jmac

A thread about Penrose triangles prompted me to have a go at reproducing one of Oscar Reutersvärd's impossible windows. I've attached the result of my efforts.
 

"Proprietary software is not ethical." Really!?!?!?! How??? Because someone earns a living from it. Because they don't do all the work and then give it away to you for free?

... veering away from personal attacks, a clue could be had from the initial releases of both AD and AP. APUB won't "have it all" at version 1 or even 1.75.  GREP for publisher would be best in the Feature Requests section. We won't really know what Publisher has or has not until it gets released. I kinda know what GREP is, and I have absolutely no need for it. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be seriously considered as a feature. 
 
So, please, let's not be like the rest of the internet. Let's have some courtesy and realize that we all use Affinity software in our own unique ways for our specific work.

I would call that "unbitmapping"! :P

Hey guys, congrats on all the amazing work on the next 1.5 Betas!
 
A feature request for a decades-old sore point in design software: document palette and swatch creation and maintenance. Productivity wise, I hate having to work on the Swatches palette to maintain a doc's palette. It's a tedious but important task in design and production environments. This is an opportunity for Affinity to leapfrog Adoblow™ in terms of user experience and app intelligence.
 
It would be VERY beneficial if AD automatically and actively maintained and updated  the current document's palette and swatches, perhaps as a per document and/or app wide setting. Meaning whenever one creates an object with unique, unspecified colors or swatches in a document, AD would add them to the document's Swatches palette (as either Global or regular swatches) and if there are any changes, AD auto updates the swatches/palette and deletes that instance (unless it's used by another object in the document). Having to periodically clean out the palter is important but tedious. You get the general idea...
 
Thanks for your consideration and amazing work. Thanks for all you do!

CartoonMike...While I understand and in part agree with your reasoning that recreating work you did in one program is a good way to learn the workings of another, for JohnG and dariobros, or many other companies with a big library of work, spending time and resources to redo what they have already done is probably not an option they would want to consider. The strangle hold of Adobe on the use of proprietary file formats they created is going to be a difficult bridge for any new company to cross. I'm not sure what the answer is but it may require quite a bit of time for those file formats to die out as they are slowly replaced by newer ones. If Affinity is able to establish it's own PDF format that might go a long way toward making things better. Not sure if that is possible.

Just to set straight what was said above: Nobody has access to the sales information apart from Apple themselves - they will never pass the information to any developer, no matter who they are. We have absolutely no way to verify that you have bought a copy of Affinity Designer/Photo apart from looking at the embedded receipt in your application on your Mac. If we do that, we could theoretically unlock a Windows license... but if we did that, it only works one way - if you buy the Windows version we can't give people a free download from the App Store - there is no facility for this.
 
[Edited to clarify: The receipt in your Mac App Store application simply validates that you have indeed purchased it, but it will not reveal any details that could be used to identify you]
 
You can argue as much as you like about whether the product is worth $50 or not (we think it's worth more than that, that's why we set it at a very reasonable $50 as we thought we were being really fair and people would be happy). Other programs may offer less, more or just generally different things, some are single-platform, some are multi-platform, but none of them offers the same level of software for the money in my opinion.
 
I think we've been pretty clear about the fact that it's not technically possible to offer anything apart from a one-way licensing scheme that would require everyone to always buy it on the Mac App Store first and then we give them a free Windows-download. That's not particularly realistic or fair, so we're just saying 'Buy it on each OS you want to use it on'. Not too much underhanded or deceptive behaviour going on in my opinion? :S
 
If the future brings a Mac version that isn't sold solely through the App Store then it's valid to revisit this discussion, but that isn't on our roadmap right now, at least not that I'm aware of...
 
Thanks,
Matt

The pencil tool is for drawing. Period. And you should be able to constrain it to straight horizontal or vertical lines.

No, they don't, but sometimes it seems as though they work 18 hours a day 6½ days a week!

... At least to me. 
 
Here's the situation, I'm resizing the canvases of a comic I've scanned in. It's going to be about 50 pages. So to save time with open-change-save-close-open next file  routine, I'm just opening 10 files at once. So far Both Affinity Photo & Design handles this very well. No real slowdowns or odd behavior (using the current MAS versions, not the betas for this).
 
The oddness begins after AP opens files. I have the files named in a sequence: QS no 1 pg 01, QS no 1 pg 02 ... QS no 1 pg 50. So the first ten files are opened. And the order that the files are in the Tabs are not in any sequence I can determine. Maybe it's the size of the file as I haven't checked that yet. But it's discerning to say the least. I'm used to seeing the files in the alpha/numeric order when I open a group of them. Now if I want to see a specific page, I have to hunt for it, rather than scanning the titles. Am I missing something or just the first one to whinge about this?
 
Secondly, after dragging the tabs to have the files be in order, I start working on the lower numbers first. I have the tabs ordered so that the page numbers go up the further right one goes (i.e. page 1, page 2, page 3...and so on). I finish work on the left most file, save it and close it. Now the "active" tab is the rightmost one. This has made me really confused many times. Now after closing the file, I have to click on the actual file I want to work on.
 
Is there some well hidden preference or option I may have missed? 
 
What I'm expecting is that when I open a sequence of files, for them to open in tabs arranged in that sequence; from left to right. Also I expect to close the leftmost tab and have the newly leftmost tab to be active. 
 
While not a bug (I ... think...) this is a slowdown as I have to re-learn NOT to go left-right as I've been doing from birth, but right to left. This is an annoyance that kind of tarnishes an otherwise shiny UI experience. 
 
Is this newly opened tab (files) behavior intentional or is is just "the way things are." Is there any way to either change it or allow the user to determine the order the tabs are displayed? Even if it takes a few seconds, it'll be faster than my re-ordering by hand. Also, can it be an option to keep the active tab on the left  instead of the right when closing an file? Or is this an insidious conservative plot ... ? 
 
Thanks for any answers. 

The Pencil tool is long overdue an awful lot of love... I plan to address this soon... :)

I'm trying out the Windows beta, and I love it! There is only one problem I seem to be facing that I think might be a bug. When a line object is selected, there is a red point at the end indicating that it can be continued, similar to DrawPlus. However, if I use the pencil tool to finish the line by starting where that red point is, I end up making a new line. The new pencil stroke does not connect to that red point, whereas I can connect it fine with the pen tool. Whether this is a bug or not, I hope this is addressed. I know there is that option under the node tool to join paths, but to do that after every stroke will delay my workflow. With the pencil tool, I cannot continue or close a path, but I can do that with the pen tool. And opposite of the brush tool, the pencil tool allows new drawn strokes to be selected, so I would think it should be meant to have its path extend.

Is the posted question about Affinity Designer or Photo? And now, is it the Windows version or the Mac? And we haven't even had the Windows version of Affinity Photo released yet! Nor Affinity Publisher. I don't know what the answer is for the forum but it seems to me this confusion with everything dumped in one bag is only going to get worse. 

First I will say that I am very happy to see this software and impressed with what I have seen so far...with one exception. The lack of a complete user manual. I don't understand the idea among developers that their job begins and ends with the software and users will fumble and stumble and guess their way to a working knowledge of the program. Video tutorials are great and helpful. So is knowing I have a reference, provided by the developer, that explains what every tool, panel, and menu option is and what it does, as though the person reading it has never worked with this software before. This is especially true for a new software that hasn't been around long enough for authors to fill the void with How To books. From what I can see the information available under Affinity Photo Help is bare bones at best and some of the bones are missing. I spent a lot of time learning Illustrator and enough of Photoshop to do what I need and I am disgusted with Adobe's switch to subscription based software availability. So the discovery of Affinity Design and Photo is very exciting to me. Stumbling through video's and searching YouTube and Google for additional information to understand how to use your products...that is not so exciting.

This is a rich and most welcome beta, but please, please, for the love of Mary, can we have rulers whose origin can be arbitrarily set.  This is a long standing request and if it is an insurmountable challenge, may we at least be told. Or, am I missing something?

WOW! That is really nice.

JPG does not support transparency. I think your file needs to be a png.

First I will say that I am very happy to see this software and impressed with what I have seen so far...with one exception. The lack of a complete user manual. I don't understand the idea among developers that their job begins and ends with the software and users will fumble and stumble and guess their way to a working knowledge of the program. Video tutorials are great and helpful. So is knowing I have a reference, provided by the developer, that explains what every tool, panel, and menu option is and what it does, as though the person reading it has never worked with this software before. This is especially true for a new software that hasn't been around long enough for authors to fill the void with How To books. From what I can see the information available under Affinity Photo Help is bare bones at best and some of the bones are missing. I spent a lot of time learning Illustrator and enough of Photoshop to do what I need and I am disgusted with Adobe's switch to subscription based software availability. So the discovery of Affinity Design and Photo is very exciting to me. Stumbling through video's and searching YouTube and Google for additional information to understand how to use your products...that is not so exciting.

It's very difficult to lose lawyers. It usually requires the presence of other lawyers and 'round and 'round you go.... No disrespect intended ids. Couldn't resist the wordplay.

Affinity products don't need to be Adobe copycats to be successful Mr. Peene.biber. They are doing just fine without very few inquiries of 3D effects as you would like to see. Can't imagine any professionals use illustrators 3D features as pro effects, sure they are good to mimic another true 3D engines capabilities but they will never compare to the real apps. Besides throwing in boatloads of resources and time to an "effect" is purely a waste of time and money. They are on their way. And just because Adobe has something doesn't mean it is needed to be considered professional software.

Hi peene.biber,
You're right it must be competitive, however we can't do this in two years with the 1.x version. It took Illustrator years to get where it is today and Adobe has a lot more resources than us.
So while we are targeting the professional market as well, it will not happen overnight. We are moving as fast as possible but obviously have to ponder what's get implemented first to ensure a balanced grow of all areas of the app. Each user has different needs and it's difficult to fill them all in the beginning. The next version (1.5) will bring improvements for UI/web design and it's taking a little more than usual because it required quite some work to implement them. While it may seem that things have stagnated a little looking from outside due to the delays and apparent lack of activity, things never look so exciting and promising for Affinity apps. There should be some news soon. Bear with us while all this is being worked out.

What 3D effects are you referring to? Are you talking about gimmicky 3D-text with raster-effects that usually end up being incompatible across platforms?
 
To represent three-dimensional images on a two-dimensional surface there's perspective / projection techniques. Adobe Illustrator offers a (from my experience completely useless and easily replaceable) two point perspective grid. Affinity Designer offers proper orthographic projection tools, i.e. isometric grids, that are way more useful than any other tool.
 
If you want 1,2,3,4 or 5 point perspective, I find that the node tool pretty much covers this since the node/pen tool is capable of drawing both straight and curvilinear lines.
 
Most vector graphics tools will tell you that their software is not a 3D-modelling suite. For that you use Autodesk Maya, Blender or some manner of CAD tool. To try and emulate the functionality of something that originally belongs to a quite different software suite usually ends up in half assed results.
 
The only 3D-tools I'm missing as of yet would be the some added functionality in the transformation tools, but that isn't strictly a 3D effect, and the mesh-warp tool on the roadmap just might be the thing to offer this functionality.
 
It would be nice to see some scripting options available though, so I agree with the plugin idea, preferably in some major language like C or Python.

Hi!
 
Pigmento is a set of 84 raster brushes carefully handcrafted for digital painters
Designed for Affinity Photo and Designer, this set offer natural media look and feel. Acrylics, Gouaches, Oils and more with expressive colour dynamics and tablet responsiveness to speed, pressure and direction.
Now updated with DAUB Spatula set (12 new tools for Paint Mixer Tool) and a new classification: you'll find them in different categories, hopefully now it should be easier to spot the correct tool!
Check this video for a quick sample!
 
This set is fully compatible with Windows and iOS Version of Affinity.

This is a quick concept done using one of the included tool, to show the colour dynamic and blending features.
 
 
 
Some Tips
 
DAUB Grunge Acrylic 4
This is a brush that creates nice textures with a glaze effect and continuous tone modulation using pen pressure.
You can use it as a pure cover changing the blending mode to Normal.
 
Do you know that with Pixel tool presets if you press CMD key while painting you can erase using the same preset?
 
Get it here
 
I'll improve these tool with free updates, so if you want those please add your real email to the purchase page.
 
Happy Painting!
Paolo
 

The color picker is one of the most annoying things. It creates so much friction and headache. Picking 6-7 colors for a gradient turns anyone into an angry hulk... *Rrrr* 
 
Ideally there should be one permanently available color picker, that appears at any time when holding one single hot key. 
 
It should works for any tool and mode at any time. When picking a color it sets the color instantly and direct (without zigzag click and dragging) to 1.) the front paint color, 2.) when a gradient point is selected the selected gradient point color, 3.) when the last click was on the fill color of an object it set these fill color, and 4.) when the last selection was on the contour color, then it sets the contour color, etc. When the last action was drawing an object, then it sets the color of that object, etc, etc. - 
 
You see the pattern. - It set the paint color. And when an object was selected it sets the main (mostly fill) color of the active object. When the last click was on an different color attribute (outline, gradient point) then it set this. So it sets the color of the last activated thing. Plus the paint color. It's the fall back when nothing is active or selected. And i've picked the color before i wanted to create something new. 
 
Let's call it the global smart instant color picker. (...from outer space)
 
But the current color picker is a no-go. 

Two reasons:
You’re not reading (or not understanding) what I write. Alternatively, I’m not being clear. “Steps” isn’t a good metric. Once again (I’ll emphasise other part, now):
 
 
So that means select-and-⌘J, select-and-⌘J, select-and-⌘J, until everything is connected, because we have a mirrored drawing with multiple connections. That is a fast and intuitive process with low margin of error. Grabbing (grabbing, not selecting) each node, wiggling it around and putting it back in place is a slow unintuitive process with high margin of error.
 
That is the difference. Precision, precision, precision. I’m willing to sacrifice steps and keystrokes for precision, because precision matters to my work.
 
Furthermore, your solution doesn’t matter. Affinity Designer is acting the wrong way, and the behaviour should be fixed. That is all that matters. Whatever method is faster or not is irrelevant. Whatever method you prefer or think is better is irrelevant. We’re presented with a method that should be working, and isn’t, that is what matters. Once again, I require precision. Precision is attained by inputting values directly. Affinity Designer lets us input those values, but then misbehaves. That is all that matters: something that should be working, isn’t.