[Using a compound shape to mask a group?]

I also noticed that when a compound shape is used to mask(?) another compound shape, you can no longer easily edit the masked compound shape (or even group). I think someone already mentioned, but it's really bad! Affinity developers, when are we getting the Designer equivalent to isolation mode?

[Using a compound shape to mask a group?]

On 1/30/2021 at 12:33 AM, Xzenor said:

Wait.. I see what's wrong.

Fill your masking-compound with a color. it just has to have a color. Any color. You won't see it anymore once it's a mask.

And start with 100% opacity.. you can lower it later if you want but just to see it work.

Thanks everyone, this did the trick!

But the Ux around this still seems convoluted... correct me if I'm wrong but:

• It is clipping when the child object makes non-overlapping parts of the parent invisble?
• It is masking when the parent object makes non-overlapping parts of the child object invisible?

And then...

• Clipping only works with single objects clipping one another.
• Masking can work with compound objects masking groups.

And finally:

• A clipping object must be transparent to work
• A masking object must have a color to work

Now, someone will hopefully correct everything I got backwards, but it feels like a huge failure that these two, very similar functions, could not have been better structured. Especially when none of it is explicit in any menus, but rather must be discovered by testing different drag and drop targets. For example, any reason these two couldn't be unified into a single feature with the same intersect/xor options as compound objects?

Is anyone from Affinity reading this? Similar to the legacy feeling you get regarding how the Fx button works, I hope they're not already locked in to this archaic way and can come up with a better solution for 2.0 perhaps...

EDIT: Oh, my god... only now do I see this...

So in other words:

• A clipped object has no symbol associated with it
• A masked object has a tiny little (crop?) symbol in a very weird place associated with it

[Using a compound shape to mask a group?]

14 minutes ago, Xzenor said:

if you're trying to use the curve or compount as a mask then you shouldn't move it below the text but on the thumbnail.

Still can't get that to work, unfortunately, regardless of how I try:

Also, even if you are somehow correct, my initial suspiciouns were right then: There's only implicit (difficult to discover) ways to achieving clipping that's theoretically different if you want to use a curve or compound as the mask. That's poor UI consistency!

Again, why isn't there an explicit, intuitive menu option/button for this?

Unless I'm missing something obvious, this seems bad on so many levels!

[Using a compound shape to mask a group?]

What does it matter when it starts and ends?

1. I move one orange shape into an invisible curve, and get expected clipping.

2. I move one orange shape into an invisible compound, and the entire orange shape disappears instead!

I don't get why it behaves differently if clipping is supposed to work with compound shapes.

Again, if there was an explicit menu command/button to perform clipping, you wouldn't have to guess what happens when you drag and drop stuff in various places...

[Using a compound shape to mask a group?]

2 hours ago, MEB said:

Yes, you can use a compound to mask a group.
That's not entirely true - on macOS if you press ALT and go to the Geometry menu you should see "(Compound)" added after the boolean operation's name. Unfortunately this can't be implemented on Windows.

1. What am I doing wrong here?

2. Why can't that hidden menu you describe always be shown? Why can't we have an optional separate toolbar for compound shapes?

[Using a compound shape to mask a group?]

Is this possible?

(Also, I must say, that hiding compound shapes behind an Alt shortcut, and no evidence of this functionality anywhere in the menus, isn't super intuitive...)

[Clipping via menus or buttons?]

I might have missed something here but is clipping only available by dragging in the layers panel?

https://affinityspotlight.com/article/understanding-clipping-in-affinity-apps/

That's really problematic if I have hundreds of objects and need to find the two I want in a list, when I could just select them and  click on a clip button.

I tried to open all buttons using "customize toolbar" but couldn't find any clipping buttons, and the same story when I looked through the menus... nothing stood out.

[How do I select through hollow shapes?]

I made a circle, subtracted a hole in that circle, and how I want to select the object that shows through that hole, but I can't!

What am I missing? This is such a basic feature...

[No big difference between bevel and mitre join]

On 1/2/2021 at 1:14 PM, Pšenda said:

 

 

[No big difference between bevel and mitre join]

Cool... the usability on that option could still have been handled better, and nobody has explained that graphical bug, though.

[No big difference between bevel and mitre join]

A bug associated with this is that the milter joins flicker on and off when you zoom, especially if they overlap something else:

 

 

(What I managed to capture above is mild... it's much worse in other cases...)

[Offset in Designer?]

I can't find the offset in designer. Can anyone let me know where it is?

So far, I've tried to add a thick stroke and expand it, but the result is a single curve object, not a compound curve object that I can release, so I'm unsure of how to get to the actual shape I want (without manually deleting all nodes from the shape I don't want... but that's tedious as I have several objects).

[No big difference between bevel and mitre join]

Oh... there's a strange, unexplained number entry that appears when you select mitre... apparently, through trial and error, if you increase that number, you for some reason get the expected result:

[No big difference between bevel and mitre join]

Guess which is bevel and which is mitre:

 

Mitre misses several joins, it seems...

[No immediate menu popup for Fx button, like Adjustment button right next to it has]

In the layers panel, there are a row of buttons along the bottom, where the Adjustments and Fx produce rather similar layer modifications.

However, the Fx button pops up a new dialogue where you have to make additional clicks to select something, whereas the Adjustment button popups a menu where you can immediately make your selection.

This feels like baggage from Photoshop that might be familiar, but feels like a missed opportunity for streamlining and making the UI more consistent...

[is Crop to selection possible]

I had to do an internet search for this today.

Very sad to see something like this still isn't possible yet.

[No per pixel hit testing on selections?]

16 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

the good news is that this bug is fixed in the 1.9.0 beta.

Great! Looking forward to the 1.9 release then.

[No per pixel hit testing on selections?]

17 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

If "circle" is two merged circled curves with black Fill color - selection don't work. 

But that is not normal! It must be a bug. Can someone please move this post to the bug forum instead?

This is so bad!

Look at the end of the video: I'm even clicking OUTSIDE of the black circle and it still gets selected!

Is this how Affinity is "fast"? By cheating this much? It's not even that fast on complicated documents...

[No per pixel hit testing on selections?]

53 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Just guessing but is the circle with no fill on top of all the other layers? And does it have a Transparent fill or is the fill set to 0 % opacity?

[No per pixel hit testing on selections?]

What am I missing here? This is 100% unworkable! I must have enabled some option by mistake:

All selection, even single clicks, operate only on the bounding boxes of objects, so the circle with no fill gets selected even if you click on objects inside of it.

That is madness. How did I make the program go this crazy?

[Publisher background curve HSL 0,0,92 exports as white]

Ok, so I tried a different PDF viewer, and it turns out the fault lies with Foxit MobilePDF... so much for one of the more popular Windows 10 PDF viewers.

(Stupid Microsoft for killing their Reader... I'll never get used to viewing PDFs in a browser.)

[Publisher background curve HSL 0,0,92 exports as white]

Desktop.zip

Nothing changed, exporting for print.

I'm on Windows 10, though, not Mac.

[Publisher background curve HSL 0,0,92 exports as white]

I have made a simple shape straight in Designer on my master, and it exports to PDF fine... except when I choose the color to be H 0 S 0 L 92... then it exports as white, even though it's clearly grey in Publisher. Switching to C 6 M 5 Y 5 K 0 doesn't help. However, if I don't change the color and instead rasterize it, it shows up in the PDF.

Anyone else found this bug?

[Lasso select vertices/points, regardless of object belonging]

Well, then it doesn't work for me.

Frankly, this is just one of a list of a half a dozen or so showstoppers, so I'd just as well wait for future versions to catch up with Illustrator.

[Lasso select vertices/points, regardless of object belonging]

Illustrator also has the wonderful feature that the first delete deletes only the lasso selected points, and then the second delete deletes the entire objects: