David Entwistle

Hi stokerg Dcument setup is 96DPI. I've since found that if I set Fit Type (in the Print dialog) to Fit to Printable, the object prints pretty much at the expected size. But I'm still puzzled as to why a DPI setting should change the print size of a vector document.

I'm using AD 1.7.3, and cannot get objects to print at the size specified in the document. This happens even though I've checked that the page setup matches the printer page size. (It seems as though the print size is in some way related to the document's DPI setting, because the print size varies with different DPI values. I always thought that vector drawing packages were resolution-independent – in fact, that's the entire reason I use them.) You can see the effect in the attached screenshot. On the main screen you can see the size of the object in relation to the page. In the Print dialog, you can see how the object has been 'resized' in relation to the (same) page size. I suspect I'm doing something stupid, because I simply can't believe that a serious competitor to Adobe Illustrator is completely flouting WYSIWYG principles. Can someone please take a moment to tell me what's happening?

Hello Pšenda: thank you for your question. No, Illustrator doesn't ask which color model to use when you open. But if you open a greyscale bitmap (for example) in Illustrator, and then specify an RGB color to work with, the color displays in RGB, as does the color palette. This doesn't happen in Affinity Designer, which was what I found puzzling (until I realised you had to specify a diffeent color model explicitly). Illustrator is a very capable vector drawing program, and it still has many really useful features not present in Affinity Designer. But I think AD may be the future of vector drawing. It has already overtaken Illustrator in some important basics (most notably node control), and I look forward to seeing it catch up with Illustrator in other areas.

Hello Garry – thank you for your reply. I agree – on reflection it would be irritating to have to specify a colour model for each opened bitmap. Hello Walt – thank you, too. Yes, that's what I saw: RGB colour sliders, but displaying in greyscale instead of (as I expected) in RGB. I think my confusion arose because, as a new Designer user, I was hoping that most things would work as they do in Illustrator. (I guess if you use that program for over 30 years, you get rather set in your ways!) Thank you both again for your comments.

Sorry to have wasted anyone's time – I should have looked in File > Document Setup where you can specify the color model. It seems that Designer takes the color model from the bitmap file that it has opened. (Perhaps it would be helpful if Designer gave you the option of color models when opening bitmaps.)

In Designer (1.7.3 on Mac) I've opened a grayscale PNG. The vector shapes that I've drawn over it display only in grayscale, even though the color palette shows them to have RGB colours. Would be grateful if someone could tell me how to get my vector shapes to display in color. (Apologies if this has been asked elsewhere – I've searched but cannot find anything.)