deepblue

Learn how to create the transparent glass effect in Affinity Photo. This effect is very easy to recreate, perfect for beginners:
 

Thanks for your report @PeterB.!
I can confirm I've been able to replicate this issue here, as well as discovered a few other issues with a similar document setup and therefore I have logged these with our development team now.
I hope this helps

That is a well presented tutorial with concise and informative content.

Hello Walt Farrell,
Thank you very much for your message. Unfortunately I expressed myself incorrectly. I have written some text in AF Photo 2.3 and want to bend it horizontally (arc). As is possible, for example, in Designer 2.3. Isn't this feature available in AF Photo 2.3?

Masking is a crucial skill for non-destructively editing your photos and art. In this video, we’ll look at masking from the ground up in Affinity Photo.
 

Unsure what you mean? But you should be using the Selection Brush Tool for this and then hitting the Refine button to tweak your selection (if needed) then output as a new layer and add whatever background you want
Lots of tutorials on the Selection Brush Tool on YouTube etc for cutting out objects. Once mastered it's very easy to use on images like yours
APhoto file attached so you can change the background if you want
 
 
 
 

HoHoHo.afphoto

For masking a colourful background isn't ideal because the colour reflects on the subjects.
If you want a soft edge on your selection or mask, use the refine feature. (Verfeinern). When the selection is active, click the Refine (Verfeinern) button. There you have different options to make the best selection. This also works for both selections and Masks. See the video.
Bildschirmaufnahme 2023-12-11 um 21.44.35.mov

Following the release of Affinity 2.3, our team have discovered an issue on macOS where when floating (Window > Float) and then redocking a document, correctly redocks the canvas, but creates an empty document window over this - which cannot be directly closed.

Our team have been made aware of this issue and we're working to resolve it as soon as possible.
Currently, our team have only found these windows can be closed when closing or restarting the Affinity main app.
Our apologies for any inconveniences caused for this in the meantime.

You can also use a straight curve and the boolean divide option.
Create a line curve from the centre of the donut shape and use the transform panel to accurately rotate the curve, make sure the transform origin is positioned at the end of the curve (centre of donut)

Select both the curve and the shape you want to cut and use the boolean divide option.

You should end up with the shape cut into two parts.

Thanks for sharing. Not exactely. I will do a quick recording of me drawing it too then.

Here’s a video which shows how to make a heptagram which looks like it ‘weaves’ into/through itself in Designer 2 (some of the tools used aren’t in Photo, Publisher or earlier versions of Designer).
Some of the functionalities/tools used are:
Star Tool (to get the initial shape) Pen Tool (to draw the basic heptagram) Expand Stroke (to get a thick shape) Point Transform Tool (to manipulate some shapes) Shape Builder Tool (to ‘join things up’) It should also work on most similar figures with a ‘low odd-numbered point count’, like pentagrams, etc.
Important: Don’t forget to move the origin of the curve to where the guides cross before you start duplicating the curve, otherwise the Point Transform work won’t be right.

2023-12-06 12-53-07.mp4

The spiral tool has been a highly requested feature in Affinity Designer. With the recently released version 2.3, it is finally here! This tutorial will show you the basics of this tool. Note: This also applies to Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher. 
 

Hello TrentL,
Thank you very much for your great videos. Your videos are really well explained and I was able to learn some useful things. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. 😃

I recorded this tutorial on how to draw the Torus Yantra in Affinity Designer. The Torus Yantra is a well-know sacred geometry figure. If you guys are interested in the topic, you can take a look.
 

I think the vector brush confusion in Affinity comes from users being used-to/familiar with the 'true vector' brushes in Illustrator, which can also be outlined and turned into pattern strokes (I used to go a step further and make them fonts too) but are also slower and don't display until your curve has been drawn.
I really like the speed and instant feedback of the vector brushes in Affinity (they remind me of the great old Creature House Expression vector-painting software which was unfortunately borged and then killed by Microsloth).
The speed and feedback of Affinity made me switch most of my Illustration work from Illustrator to Affinity......but it would be good to have true (and outlineable) vectors too occasionally (as well as some of the other useful Illustrator tools like smoothing too).

Hello Walt,
thank you for your message. I watched the video carefully again. Also specifically the Quick Grids function. A really great function.
It's not exactly what I'm looking for in Affinity Designer 2.3,
but I will try to optimize or adapt my work.
For me it is easier to select the function in the toolbar and expand the grid to the desired size. Then I always use the Shape Builder Tool.
But it also works with Quick Grids. Thank you Walt.
What about the vector brush function? I included a video as an example under my post. The possibilities with a vector brush would be really great.
Is there a way to implement this in Affinity? It started with the Greek pattern in a circle. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to create something like this as a vector file with Affinity Designer.
As a pixel file, Affinity Designer 2.3 can be used with the brush without any problems. But it is not possible as a vector file.
Or have I missed a possibility in Affinity Designer 2.3?
Thank you very much for your help.

Thanks for your report @ronnyb!
I can confirm this issue has been previously logged with our developers, so I'll be sure to 'bump' this for you now - in the meantime I'd recommend using the Move Data Entry options as shown above

Just to be sure you know: https://affinity.help/designer2/en-US.lproj/pages/ObjectControl/objectGrids.html
Tutorial: 
 
It's not completely what you're asking for, but much simpler than the old way.
 

Hi All,
I’m pleased to say that we will be pushing 2.3 live to retail this morning. The beta versions were updated yesterday to the same build (2.3.0.2165) as detailed in Patrick’s post here. This means the beta versions are in effect exactly the same as the retail versions we will push so you can keep them installed if you wish. 
As always it’s been a pleasure working with you all on this release and cannot thank you enough for all the bug reports and other feedback you have given. I mentioned at the start of this beta we are working towards a shorter cadence between updates to help us release improvements and bug fixes sooner - and I hope you agree this has worked very well.
With that in mind we will be starting 2.4 beta very shortly (hopefully in just a couple of weeks). Looking forward to seeing you all on here for that!
Thanks again,
Ash

Ahh I see what you mean - this isn't actually limited to just that option, or in fact the Spiral Tool. It happens for any of the Quick Shape context toolbar labels. I suspect its tracking the value on Mouse down rather than mouse up. I'll pass it on to development and see what can be done

Thanks!

Very impressive function. The results look really perfect.
Tim,c and Ash thank you very much for your help.

In reaction to a recent question, I’ve attached a video showing one method you can use to create a vector ‘Greek-style’ border using various tools in Designer 2 (some of the tools used aren’t in Photo or Publisher, or earlier versions of Designer).
Some of the functionalities/tools used are:
Quick Grid (to get the initial grid of squares); Shape Builder Tool (to join the squares up, not actually necessary in this case); Geometry functionality (to tidy things up and make them easier to manipulate); Warp Group (to create the ‘bend’); Move Data Entry (to create multiple copies). If you need a different number of ‘repeats’, or differently-sized/spaced overall result, then you will need to calculate the Warp Value and Rotation differently, and maybe use a different height/width ratio for the initial design.
I’ll leave it to you to experiment.

2023-11-28 12-29-33.mp4

I’ve just posted a technique here if you are interested:

Very impressive function. The results look really perfect.
Tim,c and Ash thank you very much for your help.

I think on Tim's screen recording it's not showing the move data entry dialog where he's controlling the scale and rotation of the duplicates. See screenshot below.
Create circle Set dash pattern to be 0-2-0-0-0-0 in stroke panel Set balanced dash pattern to on Set "scale with object" to on Hit return to bring up move data dialog Set scale to e.g. 90% Set rotation to e.g. 4 degrees Set duplicates to e.g. 30