Patrick Connor

The poor dragging performance should now be fixed for the next beta too :)

Okay, I admit it. I'm a long term user of Ps, as in when it was just Photoshop - no number. I'm a professional photographer both as a newspaper reporter/photographer (mostly high school sports) and make a decent living selling "art" photos which cover a wide variety of subjects, but do focus on the Sonoran desert. I've paid for my knowledge of Ps with as Churchill said, "Blood, Toil, Sweat, and Tears." I use the program on a daily basis (along with Lr). In truth, the program is an utter beast - no an ameba - no the rising flood - no, I've got it: The Borg. "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." Over the years Ps has become a monstrosity built on an ancient foundation. The program has never been rewritten from the ground up. Yet, now it has literally everything including the kitchen sink while promising to make you tall, good looking, rich, and sexy. Oh, and it will make you a great photographer!
 
The greatest drawbacks to Ps are twofold. First is performance. It has never really embraced modern processors. Yes, it acknowledges multiple cores and there as been some work with threading, but let's face it: the program is a slow dog walking. Second is usability and the user's experience. I can't tell you how many times I can't do a thing I'd just done because some tiny alteration has been made that prevents the operation from taking place. No other piece of software has ever induced as much profanity from me as Ps has over the years. (Well, there was SAS, but that's a different saga.)
 
I know my current knowledge of APhoto is skimpy. As the old saying goes, "When you're up to your a** in alligators, it's hard to remember you were draining the swamp." I know that most of the things I need are in the program but things are arranged in different ways and oft times called something else. I understand the need for this as I strongly suspect that Adobe employs more lawyers than the entirety of AffinitySerif's staff. 
 
So what do I want from Affinity Photo? (1) First and foremost - FASTER. The RAWs get bigger, the transformations more complex, and everything needs more horsepower. I fervently hope Affinity makes sure every release improves performance. Multi-core, hyperthreading, prefetch, etc., etc. (2) Always look to a cleaner and more coherent interface. I've been a programmer in my long ago and guilty past. Programmers know how to do everything. We mere users? No software vendor should ever release a program without extensive vetting by knowledgeable users. Listen to them and make changes they suggest.
 
I see demands for HDR, panorama, RAW conversion, stacking, focus repair, perspective correction, ad infinitum. Photo should stick to photos, the core place where the photographer first turns to examine and begin work. It must become a host for the multitude of plugins that make the photog's life easier. Work with other vendors. Make it easy to plug tools in. Actively seek them out. Evangelize. We need the plugins.  I've tried to install plugins in AP without success. Even after reading the help, I still get a list of questioned plugins that when called freeze the program. APhoto, become a host to the many wonderfully specialized tools that make our life easier! MacPhun has several excellent tools. I still use the old NIK tools, particularly SFX and Viveza. Topaz's tools vary, but several are good. You can work wonderful HDR with several tools. Same with panorama, stacking, B&W emulation with ASA grain qualities. DXO has the best perspective correction tools, and their RAW converter is hands down far better than anything on the market.
 
So no, I'm not an expert with Affinity Photo. Yet. Intellectual inertia is a terrible thing, but when up against the clock I don't have time to learn something new, different even if it is better. Yet I will. I hate living under the tyranny of the Adobe universe. (No, I've not bought into the "Mafiaware" program.) I want, I need Photo to succeed, brilliantly succeed! I'm going to become your evangelist, propagandist, expert, an inveterate user. But to get me, you must always be dedicated to quality improvement and, please "stick to the knitting!"
 
Robert Sorrels  
Ajo Az

I love this app! the transition is easy and the interface is instinctive ... This illustration is my first serious test on AD

So, as I've previously mentioned, I've been on a quest to replace Adobe products in my workflow.  I've been a proud owner of Affinity Photo and Designer since last year, but was still using Photoshop, Lightroom, etc...  Well, with my subscription finally ending, and choosing not to renew, I wanted to really push A-Photo into my workflow permanently.
 
I chose a specific YouTube tutorial where the artist used Photoshop (uses Photoshop for all tutorials), and recreated the image using A-Photo.  For the most part, A-Photo and Photoshop went tik for tak on tools and layer properties.  Where there were differences, I was able to find suitable workarounds in A-Photo to achieve the action/look needed.  In the end, it's a no brainer for me.  Adobe products are no longer on my Mac, and I've never been happier.  I'm waiting for the next update like a child waiting for Christmas, and I'm really excited to see this great app evolve and improve.  Keep up the great work boys!  Oh, and please bring Luminosity Masks!
 
Image Specs:
The sky, ocean surface, ocean floor, fish, bear, children were all stock images.  The bubbles and water splashes were airbrushed.  Final color grading and vintage film effects were added using Nik Analog Efex Pro.
 
Cheers!
 
 

Here is another one.  Loving this!

I find doing these little "projects" is best way to learn an app. 
 
Looking forward to the new tools in a coming releases. 
 
 

 

Oops, I uploaded the unfinished image. 
This is the final copy - 

Thanks for the file and the report Paul. I'm logging this issue to be looked at by the dev team.
 
[EDIT] Issue logged. We will update you as soon as there's news.

Schubi63,
 
Thanks I thought that was the problem. We agree that the existing option that alters the resize behaviour should also affect the initial placement, so you can know how it will behave in both cases. We will add it to the list of things to get done.

2 weeks of hard work by a great team Andy

I’m not familiar with font creation but I suppose there is much more to it than would be feasible with an AD persona or whatever an upgrade package would be. Perhaps not impossibe but certainly a very different route than what AD is currently focued on. There are people who already create fonts with AD: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/13848-typeface-design-wip

See this thread...and there might be others, I haven't looked. But this one was from a short time ago.
 
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/25299-font-persona/
 
Adding in something of a little interest to the main core of users seems to me to be wasteful of programming time. There are plenty of font editors available. Even though CorelDraw has always had the capability, it isn't a widely used aspect of the application due to the small user interest.
 
There is nothing stopping y'all who want this in AD from using AD in conjunction with a font editor. There is at least one thread in the Show Your Work section where a person is doing just that.
 
I use various applications for vector drawing in conjunction with 3 font editors. 

Daniele. If you want to learn about Affinity Designer then I'm afraid my courses on Affinity Photo are of little use to you. I don't like to think that you are out of pocket on this. I believe you can apply for a refund within 30 days on a Udemy course and here's the link that explains that: https://support.udemy.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1507981-refund-a-course?b_id=3056 . If you have no luck there send me a private email and I'll see if there's a way I can refund you myself.
 
Regards,
Drippy Cat

Despite this recent change, Serif are not planning to sell Windows Affinity from the Windows store. We will sell these from a (new) store on our own site.
 
AFAIK we have a very clean install and uninstall process already. We are also not in need of the automated patching.
 
Serif do not think that the Windows Store has a good browsing/discovery or buying experience. Also much of the current paid content does not seem to be of high quality. 
  As for discoverability, unless you know an app is in the store I find it next to impossible to discover more than one app for a task. The app pages themselves are uncategorised so unless you have found the page through a filter, once you are looking at one app you cannot see others in the same category to compare. The app filters themselves seem to obfuscate "Top Paid", "Top Free", "Best Rated", "New and Rising"... Where is "All free", "All paid"? And furthermore those available filters seem to be poor choices, for example, looking at the current "apps" section, of the 25 categories there 10 categories [business, Developer tools, Food & Dining, Government & politics, Kids & family, Medical, Multimedia design, Personalization, Security, Sports] that have nothing to show on the "Best Rated" section. Why would you ever want to filter results in a shop to No results ? A further 4 categories [Health & fitness, Lifestyle, Navigation & maps, Shopping] have only one app each in "Best Rated". The Store seems bereft of quality and seems to be being avoided by most developers.
 
We are not saying never, and we look forward to the day when Microsoft offer a well organised and popular store with quality products, like we hope ours will be.

Click here to download the latest beta
 
Status: Public Beta
Purpose: Stability
Requirements: None
 
As this is a beta release, 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 that you may be adversely affected by the application failing. In addition it is worth noting that files created in Affinity 1.5 cannot be opened in 1.4, which means files created with the Windows beta cannot be opened in the Mac AppStore version of Designer, instead you will need the latest macOS beta.
 
We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post here and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback.   If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.  
Fixes
Fixed PDF export of Symbol fonts Fixed changing categories changing the colour of waterfalls on fill flyouts Added Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Chinese installer translations Fixed searching Help being slow Fixed Colour panel swatch not updating to match object Fixed Opacity slider updating per document Fixed pasting of symbols Fixed slider popups to display under mouse click (same as macOS version) Fixed Colour Picker with Ctrl not picking from the document palette Fixed PSD loading of gradient maps Added better reporting for no disk space when writing to a new Affinity file Fixed scrolling down paragraph leading with artistic text automatically closes combo Fixed right clicking a PANTONE colour automatically adds it to a new Document Palette Fixed dragging asset thumbnails can cause them to temporarily lose transparency Fixed some translation truncations Improved speed of layers control Fixed windows not showing on the default monitor Fixed AI Import not showing PDF Options dialog Added EXR and HDR export added to export dialog and workspace Fixed Document scale to behave more like anchor to page when switching between landscape and portrait Fixed being unable to change Pencil line width correctly using context toolbar Fixed moving asset categories automatically expanding all categories Fixed crash when closing app in pixel workspace with text styles tab displayed Added Colour Picker Tool to Pixel workspace Added 32bit RGB colour format to new document/document setup  Fixed switching between floating windows when documents using different workspaces not working Fixed Pixel Tool Brush Editor Window and Spacing causing app to crash Fixed export of images when flattening transforms Fixed PDF export of transparency where it's not supported (this can happen if rasterisation gets switched off) Fixed text creeping ever upwards Fixed Snapping Screen Tolerance minimum value being different to macOS version Fixed Help search dropdown scroll not resetting Fixed Scrolling and zooming when you turn off 'Scroll inactive windows when I hover over them' (Windows 10) Fixed duplicate toasts from appearing in succession  Fixed closing 2 toasts in a row minimising the app  Fixed Text Caret blinking when focus is placed elsewhere  Fixed Context Menu on text can be slow to appear and unusable (selection dependent)  Fixed crash when dragging text out of the Layer Effects dialog onto the document  Fixed Artboard not automatically checked when selecting Devices preset  Fixed Sync button state not being initialised Fixed PDF Export to only output compressed object streams if 'Allow Advanced Features' is switched on (will allow CorelDraw to open PDFs) Fixed Embed fonts drop down becoming empty when changing an option in PDF export Fixed crash when pasting special for unknown file contents Fixed 'None' page for the Fill button on the context toolbar not highlighting Fixed Gradient reverse not working unless you nudge the slider  Fixed Edit text style dialog does not match macOS version Fixed Save As not remembering current file name  Fixed Symbol name being shown from middle instead of left edge  Fixed adjusting slider in colour chooser does not take affect until mouse up  Fixed floating Text Styles panel then clicking on a style crashes the app  Fixed colour swatches on tools toolbar not changing to reflect tool  Fixed graduated colour not appearing to the left of a Symbol object on the Layers Panel Fixed colour band missing when symbol is collapsed in layer panel  Fixed colour context not displaying gradients  Fixed deleting all snapshots at once causing the app to crash  Fixed crash when right clicking in Styles panel on a blank area and renaming Style Fixed cannot 'Add Style' when right clicking the empty space on the Style panel  Fixed editing global colour a second time from context menu causes app to crash  Fixed app does not switch to single monitor after second monitor is disconnected  Fixed docking area background when empty being black  Fixed DPI field allows numbers that are too high  Fixed not being able to adjust pressure on an unnamed brush  Fixed Text bigger/smaller keyboard shortcut not functioning  Fixed crash when command line document path is too long or contains invalid characters Improved speed of colour controls Fixed highlight when moving objects in layers panel is inconsistent with macOS version Fixed double clicking on the arrow that expands layers can hide layers  Fixed asset toasts not displaying document thumbnail  Fixed pressing Ctrl + number key changing selected objects opacity as well as zoom  Fixed Rename Spot existing on all the swatches right click menus  Fixed clicking on the edge of a swatch not applying the colour  Fixed UI colour sliders not behaving correctly  Fixed crash when closing a document containing an open embedded document Fixed slowdown when right clicking on spelling mistakes of long text  Added better feedback when attempting to open a protected PDF  Fixed Export and More options screen lagging Fixed clicking More for PDF does not show PDF settings Fixed File > Export > GIF > More > Palettised options being permanently disabled  Fixed being unable to save export preset  Fixed hit detection area not being large enough for text styles  Fixed clicking the X in the search field for Assets not clearing the text  Fixed Transform panel manually entered rotation to be modded, not clamped Fixed certain Text Styles combo boxes can go to negative values  Fixed Text Styles Kerning and Tracking to be displayed in points by default  Fixed Brush Editor's 'Base Texture' scale only going up to 100%  Fixed Text Styles having no tick to indicate they are currently applied  Fixed Brush Editor not dynamically updating the title bar depending on the user action Fixed Assets being scaled differently to the macOS version Known Issues
32-bit documents won't render

Correct, we definitely do not have a box to tick or untick regarding renewals so, I'm not sure what setting DannyS was referring to.  We have never had an option to prevent auto-renewal. When an account can not auto-renewal (lack of funds in the account, expired card, etc) our system sends out error messages via email.  We also display a message to the logged in user warning them that eventually the account will close.  Too often someone disregards those alerts and comes to us months or even years later asking where their photos are. :( We know how important photos/memories are to our subscribers and we do our best to make sure their photos are safe on SmugMug for as long as they want them there.  This does mean that we REQUIRE the user to cancel the account and we include a warning at that time that content will be deleted when the account is closed. We never want to hold someone hostage but we do want to make sure they don't lose their photos accidentally.

Thank you for confirming there is no unsubscribe without closing the account. So other than to remember to press it on the last day before renewal there is no way to get the full amount of time that you have actually already paid for. Perhaps you should consider adding a method to achieve this so users can get their full use without having to cancel their payment card like the user above did.
 
I appreciate you coming back and making that clear.

Standard behavior for Windows programs is to have the "Save As" dialog open in the directory of the currently open file and with the name of the current file already filled in in the "File name:" box. Affinity Designer 1.5.0.17, however, defaults to the file name "untitled.afdesign".
 
This behavior is 1) non-standard for Windows software, and 2) inconvenient when creating multiple versions of a design or creating related design elements using similar names.
 

I've just completed a large project ready for printing; my first serious project using Affinity Designer exclusively. What a joy to use! I'm really happy on the whole with my shift away from AI.
 
While working, I made a series of notes as I came across things I couldn't do, or which behaved in a manner I didn't expect, and which I would love to see as features in future versions:
 
 

 
1. Hover pen tool over anchor point (which becomes visible while I'm hovering) at end of unjoined line without first selecting the path, and click to activate it and continue drawing.
 

2. Join two open paths by clicking on each in turn with the pen tool, rather than having to select two paths and choose the Join command.
 
3. Eye dropper - copy styles to selected object or text, as well as colours and gradients.

 


4. Insert in front/behind/inside: keyboard shortcuts please

 
5. Stroke presets to click on; also tiny up / down arrows to change stroke by preset increments.
 
6. Keyboard shortcut to change the point size up/down by single rather than double increments.
 
7. Use the direct selection tool to select nodes that define a segment of a path, and copy just that segment. When I try this with the node tool, the whole shape is selected rather than just the part I wanted. I'd rather not have to drag a marquee around the part I'm trying to select; just choosing a couple of anchor points should do the trick in my opinion.
 

8. Have a padlock as part of each layer to simplify locking and unlocking layers. I’m aware I can select the padlock at the top of the layers panel, and that I can CTRL click to bring up a menu to lock - but as I’m doing this so often, one more movement of the mouse or an extra click really does feel cumbersome and not fluid at all. 
 
 
Thank you for considering these suggestions! 

The update today is 1.4.3 with OS X Sierra fixes ONLY. All other changes (currently in 1.5 beta) will follow when 1.5.0 is released to the app store in the next few months. We wanted the experience on Sierra to be as good as other OS's and needed to tweak one or 2 things to get that.

Thank you for confirming there is no unsubscribe without closing the account. So other than to remember to press it on the last day before renewal there is no way to get the full amount of time that you have actually already paid for. Perhaps you should consider adding a method to achieve this so users can get their full use without having to cancel their payment card like the user above did.
 
I appreciate you coming back and making that clear.

Well the Photo beta anyway, this thread started about Designer for iPad

Please give us a preview of what we're exporting.  The default is Whole Document and if we forget to change that, we end up exporting the entire workspace instead of only the intended object.  DrawPlus had a GREAT preview so we could see exactly what was being saved.
 
In Affinity Designer, I end up exporting an image, then opening it back up to make sure I only got the image and not the whole page.  The other option would be to make the options you select when exporting "stick".  When saving several objects, I have to reset it back to saving with no background for each individual object.   Better yet, give us both! 

Hi fedorov,
Those icons control (lock) the aspect ratio of an object when you scale their container forcing them to a min-fit (left icon) or a max-fit (icon on right).
The icon one the left (min-fit) is used when you want to keep the aspect ratio of the objects - like text for example - without them splitting outside/crossing its container. The one on the right (max-fit) is typically used when you want to keep the aspect ratio of the object - a banner for example - and increase it size to fill the max dimension of the container - the width of a webpage for example - even if the other dimension needs to get outside/cross the container.

Right, I think this should be sorted for the next beta build - hopefully Thursday/Friday :)
 
Thanks again for everyone's help with this! :)
Matt