softsound

Hi all, I'm pleased to share with you some macros I've been working on—these are predominantly intended for users of Blender who are retouching their renders in Affinity Photo, but you can also use these macros with EXR/HDR renders from other 3D software and even merged HDR photographs from bracketed exposures. They enable you to easily achieve whichever Filmic look you require in Affinity Photo with just one click—no messing around with OpenColorIO configurations, no confusion with which colour management option to use, and certainly no flattening and converting to 16/8-bit to apply any kind of final transform!
The macros and accompanying readme can be downloaded here: http://jamesritson.co.uk/resources.html
Here are the main talking points of this macro set:
Emulates the Filmic view transform and looks (e.g. Very High Contrast, Low Contrast) that you can apply in Blender. These macros are intended for HDR documents (OpenEXR, Radiance HDR). When saving to these formats, Blender writes out linear scene-referred values, so you do not get the Filmic view transform and looks applied. Applying the Filmic view transform and looks in Affinity Photo is possible but complicated, and involves copying the Blender OpenColorIO configuration files and pointing Affinity Photo to them. Instead, these macros can be added to a fresh install of Affinity Photo—no other dependencies like OpenColorIO—and you can apply the Filmic look you want non-destructively. If you want, just apply the Filmic Log transform—no look—and shape the tones yourself using Affinity Photo's adjustment layers. For convenience, move between different colour spaces non-destructively (Rec.709, Rec.2020, ROMM RGB, ACES CG, DCI-P3). Profiles are included in the macro file so are portable—no dependencies. I've also recorded an instructional video here: 
 
 
And some comparison images:

 
Thanks very much for reading, hope you find them useful!

I made a set of gradients for Affinity Designer. 
My first attempt at AD gradient set! Tada!  :D
I originally created the set to be used at work (using Illustrator) and I made this to share with the nice folks here at Affinity Forum.
 
Hope you guys find this useful.
 
Thanks!
 
- Maya

MAYA-GRADIENT-VOL-1.zip

Rather surprised it doesn't exist already.

So there are a number of feature requests that could be temporarily solved by the use of open source plugins. Serif want to develop proprietary solutions to many of these tools and i honestly hope they do - however whilst they are working on these tool and on fixing bugs etc, why not allow a framework that can enable plugin implementation or development for the affinity system.

Another option to open source would be to have old serif utility modules, such as tools from Page Plus, Draw Plus or Photo Plus - as long as you make the functionality clear and the fact it is a Legacy or Open Plugin, I don't think users would mind and in fact would rather have limited functionality rather than none. I understand the Affinity Suite is a new set of programs and i understand it is built in a fundamentally different way, but in order to be a true replacement of your own software , nevermind an option to replace alternate offerings, more needs to be offered to cover some basic elements of modern software. 

lets look at some EXAMPLE requests that i know of that could be an easy temporary solution once implemented 

1. Measure tool

Currently this requires work arounds ...WHY?? we can, draw a line and get its length but we cannot simply measure gaps, objects etc - this one should be an easy and obvious win this shouldn't even require a plugin, but a plugin tool that would allow you to draw a toggleable printable / non printable measurement or group of such measurement lines would be very welcome. 

2. Trace Bitmap 

This is a very commonly requested feature, users that want this functionality currently have to use a separate program, leave affinity boot program, trace the image, then re import into affinity as a vector, by allowing for a plug in framework - for a temporary amount of time users could simply use a plugin built around Potrace - http://potrace.sourceforge.net/ - this is the same technology used in Inkscape - not perfect but works well enough, and if users are currently booting a separate program to do the same thing it would stop that annoying work around, keeping people inside the affinity workflow. 

2 (a). Vector Brushes (workaround)

by allowing the above method, users could "set" the dynamic raster brushes currently called vector brushes - once they were happy with them, if they wanted to keep dynamics they could simply create a duplicate layer and set then then turn off visibility of the "vector brush" stroke, this would allow brushes to be exported without rasterization, a bitmap trace module would also have other side benefits similar to these 2, using pixel layers to draw textures then vectorising etc etc.

3. Barcode generation / QR generation

while one could again make a potrace argument if you had a raster barcode, this would be weird, however there are many other solutions including those developed for previous serif products.



Whilst there are of course many many other tools that would benefit from such a system,  but the principal is this. 

if there are open source, or older proprietary tools that can do the jobs being requested, then until such time as development can be completed on the newest gen tool these tools should be available via a plug in system, the performance of these plugins should be made clear, these are to enable users to stay in the affinity workflow whilst completing a job NOT to provide the best result serif can offer, or reflect on serifs ability. Support for these plugins should be limited and down to the Community / OS Developers if the plugin is open source or if proprietary Serif for bug fixes / version clashes only. Plugins should not get new feature requests if Proprietary, however the usage of such plugins may actually aid development of the new generation tool, as users could suggest improvements on a tool basis. 

Whilst development of a plugin manager / porting code to work with affinity will take time and effort it should be considerably less time than required to develop the new tools, and "should" cover a lot of the bases of missing tools that people currently require or ask about of a regular basis.  

This could initially be offered as a premium upgrade if necessary to cover time / costs say £10 / £20 for Affinity Designer "(+)"  plugin suite containing draw plus / page plus tools) leaving the current version only having the officially developed Affinity Designer tools, and or open source tool compatibility  and allowing for the addition of these modules for those whom want them "NOW" at an extra cost, Let me be clear i would not think this is a good strategy long term, Tools should be developed and implemented into the Core Affinity System, i am simply talking about a way of giving people tools Sooner rather than later that is cost effective for the company so that I'm not trying top ask for everything for free.

its possible many features and tolls are planned for version 2.0 ...but how long will that be? and where is the roadmap to give us an expectation? 

this workaround would remove the need for roadmaps etc as when the New version of a tool was ready it would be implemented offering improvements over the plugin version, meanwhile features you don't wish to be implemented natively at this stage could be offered by plugin developers.


 

Please add an option to disable all rendering of FX applied to elements. With hundreds of elements - perhaps over a thousand - I have to apply unique FX to many of them and I have to do it from the very beginning. It slows down rendering a lot and thus slows down my work. I use Retina view as a workaround but when zooming in everything turns to huge pixels. No good. It would be a significant performance booster without too much lost quality wise while working.

Hi,
I think this has not been asked as of yet (at least, I can't find it when searching). Probably, most of us are interested in IDML import, since the most urgent thing is transitioning from ID to APublisher.
However, I think that the ability of exporting IDML is still very important in a professional context.
1) Most of the professional publishing sector will be based on ID for years, and being able to transfer our files to a larger workgroup is very important to have our work accepted.
2) Computer aided translation tools are usually compatible with IDML files (and I can confirm they can be perfectly compatibile with ID). Translating our work will probably mean that the translators will ask us an IDML file.
So, I hope to see this implemented in a near future version.
Paolo
 

I recently purchased Affinity Publisher and Designer for macOS (after previously purchasing Affinity Photo in December 2019) and this feature request relates to all three products.
All three products have the Transform panel which allows users to easily adjust values for moving, resizing etc. One thing I keep wanting to do is to click on a little arrow to increment the value for fine tuning.
For example, in the mock-up below I show both the current design of the Transform panel and what I'm proposing. Currently, if I want to change the X value from -125.4 to -125.3, I have to click the field to highlight it, click again to place the cursor after the '4', press the delete key and then entire the value '3' followed by pressing Enter. However, in the proposed state, I could just click on the down arrow to change the X value by one increment from -125.4 to -125.3.
In other words, currently I need to do two clicks and three keyboard presses. In the proposed state this would just be one click. 
Finally, using arrows is much better from the point of view of comparing the impacts of the change, as I can view the change in real time as I'm clicking up/down.
 
 

But why only the midpoint of a segment? What if I want to snap to thirds of a segment? Or divide a segment into fifths.
An Add Nodes Per Segment command would enable one to create snap candidates at any fractional increment along a segment.
JET

Any ETA on non destructive free transform, perspective and warp tools like those found illustrator/Photoshop?
 
 

I'm looking to curve a vector (as the opening stroke of a slanted, capital 'A') into a spiral or coil. I'm working with nodes and their curving arms but am unable to make anything satisfactory. Any suggestions?

I had some minor suggestions on the artboard tool that would save me one or two steps.
Allow the artboard tool to handle custom sizes at creation (Main focus of this post) Allow the artboard tool to create & delete artboard presets Show what size presets currently are. I work with print a lot and affinity artboard presets are currently mobile/device focused, allowing me to enter custom sizes would save me a little time.
Allowing me to create custom presets / swap presets like affinity already has would be a bonus.
I included a quick example of what I mean compared to what we currently have.

 

What we currently have 👇

An example of how the rename widow could look was also included, affinity pretty much could reuse their rename preset window.

Every time I use artboards I think man if only they made this one step instead of two or three.

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.

Ah, nvm I found I can just set size in the transform tool. It would be nice if I could just directly type it in though while creating it.

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 had some minor suggestions on the artboard tool that would save me one or two steps.
Allow the artboard tool to handle custom sizes at creation (Main focus of this post) Allow the artboard tool to create & delete artboard presets Show what size presets currently are. I work with print a lot and affinity artboard presets are currently mobile/device focused, allowing me to enter custom sizes would save me a little time.
Allowing me to create custom presets / swap presets like affinity already has would be a bonus.
I included a quick example of what I mean compared to what we currently have.

 

What we currently have 👇

An example of how the rename widow could look was also included, affinity pretty much could reuse their rename preset window.

Every time I use artboards I think man if only they made this one step instead of two or three.

This might be a bad comparison but in Clip Studio Paint you can toggle a reference layer and clearly see the layer marked as well. I could imagine them implementing something similar. They could probably also go the Krita route with an actual reference tool. These two reference tools work very differently with reference layers being a useful layer for filling, outlines and other functions that allow layers to reference one another while reference tools are used for loading a group of reference images you are using and you can easily adjust all reference opacity and load and unload them. I think both would be useful.

Here is how the reference tool works in Krita. (Video)
 

Just use an emoji font and it will work fine. I made a blog post covering this here. I even cover kaomoji.

Not very many emoji fonts exist but I recommended 3 of them in my blog post. I also show an example of how I use emoji's in game design using Affinity Publisher.

The 3 fonts I recommend are:
Google's Noto
OpenMoji
and 
Code2000 (This one may have copyright issues so I would not use it professionally)
Now of course if the font doesn't support the glyph it won't work but all of these fonts are quite large with code2000 being one of the largest in the world so you should have some support.

This method does not support fancy color though as affinity does not support that, so you'll have to use basic font colors, but you can always convert into a shape and recolor it if you want. 

Considering emoji's are updated every year you may not have the latest emoji's in these fonts but you will find a lot of support still.
 

When drawing on top on an image (photo) - something I do quite a lot for weeks - I toggle displaying of the photo on and off. I partly trace the contours manually but I also recreate the texture and characteristics of the underlying layer with vectors. I compare my work with the photo constantly in the process. 
When I have many layers and expanded layers with groups the photo layer is out of reach - and to hide or show it I must scroll scroll scroll to reach it.
Feature request:
I suggest instead that one layer can be set as a reference layer than can be displayed or hidden with a shortcut key. It would also be practical if the reference layer is visible in outline mode (but optional) I know I can keep the photo layer to fx 50% transparent to see both vector and pixels, but I need photo at 100% to compare with my work and to get an idea about how to vector paint the various details and colours.
@VectorVonDoom Makes sense?
SERIF: Please have a look at the following posts from @softsound with examples from Krita, that does have reference layer and tools.

I would like Sreif to bring back "real" vector brush from DrawPlus to Affinity.
Affinity's vector brush is actually a raster brush stroke with a curve, pseudo vector brush.
Why this has been changed when Affinity was developed?

I agree with this request. PNG favicons work in some cases but not all. The Android Chrome Browser for instance shows a site icon in the 'recent sites' starting screen, but only if this is an ICO file.
 
For now though I just use IcoFX Portable, which is free and very feature rich.

Hi all,
I'm considering buying Designer but one thing that I can't find is if there is a way to fill an object using vector or patterns. I only find gradients and bitmap.
I know we can duplicate an object to create hand made pattern but I can't then edit the repetitions like if is a bitmap fill.
Cheers,
Juan

Hi,
It would be nice to be able to bulk import vector assets like SVG files by dragging and dropping many of them in the Assets panel from a file manager window. Or at least be able to use the import dialog from the panel's menu for vectors, just like we can already do with raster images. It seems like a glaring omission that we can only do it with one type of files.
Oddly enough I did a search on this forum for "Bulk vector assets import" and could not find a previous discussion on the subject.
p.s. I'm aware that we can import vectors one by one, but it's a tedious process when you want to add hundreds of files.
Alex
 

p.p.s. I bought all 3 in the space of 48h after having found Designer great, then tried Publisher and it really clicked with me. At that point I just decided to close the loop with Photo even though I'm doing fine with Gimp or Krita on that front. I love the small personal complementary application each product has. I love it so far and it will probably end up being my main tool for anything vector. Great job to the devs.

hi there,

I'd like to share my experience with the Pencil tool, and I think this is related to a bug topic,

first, I notice nice improvement when you convert shapes to curves. Very awesome, thanks to the team efforts 😊

But when I need to use Pencil tool. it still doesn't work as I'd like to use.
eg. trying to close the curves, they doesn't happen so well.

then I need to always activate the sculpt mode.
however doesn't work easily (as you can see on the video).

eg. When you draw a shape, the beginning and the end of each shape drawn, adds more points, making the curve not optimised, taken even more time to fix it.

as I use affinity everyday, I come only when I see a tool that I use all the time would need to have a bit more of attention. 

for now I suggest to my students and followers to use the pen tool,
easy to close the shape and very well optimised.


SUGGESTIONS (for this topic)
Pencil tool (quick draw mode) it draws the shape (example shown at the end of the video)

Clear Shape Option (Reduces the amount of nodes created, making the shape clear to adjust)

add Keyboard Shortcuts for the Close the Curve and shortcuts to the ToolBar buttons, would be awesome as well.

Please take in consideration this topic for the next upcoming improvements
2020-04-18 12-46-14.mp4
Jhon


 

1) Photoshop layer effect - Pattern Overlay - I use this all the time in PS. Look at Krita if you need help, they have it working and it's free & open source maybe you can sneak some code idk.
2) Layer Fill & fill opacity not to be confused with flood fill or layer opacity. Layer fill only targets the image on the layer and ignores alpha we currently do not have a workaround so I stick to PS. This is a very big time saver! If I can't get layer fill to control alpha then give me an alpha toggle at least... Like how Krita & Clip Studio handle it. 
3) Adjust window text sizes (Especially when working with glyphs) I just blindly guess what I'm clicking on since the text can only be like 12x12px and some glyphs don't show well that small.
4) The ability to open large photoshop files or handle file sizes - Crashes most of the time when working in 4k so I don't bother. I can't image how it would handle 8k. I stick to PS.