Jim57

Happy to help

You can drag from the "Sample from Location" icon in the Info Panel onto the canvas to place the pointer where you want.

Hi j3rry ,
If you're looking to hide a target position previously set then simply click the mouse icon again for this sampler.
To remove samplers then click on the sampler itself, so that it is highlighted (as shown below), then use the remove selected sample point option to remove it.

Thank you for everyone. The secret was holding it in position for few seconds (thanks Jim57 & Old Bruce). It work even with multiple nodes - I can copy the whole shape above. Very neat trick 😀

Nodes.m4v    
 

Hi, I am an advertising graphic designer with 25 years of experience. I have been using the Affinity Suite for 3 years (starting with Photo and Designer and then adding Publisher as soon as it was in beta). In Italy, I have created a course dedicated to Affinity Publisher and numerous Live sessions to help other users understand the differences between Adobe and Affinity workflows. I have helped some graphic studios to make the transition. Unfortunately, I have repeatedly highlighted the significant technical limitations present in both the V1 and V2 Suites, which, from my point of view as a Senior professional, are extremely frustrating and cause significant workflow time losses for graphic agencies. This text will be a bit longer, unfortunately, but I hope effective and understandable.
These are essentially the points you will find below, primarily related to Affinity Publisher:

    •    PDF export is not currently reliable. Depending on the values entered, there is a risk of obtaining terrible unintended effects without realizing it. This includes text rasterizations (which automatically transform a Black K-100 into a Rich Black in part of a text), knockout black instead of overprints, and unwanted effects when certain types of FX are applied at the layer. Not to mention what happens if I work with a text with an FX shadow on a Pantone color (the Pantone becomes a CMYK where the shadow is present, instead of remaining a Pantone and accepting the shadow in overprint).

    •    Color management is terrible. If I assign Fogra39 to a file and then I have to print it at a printing company that uses a different color profile when I load the new color profile, all the colors in the file will have to be reassigned because they will completely lose their real composition (the K100 black will become a rich black again and so on, as if the entire color flow passes through RGB and then returns to CMYK).    

    •    There is no internal control system in the Suite that allows the user to understand in advance when these problems occur. Nor is there a tool to understand it after creating the PDF. An Export Persona is necessary for Affinity Publisher that gives the possibility to see exactly what happens in Color Separation when a certain combination of values is chosen from the PDF export menu.

    •    Swatches management is too slow. On the palette, I have to build my Global Colors, otherwise, I won't be able to modify them intelligently later on. But what happens when I copy an object from one document and bring it to another document? Its color palette is not added to the existing palette (each color has to be manually added one by one), and this creates a considerable loss of time.

    •    Why is there no way to transform a Global Color to which I have given the Spot value into a normal four-color process? It doesn't make sense. Often, in the workflow, the same color is changed several times, from Spot to Non-Spot, and only in the end is it decided what to do based on the printing. Here you cannot. The color must be remade and reassigned to each object.

    •    Why is there no way to replace one color with another? A "replace color" function would be excellent. As well as a function that asks me if I want to replace it with another color when I delete a Global Color from the palette. 

These are the most important and limiting things for me. Although one could list a whole series of minor bugs that have existed for years and have not been resolved.

After accepting that none of this was done in V2, my idea is that I am not part of Affinity's true target audience. I am a professional with extensive experience. I worked with Quark before, and then with Adobe for decades. Why should someone like me switch to an "economic" system like the Affinity Suite? My answer is that I appreciated the great effort made by Affinity to invent a new workflow that is non-destructive by default, more modern, and suitable for the hardware available today. I was bored of using Adobe.
However, after this first step, made years ago, it seems to me that there has been a change of direction. Not surprisingly, most of the Affinity users I talk to are students, enthusiasts, or even mid-level freelancers, but not high-level professionals. This makes sense. It would be a bit absurd to go to war against one of the largest software houses on the planet, we would come out of it with broken bones. Yet I still hope. I hope I am wrong and believe that Affinity can make it.
I have 3 copies purchased of V2 in the drawer. I don't use them because I don't need them, and my workflow now works well on V1, while on V2 I immediately ran into bugs that weren't present in V1. It also happened in Adobe, I'm not scandalized.

But the question to Affinity is: do you plan to address the points mentioned above? Are you aware of them? Do you have any ideas on how to remedy them? Or is it not in your plans?

The answer to these questions would certainly help thousands of professionals like me understand how to orient themselves.
Thank you and sorry for the length.
Sincerely, Beniamino (PS: translated from Italian with ChatGPT)

Sorry I can't post a video right now, but I tried it and I did not think it worked either, but it does - after dragging the middle node of the new curve onto the curve section you want copied, you have to hold it in place (do not release the mouse) for about 5-6 seconds and it will suddenly snap. Hope this helps.

Add a Square Solid stroke end at 33.33 %:

Or vice versa, use Butt Caps and add a Circle Solid end.

Or.... make small line at the bottom of the trunk (just duplicate it and shorten from the top) then use the Square ending for that second shorter line.

or just use a rectangle to begin for the trunk and stokes for the arms. Corner tool the top of the trunk and done.

Or another way just use LAYER-EXPAND STROKE on the trunk (starting with a stroke with butt cap) as the last step, then use the corner tool on the top as desired
 

I would group the trunk and branches and leaves and then clip the group.

All these tips are good, but this should look good without any workarounds

Hi Xeevis,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
As said above this is due to the antialiasing (the background colour is bleeding through the edges of the shapes). For pixel aligned vertical and horizontal edges this doesn't happen but with diagonal/round edges it causes the issues you are experiencing.
You can try select one of the shapes, go to the Layers panel, click the cog icon on the top left, then the Coverage Map button and drag the point on the left of the graph to the top (vertically) so both points (left and right) are both on top. Note this may not be applicable in all cases as it changes the antialiasing and may produce stepped lines in other places of the same object.
Other solutions if you want to keep the original objects perfectly aligned (no overlapping) is to add a third object behind them with the same colour of one of them just to hide/reduce contrast with the light colour of the background in the object's edges, add a thin stroke with the same colour as the objects to cover the gap or simply add (boolean operations) the objects if applicable/possible (you may have to delete some extraneous nodes or adjust the shapes before the add boolean operation to get a clean shape.

We are pleased to announce an update for the macOS release of Affinity Photo 2, version 2.0.3
The changes in Affinity Photo 2 for macOS 2.0.3 (those made since the last release Affinity Photo 2 for macOS 2.0.0) are as follows:
Fixes & Improvements:  (since the last release 2.0.0)
New Document: Custom Document Preset order is not retained between app sessions Lens Correction in Develop Persona has no effect on non-Raw files when a Lens Profile is applied Fixed spurious future version error under certain circumstances Some functions in layers context menu should not be available for non-child items. Update for HEIF importer Colour Panel now remembers user preference for CMYK documents Export Panel UI fixes Pen tool tweaks and fixes Saving to External Drive gives "Failed to Save" error on macOS Ventura Gradients on text strokes don't render unless the fill also has a gradient Fixed hang that could occur composing vertical centre aligned text OpenType handling does not respect lookup flags such as IgnoreMarks Resource Manager updates Fixed Curves adjustment settings panel 'Colour Space' picker being blank when colour space is RGBU Fixed various issues involving handling of placed document files Placed documents with bleed can fail to render the bleed correctly Many and various Layers Panel updates and fixes Searching in the Library panel crashes the app if you have more than just the default category  Ensure global colour edits update live Fixed straighten in the develop persona Fixed exclusion blend mode in 16bit RGB Fixed adjustment parameters undo Fixed sync before / after in develop Fixed image place recording in macros Fixed outline layer effect RAW loading speed improvements Assorted assets panel fixes Assorted other fixes Help & localisation improvements. Licensing and Registration improvements and new help links  
UPDATING TO THIS VERSION (Free for existing customers)
The software version can be seen on the splash screen and the About dialog (in application menu, Affinity Photo > About).
If you’ve purchased from the Mac App Store— updates are done automatically next time you run your software after it is available in the Mac App Store. If this does not happen for you, open the Mac App Store app and go to the Updates page and then Store > Reload page or press CMD+R. This should hopefully force the update to show. Apple sometimes phase roll outs around the world which can mean it may take up to 72 hours for your update to be available.
If you’ve purchased from the Affinity Store— each time you start the software it will check for updates and offer to download and install any available update, or in the application main menu there is an option Check for Updates. You can download the latest installer by logging into the affinity store here and find the order in your account and use the "download" button in there. Alternatively, this new release (and previous versions of Affinity Photo for macOS) can be downloaded from this link (that installer is NOT for Mac app store purchases, which update through the Mac App Store).

No offense, but I think this clearly is a bug, not a feature request.
And I may be taking it the wrong way, but this seems to reflect an attitude that "our way is the right way, no matter what the majority of our users say." It should be noted that I'm a huge fan and proponent of Serif and all things Affinity.
FWIW I have used, professionally, just about every dominant iteration of design software since Adobe Illustrator 88. [insert geriatric meme here] I can't remember any of them ever allowing you to interact with a locked or hidden layer; this has been the common sense default for a reason.
To say that a "Professional" design program that doesn't follow this standard UI practice is because it is missing a feature seems to be either a cop-out or arrogant.
Check my posts ... I am among your most staunch supporters. But I think looking at this differently would help. Maybe this isn't the 'official' position of the company, rather just one person's interpretation. But, either way, I have to think that the software would progress faster, and the community would embrace it, if the communication on this and a number of other issues was something more along the lines of...
"Oh, you're right. That is a clear UI standard, and we missed it here. We'll address this as soon as possible. Thanks for pointing this out."
 
(This is most definitely not to say anything must always be done a certain way 'cause it's always been done that way. I despise that sentiment; change is necessary to advance, but not change without a valid reason—especially when it makes something worse or harder to use. And overall, Serif is doing a great job at improving on many things that "have always been that way" to which we all applaud.)

This [overprint colors issue] is a huge, glaring omission.
And one that I didn't realize existed. (Clearly, I haven't been using Affinity software for commercial printing.) For reference, I have been involved in print design for many years and have designed everything from newspaper ads to books with enormous print runs on offset, web and digital. I have traveled across the country on multi-day press checks.
My affinity for Affinity is, in part, due to my loathing for Adobe and their rental model. I imagine this is true for many of the folks here. I have happily supported and promoted Affinity/Serif for offering a "viable alternative" to Adobe. But I may have to rethink this as this alone makes the software non-viable for anyone involved in print. Having to create multiple versions of the same color to have it overprint is ludicrous makes for a completely unworkable workflow. Overprinting should always be available to set on the object level. Always. Period.
Serif/Affinity Team...
Please take this seriously. We are all rooting for you to be David in a Goliath industry. If you don't get these absolute basics right, you will never have the commercial success that you, and us, want you to have.

@Serigrafique 
I knew the responses would be exactly like the ones above. A perfect example of Parkinson's bicycle-shed effect.
I'm more curious about what's really interesting in this feedback:
It is important, to say the least.

Super excited when I got an email about V2 and even downloaded the free trials, but after looking at the lack of added features, it's a big pass. I'll wait for V3 or V6 or V9, what ever it takes to make this software compatible with the printing industry (Almost 1 Trillion Dollar (US$) industry worldwide).
There is still no support for overprint fills and strokes for ink trapping and color mixing, spot or CMYK color separations, non-printable layers for die cut rules or digital finishing equipment. Let's not even mention the still clunky interface. It's not workflow, it's work stoppage. Need to pull down menus to change stroke weights and type sizes, really???
I have worked in the graphic arts industry for over 40 years from paste up and film to digital prepress and digital printing, and every major graphic software package since the original Pagemaker. I know a thing or two about the industry. The reason professionals use Adobe products is because they support this kind of work. Our designers and prepress technicians agree that Affinity files are challenging to work with, and the only thing worse is Canva crap. We charge extra for such files because of the time it takes to make them work with our equipment.
Bottom line is if your like me and don't want to pay for subscription software, be prepared to pay for it on the back end.

Hi,
I know there is a diversity of opinion of the recent V2 upgrades, but the universal feeling seems to be that it has been a step backwards in terms of the User Interface - there is not a lot in the forums supporting the new changes.
I think the 'new' look and feel is horrible, and significantly detracts from usability rather than enhancing it.
- Why has the Export Persona been so badly mangled ?
- Why has the New Document dialog been similarly treated ?
- What has happened to Separated View mode ?
- Why has so much been made worse, and so little made better ?
- Why are all the fonts so small in the UI ?
- Why are button layouts so clunky and amateurish - ironically, particularly in the UI prefs panel ?
- Why are buttons and fonts so small, when there is far too much empty space in prefs panels ?
- Why don't the apps honor the MacOS 'limit motion' settings ?
- Why has the issue of contrast been so poorly factored into icon design and screen colours ?
- Why do the new icons look like something from a GameBoy app designed for 8-year olds ?
- What is the point of redesigning icons at the expense of fixing bugs ?
- Why do the new icons do a worse job of representing the function of associated buttons ?
- Why have checkboxes been replaced with meaningless dots, where you can't tell whether they are on or off ?
- Why has the 'linked' icon been replaced with something so ambiguous ?
- Why are icons and controls so impossibly small when using a hi-res monitor ?
- Why are some controls virtually invisible when using high-contrast mode ?
On a scale of 10, I'd give v2 a score of 3 compared to V1.
 

Hey everyone!
I'm sorry, but after having bought the universal license and done some testing, I deleted V2 Designer, Publisher and Photo from my iPad.
Publisher would have been great to work on files due to using Designer and Photo tools via Studio link (I'm not even doing layout stuff!) and I'd have used Designer for its export persona if I don't need editing the file later on or port .svg to V1 (quite limited, but with knife and shape builder in V2 at least somewhat interesting).
In its current state, however, the suite is a massive downgrade from V1 and even with the knife tool, shape builder and the quick menu being great tools that do work wonders on workflow efficiency, it's still much slower and quite risky to work with:
- No V1 file compatibility
- Online activation required
as well as the following issues:
- Only starts up to my files section if there are files already
- Can't double tap layers to expand and collapse
- Button lower left has to be disabled each time when opening a file
- Bars left and right show last icon only by scrolling even though there is room for displaying them (iPad mini 5)
- Frequent crashes (about 5-7 times per hour) by just using the knife, boolean operations or the shape builder
- Shape outline sporadically creating blobs at start of vertex loop when shape was created by shape builder
- Grouping layers (very basic) takes two taps instead of one, yet I got massive UI for sorting layers (probably rarely needed in general; personally, I never need it)
- Couldn't find vector warp on iPad
I can't remember alpha or beta testing any software that included such a number of huge workflow impairing issues that were regressions from a previous version. And this is a release. Frequent crashes and missing V1 compatibility are the worst ones.
Sad. Not going for a refund, though. Hope it gets better (worthwhile). You did a great job with V1 after all.
Not really going to discuss here any further. For the time being, I'll keep using V1 and be productive.
Best wishes,
Shu
[EDIT:
Two months later, testing again, some issues are solved, others appeared. Current issues:
- No V1 file compatibility
- Online activation required
- Only starts up to my files section if there are files already
- Button lower left has to be disabled each time when opening a file (changed now, but should probably be a per app setting rather than per document)
- Bars left and right show last icon only by scrolling even though there is room for displaying them (iPad mini 5)
- There is a new feature, using a tool by swiping on an icon, yet I need to scroll on the tool bar to get to certain tools. How does that work out? Badly.
- 3D filter still only shows one light source when adding further ones.
- It's great that Designer now has Duplicate when touch & holding by accessing the quick menu, but getting rid of the small menu bar completely isn't optimal either, since when you only need copy or paste (or duplicate in Photo), you now have much more screen travel than before on a funcion that's used quite frequently, making it incredibly exhausting. I'd suggest reinstantiating the old menu, including duplicate for Designer and invoking the new one by other means (maybe touch & hold, then swipe up).]

But, but... Serif Techs determined that 99.9% of the people would be able to install without issues. Remember, they determined it and independently came to the same accurate-within-a-tenth-of-a-percent statistic that MS did in their marketing materials. 🙄
Seriously, there's some fundamental disconnect between Serif and their customers that is incredibly frustrating.
While their products aren't feature-for-feature replacements for Adobe's, they could be a credible alternative for many, even professionals. But they have no clue how professionals (or advanced "creatives", etc) actually work, and worse, DON'T CARE. I mean, one of the official reasons given for their exclusive use of MSIX was that it integrates better with Microsoft Photos. That's the one "workflow" they expected you to use, (had the installer worked, that is.)
They solved the MSIX fiasco, but they really need to engage with real world use cases. Not just with proper betas to kill bugs, but to improve the usability of their products within the customers' workflow.

Amen to that. They kept total silence for almost a year, no more updates, no nothing. I almost believed that the secrecy and the lack of a beta-testing program were meant to protect some breakthrough new features from v2 (that didn't come, unfortunately).

The chaotic rollout of Affinity 2 speaks once again to the lack of systematic, user-focused, real-world beta testing of Affinity products.
1.) Did beta testing really miss the fact that many users, perhaps especially in business environments, would not be able to install Affinity 2 programs on machines they've been using with Affinity 1 for years?
2.) Did beta testing really miss the fact that widely-used image management software like Faststone Image Viewer and XnView MP could no longer be used to launch Affinity 2 unless users wrote their own .bat files or obtained a helper program to serve as an intermediary program launcher?
Everyday users (mostly non-technical types) discovered these two problems in the first seconds after downloading and running the Affinity 2 installers. Did not one beta tester report these problems?
Just these two foundational issues have generated many new forum topics and more are appearing today. Some of the topics now have hundreds of posts. How many users have time to wade through hundreds of posts in hopes of finding a solution?
Affinity users have spent days working on the software to make it usable. Many are trying to determine whether or not to continue to use Affinity 2 software. They worry about the future of their businesses. If they choose to continue, how is it possible to incorporate Affinity 2 software into familiar workflows used for years with Affinity 1?
It appears that Affinity support personnel were taken by surprise by the deluge of questions and complaints concerning the unusability of Affinity 2 software. 
I admire the Affinity support personnel who have worked patiently, courteously, and it seems frantically, to respond to users about these problems and to develop workarounds that will make Affinity 2 functional.
==============
I understand from Mark's posts this morning that a second installer alternative that eliminates these two install and launch problems will be available soon, or to quote Mark "we hope it won't be long." An MSI installer will be made available that enables users to avoid the dysfunction caused by the MSIX installer currently in use.
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/171506-installing-affinity-photo-2-in-windows-11-from-the-serif-msix-file/&do=findComment&comment=988773

All this frustration, turmoil, disillusionment, anger, and time-wasting could have been avoided by implementing a proper beta testing program. Affinity 2 now calls to mind a Dilbert cartoon, with sales hype taking precedence over user requirements and preferences. 
==============
I have commented previously about the inadequate beta testing of Affinity software. Things are missed in Affinity beta testing that the average, non-technical user discovers immediately. Testing now seems worse than ever as the most obvious installation and startup failures are not being caught. Perhaps it is just cheaper to do it this way--limited testing followed by mopping up after users complain.
Examples of surprises with previous releases:
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/87151-lost-keyboard-shortcuts-170-split/#comment-462884
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/87186-file-sizes-in-photo-for-windows-170-split/#comment-473255

That’s what you get when:
The price of admission is very low ➡️ you attract a lot of users who will always complain about prices. Don’t have a roadmap, no public beta-testing for the major software releases, overhyped marketing before launch, bugs from v1 still not fixed in v2  ➡️ you end up disappointing some pro users. And of course, there are some of them who just like to annoy anyone who is genuinely happy with what Affinity offers. But the main source of negativity on the forums is caused by Affinity’s own actions. 

Or it could be that you can't (or won't) recognise genuine disgruntlement.