Ashcraaft

Count me in 👍

As much as I love Designer/Photo/Publisher I think there are a few minor UI issues where user actions don’t meet expectations. I already mentioned some of them, for example:
– Why not reveal the file path by alt-clicking on the document  title (standard macOS behavior)?
– Why not recognize the state of the alt key once dragging has started (standard Finder behavior)?
 
But my suggestion today is: I think the color handling in the color palette (or Studio) can improve with small refinements like:
– Add a command to delete all unused colors in the document/user color lists.
– Add a command to change all used colors to global.
– Make multiple color swatches selectable (and changeable, e.g. to global or for deleting) with alt-click (standard macOS behavior).
 
Cheers
Matthias

Hi. Is there still no way to apply a PANTONE spot-color to a 8 bit grayscale image in Affinity Publisher or Designer so it will be separated to the PANTONE separation?

What we are missing without the original feature, is to colour easily bitmap B&W and greyscale images in (a) Pantone spot colour. Unless we use  vector, those above will be CMYK.

+1 an Indesign import would fasten the takeover of world domination 

Status: Public Beta
Purpose: Stability and General Testing
Requirements: Mac OS 10.9 or above
Hi,
We are pleased to announce that Affinity Publisher build 257 is now available as a manual download from the link above and on auto-update.
As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity where you may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. 
We hope you enjoy the product, and as always, if you've got any problems installing or running up, please don't hesitate to post in this thread.
Any problems actually using this version please make a new topic in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Please feel free to leave general suggestions and comments in the Discussion Forum. 
Many thanks for your continued feedback.
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Arrowheads!
We have Arrowheads for Line Styles from Designer. The best place to report any issues is probably the Designer Beta Forum.
Assets
We have removed the placeholder Assets from Publisher. Publisher will release with an empty Asset Panel.
Other Improvements and Fixes
Main Frame UI
No more duplicate empty panels (!)
Option for large thumbnails in Layers Panel. Layer colour tagging added
Column guide default options are now saved
Adding content with linked images to Assets will switch them to be embedded
Reintroduced Rotate View on context menus
Added command entry on Text Styles combos to create a new style
(Mac) Fixed overlay issue when entering font name into Text context toolbar font control
(Mac) Fixed crash using arrow keys in Pages Navigator on High Sierra and earlier
(Mac) Toggle Unicode shortcut is listed only under Text Menu
(Mac) Find and Replace panel icons missing from Panel on El Capitan and earlier
(Mac) Line Break shortcut is <Shift>-<Enter>
Pages / Master Pages
No longer draw guides from hidden masters
Fixed scroll into view in Pages panel
Fixed crash when pasting a Master into itself
Fixed crash moving items in Z-order having done detached edits
Text
Fixed application of Text Wrap borders (!)
Placing text with a frame selected now populates the frame and replaces the current content
Fix for positioning of path text
Formatting a specific text selection no longer updates text defaults. Formatting at the insertion point still does
Text tool selection improvements. <Alt>-<Click> forces select in front / behind
Long / nested style names in the Text Style panel are now displayed with elllipsis if necessary rather than shrinking
Fixed crash reading text attributes near Drop Caps
Fix for Character Variants for some fonts failing to show up in Typography panel
Fix for erroneous spell check warnings when languages switch within text
Paragraph Leading control not using localised decimal separator
OpenType - Accept newer versions of GSUB / GPOS tables. Used by e.g. Bahnschrift
(Mac) Fixed underline position for e.g. Univers Ultracondensed
(Win) Fixed issues with the Paragraph Decoration dashed stroke UI
Tables 
<Ctrl>-A / <Cmd>-A now selects all text in a cell rather than all cells in text context
Fixes for Table Tool when Table is nested inside layers etc
Fixed issue setting Table Cell insets
(Mac) Fixed glitch changing Table Format names
Find and Replace
Replaced character escapes in Find results with 'User Description' glyphs
RegEx fix for Find with trailing '\b', '\>' not highlighting results and Replace not working
RegEx fix for Replace All for empty search ranges 
RegEx fix for lookaround (?=regex) etc
Hyperlinks
File based Hyperlinks now have an option to copy the linked file to the output folder
Insert Anchor fails on text frames promoted from Master Page
Add Interactive > Insert Hyperlink to customisable keyboard shortcuts
Import / Export / Print
PDF Import - Fix for layers not importing
PDF Import - Improved detection of redundant clips
PDF Export - Use document colour space for transparency blending
Export - Fixed issue rendering image nodes with transparent regions with fills applied on raster export
Export - 'Pages' entry box isn't always enabled correctly
(Win) Fix for CMYK Printer Profiles not showing in Print dialog
(Win) Stroke width being printed incorrectly on rotated objects
Index
Sort index entries by page number
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Earlier Release Notes Beta 249

Viva Designer is supported on Linux, Mac and Windows. 
IDML is a format that can be used to backsave to earlier versions. It is also useful to get rid of cruft that can cause issues as these can be stripped out in saving to IDML as well. The format is also a useful exchange format for some translation applications.
As well, the point of these requests is it can be a format to port a document from ID to non-Adobe applications. 

Both QuarkXPress and Viva Designer import IDML. Viva Designer also exports IDML. VD does both directions fairly well too.
No add-on required. 
Mike 

How many would buy/use AFIINITY PHOTO without the great PSD import export capability?

I think you need particularly the import from InDesign CS6 format. Many users do survive with this last perpetual version hoping and praying to be able to finally switch

Hi Shotster,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Here's the options currently available to apply a gradient directly to a stroke with the Fill Tool (see screenshot).
 

+1 an Indesign import would fasten the takeover of world domination 

Hi
As a former freehand user I am happy that affinity has answered most of my needs, but freehand had the ability to pick Pantone colors for printing purposes and that is vital to my work. I hope this will be an addition to future releases.

I really want to buy this program and get rid of Adobe, who I think has gone down hill specially with features such as exporting for app designers (@1 @2 @3). Anyway, I still do some print work and saw that Pantone colors are on the roadmap which is good but how can I work around this now so I can start using it fully? Is there a date when this is planned on getting added? Or a good way to import? Right now it defaults my pantone colors to white. Thanks. Good job. 

Hi Ashcraaft,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
Currently it's not possible to align nodes using the arrange tools/toolbar (only objects). This will be implemented later.
However you can enable snapping to help you align nodes trough snapping smart guides. Make sure you have Snap to selected curves enabled in the context toolbar for the Node tool and select the shapes with nodes you want to align. Now when you drag one of the nodes you should see smart guides (horizontal/red and vertical/green) appearing when your node is vertically/horizontally aligned with another one from the selected objects. Hope this helps a little.

I'm not 100% sure on the cure, but try this (a bit longwinded)..
 
(note: entries underlined can be changed but keep proportionate)
1) Make a shape and apply a stroke
 a. Black in colour, select the line style,
 b. 20px, square cap, miter join, align stroke to center and scale with object,
 
2) on that shape, in the effects, apply
 a. Black in colour, 10px radius,
 b. click the cog to open up additional settings,
 c. check scale with object,
 
3) Copy the shape, and paste above,
 a. Remove any fill colour/patterns
 b. White in colour, square cap, miter join, align stroke to outside and scale with object
 
4) Cmd+A (or select those two shapes) align center horizontal and vertical.

If you dont mind using pixel based vector brushes, you might also create a custom textured image brush … just an additional idea …  :)