Hilltop

Masking is a crucial skill for non-destructively editing your photos and art. In this video, we’ll look at masking from the ground up in Affinity Photo.
 

Created in Affinity Designer iPad v2.
Hope you like it!
 

. . . a little foretaste of the 2024 VW Beetle calendar I'm curently working on . . . 🖌🖍(mainly witth Affinity Designer) . . . more to come in December📅
 

Quick Tips: for finding Affinity content with Google Search
Search engines: It’s easy to underestimate the power of a simple Google search (and it’s apparent many people on online forums who don’t know how to make use of it).  It can save you a lot of time, because someone, somewhere, at some point has undoubtedly had the same question you have—all you need to do is find out where they asked it and what answers and problem solutions they got in response!

With a few helpful Google search engine tricks, searching the Affinity Forum via Google can be made much more effective.

The Common Search
In general, you should string search terms with a space together to start the context search. Thus, the input "Affinity forum gradient" or "Affinity forum macro" in the search window shows all found link entries on the screen which contain those terms. Quoting ("...") helps to search after more closely related search text here.

Extended or Exclusive Search
To make Google search more effective, you should use so-called operators. Here are some of them.
A tilde (~) before a search term makes the term synonymous. So "Affinity ~forum" brings both the Affinity forum as well as hints for possible other related forums. With a minus sign (-) you can specifically exclude terms from the search. For example, the minus designer in "Affinity layer masks -designer" calls up a list of Affinity layer masks related entries without designer in the context. With a plus sign (+) you can instead specifically include terms to the search criterias.
Search in and for Websites
To specifically search a particular website/page, prefix your search term with a "site:URL" - where the URL is the web address of the site/page on which you read the info recently. For example, "site:affinity.forum.com macro recording" searches and calls for a list of threads which deal with macro recording on the Affinity forum.
A minus sign in the "-site:URL" input behind the actual search terms excludes results from the named URL. So "Affinity video -site:youtube.com" will exclude all Youtube videos from the search. With "site:de" it will only search German websites with the extension .de; Of course, other endings like .org or .com etc. can also be used here. With "related:URL" you can find out if other websites have similar content. In order to browse only publications from a specific period, you must connect the adjacent years with three points: here "2014...2018" only lists publications between 2014 and 2018 in the results list. For example in order to find at affinity.forum.com current practical contributions to macro recording you would use "site:affinity.forum.com macro recording 2016...2018".
  Some helpful browser shortcuts
To speed up the search in general, there are a few shortcuts available. For example, "Ctrl + F" will bring up a small search window at the bottom of the page that will help you to search the current page for terms. Ctrl + or - enlarges the view, zooms in or out. Ctrl + L moves the cursor back to the address bar so you can enter a new website or search term.
 
Calculations, units of measurement and currencies
The Google search engine can also calculate and convert. For those of you who struggle with mental arithmetic, just type the math questions directly into the Google search window using the +, -, * / symbols. This calls at the same time the calculator for further input of even more complicated tasks.
If you want to convert units of measure or currencies, you can also type these directly into the search window. Thus, the input "inches in millimeters" picks up a unit calculator, with "pounds in euros" you get the current price displayed as well as references to various currency converters.

I use it for editing my photography too. It's actually pretty decent. I started with trying to recreate whatever I made in Photoshop in Affinity Photo and it took some trial and error but eventually I got it. 

All of these are edited in Affinity Photo:

www.maartentummers.nl

HSL adjustment & Scope panel -> Vectorscope -> i-line
For easier control: Info panel to placed samplers on the image.
 

Apps: All
Platforms: macOS, Windows and iPad
All Affinity apps now allow you to both create and place password protected PDFs.
Create
In the advanced export options for PDF files you will see two new options:
1. Require password to open. If you set a password here that means anyone who tries to open that PDF will be prompted to give this password before they can open it.
2. Permissions password. Here you can further protect the PDF with options for restricting printing, modification, editing and copying with a secondary password.
You will also see the type of encryption being used for the file in question. This is based on the PDF compatibility being used in Export. PDF 1.6 & 1.7 both use AES-128, PDF 2.0 uses AES-256. Password protection is not available with PDF 1.4, 1.5 or PDF/X file compatibility.

Passwords can be saved with the document preset, so for example you could have a preset of “Company Internal PDF” which both specifies the export settings, DPI, etc. you want for that type of document, but also the password settings.
Place
Previously you could not place password protected PDFs in Affinity. Now you can - when you attempt to place the PDF you will get a prompt asking you for the password for the document you are attempting to place.
 

Apps: All
Platforms: macOS, Windows and iPad
A new pixel grid option is available in all apps under the View menu. When set to on this will expose a pixel grid (as per the dpi of your current document) when zoomed in beyond a certain threshold.
By default the grid is set to grey, but you can customise the colour and opacity of the pixel grid, along with the colour of standard grid lines, within Grid and Axis settings.

Apps: All
Platforms: macOS, Windows and iPad
You can now choose whether you want the background of the Asset Panel to be light, dark, checkerboard or automatic based on your current Light/Dark UI setting. This behaves in the same way as changing the background colour used for layer thumbnails.
This is primarily to be able to switch the background to achieve greater contrast for the particular assets you are looking at.
You can change the background colour from the burger menu at the top of the assets panel.
          
 

 
 

Nice additional tool.
To bad it only has context toolbar options and none on canvas like other quick shapes.
The presence of nodes suggests as such but it would only draw a new spiral.

Maybe have something like this:
 

2023-10-25 13-58-04.mp4  

Apps: All
Platforms: macOS, Windows and iPad
 
We have now added a spiral tool which is available from the shape tools flyout. This is something we have had many requests for, but also varying requests as to the type of result wanted. For that reason we have tried to make this as flexible as possible, both offering different types of spiral and variables to adjust.
When you create a spiral you will see from the context toolbar the different options available. Here are some examples of what you can create with the tool:
Spiral Type: Linear

Spiral Type: Decaying

Spiral Type: Semi-Circular
This type replicates the way many people have been creating a spiral in Affinity - effectively by joining decreasing semi circular arcs together.  With this type we also offer a counter Semi-circular option which returns the spiral back on itself:

Spiral Type: Fibonacci

Spiral Type: Plotted

 
 

Apps: Publisher
Platforms: macOS, Windows and iPad
There is a new Tags panel in Affinity Publisher which allows you to add Alt-text to any image or object when exported to PDF for accessibility purposes.  To use just open the Tags panel from the Window menu, select the image or object you want to add Alt Text too and add your description in the box:

Alt Text Source
As well as adding your own custom description to any object, you can also choose to scrape the Alt Text from the Title, Description or Headline meta data which may be embedded within the image in question.

Mark as Decoration
You also have the option to “Mark as Decoration”. This means no image description will be exported or used by screen readers as the item is purely there for decorative purposes rather than important to the understanding of the document. It’s primarily there so you can positively tag an image as not needing a description so will not return as needing one in preflight.
Preflight
Options have also been added in preflight to make it easy to check your document for any missing Alt Text should you wish. When creating or editing a profile you will see a new section for Alt Text. Here you can choose whether you want preflight to return a warning if images, placed documents or vector objects do not have Alt Text added (or marked as decoration).

Export
In the advanced section of PDF export there is a new option of "Tagged PDF". This is required to be checked if you wish to export your PDF including any tags you have added. Currently this is off by default for all factory PDF presets, although we do intend to make this on by default for all non-print based factory PDF presets.
General note on accessibility features
I also just wanted to say that there are a number of accessibility features we are working on which will be added in upcoming updates such as reading order, heading tags and other document structure tools important for screen readers. For the time being, and so to not go off topic, please keep comments on this thread focused on the new Tags Panel / Alt Text feature added in this version.

It would be great to add a «scale each» checkbox

Apps: All
Platforms: macOS and Windows
There were a few requests from the previous beta we have now implemented in 2.3. As a reminder the move data entry dialog is initiated by hitting Return while in the Move, Shape, Picture Frame or Artboard Tool.
1. You can now choose duplicates to be created in front or behind the original using the new Insertion mode options
2. Scale has now been added, to quickly resize an object by a given %
3. Properties of the object being transformed can be adjusted without dismissing the dialog
The scale %, when creating duplicates, will also apply to every subsequent duplicate - a very simple example shown below with 10 copies of the same circle being created, each one at 80% the size of the previous.

You can of course combine that with other transforms, such as below a square being rotated and shrunk on each duplicate.

As mentioned you can also now adjust the properties of the object being transformed without dismissing the dialog. E.g. below I have changed the colour of the shape as well as changing stroke width to “scale with object” while keeping the current move data entry settings live.

Another minor thing to mention is we have also changed the ramp on the ‘Number of copies’ slider to make it more useable at lower values (i.e. the first half of the slider now just goes from 1-50, with the remaining half from 50-1000).
 

These are some projects done in Affinity Publisher, but took it just a step further to see what they'd look like placed into mockups. The three projects are "Aurelie", "Jovan" and "Komodo". Affinity's built-in stock images feature really helped, especially with the amount of iterations I had to make.
 
"Aurelie"
 
 
"Jovan"
 
 
"Komodo"
 
 
"Komodo" View 2
 
 
All the books together

Dual Lighting is a cool effect that can add some extra punch to your images. Today we’ll look at how to create such images in Affinity Photo (and Designer), and also check out how to create good base images in MidJourney. 
 
 

The Selection Brush tool is a powerful way to isolate objects in Affinity Photo. But you can get even better results with the Refine feature. We’ll look at both tools in this video, and also explore some extra tips for error-checking our masks. 
 
 

We are pleased to announce Affinity Designer 2, Affinity Photo 2 and Affinity Publisher 2 are now all updated to version 2.2.1 (for all existing customers on all platforms).
Here are links to the release notes
Affinity Designer 2.2.1 for Windows               ( Microsoft Store and Affinity Store [as sandboxed MSIX and unsandboxed MSI/EXE] ) Affinity Designer 2.2.1 for macOS                  ( Mac App Store and Affinity Store ) Affinity Designer 2.2.1 for iOS                        ( Apple iPad Store )
  Affinity Photo 2.2.1 for Windows                    ( Microsoft Store and Affinity Store [as sandboxed MSIX and unsandboxed MSI/EXE] ) Affinity Photo 2.2.1 for macOS                       ( Mac App Store and Affinity Store )  Affinity Photo 2.2.1 for iOS                             ( Apple iPad Store ) 
  Affinity Publisher 2.2.1 for Windows              ( Microsoft Store and Affinity Store [as sandboxed MSIX and unsandboxed MSI/EXE] ) Affinity Publisher 2.2.1 for macOS                 ( Mac App Store and Affinity Store ) Affinity Publisher 2.2.1 for iOS                       ( Apple iPad Store )  Please follow this thread here to get notified when any new releases are made.

About
The Box Set is hundreds of vector and raster brushes made for Affinity Photo & Designer. Each brush was handmade
using real materials scanned at high resolutions and crafted to simulate real media. I wanted the origin of the brushes to
have a heritage of the materials they are simulating. Scanning pools of watercolor, swatches of paint, and stipples of charcoal
contributed to creating brushes with the same idiosyncratic material magic. My only request is that you take these brushes,
with their clever names, as suggestions. They work superbly out of the box, but I strongly encourage you to adjust the sliders,
rearrange or remove the textures, and discover how they can suit your hand(s).
 
Make. Discover. Repeat.
 
Cheers and happy art making,
-Jef (WREN)
 
RASTER BRUSHES
For use in Affinity Photo and Designer. The blending brush in the Oil Set is the only one exclusive to Affinity Photo.
 
DRAFTING

 
INK

 
OIL

 
Oil Brush Dynamics

Most oil brushes have blending built into pen pressure. With a single brush and hue you can adjust the luminosity of the stroke-
giving it an oily blend. The Brush's color in the example above is the color of the background. A normal pressure gives you the
hue without any lightening or darkening.
 
 
WATERCOLOR

 
 
ACRYLIC

 
VECTOR BRUSHES
For use with Affinity Designer Only. 
 
Pen & Ink
Charcoal & Graphite
Sumi-E
Painterly
Drips
Handlettering
 
LINKS
The Box Set
 
 

Updates! 2023

Hello!
It's been a while since the last update, but after a few inquiries on this forum I decided to update the box set of brushes for Affinity Designer & Photo. If you have purchased any set from me or downloaded the sample set you'll be getting an email with a lot of the same information I am about to present here, and I apologize for the redundancy. However, I wanted to give back to the community that inspired the update so I created a discount code just for you. Ultimately, I added around 50 brushes to the box set and retooled every brush. If you own the box set all you need to do is download the updated file from Gumroad.
Use the code AFFORUM2023 until Nov 1st 2023 for a discount on the box set.
Separate Sets
Gouache has been broken out into its own set. Additionally, Every raster brush set is now available to purchase separately. These sets will receive limited updates up to 50 brushes per set.
ACRYLIC
DRAFTING
GOUACHE
INK
OIL
WATERCOLOR
Thanks again for your support, happy art making!
PS:

The Affinity package has great paste functions: Paste Style, Paste FX, Paste Inside and Paste Without Format. I suggest going a step further and taking the cool and powerful paste functions from Inkscape 1.3: Paste length, Paste width, Paste size. These are small but very cool features: the ability to take the size of the copied object and apply that size to others.
PasteSize_Inkscape.mp4

You can probably use the Shape Builder Tool for most of what you want to do, but its efficacy will depend on the design you're using it on – see attached video.
Note: I’m holding the Alt key down while I mouse around and click.
2023-07-08 12-37-51.mp4

[EDIT: I have incorporated this quick reference chart into the free manual I've written for Publisher which you can download from my signature below. I've kept the quick reference chart available for convenience and also because it's translated into French and German.]
* Attachments updated July 24, 2023 with minor edits
I've made a chart of the Special Character symbols shown when you choose Show Special Characters in Affinity Publisher, Designer, and Photo, including some characters that can't be inserted from the Text menu and which must be entered as Unicode and some that aren't mentioned on the Affinity Help page for special characters. Please let me know of any errors so I can update the chart. I apologize for any translation errors.
I've attached the original afpub file so that others can use the embedded images of the special characters for other training materials or purposes.
Special Characters.pdf - English
Caracteres speciaux.pdf - Français
Sonderzeichen.pdf - Deutsch
Special Characters.afpub - editable version

 

+1,000 to that!
Works on Mac. For example, I use cmd-opt-1, cmd-opt-2, cmd-opt-3 etc. for personas, and ctrl-cmd-opt-1, ctrl-cmd-opt-2, ctrl-cmd-opt-3 for the Edit In… commands.
F-keys work on Mac, too.
Perhaps. But even more important – and logical according to the Human Interface Guidelines – would be if the Symbol panel button commands would appear in the context menu when a symbol is selected on the canvas. (Same for many other buried panel buttons.)