aitte

Would you be able to include the world's best PNG compressor in the export features? It usually produces files 60-80% of the Affinity PNG size and is available as a C library. The compression is the best in the world, and the only feature they lack is extra-advanced palette optimization (it does optimize, but could be even smarter, it is on their todo list), but even without that they're still smaller than all other PNG compressors.

License is apache 2.0 = free for commercial use if you attribute them in the about-box.

Project was made by Google employees.

If you include it then please preserve control over the various tuning/algorithm parameters (you'll see what I mean if you try their command line version), because that is how to achieve the best compression.

Would you be able to include the world's best PNG compressor in the export features? It usually produces files 60-80% of the Affinity PNG size and is available as a C library. The compression is the best in the world, and the only feature they lack is extra-advanced palette optimization (it does optimize, but could be even smarter, it is on their todo list), but even without that they're still smaller than all other PNG compressors.

License is apache 2.0 = free for commercial use if you attribute them in the about-box.

Project was made by Google employees.

If you include it then please preserve control over the various tuning/algorithm parameters (you'll see what I mean if you try their command line version), because that is how to achieve the best compression.

@jmac: I was already pretty angry, but I would have been pissed as hell if I didn't work with vectors often enough to enjoy my $50 Designer purchase. But as it stands, I am pretty happy about it since it allows me to create even better logos and websites without being restricted by document resolution/pixels. It was a joy to see my designs in total non-pixelated clarity for the first time.
 
It just seems like they're trying way too hard to differentiate the apps, when they're already very different and both worth owning. You are correct that photographers need attractive text, and that's why even Photoshop *ELEMENTS* has Text on a Shape (live-editable smart object), Text on a Curve (vectors), and Text on Selection Outline. Elements is more powerful than even Affinity Designer at creating text... let that sink in for a moment.
 
Anyway...
 
Affinity Photo: Extremely powerful photo editing features (loads of filters, live fx and adjustment layers, correction tools, etc), some powerful vector features but none of the Designer niceties that make vectors easy and attractive to work with.
Affinity Designer: Extremely powerful vector features that make it vital if you want to *enjoy* working with vectors the way they're meant to be seen: Infinitely zoomable without pixelation, letting you make every little detail perfect. Also has some good pixel editing features but lacks the ultra-powerful ones from Photo.
 
Bim bam bom. They're already unique apps. No reason to wall off creative and attractive text as a $50 extra. It looks kinda desperate and pathetic.
 
My heart goes out to all photographers who don't care about vectors, and who are forced to flat, boring text that's even worse than what the newbie-app Photoshop Elements would have given them.

I have to say this mind set seems oddly rigid and unsupported by the nature of the 2 applications. While they each do have "features that the other doesn't have" they clearly share many, many others, some of which you would not expect. Like being able to "create a feature in one app and then edit it in the other." This does not set them apart from each other. It sets them apart from Adobe. This feature compatibility between the two apps and the pixel persona in Designer specifically, is much more advantageous to designers who often work with photos and vectors than it is to photographers who I image rarely need the design capabilities of a vector app. There is clearly a need, even if only now and then, by photographers, and I would imagine digital painters as well, to make attractive text within their images. This is a feature that makes sense to include in Affinity Photo. If you not going to allow text on a path because "Photo and Designer are different apps" then why include text in Photo at all? I really don't understand the logic here and forcing photographers to buy (even at a very reasonable cost) an additional application to access this one feature doesn't seem reasonable.

+1 to what aitte said.

Pleeeease reconsider this. Why not make Affinity Photo better than Photoshop in *every* way?
 
Even Photoshop Elements, the cheap baby-version of Photoshop, has:
 
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/using/add-text.html
 
* Text on Shape
* Text on Selection
* Text on Path
 
They're extremely useful tools and the lack of them is a huge limitation for adding creative text to photos in Affinity Photo. :-( Every time I go to add text in Photos, I wish the feature existed... And ironically, Photos is a place where creative text matters a lot. Imagine you're making a wallpaper from a family vacation or wedding, and you want to add a headline title to it. Do you really want the letters to be on a flat, boring, straight line, or do you want the text to have some fun flair? Or just look at the dog-example in the above Photoshop link, which shows a really fun use for text in creative photo editing, where they've wrapped the text around the dog. Creative text is insanely useful in photo editing to set the right mood. This is why Photoshop includes the feature in its photo editor (even in Elements), instead of just having it in Illustrator... Please don't artificially hold back an essential core text feature of Photo editing just to differentiate Designer and Photo. You can differentiate Designer in non-text-related ways (more smart shapes, bitmap to vector auto-conversion, being able to draw vectors as a paintbrush instead of just a pen tool, infinite zoom, vector outline "xray" view mode, pixel preview of vectors, etc)... Creative text is a basic feature of any editor out there except Affinity Photo...
 
I'm sad now, and it's the first time I've been sad about Affinity... :-( Heh...
 
 
edit: Hi to everyone giving this post a "like"! But it's probably better if you also post your opinions in the thread for more visibility.

Pleeeease reconsider this. Why not make Affinity Photo better than Photoshop in *every* way?
 
Even Photoshop Elements, the cheap baby-version of Photoshop, has:
 
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/using/add-text.html
 
* Text on Shape
* Text on Selection
* Text on Path
 
They're extremely useful tools and the lack of them is a huge limitation for adding creative text to photos in Affinity Photo. :-( Every time I go to add text in Photos, I wish the feature existed... And ironically, Photos is a place where creative text matters a lot. Imagine you're making a wallpaper from a family vacation or wedding, and you want to add a headline title to it. Do you really want the letters to be on a flat, boring, straight line, or do you want the text to have some fun flair? Or just look at the dog-example in the above Photoshop link, which shows a really fun use for text in creative photo editing, where they've wrapped the text around the dog. Creative text is insanely useful in photo editing to set the right mood. This is why Photoshop includes the feature in its photo editor (even in Elements), instead of just having it in Illustrator... Please don't artificially hold back an essential core text feature of Photo editing just to differentiate Designer and Photo. You can differentiate Designer in non-text-related ways (more smart shapes, bitmap to vector auto-conversion, being able to draw vectors as a paintbrush instead of just a pen tool, infinite zoom, vector outline "xray" view mode, pixel preview of vectors, etc)... Creative text is a basic feature of any editor out there except Affinity Photo...
 
I'm sad now, and it's the first time I've been sad about Affinity... :-( Heh...
 
 
edit: Hi to everyone giving this post a "like"! But it's probably better if you also post your opinions in the thread for more visibility.

Pleeeease reconsider this. Why not make Affinity Photo better than Photoshop in *every* way?
 
Even Photoshop Elements, the cheap baby-version of Photoshop, has:
 
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/using/add-text.html
 
* Text on Shape
* Text on Selection
* Text on Path
 
They're extremely useful tools and the lack of them is a huge limitation for adding creative text to photos in Affinity Photo. :-( Every time I go to add text in Photos, I wish the feature existed... And ironically, Photos is a place where creative text matters a lot. Imagine you're making a wallpaper from a family vacation or wedding, and you want to add a headline title to it. Do you really want the letters to be on a flat, boring, straight line, or do you want the text to have some fun flair? Or just look at the dog-example in the above Photoshop link, which shows a really fun use for text in creative photo editing, where they've wrapped the text around the dog. Creative text is insanely useful in photo editing to set the right mood. This is why Photoshop includes the feature in its photo editor (even in Elements), instead of just having it in Illustrator... Please don't artificially hold back an essential core text feature of Photo editing just to differentiate Designer and Photo. You can differentiate Designer in non-text-related ways (more smart shapes, bitmap to vector auto-conversion, being able to draw vectors as a paintbrush instead of just a pen tool, infinite zoom, vector outline "xray" view mode, pixel preview of vectors, etc)... Creative text is a basic feature of any editor out there except Affinity Photo...
 
I'm sad now, and it's the first time I've been sad about Affinity... :-( Heh...
 
 
edit: Hi to everyone giving this post a "like"! But it's probably better if you also post your opinions in the thread for more visibility.

question.  How does one get text on a path in Photo?  Unlike in Designer, the cursor will never change to the "type on path" symbol when placed over the path.  However, IF you do text on a curve in Designer and copy it into Photo - it lets you change/adjust it, acting just like it supports it.  Yet it never gives you the opportunity to make it directly...
 
am i missing something?

Hi safoster71,
 
Affinity Photo doesn't have the option for text on a path, but as you say will support it, if brought in from Designer. Our devs are still improving our tools, this may be included in a future update.
 
Thanks

This is exactly how I feel. As people working visually, we are constantly reviewing the composition to get a overview of what we are trying to accomplish, and the hand holding of the transformation box breaks this process (imo).

As a long time vector graphics user, the one main issue I have with Designer is the selection/bounding/transformation box. For me, it is the most obtrusive aspect of Designer, and causes the most frustrations. When trying to make multiple selections, the bounding box makes it extremely difficult to select surrounding objects up to almost 1-2 pixels. The bounding box also becomes extremely difficult when dealing with text; try double clicking text at anything at, or below, a 24pt font and you'll start to understand the issues.
 
When working on designs, I want to see the design as much as possible with less obstructions, especially when tweaking.

I want to hide that bounding box altogether and focus on the design of whatever I'm doing. This is a simplified example, but which do you feel allows you to focus on the design rather than the UI? Please allow us to just show the outline of selections then hotkey Option (or something easy) for rotation and Alt for scale. This would solve a lot of issues of selecting other objects nearby without the problems of getting transformation queues from the bounding box.
 
This is the one feature, above anything else, that would make Designer hands down the most enjoyable for me.

The names of these filters are well-established in software, precisely because they're the names of the algorithms. It's like when you go to apply an "Unsharp Mask" or a "Gaussian Blur". You have learned what those mean, and you know that they mean the same thing regardless of what application you use. It's not "sharpness" or "blur", which would be too vague and generic.
 
Unfortunately, people are much less aware of how various scaling filters look. I mentioned the differences at the bottom of my post:
 
"And if people are interested in the difference between nearest neighbor, bilinear, bicubic and lanczos for enlarging, it's basically as follows from worst to best: Nearest neighbor = jaggy pixels (extreme aliasing), Bilinear = smooth pixels (the values are blended together; produces no ringing), Bicubic = sharper but has visible ringing, Lanczos = sharper than bicubic and rounder handling of diagonal curves than bicubic (less aliasing), similar amount of ringing." (Ringing means "halos" around contrasting edges between colors, such as at the edges of objects.)
 
I think the best thing Affinity could do is provide a graphical selection screen for beginners, with small, zoomed-in previews of each filter, all using the same test image (not the user's own image). They would then see that Nearest Neighbor = "big, ugly, square pixels; only useful for enlarging pixel art", "Bilinear" = "smoothed out pixels", "Bicubic" = sharp but has halos (ringing) around all contrasting outlines, "Lanczos" = even sharper *and* has smoother handling of diagonal curves (less aliasing/stair-stepping), and has a similar amount of ringing (halos).
 
Anyone just doing general resizing will probably always want Lanczos. Its quality is very good. If you get too much ringing, use Bilinear resizing instead and manually apply an Unsharp Mask filter with a ringing-free Radius to make it sharp again.
 
If the resize panel ever gets an "Advanced" mode, I'd also want to have access to 2-lobe, 3-lobe and 4-lobe versions of the filters so that I can choose how sharp or blurry the Lanczos resize should be.
 
I still hope the "non-separable" (Slow, 2D) version of Lanczos is removed, if indeed proven superfluous (as it was claimed by all the reference books and material I looked through): https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/9378-what-is-the-difference-between-lanczos-seperable-and-non-seperable/&p=53992

Developers & Readers, go to this post for suggestions about improving the curve tools: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4274-join-nodes/?p=54441 and these two posts to see why the tools are deficient today: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4274-join-nodes/?p=54355 & https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4274-join-nodes/?p=54357
 
 
Actually, Alex, your video turns out to be wrong too.
 
In your last step, you select two dots (nodes), click Join Curves, and then try moving the nodes. You see them move as one object. But they're actually still separate. You didn't de-select after the Join Curves and try selecting again. So you've still got *both* selected and are moving them.
 
 
Here are some of the problems I've seen with my method and your method:
 
1. The "Break Curve" tool is only meant to be used with a SINGLE node selected. (If you select multiple nodes, it acts as if only 1 of them was selected). It turns that node into 2 nodes on top of each other, that you can then move around independently if you first deselect them. So you have to select a single node, break it, deselect, select it again (to grab one of them), and then spread it apart. That is how you create an "opening" in a path.
 
2. The "Join Curves" tool joins two curve objects/layers together. It does NOT join nodes together the way you or I believed. However, it DOES merge ONE of the two seams. So only one side will still have the "split" we talk about.
 
3. To actually close the curves (the small gap we talk about), you have to first click Join Curves as above (and like I said: You do *not* have to care about what nodes are selected *at all*; it only merges the two layers!). Next, you MUST click the "Close Curve" button. And again, you do NOT have to care about what nodes are selected. It closes all open nodes to their nearest neighbor.
 
Does anyone else think Affinity Designer/Photo has really badly implemented join/break/close curves? This was definitely not obvious and this behavior took a long time to analyze and figure out...
 
You would *expect* that the commands operate on the selected nodes. But they don't. They operate on the whole selected objects/layers.
 
It's a hugely confusing and inconsistent mess...

Developers & Readers, go to this post for suggestions about improving the curve tools: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4274-join-nodes/?p=54441
 
---
 
I made a cool screen recording to demonstrate this. You need to turn on line stroke to be able to see this clearly, since the regular blue line is too thin to really see what is going on.
 
Here's what happens in the video:
 
- Two separate Curve layers.
 
- Select a single dot/node on one of them and click "Break Curve". It turns the node into two and lets you spread them apart.
 
- Do the same for the other curve.
 
- Now turn on snapping and select both layers and drag the nodes on top of each other.
 
- Deselect all nodes. It doesn't matter if you have any nodes selected though, since Affinity doesn't care *at all*. It doesn't use your node selection. It *only* uses your layer selection. Be sure that both of your curve layers are selected.
 
Now Click "Join Curves" and it creates a single layer from them.
 
Here is the inconsistency: One of the sides is merged, the other is 2 nodes on top of each other (still broken). I demonstrate this by pulling that side apart and showing that there's no line-stroke there.
 
- Next, I *deselect all nodes* (because your selection yet again doesn't matter; I could have left them selected too!) and click the "close curve" button to make it detect the gap in the curve layer and close it. But notice how it still leaves TWO nodes/handles at that location that it closed, so I spread them apart and show that they're connected. Then I delete one and finally we're left with a closed object with zero extra nodes. I understand that it does that "extra node" because the "close curve" tool is also used when nodes are very far apart, so sometimes you want it to keep both nodes... ​But Affinity should detect when the node-gap that "Close Curve" is closing is on top of each other, and turn them into a single node.
 
It's all so fiddly... so broken... so unobvious...
 
Why does the join curves join one seam but not the other? (To be consistent, it should join *nothing* or *both*; not just one side!)
 
Why doesn't the join curves tool care about what nodes are selected?
 
Why doesn't the "close curve" tool care about what nodes are selected?
 
Why doesn't the "close curve" tool detect when nodes are snapped/perfectly overlapping and delete the duplicate when it joins them?
 
Why does the "break curve" tool break open a single node, but if I select TWO nodes it breaks ONE of them apart instead of doing the logical thing of breaking the connection between the two selected nodes?!
 
Etc etc?
 
It is so inconsistent and bad... To join two objects you need a rocket science degree in all of Affinity's quirks. ;P
Curves_Kinda_Suck.mov

Developers & Readers, go to this post for suggestions about improving the curve tools: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4274-join-nodes/?p=54441 and these two posts to see why the tools are deficient today: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4274-join-nodes/?p=54355 & https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4274-join-nodes/?p=54357
 
 
EDIT: THE BELOW "TUTORIAL" IS WRONG. Due to the broken/inconsistent tools, the result wasn't correct either!
 
Okay I found out how to do it and made a tutorial.
 
See the attached image.

Developers & Readers, go to this post for suggestions about improving the curve tools: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4274-join-nodes/?p=54441 and these two posts to see why the tools are deficient today: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4274-join-nodes/?p=54355 & https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4274-join-nodes/?p=54357
 
Hmm, I did the following:

- Create two smart object arrows.
- Rotate them.
- Right click each and Convert to Curves.
- Select both layers and boolean add, so that they were one one object with two closed shapes far apart from each other.
- I then used the node tool and "snap to node" in the toolbar, and dragged a corner of one arrow's base down to the other arrow.
- Then I selected all nodes at that spot and clicked "Join Curves".

So you're saying it refused to do it because both shapes were closed?

In that case, maybe Affinity Designer could be smart and open the shapes so that they become mere lines again. Feature suggestion: When "Join curves" detects overlapping nodes, check if there are only two locations where the objects overlap, and in that case break open the curves and join them at those locations, ignoring the fact that they *were* closed curves...
 
Also: Maybe there is a "break connection between the selected nodes" manual command where you select two nodes at the bottom of one of the arrows and break them open...
Actually, I may have seen such a command... going to check now...

Developers & Readers, go to this post for suggestions about improving the curve tools: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4274-join-nodes/?p=54441 and these two posts to see why the tools are deficient today: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4274-join-nodes/?p=54355 & https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4274-join-nodes/?p=54357
 
This bug does indeed seem to related to transformation. I created two smart objects (arrows), rotated both, converted to curves, and the "join lines" tool refuses to join them. So the rotation (transformation) was probably the reason...

How do I drag a shape by dragging one of its points and snapping it to a point of another shape?
 
Snapping capabilities are shown in two tutorial videos on Vimeo. Do you need additional information besides your other post here: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/12247-snap-in-a-designer/ ?
 
What is the shortcut to unselect objects?
 
In general you can use the ESC key. For pixel selections use Cmd + D.
 
How do I join two lines?
 
Click the Join Curves button on the context toolbar. This post (where I demonstrated a special use case) could be interesting as well: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/8425-how-to-make-2-different-paths-become-one-path/?p=34571
 
Is there a tool for creating a straight line?
 
Use the Line Mode of the Pen Tool, selectable from the context tool bar. Note that Line Mode and Polygon Mode behave differently. In Line Mode, every second click closes the operation, such that you start a new path with the following click. In Polygon Mode the operation is not closed until you hit ESC or choose another tool.
 
Is there a way to select objects the same way as AI cs5?
 
Choose Preferences … > Tools and tick “Select object when intersects with selection marquee”. Then you can just touch the objects with the marquee to select them. Was that what you wanted to know?
 
Hope that helps … Alex  :)

Why dumb it down?  "Normal" users will either figure it out, or ask.  

I just checked, and *everything* under the Filters menu has those super useful, blue "No Comparison / Split Comparison / Side By Side Comparison" buttons in the bottom left of the filter panel.
 
But *none* of the Layer menu's Adjustment Layers or Live Filters have that feature, so it's hard to compare the results of the adjustment.
 
There is probably a technical reason for the lack of those buttons when dealing with non-destructive live-layers.
 
But in that case, can't you add a "Compare" button to the left of the "Merge" button in the top toolbar of those effect windows? That would be a "momentary switch", meaning, the user clicks it, and as long as they *hold down* the mouse button it shows the original image (disables the effect), and when they let go again, it re-enables the effect. That way the user can't accidentally toggle the effect permanently off, since it's just a momentary switch. And it would be good for quick comparisons.
 
Better yet, perhaps the blue switches can be added to live layers too?
 
I loathe having to go all the way to the layers panel to disable/re-enable the effect when I want to compare the results of live filters/adjustment layers, and then all the way back to the effect panel to keep adjusting things. That slow mouse-travel time for comparisons seems like the least slick area of Affinity Photo/Designer.   :D
 
Please save me...

We don't expect to be able to export AI files ever, I'm afraid. It's a proprietary format owned by Adobe. The best we can do is export in PDF. Although we can import them, that's because they include PDF stream and we actually import the PDF.

I was using the ability to create non-destructive boolean curves. To do so, you must add the "Operations" panel to the main toolbar. Then, you option-click the button in the toolbar to do a non-destructive boolean (a regular click would be a destructive boolean).
 
If you go into the menubar instead, under Layer - Geometry - Subtract (for instance), it does a destructive boolean.
 
I've tried holding option, command, shift, etc while clicking the application menu item.
 
But unfortunately the only way to get non-destructive booleans to work is to have the Operations toolbar visible instead, and to option click those buttons.
 
 
So my questions & suggestions are:
1. Are any other functions in Affinity option-clickable, or is it just the boolean operations that have a special meaning?
2. Some Mac applications show different menu items when Option is held down. You could do the same thing in Affinity's menu. If I hover over the Layer - Geometry menu, it would show the regular "Add", "Subtract" etc. But if I hold down Option, it would instead switch to menu items saying "Compound Add", "Compound Subtract", etc.
 
I'm pretty sure it's doable.

We do this slightly differently to Illustrator, but I would argue it's much more productive - certainly when you get used to it. Option-clicking on any off-curve handle will remove it, causing that side of the curve to look sharper. Option-clicking on any on-curve node will remove the off-curve handles on both sides of it, making the previous and next curves appear sharp at that node.
 
Think about it... As you are drawing your line you drag out away from the centre (on-curve) node so when you release the drag, you are currently over the top of the off-curve node that you might want to actually get rid of. If you want to get rid of it, just Option-click and it will go away because you are already on top of it. There is no extra time-wasting moving the mouse required.
 
Hope that helps :)
Matt

I see your point marsofearth, mainly the convergence between different computer graphic technics.
 
But I have to say Serif's choice suits me better.
About mixing vector and raster technics, I didn't have time to use AD enough but it seems that you have some nice pixel mode tools.
 
And aitte is right about different things like having different cheaper apps to let people choose one or two (and three in the near future) apps depending on their needs.
 
For me, the essential in that choice is to keep those applications as light and powerful as possible in their respective domains but still, having an efficient bridge between the two if you need it. I don't want an app doing 3 millions different things if the price to pay (beside $/€) is to have a 5Go application taking ages to load and do something.
And of course being competitive with Adobe equivalent but without the subscription.