softsound

Yes, I was thinking the same thing recently, why show all this stuff I'm not using at the moment?

This is such a nice style, thank you for making it free!

Thanks, though I'm disappointed they removed that feature, I rather liked it as it saved me a little time. Even just adding a link somewhere for updates would have been nice.

I used to use it to download whatever freebies normally came with the upgrade, and sometimes just browse updates. Did V2 get freebies? Normally every upgrade might throw in a brush or font or something extra when upgrading.

For me in addition to the original post: trace tool better gradient controls it was hard to reuse gradients... Like if I make a layer effect gradient I want to use elsewhere what now? Why doesn't this work like color? Why are layer and fill color/gradients not the same? Paint format tool like in google docs so I copy text fonts/styles quickly and reapply in 1 click.. I'm still surprised we don't have symmetry tools/rulers that doesn't sound that hard to implement.... I feel overall Publisher upgrades were nice. Designer upgrades so-so.. Photo not that noticeable...

I think you made some good points. 1) They lost information with the some of the new icons, the source of color made them easier to scan on those icons. Removing the color will slow down users. 2) I agree, looks better. 3) I'm not sure if having colors for particular software is good or bad, but would make the color schemes at least make more sense. To me most of the color in affinity feels kind of random. 4) The placement of the horizontal or vertical button is really bad, layout info should be in the layout section... I feel those buttons should be larger and in a place you scan more often, same with the heart though, that feels like an awkward place for it. Personally I preferred more of the old layout as it felt the info was compacted better and looks faster to use. 5 & 10) Yeah it's a big downgrade. 7) I still can't believe they don't have this. I complained about this years ago! The bad UI changes is a big disappointment for me. It's made me debate getting the upgrade, I used to admire Affinity for some their design choices but it feels like they didn't care as much with this round. I've always thought their icons were not great but at least readable, some of the new ones now are again just bad... And I'm disappointed they didn't follow standard UX laws of grouping like info, and reducing clicks when possible, etc. It feels like they wanted to really use screen space in this update, but the problem with using a lot of screen space is it slows you down. A fair amount of other posts bring up where they slowed down the experience. Most of the time it's better not to show advanced features or previews unless the user asks for it and it would be better to make them a separate window as most users won't need that info. I think it would have been better not to make the UI changes a selling point as they are mostly a disappointment. That said I've been a fan of affinity for a while so I intend to upgrade and hope things will improve in the next version 10 years from now

This is pretty awesome! Thanks!

Those are some nice resources, I'm going to bookmark your website because it's really useful just need a bit of google translate and it's great.

@GBF15 You can probably get away with PDF/X-1a:2003, as it seems affinity handles the transparency right, worst case you can ask for a refund from affinity or just use the trial version. The trial version is great, fully featured and you can download it as often as you want (I think, don't quote me on it).

Well, I'm not great at book cover's so take what I say with a grain of salt, maybe just try a few different designs and have people vote on it? You can try different text styles and see if anything stands out better. I made a quick attempt at it, and I don't exactly like your font but I think it's easier to read then what I have though so... maybe try a few different designs and look at a few book covers and try those styles. I think for the most part at the end of the day it's mostly personal preference...

There is another way to do if you are in a hurry, if you copy and paste in image you should be able to directly change the color. But yeah using layer effects is the pro way to go about it. Oops. Did not realize this post was so old, sorry! exampleColoring.mp4

I might have asked this before, I don't remember but is there a way to save this gradient? Copying and pasting just this gradient would be okay too, I'm just combining layer effects right now and hoped there was a faster way to do this without overwriting other effects. I mean this is simple enough I can redo it on other layers but if I make something more complicated is there an easier way to copy it or save it?

I rather like plug-in's, I tend to write minor ones for grids and such and would be happy to see Affinity open it up to some sort of JavaScript or Python model. Quite a lot of people have asked if they can use company x plug-in so I imagine they will have to add it at some point for professional use. It would be nice to see a micro's become more popular too, I have used those a lot in Photoshop. This sort of thing tends to take a long time to implement so I don't imagine it any time soon.

I'm glad you were able to work it out. Yeah, looks like I was wrong, sorry, cool though, I'm glad I learned something too. So they do have the same functionally. I thought I tried that before and didn't have it work earlier but it seems to work for me now.

Can you make it then? A shape with no fill/stroke and only layer effects?

That is just effect fill opacity @Aftemplate not layer fill opacity. Photoshop has effect fill as well, they just call it opacity in the effect window. If you can pull off the effect though I would impressed. I suppose you can just reverse it by starting with a gradient transparent blur and cutting out the shape though that's the closest thing I could think of, but it's a lot more work.

In Photoshop yes, Affinity as far as I know does not have layer fill opacity control so no. They have shape opacity, and layer opacity, but not layer fill opacity. In Photoshop you can have the image/shape hidden and only show the effect, but effect control is very limited in Affinity.

Kindle Create (Made by Amazon of course) is a tool you can use to format your PDF for Kindle, it's very easy to use, just upload the work (I use PDF) and export to kindle's format. It has worked fine for me and my illustrated picture books, for the majority of work I think it will be just fine. If you want to publish outside of Amazon, there are tools out there (like Sigil and the like) but I haven't used them. When working with Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) they have a way to preview how your book will look in both print and digitally and while it's slow, it is a very helpful to see how your work will look before you publish. If you have any questions about the process I can probably help with Amazon publishing.

I've published a few books on Amazon and yes, I think these are nice additions but Amazons book format tools work well enough, have you not been using that? I've used them on picture books I've exported from Affinity Publisher to use on Kindle and it seems to work okay. It should be even be better for books without pictures. So if you are using the KDP system it should work fine, you can upload PDF's and not run into too many issues... Though it can be a very slow process. Although, it would be nice to get these formats, I don't think affinity has any plans to have them in soon.

You are looking for a layer fill feature, Affinity doesn't support it, but I use layer fills at 0% with 100% opacity on shapes all the time in Photoshop and I wish Affinity had a similar feature. They don't have any nice work arounds either right now. What makes them so nice(layer fills) is being able to adjust both fill and opacity on a layer and just use them for layer effects. Currently in Affinity if you don't have a set color or stroke color on the shape it will not show even with effects applied. In Photoshop or other adobe work you don't need a stoke or color to have the effect still work. So being able to avoid a stroke & color or/and use layer fills would be nice, currently neither are options. These fill options make designing UI like this a breeze in Photoshop. I hope Affinity Designer can one day add them in.(Obviously I made a cheap knock-off here but I only spent 30 mins) The nice thing is I don't have to worry about layer blend modes canceling out or overlapping etc with this method.

Yes, this seems like a very reasonable idea, also would be nice is if I can click and drag values (to make it faster increments ) on the arrows too. Sometimes I don't want to use my keyboard and just being able to quickly do this all with the mouse is ideal.

Does this help? Just take a diamond and cut it in half twice. The little triangle piece you have can be copied to make 4 pieces. Once you have your four pieces all you have to do is turn them until they all fit.. I cut the diamond by using a rectangle or square shape and the subtract tool.

Krita can hide & show with a keyboard shortcut. I set mine to space for example. And since it's not tied to the layer system it keeps things very clean. Affinity should be able to make a similar tool at some point, I mean Krita only has 4 full time employees after all.

I think the point of art boards is to be able to have different sizes in one document, I understand I can just create a bunch of documents and copy and paste it over or use the transform to transform but these workarounds seem unnecessary if they just gave the option for custom sizes upfront. I submitted my suggestion here.

This is cool! Thanks! 😀