Graphite Addict

I love you guys, and I have a big load of respect about you, being a big evangelist of Affinity, but I'm not having a good felling on this. Canva is not what I could name a "professional software" partner. They want to be Adobe, not an adobe alternative.
The first insinuation of subscription model will break any trust on Affinity, and for the love of the goddess, I hope Affinity apps don't become a dumpster of stupid and crappy AI and cheap design tools that Canva really is.
I've read the FAQs you published… they don't give me enough reassessment that nothing is gonna change. Your company and your project is not yours anymore.
I wish to be wrong.

Hi All,

I am thrilled to announce that Affinity is joining the Canva family.
This is a moment of great excitement, anticipation, and profound gratitude for all of you who have been part of our story so far. 
We know that those of you who’ve put your faith in Affinity, some since we launched our very first Mac app, will have questions about what this means for the future of our products. Since the inception of Affinity, our mission has been to empower creatives with tools that unleash their full potential, fostering a community where innovation and artistry flourish. We've worked tirelessly to challenge the status quo, delivering professional-grade creative software that is both accessible and affordable. 
None of that changes today.
In Canva, we’ve found a kindred spirit who can help us take Affinity to new levels. Their extra resources will mean we can deliver much more, much faster. Beyond that, we can forge new horizons for Affinity products, opening up a world of possibilities which previously would never have been achievable. 
Canva’s revolutionary approach to design democratisation and commitment to empowering everyone to create aligns perfectly with our core values and vision. This union is a testament to what can be achieved when two companies that share a common goal of making design accessible and enjoyable for everyone come together. 
I want to express my deepest gratitude to our incredible Affinity team. Your passion, dedication, and relentless pursuit of excellence have been the driving force behind our success so far, and I can’t wait to continue this journey with you all. 
To our loyal users and the creative community, your support and feedback have been invaluable. You’ve inspired us to push boundaries and continuously improve, and we’re excited to embark on this new chapter together. 
The future is bright, and I am incredibly excited to continue our story together and create a world where design is within everyone's reach.
With heartfelt thanks,
Ash
For more information...
We have included some FAQs at the bottom of the announcement article here. A video message from me with some more background is on YouTube here.  

Additionally we will be setting up a Q&A session about this acquisition in a few weeks time. More info on how to take part in this will be sent on email and posted on this forum in the coming days.

Hi All,

I am thrilled to announce that Affinity is joining the Canva family.
This is a moment of great excitement, anticipation, and profound gratitude for all of you who have been part of our story so far. 
We know that those of you who’ve put your faith in Affinity, some since we launched our very first Mac app, will have questions about what this means for the future of our products. Since the inception of Affinity, our mission has been to empower creatives with tools that unleash their full potential, fostering a community where innovation and artistry flourish. We've worked tirelessly to challenge the status quo, delivering professional-grade creative software that is both accessible and affordable. 
None of that changes today.
In Canva, we’ve found a kindred spirit who can help us take Affinity to new levels. Their extra resources will mean we can deliver much more, much faster. Beyond that, we can forge new horizons for Affinity products, opening up a world of possibilities which previously would never have been achievable. 
Canva’s revolutionary approach to design democratisation and commitment to empowering everyone to create aligns perfectly with our core values and vision. This union is a testament to what can be achieved when two companies that share a common goal of making design accessible and enjoyable for everyone come together. 
I want to express my deepest gratitude to our incredible Affinity team. Your passion, dedication, and relentless pursuit of excellence have been the driving force behind our success so far, and I can’t wait to continue this journey with you all. 
To our loyal users and the creative community, your support and feedback have been invaluable. You’ve inspired us to push boundaries and continuously improve, and we’re excited to embark on this new chapter together. 
The future is bright, and I am incredibly excited to continue our story together and create a world where design is within everyone's reach.
With heartfelt thanks,
Ash
For more information...
We have made four pledges to the Affinity community which you can read here. We have included some FAQs at the bottom of the announcement article here. A video message from me with some more background is on YouTube here. This announcement post is locked, but I have included a duplicate of it in the questions forum here which you can respond to.

@Ron P. I have encountered it several times when using the Space Bar specifically now, I just checked and double checked looking directly at my finger placement on the Space Bar which was dead centre nowhere near the Alt Key. I now really don't know if this is a bug or I need to replace the damn keyboard.
I shall assume it's my Keyboard for now, and if I can test it with a different one I will revisit this post and update it.
As for an option to disable Alt drag to colour pick, that option would not affect default use and it's an option I could use right now as it's wasted an hour of my work time looking for answers, writing this report and fixing colours.

Thank you for your reply Ron. I'm on Win 10 PC, AD 2.4 here too. I have just this moment discovered it's me accidentally catching the Alt Key, which samples a colour when dragging the mouse. Something which is easily done by accident on this particular keyboard.
I should like to disable that particular short-cut, if it is possible, but now that I know why it is happening I might be able to avoid it.

In short:
Yes.
 
In long:
Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!

Hi All,
We have now added a new function to permanently set the bounding box to whatever you have cycled it to in the 2.4 beta which is available to try now...
 

There is currently an improvement request logged with our developers specifically for this and our team are looking into adding this as a dedicated option. I've 'linked' this thread to the request, so that our team can see how many users are requesting this.
I've also explained that previous to 2.2 there was a known workaround with Add, but since this has been lost due to unrelated Boolean fixes, the dedicated option is more wanted than ever

Another great and useful video, Trent. Cheers.
After watching your video and applying the settings in Designer, I too noticed the lack of an "Add Preset" Button. Designer also lacks the option to display an Adjustments window/panel. Strange omissions.
I've saved the preset in Photo.
The somewhat tedious workaround for the missing Add Preset in Adjustment Layers for Designer, is... File > Edit in Photo > apply the saved B & W Adjustment (30 Red, 90 Yellow, 60 Green, 70 Cyan, 10 Blue, 40 Magenta), then File > Edit in Designer. Or copy and paste across. (adding this as a note for myself as much as anything, but it might help others).

Lesson one is HERE.
Lesson two is HERE.
In 1983 a computer science professor at NY University looked for a way to make computer-generated images look more natural. In 1987, a small team of software engineers started producing affordable, user-friendly graphics software in the Jurassic era of Windows 2.0. Thanks to these founding fathers, Ken Perlin and Serif Software ☺ I can now produce images like this with Affinity Photo from an original photograph solely using procedural textures and default filters.

Introduction
I won’t be taking you through the extensive textures and techniques I used to create the above image – baby steps! The purpose of that was to introduce you to the Simple Perlin Noise texture in Procedural Textures (which I did use) and just how potent Procedural Textures can be.
In this lesson I’m going to show you the subtle art of Tweaking. Tweaking (editing) Affinity’s existing Procedural Textures are a gold mine for finding new textures, gradients and effects. By the end, you should be in better position to spot different parts of the equations and have some idea of how to experiment with them. Starting with the default Perlin Noise preset, you will produce several presets, gradually adding to your Procedural Texture tweaking knowledge.
NOTE: Menu convention: Where you see "Layer>New Layer", "Edit>Fill eith Primary Colour", Filters>Colours etc. it means go to that menu (Layer, Edit, Filter etc) and select whatever follows. So, Filters>Colours>Procedural Texture means click on the Filters menu, click on Colours and then select Procedural Texture.
 
Perlin Noise Close Up and Personal
Before we dive in and start tweaking, let’s take a look at how the Simple Perlin equation is put together.
Create a new canvas 2400 x 1600 pixels
Create a new layer via Layer>New Layer (or click the chequerboard icon at the bottom of the layer palette)
Fill with your foreground colour via Edit>Fill with Primary Colour.
Add a LIVE Procedural Texture filter (so we can easily edit and save new presets). Do this via, Layer>New Live Filter Layer>Colours>Procedural Texture.
Select the Simple Perlin Noise preset from the Equations preset drop-down list. Here’s how the equation looks:
perlinsc(rx/200,ry/200,7,0.6)*0.7
It’s a little bit intimidating but it can be broken down fairly simply. Think back to lesson 2 and the equation we wrote for Basic Noise 2 which was noisei(x,y). What you’ve got is the command at the beginning to produce noise followed by how to do that in brackets, with the “instructions” inside the brackets separated by commas. It no different with perlinsc(rx/200,ry/200,7,0.6)*0.7
Instead of a telling Affinity to make noisei type noise, the equation is telling it to make perlinsc – another type of noise. The instructions for doing that are inside the brackets. With noisei we had two instructions, x and y, which mean “make noisei across and down the image”.
The perlinsc command needs three instructions to get going and produce noise. Look inside the brackets. There are four sections divided by commas:
rx/200 COMMA ry/200 COMMA 7 COMMA 0.6
Each section contributes a feature of the noise. I’m not going to explain the technicalities of what they do, just how the work out in practice (basically because I’m not a computer scientist!)
TIP: Whenever you tweak equations, a general rule-of-thumb is KEEP THE COMMAS or you might find that nothing happens.
Here’s what the equation does:
rx and ry mean that the texture is click-draggable – you can click inside the texture and drag it around the screen. ANYWHERE you see an x or a y on their own in an existing equation, try substituting them with rx and ry.
/200 literally means “divide by 200”. You don’t need to know the maths though; you just need to know that smaller numbers here will make smaller noise.
Delete a 0 from each of the 200s and press Enter.
 

That’s actually a pretty useful texture – I use a variation of it to create a watercolour paper texture (instructions at the end of the tutorial). Save this as Watercolour Emboss Txr. I have created a category for Art Effects in the presets. If you want to do this, click the burger icon top right, click Manage Presets then Create Category. Once your category has been created you can drag the Watercolour Emboss Txr preset into the new category.
Next, the number 7 in the equation has the effect of controlling the overall softness of the noise. Change it to 1 and see what happens (Ctrl+z (command+z) to change back).
Lastly, the 0.6 has the effect of controlling the level of detail or density of the noise. Change this to a 1 and see what happens (then change it back again.
What about *0.7 bit tagged onto the end after the brackets? We’ll save that for later! Suffice to say, it’s not need to make Perlin noise – delete it and see what happens. Now do Ctrl+z (command+z) to put it back.
 
Making the texture adjustable
 
If you take away nothing else from this tutorial remember this The Golden Rule of Tweaking:
Try swapping numbers in equations for Custom Inputs
Looking at the perlinsc equation, there are a lot of numbers, so, in theory, we should be able to put controls in for all of them.
As you learned in the last lesson, the bottom section (empty at the moment) is where you’ll find the controls, if there are any for how the texture appears. These controls are added via the buttons at the bottom of the Custom Input box. They look like this:

They are:
0,1 – This creates a slide controller. In terms of numbers, it can control anything from 0 to 1. “Huh! Say what?” I hear you say. “Numbers” in this instance means 0, 0.1, 0.25, 0.33 etc. Again, don’t worry about this too much. Enough to say that the 200 numbers in the equation are A LOT higher than 1, so this controller is not a great candidate for subsituting for the 200.
By default the slider is set to the far right, which is where 1 is. 0 is far left. In a future lesson I will show you can make slider go from 0 to numbers higher that 1 – which can be useful.

Most frequently, this gets used for shading, softening or blurring textures which allow for that to take place. You’ll also find is used to add turbulence to some textures too.
-1,1 – This is another slide controller similar to 0,1, but controlling everything from -1 through 0 to 1. Again, not a great contender for controlling 200.
By default the slider is set to the centre, where 0 is, with -1 at the far left and +1 at the far right.

This gets used as a means of offsetting or cycling the effect of some textures.
 
R & Z – Both of these will add a number input controller where you can enter a number or use the up and down arrows to increase or decrease the numbers.

The difference between the two is that whilst you can put numbers with decimals (like 1.5) in the R box, you can only put whole numbers in the Z box.
These are often (but not always) the most useful in adding controls for size, density, roughness and turbulence of textures.
 
Let’s look at the Simple Perlin equation again:
perlinsc(rx/200,ry/200,7,0.6)*0.7
Ignoring the bit outside the brackets, we should be add controls (Custom Inputs) for all the numbers inside the brackets, giving complete control.
We’ll start with adding separate controllers for both the 200 numbers. Why two controllers? Because one 200 controls how much noise there is across the width (rx), whilst the other controls how much noise there is across the height (ry), and ideally it would be nice to control both.
Since 200 is not a decimal, it makes sense to add a Z Custom Input, although an R Custom Input will work just as well too. Click on the Z button and add the controller. Notice how it has been assigned the letter a. If we substitute any of the numbers in the Simple Perlin equation for the letter a, that part of the equation will now accept controls from the a Custom Input box. Type the word Width in the empty space after the a, and the number 200 in the number value box.

 
In the Equations section, substitute the first 200 in the equation for the letter a, but make sure you keep the / sign and the comma after the a so that it now reads perlinsc(rx/a, ry/200 etc…

Add another R Custom Input. This one is b by default. Add the word Height in the description box and 200 in the value box.
You also need to change ry/200 to ry/b so that now the equation looks like this:

Play around with those values for a few moments to see what happens.
What happens if the width is 500 and the height is 2000? Does that look a bit like falling water to you?
Don’t forget to reset the numbers back to 200 before continuing.
More changes = more control
Looking at the equation as it is with the two controllers we just added we now have perlinsc(rx/a,ry/b,7,0.6)*0.7. The next number we can substitute for a controller is 7. It too is a whole number, not a decimal, so let’s add another Z Custom Input with 7 as its starting value. Now substitute the 7 in the equation for the letter c.
Your equation should now read perlinsc(rx/a,ry/b,c,0.6)*0.7.
Lowering this number seems to make the texture softer and blurry, so we’ll call this control Softness.

TIP: If, at any stage you lose the texture, double-check to make sure you still have the commas (and in the right places), and that you have values in inputs you have created.
0.6 is the next number in perlinsc(rx/a,ry/b,7,0.6)*0.7, so we can now add a control for that.
You would think that because 0.6 is a decimal, that an R number Custom Input would be what we would need. Unfortunately, as I discovered in my early experiments, it doesn’t work – the results are too harsh. That’s because perlinsc is looking for a very narrow range of decimals from 0 upwards. If you find this to be the case, when you are “tweaking”, try the 0,1 controller instead. Why? Because it covers all the decimal places between 0 and 1 incrementally as you slide from left to right.
Go ahead and add the 0,1 Custom Input slider now. Name it Detail, since it seems to add and subtract noise as you slide it about. Set the slider to about 60% along. Why 60%, because 0.6 is decimal for 60%! (Darn, I promised no maths!)

The final control
Now it’s time to tackle the very last bit of the equation. So far we have:
perlinsc(rx/a,ry/b,c,d)*0.7
I said earlier on that the *0.7 isn’t needed to generate perlinsc noise. However, deleting *.07 has the effect of making the texture brighter. That’s because it’s acting as a brightness control. Which means that if we substitute *.07 for another 0,1 slider, we will be able to control the brightness of the textures.
Go ahead and do that now by clicking the 0,1 Custom Input button, call it Brightness and set the slider to 70% (.7 remember?).
Now substitute *.7 in the equation for e. This should be the result:

Save this as a new preset. Click on the burger icon top right of the equations section. Save the preset as Perlinsc Noise Maker. You could save it in the Noise category, or create a new category of your own.
Feeble Excuse
I’m going to skip the last two controllers for now, but they are an Angle input and an Elevation input, since they aren’t needed for this tutorial.
Variations
Try creating sub-presets with these input settings:
Variation 1. Soft Horizontal Folds
Width = 1000
Height = 20
Softness = 2
Detail = 0% (far left)
Brightness = 60%
 
Variation 2. Long Hair
Width = 60
Height = 600
Softness = 9
Detail = 75%
Brightness = 60%
 
Variation 3. Clouds Closeup
Width = 1000
Height = 1000
Softness = 20
Detail = 50%
Brightness = 80%
 
You should be able to see by now that with one equation and five controls you can create a huge variety of textures. Don’t forget that ALL these variations are also click-draggable, giving you even more variety.
One final word on variations. Look up Procedural Texture in the Help file and you will find a list of other Perlin noise commands. Simply copy and paste those over the perlinsc part of the equation and you have even more textures.
 
How to use the Watercolour Emboss Txr preset to create a watercolour paper texture
Create a new pixel layer above your photo/artwork.
Fill this with any colour – Edit>Fill with Primary Colour will do.
Apply the Watercolour Emboss Txr Procedural Texture preset you made earlier in this tutorial.
If you have added it as a Live Filter Layer you need to Rasterise the layer (right-click on the layer in the layer palette and select Rasterise.)
Apply an Emboss filter via Filters>Colours>Emboss. Set the radius to 3 pixels, the amount to 100% and tick Monochrome.
Click Appy.
Set this layer’s blend mode to Overlay or Soft Light.
 
 

Introduction
 
I don’t understand the mathematics involved either!. Honestly, I have barely the slightest clue about the maths. I also only have a very rudimentary understanding of the syntax for making the equations from scratch.
So, what’s the point? I hear you ask. The answer is that without any understanding of the maths or the syntax, I have managed to work out enough to create artistic filters and macros for all kinds of artistic, lighting and graphic design effects. It’s this PRACTICAL knowledge I want to share in a few tutorials with those who look at the Help section in Affinity, see “var v2=vec2(rx/w/2, ry/h/(b*2)); dir(v2*(a*2))*(c*2)”  and run for hills screaming.
The aim of this first tutorial, is to give an introduction to Affinity Photo’s Procedural Texture filter from absolute scratch. I assume you know absolutely nothing about Procedural Textures. The following tutorials will help you build up enough knowledge to mess around with them and tweak them to make your own.
Why bother with Procedural Textures at all?
 
With procedural textures you can: create textures and patterns which can be used in place of image textures; create textures for displacement maps and create artistic filters; create gradients; lighting effects like highlights and sun spots. I have dozens now which I have used to create chalk, watercolour, cross-hatching, oil paint, grunge, paper and canvas textures… their uses seem only to be limited by your creativity and experimentation, which let's face it, is half the fun!
What are Procedural Textures?
 
Simply put, they are a line, or lines of mathematical formulae in C++ programming language which generate patterns of pixels, BUT DON’T LET THAT SCARE YOU. You DON’T need to understand the maths or coding to use or customise them – I promise!
The clever thing about Procedural Textures is that, because they are generated by maths equations, like vector graphics, they work at all resolutions and sizes of documents. The pattern is only ‘fixed’ as pixels when you hit apply. If you use them as live filters, they are not even fixed then, but remain completely editable AND interchangeable.
Where do I find Procedural Textures?
Go to Filters>Colours>Procedural Texture.  You can also launch them as a Live Filter through Layer>New Live Filter Layer>Colours>Procedural Texture. This option gives you the chance to change or edit the PT later, but lots of Live Filter Layers may slow down your system.
Let’s leap right in! If you’ve opened the Procedural Texture dialogue, close it.
The Procedural Texture Dialogue Explained
Create a new blank document 1920x180 pixels (the size doesn’t matter). Create a new pixel layer by clicking on the chequerboard icon at the bottom of the layer palette or go to Layer>New Layer. Fill this layer with your foreground colour through Edit>Fill with Primary Colour. Procedural Textures seem to need a filled pixel layer to work against.
Let’s look at the Procedural Texture Dialogue in detail:
 

It’s divided into two sections. The top is the Equations section. This is where the equations go which generate the textures. The bottom section is the Custom Inputs section. This where you’ll find various controls for the texture, if it has any.
Equations Section
 
The Equations Section has a drop-down list of presets. This list is actually a library of different textures and patterns divided into categories. The burger icon to the right of the presets drop-down list is where you can create new presets, rename and delete them.
You can also open the Presets Manager by clicking on Manage Presets. Do this now.
 

This is where you can add your own categories, export and import presets, and delete and rename them. You can also drag presets to reorder them or put them into different categories.
Whilst you are here, create a new category and call it Basic Noise or Tutorial Textures. You can rename or delete them later.
Two further things to note are that you can’t rename or delete the default presets, but there is a burger icon next to the categories where you can delete or rename your own or imported ones.
Close the Presets Manager and select the Chequered preset from the Basic Shapes section.

The Equations section has got one equation line which generates squares.
 
TIP: Look at the equation. It has “rx” and “ry” in it. If you see these in any equation (or put them there yourself) you have a click-draggable texture. Click and hold down the mouse in the texture or pattern and drag the mouse around.
 
At the end of the equation line, you have the letters R, G, B, A and an X.
They refer to the red, green blue and alpha (transparency) channels – here R, G and B are active. You don’t need to know anything about channels for now. Just click them on and off, and try them in pairs. The weird thing is that if you want, say, red and white squares you have to turn off the red button! (This is to do with additive colour mixing – a whole other tutorial).
The X at the end of the RGBA line deletes the equation line.
Custom Inputs
 
The Custom Inputs section has got one controller called “Square count” which is set to 25. It’s not the actual number of squares, it multiplies the numbers of squares in the pattern.
The X at the end of the Custom Inputs line deletes the input.
The Custom Inputs section has its own burger icon. This is where you can add sub-presets or variations of textures which you make. Affinity won’t allow you to save sub-presets of the default textures, but it’s worth checking the drop-down list of the default textures as there are some good textures hidden away there – like “Smoke” in the Perlin Noise preset.
That’s it for the basic introduction in the next tutorial (Procedural Textures Tutorial 101.2) we’ll go a little deeper and create a very basic custom texture  - just one word a pair of brackets and one letter, which, with a few tweaks can give you this!
GO TO LESSON 2

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

If you haven't read my first Procedural Textures tutorial (Affinity Photo Procedural Textures for Absolute Beginners: 101.1)  you can find it HERE
In this tutorial we will create a series of basic Procedural Textures. We will build up the skills gradually, one step at a time, and finish by making a Macro which can be used to create silk backdrops like this one:

If you haven’t read my introduction to Affinity’s Procedural Texture filter and want an explanation of what it’s all about, you can read that here. By the end of this first tutorial, you will have a basic understanding of how Procedural Textures work, you will have made a few adjustable textures and you will have a macro for making silk fabric backdrops like the one I showed you at the end of the last tutorial.
We shall be making some simple new presets which you can save into the Basic Noise or Tutorial Textures category you created in the first tutorial. If you haven’t done that yet, open the Presets Manager and create a new category for the presets we’ll make in this tutorial. To do this you’ll need to open the Procedural Texture dialogue and click on the burger icon at the end of the Equations line.
Go to lesson 3 HERE
 
Before we begin here is a quick reminder of the four basic maths symbols on the keyboard. It's useful to know so that when you see them in an equation you know what they are.
TIP: Look at some of the default Procedural Textures that come with affinity. See a / sign? swap it for * and see what difference it makes.
Maths signs + and – are obvious. * is multiply, / is divide. Note that the multiplication sign is an asterisk * not an x.
The Simplest Texture of All
 
I promised to start from scratch, so let’s make the most basic Procedural Texture of all.
First, remember that PTs need a filled pixel layer on which to work so create one now.
Create a new blank document 1920x180 pixels (the size doesn’t matter). Create a new pixel layer by clicking on the chequerboard icon at the bottom of the layer palette or go to Layer>New Layer. Fill this layer with your foreground colour through Edit>Fill with Primary Colour (white).
TIP: For this tutorial you will make life MUCH easier for yourself if you create the Procedural Textures as a Live Filter. To do this go Layer>New Live Filter Layer>Colours>Procedural Texture. This can be re-edited at any time by double clicking on the Procedural Texture thumbnail in the Layer palette. Create a new live Procedural Texture filter as above, if you haven’t already done so.
Create an empty equation input box by clicking on the + button at the bottom of the Equations section.
Whoa! What happened there! Your image just turned cyan! (If your pixel layer is white.)

When you add an equation line, by default, Affinity assumes that you only want it to affect one channel. Look at end of the Equation line – only the R button is highlighted.
Really, THIS is the most basic “texture” of all – no maths, no coding!  In fact, if you applied this to a photo you would tint the whole image Cyan. Turning on the R, G and B buttons in combinations creates various filters, which you could save as presets, if you wished – but that’s not where we’re going today. Click all the RGB buttons so they are all depressed and your image is black.
Click in the new equation input box and type (or copy and paste) the following:
noisei(x)  (Note the last “i” – noisei. I’ll come to why that is important later.) Press the Enter or new line key.
 

You've created a bar code texture!
Save this as your first texture (you can delete it any time you want, but we’ll build on it as we go). Click on the burger icon and save it in the Basic Noise category you created in the last tutorial.
Save it as Basic Noise 1.  If you haven’t created a category, do it by clicking on Manage Presets in the burger icon on the right of the preset drop-down list, then create category, name it as Basic Noise.
 
So, what’s going on?
The ‘noisei’ bit is the command to tell Affinity to generate “i’” type noise (I’ll come back to that later). Like 99% of procedural texture equations expects some instructions inside brackets afterwards telling it how to generate the noise – Here that is (x).
What’s the x for?
Affinity views your pixel layer essentially as a grid or graph of pixels. It has to plot (generate) the procedural textures from a starting point. This starting point is the top left-hand corner of the image. It then needs to know which direction to go.
Going from left to right is the x direction, whilst going from top to bottom is the y direction. Try changing the x inside the brackets to a y, then press enter to see what happens.
 
A word about spaces in equations – they don’t seem to matter too much. noisei ( x ) produces the pattern exactly the same noisei(x).
 
Where’s the noise???
When you typed in the equation you were probably expecting to see a field of pixel noise like this:

The reason why we haven’t got that is because we have only given Affinity an instruction to generate the noise in one direction, left to right (x) or top to bottom (y)
 
What we need to do is combine both directions, which is more straightforward than you’d think. We just put a comma after the x and then type y, making sure it’s all inside the brackets like this:
 
noisei(x,y)
Now you’ve got basic noise! Save this as Basic Noise 2.

Take Control
Remember those custom inputs down the bottom? We can them to control how the noise appears.
First, go into the presets and select the Basic Noise 1 you created a moment ago.
Click on the R custom input button at the bottom and fill it in as in this image.

The R tells you what kind of input it is. R means any number including decimals – so you could type 40.05, if you wanted. The letter a name of this input as far as the equation is concerned (I’ll come back to that in a minute). In the next empty box I typed Width (you’ll see why soon), and then I have typed the number 40 as a starting number.
 
If you’ve entered those, so far nothing has happened. That’s because we need to tell Affinity to look at this input we have just made. Remember that letter a in the input box? Amend the equation so it looks like this noisei(x/a) and press enter. Now you should see a dramatic change in the texture.
 

The “/a” in the Equation just tells Affinity to look a the a input box and divide the noise by that number. You don’t need to know what the maths is doing, just that by putting /a when you increase or decrease the number in the custom input box by clicking the up and down arrows, the pattern gets wider or narrower. Save this as Basic Noise 3.
Open the Basic Noise 2. you created earlier. Add two R Custom Inputs. Call the first (a) one Width as before with a starting value of 80, and the second (b) one Height with a starting value of 40.

Now you have a size-controllable noise maker. Play with it for a while. Don’t forget that if you like a particular combination (say 5 wide and 90 high) you can save it as a sub-preset via the burger icon on the right of the custom inputs box.
Add Colour
So far, we’ve only used one equation line, which already is beginning to make some interesting patterns and designs. But if we add another couple of equation lines, we can really mix things up.
Re-open the Basic Noise 3 preset we made earlier. The line reads noisei(x/a), and we’ve got one custom input which is assigned to the “/a” part. All of the RGB button are on.

TURN OFF the G and B buttons, so only R is on.
 
Now add two more equation lines by clicking the + at the bottom of the Equations section.
 

Still nothing! That’s because the new controllers have been assigned the letters b and c. Edit the G equation, taking out the letter a and substituting for the letter b. Do the same with the B line, but make the a a c.
Make the starting numbers for the R, G, and B 9, 11 and 13. When press Enter after typing in 13 you should end up with this:

You can save this as a preset if you wish.
Notice how I have renamed the custom inputs to Red Width etc.
By adding /ya, /yb, and /yc to each equation line we can get resizable, overlapping coloured squares.

Note that I have renamed the custom inputs and put different starting numbers. You can save this one too, if you like.
A whole lot of noise
 
I promised you a satin filter Macro. I also said that I would explain what the last “i” in noisei is all about. One look at the help page for the Procedural Texture will tell you – there’s more than one kind of noise! There is noise (without the i), noisesc, noisesin, noisecs…. Dozens of them if you include the harmonic noise ones.
We’re going to play with cubic noise. The command for this is… wait for it…. Noisecubic.
Re-open Basic Noise3, the one like this:

Edit the equation so that instead of noisei(x/a) it reads noisecubic(x/a). Make sure you delete the last “i” of the noisei.
You should have soft, blurry lines like this:

Save this a preset called Soft Cubic Noise Lines. The default width value is 80
Make a Silk Background Macro
Close the Procedural Texture dialogue.
Delete the live filter layer and accompanying pixel layer.
Before you start recording the macro, change your foreground colour to any colour other than white. This will be the default colour for your silk background. You will be able to change it after you run the macro.
 
Open the Macro tab which is found at View>Studio>Macro.
Click the record button (red dot).
Create a new layer via Layer>New Layer.
Fill with foreground colour via >Edit>Fill with Primary Colour.
Add a new Live Procedural Texture Layer via Layer>New Live Filter Layer>Colours>Procedural Texture.
Select the Soft Cubic Noise Lines preset you just made.
Close the Procedural Layer dialogue (X top right corner).
Add a new Fill Layer via Layer>New Fill Layer.
Change the Layer blend mode to Average.
Press stop recording button (square).
Save the Macro as Silk Background by clicking on the icon with three squares and a tiny +.
You now have a fully editable silk background texture. To test it out, delete all the layers in the layer palette so that you have a completely empty document.
Run the macro.
You should have two layers: A fill layer, which when selected, you can simply click any colour in your colour swatches to change the colour. A pixel layer beneath it with a live Procedural Texture filter. You can change the Procedural Texture by double-clicking the white thumbnail with the hourglass symbol in it. You will then be able to change the width of the silk folds.

One Final Tweak
If you want to make the Soft Cubic Noise Lines preset click-draggable, you can edit the equation and add the letter “r” before the “x”. The equation will then read noisecubic(rx/a). If you have the Procedural Texture dialogue open, you will be able to drag the texture sideways.
If you wish to replace your Soft Cubic Noise Lines preset with this draggable one, click the burger icon on the right of the preset drop-down list. Select Replace Preset. Scroll down the drop-down list until you find Soft Cubic Lines. Click OK.
Here’s what the texture macro looks like blue and with a width of 15
Next tutorial is HERE

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.
 

Hi @Humbucker,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
The Warp Tool in Affinity Photo simply picks whatever object/layer (or objects/layers if applied to a group) and treat them as if they were a single image distorting everything. The destructive version of the filter (menu Filters >Distort > Mesh Warp) converts the the result to a pixel layer, whereas the live version of the filter (menu Layer > New Live Filter Layer > Distort > Mesh Warp or using the Live Filters button on the bottom of the Layers panel) keeps the output editable through the Mesh Warp filter layer.

The Warp Group in Designer only works with vector objects keeping whatever is inside the warp group selectable and editable (the original vector object's geometry not the distorted version which cannot be editable directly). If you do need to edit the distorted version of these objects you have to convert them to curves (clicking the respective button in the context toolbar) when the mesh warp group layer/Node Tool is selected. We hope to improve it to also include raster data/other vector objects attributes.

If you own Affinity Photo, and are working in Designer go to menu File > Edit in Photo... To switch the document temporarily to Photo add the Live Mesh Warp filter there, then use the command File > Edit in Designer... to get back to Designer. You can still edit the Live Mesh Warp filter in Designer as if you were in Photo.

I can see Serif confirmed on Instagram that they were starting work on a blend tool and hoped to have it ready this year, though to be fair to Serif I wouldn't hold them to that timeline. Does seem like they're aware of the ask and are working on it which is great
 

This is from the comments in the Mesh Warp and perspective live filters reel they did to showcase 2.1 before it was released.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CqGP3cBsqZw/

Sharpening, healing, denoising, upscaling, etc. -- Sure. Creating? No way. As long as AI is a tool to carry out my wishes, under my control, that's fine. When it starts "creating" by itself, no interest at all.

Hi All,
Well, it’s been a pretty crazy week since the launch of V2!
This has been a real labour of love for us over the last year or so, and I can’t even begin to describe how hard the development team have worked on it. Not only getting the V2 apps launched, but also of course finally bringing Publisher to iPad. 
With this being our first paid-for upgrade there has understandably been a lot of feedback / questions around future updates and our pricing policies. I thought it was worth addressing / clarifying our position on some of these personally...
Updates to V2 moving forward
Buying V2 not only gets you all the new features you have seen, but we have various updates planned – including many more new features and improvements – which you will get for free. This will continue until such a time that V3 is released. We’re not sure exactly when V3 will be, but I can confirm we are not going to move to anything as regular as an annual upgrade cycle as has been speculated.
It’s worth saying too that V2 does include many under-the-hood changes to our underlying technology, and we have also been investing in several new areas of research recently. Some of these haven’t manifested themselves into new features yet, but overall V2 does give us a better platform to develop on moving forward and I’m sure you will be pleased with the updates V2 will receive.
Updates to V1 moving forward
While we did say on the FAQ that V1 would no longer receive any updates, I want to clarify that was about new feature updates. We will be updating V1 to fix any critical problems caused by operating system updates in the future. So if the next version of macOS breaks V1 we will endeavour to fix it. There will be a point in time when continuing to maintain V1 in this way will not be tenable, but certainly for the foreseeable future we will continue to patch. In fact, we have an update to V1 queued up for release very shortly with some fixes for Ventura and issues caused by a recent Windows security / quality update. 
We will update our FAQ shortly to make that clearer for everyone.
Offer period
In case you didn’t see, I’m pleased to confirm we have decided to run this initial launch offer until 14th December to give everyone the best chance possible to get it if they wish / have a decent amount of time to trial it. 
Upgrade pricing
It’s been really hard to see some of the comments about us not looking after our existing customers – we’re pretty devasted that anyone feels like that to be honest. But the fact is we felt our hands were tied somewhat with being able to offer upgrade pricing in a fair way. The main reason for this was App Store customers (which make up around 35% of our userbase). The problems with that are two-fold: firstly, we didn’t have a way from within V1 to validate an App Store purchase receipt to reliably ensure customers who were entitled to an upgrade could get one; and secondly, we could not find a good way for people to get that discount via the App Store. Us pushing upgrade customers to go exclusively via our own site (including customers who were previously acquired via the app stores) may also have put us in violation of App Store Ts & Cs which we were obviously concerned about.
I’m not saying that these issues were completely insurmountable, but any solutions we came up with would be messy, and most importantly could have resulted in some bona fide V1 customers struggling to get validated and claim their discount. We certainly don’t have the support resource here if we ended up needing to manually validate tens of thousands of receipts for example.
The only option we felt was safe to move forward with was a general launch offer, which would guarantee that every V1 customer could get the discount, whether they purchased directly through us or the App Stores. We knew a side effect of that would mean some new customers would end up receiving that same discount – but we felt that was a better option than V1 customers missing out. It’s also worth saying that while there has been some good press about V2, all our main marketing has been via email and through social media to our followers. In other words, we felt ok about it because we knew the vast majority of people who would find out about it or take advantage of the offer would be existing customers. I would be surprised if over the offer period customers upgrading from V1 didn’t make up more than 90% of our sales.
Overall I do believe us giving a 40% discount, along with the addition of the new Universal Licence of course, is offering fantastic value for money for those who want to upgrade. 
However, taking on board some of the feedback there is something extra we can do – we will offer a new free bundle of content exclusively for V1 customers upgrading to V2 as an extra thank you for your support. I’ve seen this suggested by a number of customers and it’s a great idea as it does remove the App Store conflict entirely. 
We’ll need a little time to put something together, but all customers who previously registered or purchased V1 and have since upgraded to V2 will receive a voucher code for this via email as soon as we can.
A comment on no subscription
I do want to say that some of the points above are exactly the reason why software companies move to subscription. Whatever you do with upgrade pricing, you still have the issue of customers who bought the previous version 3 months ago vs. those who have had it 2+ years. Offering perpetual licences also gives the additional overhead of needing to maintain the previous version longer than you would if everyone was on subscription / generally always on the latest version.
We are a small team so some of these complications are not ideal — all we really want to do is focus on developing our latest codebase, push out regular updates and continue with our mission to make great creative software accessible to everyone. 
But it does need to be funded somehow. We know you love our no-subscription model, but there also needs to be a level of appreciation that the alternative is having paid-for upgrades from time to time. That unfortunately comes with its own problems.
All of that said, I have to say we have been blown away with the response to V2 - around 3 times as many people have upgraded in the last week than we expected - and we really can't thank you enough for the support you have shown. More than anything the success of this upgrade puts us in a great place to continue investing heavily in development which is ultimately what it's all about, and we’re super excited to crack on with some great updates coming next year!
All the best,
Ash

Yes, we will be providing MSI installers to customers who require them. This FAQ will be updated with links to MSI downloads when they become available.
Yes. These are now available
 

Hi @Graphite Addict
This has been passed over to our developers for further investigation. 

As the title suggests, Gradient Fills do not move as expected when the group is warped. In the example - left the original, right a perspective warped copy where the gradients appear locked to their original, pre-warped position.

I posted a similar complaint. I don't use MS Store apps. I don't even use the standard Windows 10 menu, instead using Stardock's menu which looks like Windows 7, precisely because I don't want to see these Windows store apps and I detest this ridiculous tablet interface on a high resolution dual monitor setup.
I just want to be able to use the new suite in a "normal" windows desktop experience. That is to say, have an icon on my desktop that I can double click. And oh boy, do I have to jump through hoops for that to happen.
I had to copy all three program executables out of the installation folder (so I can use them for the icon for my desktop shortcut) and then make a desktop shortcut to point to the iconless executable shortcut in %APPDATA%\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps. And trust me, if you're not a technically literate user, even finding and accessing those executables in the first place is non-trivial. 
I totally don't see what Affinity is trying to do by moving to a Windows App model. It just degrades the experience. 
Oh, and the program startup time is 3x slower than Affinity 1. And because it's a Windows App, I don't get to choose where to install it, so it wastes precious space on my system drive when it could instead, in a normal app, be installed to a user-defined location. 
EDIT: Before anybody points me to this link on how to create a desktop shortcut. I know how to do this. The problem is that the shortcut is created entirely without an icon in one case, and tiny, illegible icons in the other cases. Here's an image of my manually created icons on the left and the icons that get created if you try to create them using the recommended method on the right. It looks like a dog's breakfast. 

I am very disappointed. I expect a software vendor to provide me with an executable .exe file for installation that gives me the choice of the local program folder. This is also the case with most providers. I just don't want to do this cumbersome .msix crap to myself, especially since I don't use MS Store apps and have disabled all Microsoft spy features. If Serif continues down this path, they've definitely lost a customer. And I think I'm not the only one.

I should imagine that MSIX could cause problems in a corporate environment.
The more I think about it, the more I think MSIX as the only option was a big mistake.

Maybe Serif should consider allowing plugin development and making a plugin store.
Thus, Serif itself could release first-party high quality plugins as a source of income and at the same time user or thrid-party developer like Astute Graphics could help developing "long wanted, low priority" or some "few needed but hard to implement" functionalities.

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