designerUK

Yes Matt, here in Blighty my ears prick up too when a politician says 'these people'. I did not intend to infer any inferiority in the quality of personnel on the project, and am sorry if it reads that way. It's a difficult couple of words to not use together at some point and a shame politicians have tainted it. I actually think you'll be exceptional people taking this on - being exceptional though… well, Neo was exceptional, but still needed the red pill in order for him to understand the world. Being exceptional is not the only thing needed to get things right in business, unfortunately - if only it was that simple, eh. I appreciate your good humour Matt. Take care.

Yes Rui, you're right. I'm just a lazy beggar when in the thick of production with a deadline to meet. Dragging colours up and down a long list, hanging onto the swatch so as not to drop it while the list scrolls (and it seems to tax InDesign particularly so it stutters a bit) is not as easy an activity as one might think. And new colours are added to the bottom of the long list so dragging right to the top is painful to say the least. I suppose I should swap pallette views back and forth from list to grid. But I suspect all this is why I tend not to do it. Right-click/two-finger-tap on the swatch to tag would be a lot easier. And it's more about keeping the brand colours at the top, rather than a creative warm/cold thing in my case. We're of the same world though thee and me. But I think the Affinity team have moved on from this thread. Missing the point that pro designers spend the bulk of their time fashioning shapes, moving them about; mixing, applying and administering colour and outputting (usually to a file) - the rest is down to creativity with those things - so these are the paramount things to focus on and hone to the enth degree in order to make this a stand-out app. I don't beleive these guys understand that and the forum will suck their focus elsewhere and everywhere. I don't know about you Rui, but I've found this an unproductive experience. I've raised only a few things, granted, but my experience is of being knocked back each time. Only to find the same request has been posted in triplicate by others afterwards. I could have written "deja vu" on a fair number of topics in here, but didn't as it'd be childish and would have the opposite effect to it's goal. So... as I've a heap of work in now anyway, I'm leaving it to your capable hands Rui (and the others of our world in here). They may not have ported their app, but they need to ask themselves if they've ported their thinking. I suspect what they're doing is following a diminishing user base over on Windows (due to the iPhone introducing Apple to the masses and a migration of their hobbyists over here to Apple) only they've thought they'd be clever and have the professionals too - niavely under-estimating the difference between hobbyists and pros, as well between the Windows and Apple 'way' (and it's the Apple way that's the reason the pros are here not on Windows). They'll not please both the hobbyist and the pro equally in one app, the gulf is too wide and they need to choose which horse to back - focussing on bettering the hobbyists Sketchbook Pro perhaps instead. This might seem unkind, but I say it with a heavy heart and a hope they'll be more open minded going forward (I daresay they think they already are) as there's a huge education job here - there are designers, including you Rui, who are having to explain stuff they really should have found out for themselves before now. All the best

You're actually missing a trick here if you think about it. I'm still not sure what you think the recent colour UI adds in value, but it 'could'. Scrolling through a long list of colours is a bane - absolutely. So... "10 Most-used colours" UI device. Would the 10 most used be the one's users are most likely to be searching for in the long list too? I suspect so. Also possibly quite a powerful creative tool - see at a glance what the colour temperature of your artwork is… too many cool colours when the client wants warm. Or how about a 'favourites' where the user effectively builds a subset of colours themselves. Tag colours so they're 'sticky' at the top of the colour palette list ... or tagging inserts them into the horizontal UI in-front of the 'most used'.. the need to hover over would be reduced because the user would have decided what was in and was what not, though not completely if two very similar colours… er, [writing as thoughts come here] though if I could drag the order of the tagged colours around in the favourite/most used UI then I'd know which was first.. so wouldn't need to hover. Not aware of any app out there does this and Adobe doesn't (CS6). Just chucking in a couple of ideas because I'm not just about the negative stuff. Apologies if it's difficult to read - wrote as I thought. Best.

cmd + option-drag in photoshop duplicates a selected area, so though Pod is right ("photoshop doesn't really do duplicate"), the keyboard shortcut is almost option-drag - almost the same in otherwords. Doesn't fly totally in the face of an Apple OS wide convention.

Adding tool tips means you now have two UI's doing essentially the same job. One lists colours horizontally, one vertically - except as Rui explains above, one needs a 'hover over' activity in order to "make sense" of it. The recent UI is also cluttered with additional colours that may not be attached to any objects in the illustration. Colours mixed and applied to objects discarded, so effectively 'unwanted' colours. Second problem with this UI. I've used Word/Powerpoint extensively in my time, I'm speaking from experience.

Question - if there are two reds in the recents with <10% difference in the yellow component (CMYK), how does one actually tell which one is the one you've used from such a small square? This is a problem with Word/PowerPoint's recent colours, and it's not the only one. Yes, a good tool for hobbyists and illustrators who do not need to be precise and structured about the colours they use, but of little use, so just visual clutter for the graphic design professional IMHO. ----------------- Regards and all the very-very best. Respect to you.

Smart guides: Oh very good. That's shown me! Well done. Smart guides should be on by default right from the start. MS Office: Your response is pure programmer weird speak. So here's some weird user speak - I'm referring to UI elements like the recent colour bar and the rotation handle sticking up from any shape for example. I've only encountered these things in Word/PowerPoint. I need to give them more time to see if they are indeed the same before I question them. There's no where to suggest removal/switching off of features is there ;-)

Hi Smart Guides One of the very few features for which I'd kill, in order to keep. Nuff said? Too big a feature for an app of this price point? Thought occurred today "bet it ain't got these". Checked it didn't before posting this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWnEkCm_vPs (As an aside: Bit concerned how the more I dip into this app, the more MS Office-like things appear.... most designers run a mile at the merest whiff - will kill credibility if the similarities are siezed upon by any reviewers - beware.)

> To say it would take longer due to icon sets is just lazy. Wo there tiger. Lazy? Building these apps from the ground up is no small feat and while the icons might very well 'port in a few minutes', it's the 'done properly' that takes the time. There's a list of stuff to do to this thing to make it usable that's longer than any arm I've ever seen... I think you're a bit keen to have this thing huh? I'm not employed by Affinity btw. No connection other than my presence in here.

Krollian: Good lord, I had no idea that FreeHand Forum was out there. Anyone: There's no equivalent for QuarkXpress, or the old PageMaker (unless someone knows different). Must be something about illustration software. (I don't mean to open up a debate about it btw and won't get drawn into one as I doubt it'll help the Affinity team who are providiing this space).

I didn't drag an object onto the pasteboard last night and observe this, but this is important. What is the "paste" board for, if not to paste (copy/duplicate and paste) objects onto? I'm not being facetious, I'm genuinely intrigued.

Hi Andy Thanks for the guidance. > the "print / photo / web" combo only went in recently That explains it. > designers will often use one colour chooser, Yes I'm sure you're right. I was trying to think last night what the circumstances were when I depart from CMYK in a 'for print' project. I know I do during the process of creating the artwork, but will have to consciously note and observe the behaviour in the wild in order to articulate here if appropriate, if you follow. Last paragraph - interesting. I'll have a look at that. *** The gradient tool seems very good btw. Adobe's are a bit of a bane. Have you a space on the forum for praise? Regards

Hi In the new document dialogue if I specify - Document Type: Print, I'd expect the app to default to CMYK throughout, though of course if I did want to use RGB colours I'd want to be able to depart from the CMYK spec on an ad hoc basis. Currently, the colour mixer appears to default to Hue regardless of any changes I make in places that look like they might set this up. Is that how it behaves or have I missed something? I've searched the forum - no one appears to have raised this already. ---------- (I don't know if it's preferable for me to create a new topic for each observation or list them in one, I'll presume a topic per observation unless guided otherwise)

Deja Vue! You'll get this request a lot I'm afraid, Matt. I can see your point and I don't think there's any way round it but to have two sets of icons. Dagklingstedt: I don't beleive it's anything to do with age... glasses sort that out don't they if you think about it. Matt: It's looking quite a neat app, I think you've all good reason to be proud, it could well be a winner though there's a little way to go still - but you all know this.

Hi Matt. Pantone is a must for print designers, still today. Without it, I'm sure you appreciate your apps will be no-go for print designers. Might be an idea to add some sort of "coming soon" into the swatches pallette? Otherwise designers might write you off, never to return, because they don't realise it is 'coming soon'. When communicating with third party output, it's still Pantone references predominently, and of course if one dutifully specifies a Pantone reference, supplying artwork not using the colour one has specified.... Sorry if you know all this, I don't know what you know and don't. Please understand I'm trying to be helpful. I'm having an intial scan through your app now and it's the print-ready artwork output end I'm interested in as it's the critical end, hence my search in the forum for 'Pantone' and picking up this topic. Regards