Hilltop

When manually adjusting the tonal values of some thousand pictures I am grateful for every single mouseclick I can avoid.
In the levels adjustment dialog I frequently switch between the red, green und blue channel. To do so, I need to open the drop-down-menu, move to the correct entry and click again. This works in about 90% of my attempts.
If the dialog would use horizontal radio buttons, a single click would suffice:
( ) Master ( ) Red ( ) Green ( ) Blue ( ) Alpha
or, if there is not enough space:
( ) Master ( ) R ( ) G ( ) B ( ) ⍺
I would very much appreciate that!

Hi everybody 🙂

After recently buying all 3 of the Affinity programs, this was the 3rd thing I made with Affinity Designer. The other 2 were a Christmas post and a new years post for Instagram. My first impression of AD is that it has potential, but to me it still has a long way to go if it wants to compete with Adobe Illustrator. But of course, it's very difficult to get to the Adobe level, since they have so much experience and money 😅

I bought the Affinity programs to hopefully get less dependent on Adobe software, because I really don't like the 'subscription only' principle Adobe has adopted. I don't like to pay Adobe 'ransom money' to be able to have access to my own documents. And since using Adobe Creative Cloud I've had several bugs that have never been an issue back when I had Adobe software that I bought. So even Adobe isn't as good (anymore) as it should be for that price.

Most of the things I design are T-shirt prints for my webshops and since I'm addicted to designing letters (typography) most of my designs contain custom made text. This 'L' was made for Instagram only. From time to time I design single alphabet letters, to have something more to post on Instagram. I post far less than the algorithm wants, but I don't want to be a slave to the algorithm, so I follow my own rithm 😋

Is anyone else into designing typography?

✌️ Luc
 

If you tried Affinity Photo with the dark user interface you might want to try the light one. In my experience it increases legibility. Go to Edit/Settings/User Interface. There you can find also some other options to suit your preferences.

Let's go back to school, with some of those common and well known school protractors for measuring in degrees.


 

... etc.
 
The protractor assets shared here ...

... are all vector based and do have printed on degree scales. You have to adapt/size the default assets protractor sizes to your document needs and thus scale them up/down so they nearly match your doc measurements.
Note that all protractors are just a bunch of grouped/layered together vector parts (curves and text) thus they can be modified in colorings and the like. Also you should always move & size etc. a whole reused protractor group/layer when needed!
Here is the associated assets file:
protractors.afassets Have a nice school day!
 
 

I have been playing around with styles lately making a bunch for different email marketing campaigns I have been working on. I started off here on the forums to see what others have done and what is possible. In doing so, I came across a post from the pre v2 archive section of the forums from someone looking for a style to recreate an effect in Affinity Designer. See the original post here.
I think I have come close just casually playing with it and I thought I would share the style here (See attached v2 AD Style). Here is the original:

When I make styles for use with text, I like to design it with the text but then apply to a shape then save style from the shape so the font is not saved with it unless I typically use that font with the style.
Below is a single v2 style applied to a font I have called "yellowtail" (Not sure where I got it, probably w/CorelDRAW). I then added the border around the text and the tail. I will show both.
Just the style applied:

With added tail, just drawn with the pen tool with same style applied) and an underlying layer under the text.

I have attached a copy of the tail as well for those who are not comfortable with the bezier pen tool.
I hope someone finds this useful. With In AD v2 more is possible in "styles" than v1 and I encourage more "Styles" creation and sharing
Cheers!
 
Blueliner Vintage (AD v2).afstyles
Tail for Vintage Txt.afdesign

New version! I have uploaded a new version of this unofficial Publisher manual to the first post of this thread. In addition to being updated for the changes in Publisher 2.3, this version covers character and paragraph formatting, text styles, and all the other text-related features. It is 120 pages longer than the original version.
Although it's written for Publisher, most of the text features are the same for Designer or Photo so you may find it useful for the other Affinity applications, too.
Cheers
 

If you tried Affinity Photo with the dark user interface you might want to try the light one. In my experience it increases legibility. Go to Edit/Settings/User Interface. There you can find also some other options to suit your preferences.

If you tried Affinity Photo with the dark user interface you might want to try the light one. In my experience it increases legibility. Go to Edit/Settings/User Interface. There you can find also some other options to suit your preferences.

The Vector Flood Fill tool was introduced in Affinity Designer 2.1. It is a cross between the Gradient Fill Tool and the Shape Builder tool. Today we’ll look at how to use this feature. 
 

What does the mysterious brush option “Protect Alpha” do in Affinity Designer and Photo? Why would we use it? Today we’ll look at this feature (also knows as “Lock Transparency” or “Alpha Lock”) and see some demos of how it can be used to make digital painting much easier.
 
 

Ever want your design to have a more realistic texture on a surface? Displacement Maps are the perfect tool. In this video, you’ll get a deep understanding of how Displacement Maps work and also how to use them in common scenarios like T-Shirt mockups.
 

Hi there!
I was remembering this Feature request where there is a video demo of the required functionality, and while I still think this would be a great addition I asked myself: could this possibly be done right now? And it can, sort of. See video below:

Pseudo-ArcTool-Demo.mp4 As you can see, after you set the Donut Tool, you can switch between it and the Point Transform Tool to create the curves.
The bad:
You need to switch constantly between Tools There is no snapping to any intersecting line You have to delete segments to have a single line in the curved line BUT I think the good news is that:
It can be done It's fun I hope this encourages the Devs to spend some time in it given that it doesn't seem to be that far away Best regards!
 

Vector portrait of movie director, actor, visual artist and musician David Lynch. All 12 stages of progress in my portfolio blog: https://communicats.blogspot.com/2024/01/david-lynch-vector-portrait.html
In aforementioned blog I briefly explained how the effects used have been created, but I will repeat them here for clarity:
In Affinity Designer there are what Serif calls 'Vector Brushes' that actually are based on bitmap images. So, this in fact is not a 100% vector portrait. Users can draw these brushes themselves in vector format, that are exported as png-files. For almost every 'vector' portrait, drawing specific brushes have to be created, since no hair strand or pore texture in a person's face are the same. To such brushes Gradient Fills and Gradient Transparency effects are applied and sometimes they are Duplicated using Filters (below the Layers panel) that in some cases are offset, re-sized, skewed or mesh warped a little. In a number of cases it helps to apply the 3D lighting effect - highlights and outer shadows - to these brushes too. In the Gradient Tool there is an option to use bitmaps as the fill, which also is useful to achieve the desired effect. To these type of fills the same effects can be applied as used to manipulate the Vector Brush strokes.
 

 
 
 
 

 
 

 

My brother bought a new place and requested I make him a poster on human evolution using the skulls. It took a while to research and decide what would work and to weed through alternative ways to present to timeline. The images were draw  in AP and it was set up in Apub.  The illustrations separately are on 15x15" canvases and the printed poster will be 12x18". 

My little Canny Vectors app has just passed the 5,000 acquisitions ‘marker’ in the Microsoft Store which, while not being a massive number, is great for something that has only been mentioned in these forums.
Thanks to anyone who has passed on a recommendation to a friend/colleague/enemy/stranger/etc.
Thanks also to anyone who has posted a nice review/rating in the store too.
Looking forward to making it to 10,000.

i find symbols for the AWS (Amazon Cloud) on github:
 
https://github.com/cosinepi/aws-simple-icons-affinity-designer-asset/tree/master/Asset

Here are some Windows 11 color folder icons and some additional Windows icons I created. These icons can be used to replace the default icon for folders in Windows.
The folder icons were designed to match the style of Windows 11 folders, but they can be used in Windows 10.
My apologies to Mac users that this is a Windows-only resource. I hesitated to share something that can’t be used by everyone, but I’d like to make the icons available to those who may find them useful.
The icon ICO files include the standard Windows icon image sizes. Instructions are included for those unfamiliar with how to change Windows folder icons (it’s easy).


Contents of the ZIP file:
38 folder icons (ICO) 139 additional symbol icons (ICO) 12 brand logo icons (ICO) 1 instructions document (PDF) 2 preview images showing all the icons (PNG) Windows Icons.zip

Please include the option to update all 3 programs at once so we don't have to load each one and update separately.
If a user owns Publisher, I assume it can see the file paths for the Designer and Photo installs.
The updater should check each program's version and make sure D and P are at least the same version as A
 

Snapping to the bottom of the screen (that is, the taskbar), as well as snapping to the sides and top of the screen, seems natural and reasonable to me. If I want to place the panel very close to the edge, I probably want it to be placed "exactly" on the edge. Placing it behind the edge and thus hiding part of the panel doesn't make much sense to me, which is why snapping is useful.

Apps: All
Platforms: macOS, Windows and iPad
When in move tool double clicking a vector object takes you into node tool. It has been suggested that a double click on an object while in node tool should do the reverse and take you back into move tool (you could previously double click on the canvas / not over an object to return to move tool but this both loses your selection as well as not being possible if you are zoomed in). This has now been implemented in 2.4.

Original black and white image is "Stonethwaite Bridge, Borrowdale, Cumberland, from a soft ground etching by William Green, 1809," now in the public domain, courtesy of the British Library.
The bluebird and cardinal, who is actually bright red in my original jpg, are regulars from my garden. They join me in wishing everybody a much happier 2024!!

Chinese zodiac dragon created in Affinity Designer.
 

 
 
Vector wire frame screen dump.
 

Fascinating! Thanks, Trent, learned a lot!

The Black & White adjustment for Affinity Photo looks simple, but there are some concepts you should know before using it. In this video, we’ll look at how knowledge of RGB colors can help you get better B&W conversions for your photos.
 

The Levels adjustment is used to adjust the darks and lights in your photos. Today we’ll look at how this tool works and how to use it in practice.