Arlen Keshabyan

Hi All,
Another build has just been made available (2.1.0.1790) including a few more fixes. They are listed in the fix list thread here.
Nearly there!
Thanks,
Ash
 

Apps: Designer
Platforms: All
A new vector flood tool has been added to Affinity Designer. This is denoted by a paint bucket icon in the Tools Panel (on iPad you can find it nested with the gradient fill tool, on Windows it will currently need to be manually added via Customising the Tools Panel).
This tool allows you to automatically fill areas created by overlapping / intersecting shapes and open curves in your document. This tool requires you to make a selection first of the curves / shapes you want the tool to consider. You can then choose a colour from the colour or swatches panel, and tap within any enclosed area to create a new shape with that fill colour. While in the tool you can also drag swatches from the swatches panel onto any area.

There are two insertion modes to this tool you can select from the context toolbar:
Inside. This will attempt to create the new shapes / fills and place them inside existing shapes where possible. In-between. This will break fills and strokes apart in existing shapes, and insert the new fills in-between.  The difference between the two is shown below. 


While using the tool you can hold Cmd (macOS / iPad) or Ctrl (Windows) to make new selections (also combining with Shift to add / remove items from your selection). You can also click-drag the tool to quickly fill many areas all at once, a simple example is shown below with some text:

The tool works with any type of fill - solid colour, gradient or bitmap. The options in the context toolbar for min, max and stretch to fit are relevant only to gradient and bitmap fills, and refers to the method used to scale the fill to the new shape.
For bitmap fills you can select a bitmap fill swatch to use, alternatively you can create bitmap fills on the fly by dragging a texture file or asset directly into the active colour in the toolbar. Below is a video showing that in action with using assets to create bitmap fills:
Texture Fills.mov
For bitmap fills if the texture has any transparency then the fill will be added as an additional fill to the shape. This allows for overlay style textures to be easily added on top of an existing colour fill. We will look at a way to make this behaviour optional.
Finally it's also worth pointing out that when you are in the tool you can also drag swatch from your swatches panel directly into any area in your selection, to quickly add multiple different colours to areas without having to select them first.
We would love you to try this new tool out and let us know what you think or if you encounter any bugs or unexpected results.

Hmm. Okay. It looks like a hack but partially can do the job.
Thank you

Just clip the image/picture with the shape and add a Gaussian blur effect to the clipping path.

Hello Affinity team,
Here is the feature request to do easy feathering. Usually, in Xara Designer, I put a picture in a vector object and use feathering to smooth edges of the object. As an example:
No feather:

 
With feather:

 
Feathering is done as simple as dragging a slider to the desired number of pixels to smooth the edges.
I wonder, if such functionality is possible to implement for the Layer effects?
If yes, then when it's expected? If no, then why and how to achieve the same effect now in Affinity Designer?
 
Thanks,
Arlen.

Hello Serif team. Thank you for the great Affinity products that you do!
There are a couple of features that I miss in Affinity Designer from Xara Designer Pro X.
1. The first feature is the Blend tool in Xara Designer Pro that allows you to create a number of transformations from one vector object into another with a variety of options, including morphing colours, shapes and the ability to align the result along a vector path (like aligning a text along a path). It also can duplicate one object multiple times in a variety of ways. Later, you can convert a blend object to separate editable vector objects if you need. As a simple example, this tool allows you to create one vector star object, immediately blend it into multiple stars with preferred spacing between them (even unevenly) and align them all along a circular path. I think, it's a very interesting and powerful tool to have in Affinity Designer.

2. Also, I miss the Contour tool. It allows you to create vector contours around objects with variety of options. Of course, the contour object is also convertible into a vector object.

3. Another very powerful feature from Xara Designer Pro is Guideline Layers. All vector objects that are drawn on such layers turn into guidelines. This ability lets you have very tricky guidelines that cannot be achieved by the simple guideline system such as in Affinity Designer and Publisher.

 
4. The Mould tool in Xara Designer Pro is also very powerful. It resembles the Mesh Warp tool in Affinity Photo, but it also can be applied to vector objects in a non-destructive and editable way.

5. And the great Bevel tool of Xara Designer Pro.

6. And the last in the list but not least, the Shape Painter tool. It's provides a very convenient way of retouching and fixing vector shapes.

Thank you,
Arlen.

Correct, but even if Xara creates a raster effect, it manages to recalculate the effect perfectly every time an object changes or it exports a document for different DPIs.
I agree, Affinity has the bevel layer effect but it's not as powerful and flexible as Xara's yet  But I believe Serif will do the bevel tool more powerful and flexible than that in Xara!
Thank you!