dangerman2000

Kudos on the great app. 
 
 
This is a fairly basic ease of use suggestion...
 
When you are dragging a selection box/circle or dragging out a shape, it'd be splendid if holding down the spacebar would move the selection/object. 
 
 
This makes it easy to get an exact selection... or enables you to size and position in one simple move saving a lot of futzing and keeping you in flow. 
 
This interaction can be found while taking a native screenshot on your mac (shift+cmd+4+drag... + hold spacebar) or on all the other drawing apps made by the company named after dirt bricks.... and Affinity is better than dirt bricks' products.
 
 

Kudos on the great app. 
 
 
This is a fairly basic ease of use suggestion...
 
When you are dragging a selection box/circle or dragging out a shape, it'd be splendid if holding down the spacebar would move the selection/object. 
 
 
This makes it easy to get an exact selection... or enables you to size and position in one simple move saving a lot of futzing and keeping you in flow. 
 
This interaction can be found while taking a native screenshot on your mac (shift+cmd+4+drag... + hold spacebar) or on all the other drawing apps made by the company named after dirt bricks.... and Affinity is better than dirt bricks' products.
 
 

Please for the love of God, allow for "i" to be the eyedropper shortcut! Doesn't seem like too much to ask. Great job guys on the latest betas.

Hi dangerman2000,
Thanks for your feedback.
In the latest Beta there's already an option to create a new document from the clipboard content (File ▹ New From Clipboard). This will be available in the next Mac App Store update.
I believe the trim command (already available in Photo) will also be ported over to Designer at some point.

Context:
I make assets for the web and mobile apps. I do not make my assets on a giant artboard. When you have a ton of images performance suffers, layers get janky, and all your eggs are in the one file. Slicing is time consuming. I want a single file that I can just export and be done. 
 
My A.D. usage = 60% of my work; PS + FW + AI = 40% -  I'd love to be 100% A.D. because they've done a great job with it and I love it.
 
Need:
I want to be able set the canvas size with ease. To do this the A.D. needs the following...
 
Request
Visual crop tool - There is currently no way to crop that I could find other than to adjust the numbers... this is too hard. Trim Command - I could not find this one either.   Auto-canvas size based on clipboard - Canvas size should look at clipboard and default to that size (cmd+n ... return ... cmd+v ... and I'm editing in PhotoShop) If you agree that this should be on the roadmap, like the post.. if not what am I missing?
 
Thanks and keep up the great work!!!
 

Or maybe it's paste special as new document.  Something like that!

Hi waveman,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
We are aware of how the colour-picker works in other apps. We understand that most users are expecting it to work the same way in Affinity. There was already several threads discussing this.
Some features were already changed due to users requests so i don't see any reason why we wouldn't look into this one too. It just happens that we are very busy at the moment preparing Affinity's Photo release. As soon as there's an opportunity I'm sure this will be reviewed if need be.

Hi everyone,
 
I'm new to the forum and this is my first post here. As a graphic designer with more than 15 years of experience and someone who's been looking for an alternative to Adobe products, I've been testing Affinity Designer Beta for a while and I'm really amazed what can be achieved with such great input from users and by developers who listen!
 
Right now I use Affinity Designer Beta along with Adobe Illustrator, testing, comparing, trying to achieve similar goals using both. It is great that developers from Affinity are not trying to make a copy of Adobe products and finding mostly better solutions with users in mind, but there are times, when I'm really in a hurry and I'm forced to do certain things in Illustrator. There are things that slowing me down A LOT in Designer, and the major one is colour picking.
 
Right now I just cannot find any other way then:
- selecting an object
- moving cursor to the top right corner
- grabbing a colour picker
- choosing a colour
- moving cursor to the top right corner again
- and then finally selecting it.
 
All this takes far too much time for such simple operation, so I gave it a lot of thought, and came up with something that I believe will work great. 
 
First of all, what's needed is a one button shortcut for the Colour Picker tool like the "i" in Illustrator, and then we can use the loupe from Designer to create even better experience and this is how it could look like:
 
- select Colour Picker tool via one button shortcut, then
     - pick a colour from any object by just clicking on it
     - OR - HOLD on any object for 2 seconds to change the cursor to LOUPE for more precise colour selection!
- boom!
 
And now the most obvious thing - if you don't have any object selected, this action will just choose a colour which will be selected when new object is created, but when you DO have an object selected, this action will APPLY the colour you've just chosen to the already selected object.
 
Advantages: much fewer moves and clicks, less distracting and keeps you focused on what you're currently working on, intuitive and when gives more control by using loupe for precise colour selection without any additional clicks or moves.
 
All this would speed up everything tremendously! If this or something similar has been already discussed, or if there is any solution to that which is already implemented and I simply don't know about it, please let me know.
 
I wonder what you all think about it!
 
Best Regards!!!

I think the current ones look good. I am not opposed to change, but the proposed icons do not feel special.
 
The gradient, geometric shapes, and colors have an 80's feel to them, which is awesome if you are going for a retro app. You will be tired of the new icons in 3 months time.
 
I would encourage more explorations or open it up to your customers in a 99designs style competition. 

I think the current ones look good. I am not opposed to change, but the proposed icons do not feel special.
 
The gradient, geometric shapes, and colors have an 80's feel to them, which is awesome if you are going for a retro app. You will be tired of the new icons in 3 months time.
 
I would encourage more explorations or open it up to your customers in a 99designs style competition. 

>> - Fix for slice layers occasionally doubling in size!
 
 
Hurray! Thanks for fixing this!

Agreed... especially with the canvas size / crop etc. The canvas is a bit frustrating in AD, I would love not to have to visit the export persona and set up a slice in order to export a given size. Cropping should re-size the document. This would change my workflow for the better. 
 
Another simple one that would make AD smooth like butter is: 
 
Spacebar+drag moves/repositions the selection / artwork - This is just a common interaction found in native Apple screenshot application as well as other design apps. Basically, when you are drawing a rectangle or dragging a marquee, if you hold down the spacebar it should stop resizing and now move the object on the screen. 

Agreed... especially with the canvas size / crop etc. The canvas is a bit frustrating in AD, I would love not to have to visit the export persona and set up a slice in order to export a given size. Cropping should re-size the document. This would change my workflow for the better. 
 
Another simple one that would make AD smooth like butter is: 
 
Spacebar+drag moves/repositions the selection / artwork - This is just a common interaction found in native Apple screenshot application as well as other design apps. Basically, when you are drawing a rectangle or dragging a marquee, if you hold down the spacebar it should stop resizing and now move the object on the screen. 

Context:
I would like to invite other people in my organization to my shared design folder. All my files are .afdesign and they cannot view them without buying the software.
 
Proposal:
Create a simple free viewer so that others could view my work without me doing extra "export/save as" work and managing multiple copies and updates of the same artwork.
 
Requirements:
- .afdesign file preview
- Pan
- Zoom
 
This could be mac only.
 
 
Some of this may already be written. If you have AD installed and click on a .afdesign file, it gives a preview in the file viewer.
 
Aside:
Adobe's Fireworks saved as an editable .PNG and this made it so easy to share work while maintaining editability. This is not proposing a change in file format, but that would be even better because everything supports .png.

Context:
I would like to invite other people in my organization to my shared design folder. All my files are .afdesign and they cannot view them without buying the software.
 
Proposal:
Create a simple free viewer so that others could view my work without me doing extra "export/save as" work and managing multiple copies and updates of the same artwork.
 
Requirements:
- .afdesign file preview
- Pan
- Zoom
 
This could be mac only.
 
 
Some of this may already be written. If you have AD installed and click on a .afdesign file, it gives a preview in the file viewer.
 
Aside:
Adobe's Fireworks saved as an editable .PNG and this made it so easy to share work while maintaining editability. This is not proposing a change in file format, but that would be even better because everything supports .png.

Is there a possibility to crop a document using the Crop Tool?
Thanks
heike

This is a common use case:
 
- I select a shape from the palette
- I click and drag to draw my shape on the canvas
- I realize I didn't start at the right spot, but I don't want to have to start from the beginning
 
At this point Adobe apps allow me to hit the spacebar, which causes any further dragging to reposition the existing shape (at its current size) as I drag. When I lift up the spacebar, I can continue sizing my shape from its new origin.
 
For reference:
http://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/default-keyboard-shortcuts.html
 
It's a seemingly minor function, but very useful, and notable in its absence here.

(AD's existing Control-drag is interesting, but not the same.)