CRWillow

I normally work on multiple projects concurrently with specific brand colour swatches. Since the 2.3 update, whenever switching between project tabs, the palette automatically reverts to the standard "Colours" palette. Even trying to set a custom palette as default does not work. 

Has anyone else had this weird problem?
 
Here are the four steps I'm taking:
1) I have an AP file open and it has only a background layer. In the tool bar I select Force pixel alignment, Move by whole pixels and Snapping (represented by the magnet symbol).  
2) I add an unsharp mask Live filter layer (not nested but it makes no difference here) and raise Radius to 5.0px, Factor to 4 and Threshold to 0%. The image sharpens in the way you would expect.  
3) Both layers are visible (a tick in each box). I right click on the Live filter layer's icon (or the Background layer's icon) and select Merge visible.  
4) The merged layer appears but it has lost the sharpening completely.
 
Am I correct in thinking that this is a major bug? I simply cannot sharpen.
 
 
 

That is what I have been trying and I believe this method is not working. When You click the palette icon in swatches/gradients as suggested, the gradient is saved, but different one that the one I am working with in Gradient map dialog box. Actually it seems that even with gradient tool, saving the gradient there is not working correctly. May be related to my complex gradient with several colors :-/
 
 
Thanks, I took me while to find presets there. That is why I believe there should be a shortcut on popup windows for loading presets.
 
Because for gradients we have two separate libraries – swatches and adjustment palette. That is a bit confusing. At least for me.

I did as you showed and it worked as long as I had a fill and stroke color and the two small circles are together on one layer, which you divided.
However I tried it again without a fill or stroke and got the following results.
The steps I took were -
Draw a large circle, add donut with 35% hole at the top of circle, duplicate and place at bottom of circle. Select all layers, clearing fill and stroke. (Capture 1)
Click shape builder while all is selected, click the +/ add button and draw through the outer donut and the left side of large circle. (Sometimes the piece stays empty as in Capture 1a, Sometimes it goes grey as in Capture 1b) Now a double small circle appears on the first shape created. Plus as you see in 1a the second shape lost the small circle and left the outer part not joined to the large circle. In 1b the first shape changed to grey, gained a circle and the other side stayed clear without a fillable circle - just the hole.
Now on something simple like this I can clean it up but on a more complicate design I can see a headache arising. Are the shapes and lines suppose to have strokes and fills?, I don't remember reading that they needed to be plus most of the tutorials I've watched aren't filling the shapes until they finish the design.

I'm trying to mask, hide some of the dots to see how it looks with fewer of them, I click the mask icon, the white block appears, I use a 000000 black and it doesn't mask the dots fully, their transparent like I've used a grey instead of full black. When I paint white over black solid dots on the mask if changes nothing. Painting over the transparent dots exposes them which is the opposite of what I'm trying to do.
Well I figured it out, it doesn't make sense but it works- I hit D to use the white and as I said it just demasks what I had painted over, I then clicked X and it changed to the default non total black of #231F20. This makes the mask opaque hiding the dots fully. I'm at a loss why it does but as long as I remember not to use real black I'll be set. Thanks for the help.

This happens sometimes for several hours then it starts working. It's very difficult to know what I'm doing when I can't see the edges of a brush. It happens on both Photo eraser and paint brushes even the basic brushes won't show the edge. I'm working in Affinity 2 though this happened in the 1st version too.

Is there anything that needs to be turned on or off somewhere? I'm working on a PC with windows 10.
Thanks for any help.

In this case my goal was to have a the hat match that sort of matched the shorts. I ended up painting it with a 80% clone and paint brush. I just didn't understand why I get a bright flash when I hover over an area to patch. I guess it's a area size thing. I'll keep working with it and get better hopefully. Thank you all for your help.

On which layer do you want to delete? Maybe you have just the wrong layer active?
the screenshots shows some illogic information:
layer „copy“ thumbnail is empty, but active / selected layer „background“ is inactive Canvas shows something despite empty layer thumbnail -> maybe file is corrupted. 
  the best way to check brushes incl. erase brush are working:
create a new document add one pixel layer select brush tool select basic round brush of 32px width  Choose color like black (not white) brush a stroke if this works, then the reason is in your other document.
copy one pixel layer of your issue document, and use new from clipboard test the brush again if it works, copy all you layers and paste them into the working document test brush again if nothing helps: upload the file here, so we can inspect.

Hi simon bd
I can only find 1 similar report to this, the customer was using the Pan tool, and whilst panning used the Ctrl+S shortcut to save his document. This causes the Pan tool to get stuck in it's current state.
Is it possible you saved the file during a View tool operation?

I have the same problem some times with Affinity Designer and with Affinity Photo in the newest versions for Mac OS Mojave on a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15', Mitte 2014).

Hi,
Affinity Designer sometimes gets stuck on the View tool. This happens even if you’re not using the View tool. The Toolbar shows the Brush tool selected, but the cursor is the hand and the behaviour is the View tool’s. You can click in the Toolbox to change tools (you see the new tool being selected), but the cursor/behaviour is still the View tool’s; there is no way to get rid of it. It’s like the application crashed. However, you can still save your work, quit and relaunch. After relaunch, the application behaves normally…until the next time it happens.
Affinity Designer 1.7.1
Wacom driver 6.3.35-2
Mac OS Mojave 10.14.5
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
Thanks,
Simon

Ah, thanks a lot, Alfred!
I just could not understand why on earth I could never learn how to size things in Designer..! This will definitely reduce my WTF stress level! :-)
 

The fact that Image layers behave completely differently than Vector layers regarding size changes is VERY CONFUSING!
Vector object layer:
No control key - Dragging a corner changes the size freely Shift pressed - Dragging a corner changes the size with fixed aspect ratio Image object layer:
No control key - Dragging a corner changes the size with fixed aspect ratio Shift pressed - Dragging a corner changes the size freely The fact that a grouping an Image layer together with a Vector object makes it behave like a Vector layer doesn't make it less confusing.
Is there a way of changing the preferences for this, to make all layers behave concistently?
Best / Jonas

I have a pixel layer selected.
If I use (for example) the brush tool. I can draw etc
But the erase brush tool does nothing. Opacity is 100%, Flow is 100%, hardness is 100%
Layer is not locked.
So bloody exasperating just wasted 10 minutes trying to get it to work.. How can it be that unintuitive !??
 
If I use the select tool and draw a box, and then hit delate.. similarly it does nothing
I have removed all layers except this layer

I experienced the same issue. After a while, Designer 2 get laggy, and any operations even simple one like selecting, deselecting object takes ~1-3s.
The only solution for me is restarting the app periodically when it start to feel laggy.
Also when closing app, i often need to to do "end task" manually in task manager because the app seems to crash.
Looking forward to stability improvement on v2 🙂
 
*Designer 2 on Windows 10. Ryzen 7 3700X + 16GB Ram + GTX 3650 Super.

Yeah, I ran V1 and v2 side by side on my desktop gaming rig like I've always done with v1, but v2 is significantly slower on basic operations. Just selecting objects imbedded in another object, is really bad for instance. So slow, that when trying to CTRL select an object with embedded objects to duplicate it on Windows, v2 selects the inner object and copies it and not the whole parent object. Resizing, node functions, everything takes longer to start working, just weird.
Not sure if it's due to how the application is written to work within the Win10/11 "app" structure, but noticed that the install for the app moved from Program Files to the User, .affinity hidden folder. Something is not the same as before, for sure.
Guess I'll go back to v1 until this gets fixed...UGH!!!!

Example and notes.

Notes: In order to render this as it looks in the screenshot, I had to adjust some of the nodes positions, if I zoomed in or out the render became corrupted, I suspect this is because of the font used and also on Affinity not rendering correctly.
The tapering using the strokes pressure panel is controlled by the brushes size variance option, I set that to 100%

After setting the size variance option in the brushes settings, you can use the pressure panel in the stroke panel to edit the taper of the text.

and you end up with this...

Spiral text tapered.afdesign
Sentence Brushes.afbrushes

Hi guys,
 
I think Affinity is the future of design software. The one thing keeping me from switching from Adobe to Affinity is the scripting/automation feature. I have a bunch of scripts running in Photoshop and Illustrator and can't think about switching to Affinity and doing things manually again. You probably got this request earlier, but I'm just signaling the importance of automation/scripting in design software
 
I hope this feature will appear soon
All the best from Poland,
 
Sebastian from Keyshorts

Maybe that's i; sounds like something I'd do.

Check that the shortcut is still intact

That was it! Didn't event think to look there since I've never edited it.
What might have caused it to change? Is it maybe that this was added at some point, but my old preferences which didn't have it, were carried over?

Btw it is the same story with Affinity apps since years, .... update 2.1 is announced, ......  with new features, but problems do not get fixed, as I can see in beta version. For example bleed settings, options, .... document settings .......   nope! 
 
New options, new buttons, new stuff ....  seems as this is the only thing interesting the Affinity guys!
Do fix the obvious missing points, not working options, and from many users wanted  options like finally visible active tools and buttons, bleed settings .....  and when all this is done, and the users are happy, ....  then you may bring new stuff!
What is more important? App working fine and happy users? Or not happy users and more new options often just bringing more new problems? Think about that!
 

Thank you SO much. I adjusted each brush, exported them and reinstalled the categories back into my programs and the work just fine now.
Thank you all that helped out. Hugs to you all.

Just had this same problem on our Facebook group.
 
It was a CMYK source file and when exported the black was 5% grey or RGB 5,5,5 - so the background wasn't fully transparent.
 
Hope that helps.

FEATURE REQUEST: I would also like the idea of being able to toggle on and off visibility of images/object that are outside the document area in AF-Photo.
As a work-around using only AF-Photo:
1. Create a Simulated-Artboard document which is 3 times the size of your planned document with a transparent background.
2. Create a Background-for-Artboard document which is the size of your planned document.
3. On the Background-for-Artboard document, add a pixel layer with a flood fill of 87% gray and copy this layer into the Simulated-Artboard document.
4. Use Alignment to center the new layer in your Simulated-Artboard document, then lock this layer and make sure it is always at the bottom (background) of your stack.
5. Before you start working, save the Simulated-Artboard document as a template for repeated use on later projects. Close the Background-for-Artboard document without saving.
6. Now you can add stuff to your document and shuffle things around. Once everything is tickety-boo, then you just crop to the background layer you created and save your crop to a new document.
I have attached a template for a letter sized landscape document to demonstrate the procedure.
If somebody has a better solution, PLEASE share it. I tried the artboard suggestion posted previously with an attempt to edit an AF-Photo V2 document in AF-Designer V2 and the only thing that keeps happening is the error failure to open in Designer. My document is lost to both Photo and to Designer. The same thing happened when  trying to go to Photo from Designer.
 
simulate-artboard.aftemplate