M1000

Just change the top left colour and the others will follow.


Interactive Colour Chords AP1.afphoto

Hi,
the channels panel allows to create a greyscale layer or mask layer from existing pixel layers or mask layers color channels only.
Please add the option to create a greyscale layer from compound color channels (RGB or other color modes, and alpha) Please add the option to create a mask layer from spare channels channels (RGB or other color modes, and alpha) Please add the option to create a mask/greyscale layer from any channels where "create spare channel" is offered today  
This will save you lots of edit steps, including creation and deletion of temporary helper layers.
e.g. to create a greyscale layer from a single compound alpha channel, today a straight forward approach would require 6-7 steps with a complex dance of left/right mouse clicks and always hitting a very small area to toggle the right lick context menu:
create a spare channel create a pixel layer load pixel layer red from spare channel load pixel layer green from spare channel, load pixel layer blue from spare channel fill alpha channel move pixel layer in layer stack to intended position

Exciting times. With precious little in the way of recent updates, some users wondered if Affinity was dead—but no, we were promptly told that they were just focused on the next major version. And four months later, here it is!
A common expression amongst users has been 'hopefully in version 2', so here's my list of hoped for changes. I'm about to fire up my new V2 apps for the first time and see if all the hopeful waiting has been rewarded. I've divided my list into two main categories: 'UI frustrations' and 'Missing or broken features'.
 
UI frustrations
Window management (Separated Mode)
Ever since MultiFinder appeared on the Mac in 1987, we've been able to run multiple apps and see their document windows side by side. Over the years came other improvements like drag and drop between apps and documents. You lose some of those benefits when an app takes up the whole screen with a solid background. For this reason, many of us preferred a separated workspace (turning off Application Frame in Adobe apps), but after switching to Affinity, quickly discovered that Affinity's Separated Mode was pretty broken, with document windows and Studio panels seemingly having no knowledge of each other's existence.
After much criticism, Affinity finally responded in June 2020 with a help article titled 'Increase your efficiency with Affinity’s Separated Mode'. There was no admission of any issues though, and I parodied the unhelpful article in this forum comment.
Changes in V2
Affinity seems to have finally acknowledged the issues with Separated Mode. Their solution? Remove it altogether! The new 'Float View to Window' command kind of gives us the worst of both worlds… separate windows that still aren't aware of your Studio panels, and a big old solid-grey app window obscuring every other background app. It looks like Affinity might have just put this one in the too hard basket.
Panel management
Resizing Studio panels in V1 is somewhere between painful and impossible. To be fair, this was never a perfect experience with Adobe either, but Affinity takes the pain to a new level. Can't see most of your Paragraph panel? Hover your cursor very carefully over that one-pixel hairline between panels… Nope, there's the 'no entry' cursor telling you the panel can't be resized (for some unknown reason). Double-click to minimise a panel or two to make more space… only to find that it added several inches of completely empty space to a different panel instead. Try to resize that one. Nope, there's the 'no entry' cursor again. Start double-clicking ALL the panels until you can finally see the one you want. Utter frustration.
Changes in V2
After playing around with panels for just a few minutes, the results are mixed. Firstly, I can resize panels (without seeing the 'no entry' icon all the time)—great! Secondly, the hover-zone seems to have expanded from one pixel to around two—I'll take it! Beyond that, things are still quite unpredictable. For example, I currently have a massive Swatches panel full of mostly empty space, and a tiny Text Styles panel below it which is showing me only two lines. I can resize the Text Styles panel to my liking, but if I then minimise and reopen it, it's right back to the way it was—tiny and useless. Whatever algorithm is determining these panel sizes is clearly not fit for purpose.
On a positive note, on the Mac the Studio panels are now listed under the Window menu—exactly where they should have been all along!
Oh one other thing… I lost the Swatches panel in Designer. As in, it just totally vanished. 😳 I can hide it and unhide it again from the menu, but it does not reappear. Restarting the app doesn't bring it back either. This could be a bit of a problem!! (Edit: Found!)
Working with guides
Creating a simple guide the normal way, by dragging out from the ruler, works fine. Unfortunately though, Affinity apps lack the power and flexibility of other drawing apps like Illustrator, which let you select and manipulate guides like normal objects—positioning them numerically for example, or hitting delete to remove then. Illustrator even lets you convert normal vector objects into guides.
With Affinity apps, you have to drag a guide off the edge of a page to remove it. The issues with this approach are (1) you have to be zoomed out so that you can see the edge of the page, and (2) it's inconsistent with the behaviour of other objects, which can be safely dragged and positioned beyond the edge of the page. This creates confusion for users as discussed on threads like this one.
Instead, Affinity gives us the Guides Manager. It's a useful tool, but it would be less necessary if guides were more flexible in the first place.
Changes in V2
There appears to be no changes to the way guides work in V2.
Working with colour swatches
In my opinion, Affinity seriously dropped the ball in V1 with the way colour swatches are handled. Here are some of the features that are missing or broken:
There's no obvious place to put your custom colours. You have to find the 'Add Document Palette' command first, which then creates something called 'Unnamed'. Other actions may trigger the app to add a second palette named 'Document'. Once a swatch is created, you can't convert it to or from a global or spot colour. You can't select more than one swatch at a time. You can't drag and drop colour swatches between palettes or between different parts of the UI. There's no obvious way to add a Pantone swatch to an existing document palette. (You need to apply the colour to an object on the canvas, select the object, switch back to your document palette and click on one of the two 'Add…' buttons.) New global colours are given generic names (Global Colour 1, etc). Pantone colour names are not preserved when added as global colours (the most common requirement!) and need to be typed in manually. Global colours are not transferred between documents when copying and pasting objects. (You need to explicitly export a palette from the first document and then import it into the second document.) Global spot colours are not added to a Publisher document palette when placing a Designer file (unlike InDesign and Illustrator). There's no search field in the 'Add Global Color' panel or edit colour pop-up, making it almost impossible to select the one you want from a large list of swatches. (They aren't displayed as a list, even if you set the panel appearance to 'Show as List'.) There's no command to find and delete unused swatches from a document palette. There's no option to merge two global colours. When deleting a used swatch, you're not asked what to replace it with. (If you delete a global colour, all instances just get replaced with a non-global version.) Yes, colour swatch management in Affinity V1 is bad—really bad. In one forum comment I wrote, 'That's one thing Adobe got right, and something the Affinity devs would have done well to replicate, rather than trying to get clever and do their own thing. Gosh I hope version 2 starts to take this seriously.' Well let's check out V2 and see…
Changes in V2
(1) The 'Add Document Palette' command now displays a pop-up which asks, 'Please enter a name for the new palette.' It still defaults to 'Unnamed', but it's a small improvement over the previous behaviour.
(9) Both the 'Add Global Color' panel and the edit colour pop-up now feature a search field, making it much easier to select from a large list of swatches. (They also now respect the 'Show as List' setting.)
Aside from those two improvements, very little seems to have changed with colour swatches across the Affinity suite. That's a big disappointment, and seems to communicates that the Affinity team don't share the view of many users, that this really needed an overhaul.
Undo/Redo
In Affinity apps, the action of selecting or deselecting an object gets added to the undo/redo stack. This is counterintuitive, goes against years of established practice, and (if the user is not familiar with it) can lead to data loss. Only an action that alters the artwork in some way should be added to the undo/redo stack, as discussed here.
Changes in V2
Nothing has changed.
 
Missing or broken features
1-bit black and white artwork (line art)
Graphics applications have, since the beginning of time, supported true 1-bit black and white artwork, so many professional users were understandably shocked to discover that Affinity V1 apps offered no support at all for 1-bit files. The only workaround is to work with grayscale and manually compress your lightness levels. This is anything but reliable, as compression algorithms at export time will not recognise the difference between a faux B&W image and a grayscale one, downsampling line art to an unacceptably low resolution and adding unwanted antialiasing.
Changes in V2
Incredibly, there's still no support for 1-bit black and white artwork.
Turning off antialiasing
The ability to turn off antialiasing of exported graphics is an essential feature for any professional graphics application. Affinity V1 apps lacked this feature entirely in the beginning, but in response to a forum post in 2015, one of Affinity's developers added highly-customisable, per-object control of antialiasing. Then, in 2020, it got better, with a simple on or off option, which you can apply to multiple objects at once.
This is a huge improvement already, but some of us would still like to see a simple on/off checkbox at export for outputting something like a raster print versions of a logo. As I explained in the same discussion: 'it's about tailoring the artwork to different output media. That should be an export function, not something I have to hard-code into the design file.'
Changes in V2
Turning off antialiasing cannot be done globally at export—it must still be hard-coded into each object of the file.
Reliably exporting for print
Affinity Publisher's default PDF export settings for print-ready artwork ('PDF (press-ready)') turns black (K:100) to a CMYK mix (e.g. C:71, M:66, Y:66, K:76), which would be a disaster if not detected before your job goes to print (something which is difficult when there are no pre-press tools provided). There are other issues too, like line art being downsampled and antialiased (related to the previous two issues).
Changes in V2
This has not been fixed. The 'PDF (press-ready)' export preset still has an all-or nothing 'Embed profiles' option ticked by default, and still causes black artwork (like text) to get converted to a CMYK mix.
Previewing colour separations
Affinity has no alternative to Acrobat Pro. For print professionals, this means no way of previewing and checking colour separations before going to print. When combined with the issues mentioned above, the chances of poor quality artwork and printing are high.
Changes in V2
There are no new apps or built-in tools for checking colour separations.
 
Summary
V2 may have brought some cool new features, but it has only brought modest improvements to a few of the features which matter to me the most, while other issues have been overlooked completely. Having waited so many years for the first major update, I have to say, I'm pretty disappointed.
I'll still purchase all the apps, and I'll still recommend them to family and friends. They do a lot of great things, and you certainly can't beat the price.
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of the issues I have with the Affinity apps—just a few that frustrate me the most. If I've left out some of your biggest issues, feel free to add them below with a note on whether V2 fixed them for you.

Hello fellow Developers,
I trust everyone's having a productive coding day. I wanted to bring to light a topic that's incredibly relevant in the realm of Professional Print Production – the importance of Overprint Simulation and Color Separation, and why we need to integrate these features into the next version of Affinity Publisher and Designer.
The world of print production is complex, blending an intricate mix of color science, material properties, and digital-to-physical rendering. Overprint Simulation and color separation are two pivotal elements in this process, largely overlooked in many design software, including ours.
Overprint Simulation is the digital process of replicating the effect of printing one color on top of another. It's used to anticipate and prevent gaps or 'white halos' from appearing between colors due to misalignment - a common issue in print production. Overprint Simulation ensures clean, precise printing, particularly around intricate graphics and texts. It also facilitates unique color blending options that can be indispensable for graphic designers.
Color Separation, on the other hand, is the process of decomposing a graphic or image into the primary print colors – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (Black), collectively known as CMYK. This is fundamental in transforming digital designs into tangible print products. The precision and accuracy of color separation directly influence the quality of the final printed piece, making this an essential tool for professional designers and publishers.
Affinity Publisher and Designer, while powerfully equipped with many other advanced features, lack built-in overprint simulation and color separation functionalities. The absence of these features complicates the print production process and can negatively affect the print output. Our users currently have to depend on other software for these functions, which is far from ideal considering our goal to provide a complete and intuitive solution for professional design and publishing needs.
Implementing these features would significantly enhance the efficacy of Affinity Publisher and Designer for print production. Overprint Simulation controls would offer more control over how colors interact, reducing potential print issues and broadening the creative palette for designers. Robust color separation tools would ensure that designs are print-ready straight from our software, saving time, and reducing the risk of color discrepancies in the final product.
Not only would these features better serve our current user base, but they would also make Affinity Publisher and Designer more competitive in the professional design software market, potentially attracting new customers who primarily work in print.
In conclusion, I urge everyone to consider the significance of overprint simulation and color separation features in our future updates. These are not just bells and whistles – they're fundamental tools for print production. Let's help our users to transform their digital art into printed masterpieces with the accuracy and color fidelity they deserve.

Examples:
https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/inks-separations-screen-frequency.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/overprinting.html
Best Regards

If you set any file to always open with Affinity Apps in the Windows File Explorer, Affinity Apps change the filetype for that image file format to "Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher File", making it impossible to sort files by type in the Windows File Explorer. Other programs don't do that. (old thread)
I was happy to see this was changed in Version 2 (I had installed the MSIX Version).
But now with 2.1 (MSI Version) this was changed back again to the old behaviour.

Is this different between the MSIX and MSI Versions? I'd prefer to use the MSI Version though, because of some quirks the MSIX Version has (can't drag files on the Affinity Apps on the taskbar to open etc.).

Blend tool (object blending) has been requested since 2015. It's a crucial part of doing parametric / creative work. Any chance to put in onto priority / pipe?
Thanks

Since it's now possible to have multiple instances of layer effects, wouldn't it be nice to have a checkbox for a global angle for those multiple effects? And wouldn't it be even nicer to have an independent offset value to change the angle based on that global angle?
Currently it's quite annoying to change the angle for multiple effects on a complex layer effect.
Here's a mockup:

Since it's now possible to have multiple instances of layer effects, wouldn't it be nice to have a checkbox for a global angle for those multiple effects? And wouldn't it be even nicer to have an independent offset value to change the angle based on that global angle?
Currently it's quite annoying to change the angle for multiple effects on a complex layer effect.
Here's a mockup:

Since it's now possible to have multiple instances of layer effects, wouldn't it be nice to have a checkbox for a global angle for those multiple effects? And wouldn't it be even nicer to have an independent offset value to change the angle based on that global angle?
Currently it's quite annoying to change the angle for multiple effects on a complex layer effect.
Here's a mockup:

Since it's now possible to have multiple instances of layer effects, wouldn't it be nice to have a checkbox for a global angle for those multiple effects? And wouldn't it be even nicer to have an independent offset value to change the angle based on that global angle?
Currently it's quite annoying to change the angle for multiple effects on a complex layer effect.
Here's a mockup:

I guess what mschwerer meant was having more than two pages side by side (by side) in the pages panel. Like a roll fold for example.
more in this thread

Just change the top left colour and the others will follow.


Interactive Colour Chords AP1.afphoto

Just change the top left colour and the others will follow.


Interactive Colour Chords AP1.afphoto

Display the names of the brushes as done on iPad, see this post for visuals: 
 

Just change the top left colour and the others will follow.


Interactive Colour Chords AP1.afphoto

Just change the top left colour and the others will follow.


Interactive Colour Chords AP1.afphoto

Just change the top left colour and the others will follow.


Interactive Colour Chords AP1.afphoto

Just change the top left colour and the others will follow.


Interactive Colour Chords AP1.afphoto

Just change the top left colour and the others will follow.


Interactive Colour Chords AP1.afphoto

Just change the top left colour and the others will follow.


Interactive Colour Chords AP1.afphoto

Just change the top left colour and the others will follow.


Interactive Colour Chords AP1.afphoto

Just change the top left colour and the others will follow.


Interactive Colour Chords AP1.afphoto

Just change the top left colour and the others will follow.


Interactive Colour Chords AP1.afphoto

Just change the top left colour and the others will follow.


Interactive Colour Chords AP1.afphoto

Thanks ashf!
Didn't realize I could just pull the tiny line.