JDW

For now it's easier to use Illustrator because Serif still doesn't give us that most basic of all functionality. In illustrator it's a laughably easy two-step process: 1. Select the box tool and then click once on the page so a dialog box appears that allows you to set the exact width and height you want. 2. Go to the appropriate menu and simply place your crop marks. There's a preference setting that lets you choose if you want Japanese crop marks or not. It's that easy. It should be that easy in Affinity Designer. Here's yet another way to do it in Illustrator: https://youtu.be/9-R8NT5nNtM

The only reason I can see that Serif is NOT yet catering to users of Adobe apps as much as they should be (in terms of filling much needed feature requests that would enable the bulk of Adobe users to finally make the switch) is that Serif is juggling too many balls at once. They apparently are trying to kick out the equivalent of InDesign (a publishing app), and as we saw at WWDC, they've clearly spent a lot of time on iOS apps too. I think it's great they are trying to be a complete replacement for Adobe, and even exceeded Adobe in terms of being the first company to come out with a really decent iOS app -- seriously, Affinity Photo on iPad is shockingly good and doesn't foolishly dummy down the feature set like just about every other iOS app out there does. But at the same time, there are still many Adobe users on the fence waiting. Once Serif has committed itself to kicking out the feature requests of Adobe users in this forum, they will surely see a tsunami wave of switchers, happy to rid themselves of that hated Adobe subscription model once and for all. With that said, today's news said this... "Adobe Systems Inc (ADBE.O) reported a profit that topped market expectations for the ninth straight quarter on strong subscriber growth..." I simply cannot believe that growth includes "happy customers." I think it includes people who feel "there's no better option right now." Serif needs to continue to work hard on making its software "the better option." And for some people, it is right now.

Thanks, MEB. You answered my question perfectly!

I watched the Apple WWDC keynote and found AP for iPad amazing. Nothing else on iOS compares! While watching your video tutorials today, I paid close attention to object removal. Please jump to 1:57 in the following tutorial video: Notice how the woman is nicely removed but the left-corner edge of that L-shaped gutter has vanished and looks very wrong. In Photoshop there is a Clone Stamp Tool that helps one to manually fix things like that (restoring content beneath a removed object). Is there an equivalent Clone Stamp Tool in Affinity Photo for iPad? INPAINTING is very easy to use and is a good tool in many situations but not all. In the specific case of removing that woman, a clone stamp tool used by hand would make the removal nearly undetectable and allow you to retain the content shown between her arms. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm happy to oblige.

SrPx, The stabilizer feature you wrote about already exists, so there's no reason to defend it. Furthermore, I was not saying that feature needs to be removed. Obviously, there are some that you simply don't understand what this discussion is about. Thankfully MEB does understand, as per his previous post. This discussion is about how to add a feature that is missing in Affinity Designer but which does exist in Adobe Illustrator for good reason. It's absolutely silly to say we only need certain tools when designing while implying we don't need comparable tools at all when repurposing art.

I just tried it. I must say, that "pull-string" approach to drawing is rather intriguing. However, it is no substitute for a tool or menu command that smooths/simplifies paths as can easily be done in Illustrator. Why? For reasons I've already stated. Sometimes you want to REPURPOSE EXISTING ART. Your new tool only helps when CREATING NEW ART. I want the means to open an old file I created or a file somebody sent me or a file I downloaded from the net and then simply the paths, akin to what Illustrator can do. I hope that's clear!

I actually want to join you reveling in all that fun, but I must first wait for the "easy to delete a node" feature. The lack of important features in Affinity Designer strongly attenuates my otherwise fun-filled personality! :(

That takes just as much effort as pressing the delete key on the keyboard (which happens to correspond to that menubar command). It should be even easier than that because Illustrator makes it easier than that. That's my point.

Mike, I reside in Japan and we print CYMK flyers in A3 and A4 format, we design packaging, we design stickers, we design... Well, we design a lot of different things. And we always use Japanese crop marks because if we don't the people we send the data to will complain. And I also get requests for Illustrator file data, with Crop Marks, from dealers who want to mod our existing designs and then professionally print the designs themselves. The only time I do not use crop marks is when a shop wants an RGB PDF to print themselves on their inkjet printer. So while things may be different OUTSIDE Japan, things that are required here are what matter when doing such work here. And since the Japanese economy is nothing to treat flippantly, companies like Adobe build Japanese crop marks into their app. It's only logical Affinity Designer should do the same, even if it could be argued that "the rest of the planet isn't like that." And there you have it.

I would be pleased with that too, although it would not be a complete feature unless it also after smoothing for existing art. Why? Because sometimes you want to repurpose art. Some vector art may be very jagged and you want to smooth it. In Illustrator doing that is easy. Not equally as easy in Affinity Designer, hence my previous posts on the subject.

Thanks for the hack... ahem... "workaround," Mike! :-) Honestly, anyone who sends CYMK designs off to a professional printer uses crop marks. In Illustrator, you simply sketch a rectangle and click Effect > Crop Marks. (Whether or not to use Japanese crop marks is a Preference setting.) And boom! You're done. Want to resize your rectangle in Illustrator? No problem. Crops are repositioned automatically! Japanese Crop Marks are better than normal crop marks because they are very precise and offer a lot design guidance, as shown here: https://www.antennahouse.com/xslfo/img/PrinterMarks.png I don't want to build those by hand for every size rectangle imaginable; hence, it is only logical that a TRUE Crop Mark feature be built into Affinity Designer. It makes little sense to offer CMYK features without also offering Crop Marks. They really do go hand-in-hand.

Affinity Designer (AD) is not the same as Illustrator insofar as AD offers a Pixel Persona. Reminds me in some way of Deneba Canvas 3.5.x which I absolutely loved back in the day. Illustrator is very much a vector only app even though it allows some rasterization. As such, due to the presence of the Pixel Persona, a Magic Wand Tool is only logical.

Yes, I know. But that extra work doesn't make me all fuzzy inside. It's faster in Illustrator when you have dozens of objects to modify because there is no "reset to square corners" step. Anyway, thank you!

Aha! Now that is elusive! Note to self... Click the "transparent node" ... the "transparent" node... "transparent"... I repeated it 3 times so hopefully I can remember that! :-) Thank you!

Thank you for the tip. There is one caveat, however. Your tip does not work on objects which already have rounded corners (and I don't mean "baked" corners either). Try it. Sketch a rectangle. Choose the "Corner" popup in the info bar atop your window and choose Rounded. Then choose the Corner tool and try your tip -- you can't. This caveat matters little when you are designing your own rects. But if you receive an AD document from someone else with objects that already have rounded corners, you cannot round multiple corners via your tip. In Illustrator though, this is no problem at all (unless corners are baked).

To round individual corners one need only untick "Single radius" in the info bar at the top of the window. But how do we select 2 or 3 corners and round them at the same time (to be the same radius)? This can be easily done in Illustrator. Thank you.

In Photoshop it's easy to copy or move fx from one layer to another. I can't figure out how to accomplish that in Affinity Designer though. Try this: 1. New document in Affinity Designer. 2. Sketch 2 rectangles on the page. 3. Give 1 of them a drop shadow. You should then see the white "fx" mark at right on that layer. 4. Try moving that "fx" to your other rectangle layer. You can't. 5. Hold down the Option key and try copy the "fx" to your other layer. You can't. 6. Right-click on "fx" and see there is nothing directly applicable to "fx" If there is no feature to accomplish this important task, please consider this a feature request. Thanks.

Thank you, Mike! For those of you who find this thread seeking specifics... Affinity Designer > Preferences > Tools > ENABLE "Select object when intersects with selection marquee"

Let's say I do this: 1. Place an EPS graphics in Affinity Designer. 2. Use Transparency Tool on the graphic to make part of it transparent (a gradient). How do I UNDO that action later on? Sure, I can eliminate it by pressing CMD-Z numerous times (loosing all my other work in the process). But I don't see how to eliminate that added transparency when I look at the Layers palette. I see the transparency on my layer, but I don't see how to zap that transparency into oblivion. If it was added as a separate layer, it would be easy to delete the transparency, but it isn't. It merely displays in the layers palette. How do I delete a transparency I added to an object via the Transparency Tool? Thank you.

MEB, I know I can use the Node Tool to easy select a node on a vector object and then press the Delete key on the keyboard to delete it, but how can I do the same thing by using my mouse only? In Illustrator, it is SOOOOO EASY to delete nodes. With a vector object selected in Illustrator, all the nodes appear. Then with Illustrator's Pen Tool, you need only click an existing node to delete it because Illustrator is smart enough to know that you obviously don't want to use the Pen Tool to create a new node atop an existing node. But if you hover over other parts of that same vector object, the Pen Tool changes to a + to add a new Node. Strangely, in Affinity Designer, if I sketch a vector object and select the Pen Tool and then hover over an existing Node, I see a little hyphen mark to the right and below the Pen Tool icon that indicates to me a "minus" as in "delete" (as in, "do what you can do in Illustrator") but when I click nothing happens. In short, it should be easier to delete nodes without having to use the keyboard if I want to.

I myself can select vector objects in Affinity Designer by (1) clicking on them directly or (2) click-hold-and-drag a selection marquee AROUND THE ENTIRE OBJECT. It is the latter that I find the current functionality a bit tiresome because I have to move my hands more than in Illustrator. In Illustrator, you need only draw a tiny selection marquee box that merely touches the object you want to select. You don't have to draw a huge selection marquee that encompasses the entire vector object. Think about why this is beneficial... Say you have 3 separate but overlapping vector objects. You want to select all three. In Illustrator, you can draw a teensy, tiny selection marquee that passes through all 3 objects and then all 3 end up selected. But in Affinity Designer your hand must do more work by drawing a huge selection marquee that goes outside all 3 objects you want to select. Is there some command key trick to make this work, MEB? Or does this need to be added as a Feature Request?

It's now April 2017 and still no means to smooth/simplify paths as can easily be done in Illustrator. If you have Illustrator, just draw a vector path using the Pen tool or Pencil or Paintbrush. Then Object > Path > Simplify. As you decrease Curve Precision your selected path becomes more rounded. That's what I use it for and I, like everyone else here, want to see that important feature in Affinity Designer soon.

This important thread regarding Crop Marks was started back in 2015. It's now April 2017 and no built-in way to add Crop Marks (including Japanese Crop marks) is to be found. I would think that this is probably one of the easier features to add to Affinity Designer. Why not add it today? For truly, the old school way teaches us, "Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today!"

Even though I've purchased Affinity Photo and Designer, I still don't use the apps full time because they lack features that I have come to rely upon. Even so, I decided to toy with Designer again today. A big reason to have a Linked Files feature is for use in Illustrator. Most often when I send files off to print or off to business partners who intend to print the document themselves (either in-house or sending it off to a professional CMYK printer), they ask for Illustrator files. Sadly, Designer cannot export to Illustrator format, so we must export as a PDF. But if we export to PDF (print/CMYK) and then open that PDF in Illustrator, everything is grouped together in a way that cannot be easily ungrouped (seems like multiple layers of Clipping Masks are applied because if I choose Object > Clipping Mask > Release multiple times, the objects eventually get released). Anyway, all graphics are embedded by Affinity Designer, and sometimes there is a need to keep the graphics externally linked to achieve the best print resolution. Why? Well, there are times when you sent a file off to someone who has Illustrator and they want to modify the file before printing. If the graphics are embedded at fixed resolutions, then the resolution embedded would need to be as high as the original graphic so as to allow the Illustrator user to enlarge the graphics without losing much quality. I fully understand you feel Publisher is important and I don't seek to diminish that importance (not that I as a single person ever could anyway), but there are some people in the Adobe camp who thinking highly of InDesign even though there are a surprising number of multi-page (multiple-artboard) designs sent off to the printer in Illustrator format. Why? Because Illustrator gives the designer far more control than InDesign does, and no surprise since InDesign is geared more for multi-page booklet type printing than getting into the nitty gritty of design tweaking. So what I am saying is that if Affinity Designer can play better with Adobe Illustrator, that would more quickly wean Illustrator users off Illustrator and onto Designer. Consider though that if the formats that Designer exports do not play well with Illustrator (and honestly, PDF really doesn't a lot of the time), one would probably prefer to stick with Illustrator. That's why many people still use MS Word instead of Apple's Pages, even though Pages has some pretty slick features. When I create something in Pages I can save to Word format, which is great, but then when you open the document in Word, there are problems here and there that need to be fixed. Let's say my business partners are Windoze users who use Word but I want to use Pages. We each edit and save, sending the newest document to each other. Because Pages doesn't export a perfect Word format, the tweaks required to prevent the document from breaking in Word make it unreasonable to continue using Pages. Time is money, so it is more advantageous to simply use Word than Pages, even though designing something in Pages might be preferred by the designer. In like manner, I think a lot of Illustrator users would love to see the day when they can leave Illustrator behind. But that would mean they would still need to export documents that play well with Illustrator because Illustrator is still going to be the Industry Standard app for many years to come. Even if one argues that "linked files are coming in Publisher," the fact remains that many Designer users may want that feature in Designer too. Best wishes.