVG images (that is the optimal solution but apparently didn't work for you), you could simply try exporting your image in a much higher resolution. I suggest the original dimension multiplied by 2, or 4 eg. 1200x200px; this would allow the browser to better downscale the image where it's needed. Don't forget to force your desired width of "600px", inside the html/css. This will retain the original banner size when displayed at 100% zoom or on conventional displays, but also give you some extra pixels leeway that would allow you to zoom in gracefully when needed (or fill the extra detail in high-res displays). As for the filesize, as long as you export it as a png, it won't be much bigger since it will compress a lot. hope this helps! -Fotis

@jmzeus, not sure I understand... when you convert an ellipse (or any other shape) to a curve, and press Cmd+Y you won't see a difference in the outline; but if you use the node tool (shortcut: "A") and select the curve, you will see that it now has some nodes/control points (eg the ellipse has 4)

thank you @DWright! That would be great indeed!

Thank you @DWright! However this is not what I was looking for - If I got the correct link, the video shows how to individually manipulate the tangents(?) of the node. I was looking for a way to treat multiply-selected nodes as a group, and perform group transformations (such as scale and rotate) on them. I've updated the original post with a photoshop video demonstrating the feature, to better illustrate my point

Hi! I'm trying to replicate the following (PS) workflow in Affinity Designer video: https://youtu.be/9BQMiAvhWho picture: Goal: I wish to select a subset of the nodes in a curve and perform the 3 basic transformations on them (translate, scale, rotate). On photoshop, you can select the nodes, and by pressing Cmd+Shift+T bring up the transformation box & handles. Automatically the average of the nodes works as the center (but you can move it around too). So far on AD: I use the node tool [A], and Shift+click on the desired nodes. Move: if I drag them, I can move them around. (This is desirable). But I haven't been able to find how to do the other two transformations (scale, or rotate). Scale: It seems I can type-in the width and height (% or mm) in the transform panel, and choose the transformation center with 9-dots-box (8-directions + center). This effectively replicates the scale transformation, ableit a bit cumbersome. Is there currently some more intuitive/interactive way of doing that? Edit: FYI I've just discovered that on the Transformation Panel you can horizontally drag on the X:/Y:/width:/height: labels and this transforms the shape visually Rotate: I haven't found a way so far to do that; Even in the transform panel it's grayed out as an option when working with nodes. Would anybody know how to do that in Affinity? Thanks, Fotis

I +1 that! I was also trying to find it in the menu and the layers panel (menu & context menu) but couldn't find it, so I concluded it didn't exist

@R C-R, I did try that, but didn't seem much difference; thanks though! Thank you @MEB! yes, that would be rather useful!

Hi! Still getting to know AD, and I love it! I have a question but don't really know how to phrase it properly - maybe it's been asked before: I'm trying to "optimize" a curve by deleting excess control points. In PS when you do that, I tries to approximate the curve by modifying the neighbouring 2 points (the previous and the next) so that the curve doesn't "suffer" much from the lack of this control point. Anybody know how this can be done in Affinity Designer? thanks, Fotis