Stephen_H
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Posts posted by Stephen_H
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Ah, a man after my own heart. So much work is needed on swatches. You've raised some I haven't thought of, especially the automatic naming of the swatches based on their values.
My major issue is with swatches not copying over when you copy-n-past an object from one document to another. The global swatch is left behind. When you add the fact that overprinting is a swatch attribute and not an object attribute, you run the risk of inconsistencies between the documents - not a hallmark of professional design.
Coupled with a loose management of color modes, the whole color management thought process is feeling a bit incomplete.
- sfriedberg and WKansepa
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I think there is a difference of opinion as to what "Mature software" is. New features are easy to come up with. Take a manual process that everyone is doing, and make it an automated feature. In this regard, we the users drive new features so the development team don't have to use a crystal ball to read the future and re-invent the wheel. While I despise the subscription model, I do see it more of a resource service than a new feature service. (Access to expensive fonts, regular compatibility and security patches, cloud storage, support, etc.)
When I think of mature software, I see something that has a refined workflow. No gaps in the process and allows for the basics without feeling the need for the latest and greatest automation/feature. Adobe and Corel have this maturity. The way they manage color, swatches, import/export, typography, palettes, fills, strokes, etc are consistent and not lacking (like it or hate it, the holes have been plugged)
Affinity's applications are not mature workhorses. They are filled with gaps that make them accessories, not primary production tools. Judging by the slow pace at which features we've been asking for (eg: arrow heads) has been delivered, versus the mind blowing unique features that win it awards like Apple's "Application of the Year" many years running, it's going to take about 5 years before it is a genuine workhorse and competitor to Adobe that we can all use on a daily basis.
I think running out of new ideas will be the best think for Affinity because it will force them to go back and refine what they have already done and make it truly awesome. This might even result in a fork in the product line up - a consumer and a pro version of each. The pro version will be the consumer version with better color management, customisation, proper proofing features etc and will sell for $100. Many won't appreciate these production-level features, but those of us who do, will be willing to pay the higher price.
I think we've all purchased the applications because we're hopeful of a genuine competitor in the market and it's possibly a statement to Adobe to make them pull up their socks, but realistically, they are sitting on our computers as extras. I hope Affinity puts the time into refinement, and not just features for sales.
- Jowday and Krustysimplex
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On 9/23/2020 at 4:29 PM, F+C said:
Sigh - so true.
Affinity Publisher is like that friend who is a really good person, who you'd like to hang out with more but keeps on doing dumb things. BUT it's also so much cheaper than the other program so I guess you get what you pay for.I've given up trying to use it for production tasks and stick with CS. Perhaps in v2 these issues will be fixed but I fear as the team is apparently made up of non-production industry types this will continue to be a consumer level product (which isn't bad - it's just not a pro-level application)
I have a friend like that. My wife doesn't let me invite him around to the house any more.
My biggest little issue is the fact that a global swatch doesn't get carried over to a new document. Give a logo a global swatch, copy it, paste it into a new document. Try find that swatch to apply to other elements in this new document. Good luck. (strangely, the logo will still reflect as being in a global swatch, you just can't get it into the swatches palette or even pick it up with the eyedropper). How are we supposed to have consistent corporate colors between documents if global swatches don't follow the object to another document. You have to manually create new global swatches in every single document you work in. Aaaaaargh!
Then the swatches have overprinting, but not the objects. Want to overprint a bit of text... make 2 black swatches. Then the same problem happens when you copy and paste that object to another document. Because the swatch doesn't carry over to the new document, you lose your overprint settings which will probably only show up when you go to print and the business cards don't match the flyer.
I've just put an extensive comment about these little issues that keep the Affinity apps from replacing Adobe on my computers. Please can everyone go add your little issues to it. (not the big stuff... just the little tweaks like guide colors and starting points of page rulers that is leaving the Affinity apps as novelties on our computers, rather than production tools)
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On 9/23/2020 at 5:52 PM, Murfee said:
Then yes it is a pain, I don't use that dropper
And that sums it all up... why are the two droppers that look identical, so completely different.
Us from production backgrounds need to get something done, and Affinity is confused about what it delivers to us.
I hadn't thought about the lack of production background programmers, but this argument makes a lot of sense and explains a lot. I hadn't realised the launch demo had the presenter placing a PNG instead of a CMYK image. I'd love to see his face when when those glowing RGB colors print in CMYK. (He'll probably just blame the printer)
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I purchased Designer and Photo years ago but I just couldn't replace Illustrator & Photoshop because of a few missing features that are just workflow basics. I've moved to the Windows platform and just downloaded new trial versions of them to give them another chance, and these problems persist. Most of them relate to features that prevent the user from making critical, unprofessional mistakes like inconsistent color use across multiple documents. If you are deigning a flyer, a business card and a name badge, you can't have variations between them. These are a few [very] minor omissions that I am missing that risks me making amateurish mistakes:
- Global swatches don't carry to another document when copy-n-pasting a logo from one document to another (same as in Publisher)
- Swatches not carrying over to the new document also means that overprint setting are lost because overprint is defined in the swatch, not in the object.
- I can't tell what color mode I'm working in. If my mode is RGB for a flyer, I need something to shout out at me, or at least give me a clue that my print job is going to be disaster. A simple RGB/CMYK icon would suffice. Even Photo displays its color mode in the document's header, but Designer [where it's more important] doesn't.
- The colour picker only picks up RGB/CMYK values, not a global swatch. Even if I've pasted a logo into a new document and it's displaying a global color, the eyedropper doesn't read it as a global color so I can't even reliably copy colors from my source logo.
- To duplicate an object by dragging it, I have to press the Alt key before I select the object, not during the drag. Most of the time, I need to be certain I have selected the correct object before I duplicate it, however, now I have to duplicate something and then find out if I selected correctly. I don't know how many times I have moved items I want to duplicate and duplicated items I didn't want to duplicate because of this. An application is not fast to work in if I'm constantly undoing my actions.
- Changing the colors of margins & guides. If I design a blue brochure, my margins and guides disappear. I need to make them red or yellow or anything. I don't expect to be able to mix my own colors, but a dozen pre-mixed swatches to choose from would solve this problem. (apart from working in wireframe mode)
- Connecting the selected transform corner in the transform palette to the free transform with the move tool. It's very strange that I can select a corner in the transform palette, but then I always rotate around the center. I have to manually type rotation values in degrees to get the rotation around a corner. Why the disconnect? This disconnect is similar to the disconnect I experience between the swatches, color mixer and eye dropper.
- Previewing at export. Even in Photo, I can't see the effect of the level of JPEG compression being applied to my exported files (neither in Designer nor Photo). I have to export a file half a dozen times until I hit upon that sweet spot of small file size to barely noticable quality loss. Even the open source GIMP does this with a live preview at export. I can do awesome professional work, and then break it all with a poor export... and not even realise it.
- Proofing colors. I really need to be able to see how my colors will separate before I save my PDF. If I've accidentally worked in RGB, this will reveal my mistake as I go to repro. Overprinting and knockout will also be a disaster if not picked up in time. (Who here hasn't experienced the dreaded white text set to overprint and wondered where all your text went?). This feature alone forces me to keep a professional, licensed copy of Adobe Acrobat around to preview color separations. In my final repro file, I have to know if my spot colors are still spots and if I'm printing fine black text as 100% black, or a full color breakdown that will turn my single color print job into a full color one. Previewing the separations (or channels in your photo editor) points out my potential errors.
- Overprinting settings. The previous point leads straight into this one. Why is over printing set in the swatch and not the object? If I want some small paragraph text to over print, but large display text to knockout, I have to make 2 identical black swatches to do this. Why can't I specify this on an object-by-object basis? I guess "Multiply" does the same thing and works as a work-around, but you're targeting print designers, and use the term overprint yourselves so why the strange and risky implementation.
- Snapping to "round" values. When manually selecting a color in CMYK, we are inevitably creating a color using round number values from a color chart. It's slow and frustrating trying to select exactly 50% in a slider as it hops from 49 to 51 and back again while we search for that perfect pixel placement. How about snapping to increments of 5% by holding down the shift key? Your snapping features are awesomely powerful, but only in the document. Why not extend this into the sliders and the rest of the application? (Admittedly, I don't know any other application that does this, but it makes sense and would be welcome.)
Basic features that are even in open source software seem to be missing. We waited for years to get arrow heads. You claimed it was because you wanted to get it awesome, but they are no more powerful/different to anything else out there on the market. I suspect we only got them when Publisher was released. Did we have to wait for a whole new app to be leased to get arrow heads? Now we sit with other missing basic, common features like:
- Blend/Interpolate
- Stroke drawing tools like a grid tool and a straight line tool. These are enormous time savers.
- Tabs. (I understand you want to protect Publisher by keeping high end text features like hyphenation, drop-caps and text wrap out of Designer, but this feels like a very basic feature compared to your range of kerning, alignment and Opentype features already here from day one)
I understand that everyone's needs are different and you can't satisfy everyone, but you are targeting print designers as well and illustrators and web designers, and these are all features every professional expects and is surprising that they're not here. You give us features that most professionals just leave on the defaults because few of us even understand them (like color profiles and LUTs), but then drop the ball by not pasting a global swatch from one document to another.
It's confusing and just doesn't make me feel confident in the files I send to print.
Please can you look at these issues before adding new features. I understand that new features are needed to sell products, but a lot of us early adopters are just wondering where the small tweaks and refinements are.
It seems that your development team needs to consult with an old school designer or printer to get these fundamentals right. It feels like you've only got young designers who have grown up with an RGB workflow and have never had to bang out 6 flyers in an afternoon and send them to print with the job being rejected.
- spidermurph, Maciek Blaźniak, sbgraphic and 31 others
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Power Duplicate is a poor substitute because it's not live, hence not editable. If you don't get it right first time, you have to do it again and and again and again and again and and again and again and again and and again and again and again and and again and again and again and and again and again and again and and again and again and again and and again and again and again, until it's right.
Fran, we all feel your pain and have been wondering where the blend/interpolate feature is since it's been aound for about 30 years in discontinued applications and even in modern day open source applications. You'd think the developers could just copy-n-paste the code from the open source stuff.
Apparently not...
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I'm finding working with color in Designer to be at times both confusing and frustrating. Once I've created a document, how do I tell what its color format is? If I have a few documents open, some are RGB for web, and some are CMYK for print, I'm getting confused which is which, and can't find any thing that displays my color mode. Even my color mixer will present RGB and CMYK sliders, depending on what I used last.
Alternatively, does Designer not actually have color modes and just relies on me to mix my swatches in the correct format? ie: I can use both RGB and CMYK colors in the same document.
Here's a screenshot of my document. Can someone point out something that indicates the color mode of this document, or tell me of a setting that will turn on an indicator or similar?
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+ Blend tool/command
Dave Dennis is right. The concept (hence the code) for a blend tool is 30 years old.
It's even in open source software. Here it is in the open source app, Inkscape:
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I found this discussion because I was looking for the same thing. I was just wanting to put cut lines on an A4 page to cut it evenly into 30 strips. In Illustrator, I'd just draw a 30 row grid with the grid tool, or blend 2 lines across the page with 29 divisions. (30 seconds to do it). Designer has forced me to manually duplicate a line 30 times and then align & distribute them. A real pain, especially since I seem to be constraining my movement to a 15 degree angle and I can't find out how to change my move angle contraint settings.
Anyway, here's a simple work around for your particular challenge. It uses the appearance panel to layer multiple strokes on each other. I made a video because it's a mission to try explain it.
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I see that changing the profile within the document changes the colour reading. Thank you, I'm able to replicate this issue with and without my problem.
However... This is not how a profile should work. A profile should be adjusting the way it is displayed on screen, simulating the final experience, not changing the actual colour mix of the object/pixel/swatch etc.
This is a problem.
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I've made a screen cast video of this so you can see it in action, but simply put, here is my process:
1. Open a CMYK PDF. I confirm the document is still CMYK.
2. Select the orange object. The orange is 5/60/100/5
3. I copy it.
4. I create a new document. It's also CMYK.
5. I paste the orange object into this new document.
6. The orange object now reads as 13/64/100/2
(In the video, I copy-n-paste back to the original document for good measure and the new color mix is retained which makes me suspect it's being copied with RGB values, not the CMYK values)
Why does this orange object change its CMYK colour mix when moving from one CMYK document to another. It's not changing colour models so I expect it to remain the same color mix. Please can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong. When this happens, I can't trust ANY colours in my documents. If I can't copy-n-past a logo from one document to another and keep the corporate colours, I can't use it for professional design work.
Please tell me it's something I'm doing, and not the application that doesn't respect color mixes and converts everything to RGB first.
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Hi
I've posted another topic regarding the lack of global swatches not being included when copy-n-pasting artwork from one document to another (which is also a shortcoming in Publisher so that's clearly not a bug, just a strange for process), so part of this video is repetitive, however.... when creating swatches from colours used in the document, I'm getting strange mixes that don't match what's in the document. I show this in the video as well. This is my biggest concern because it should be a solution to the lack of global swatch's follow-through.
In my video, I demonstrate how a simple 2-colour blue (100/50/0/0) shifts to 100/39/0/26, a 3-colour version.
If I'm right, it means that every colour in a corporate identity is at risk of shifting to something else the moment I paste a logo into a new document. Hopefully someone can correct my work process and it's not a bug because inconsistent colour mixing between documents is a real deal-breaker for professional design.
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Thanks.
BTW, I've picked up a very strange bug that converts a global swatch to the wrong colour. I've made a video demonstrating it. I'll open a new topic for it since it's quite broad covering a few colour issues that are preventing me from working confidently.
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I paste a logo with global swatches (Corporate colours that must never ever change) and the swatches don't follow into the new document. The global swatch is there "sort of" because the colour palette says my object's fill is a global swatch and I can even edit it, but I can never apply it to another object because it's not in the swatches palette anywhere.
Major fail...
Here's a screenshot showing the global colour in use, but no document palette or global swatches in my swatches palette.
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I'm having the same problem in Designer. Paste a logo with global swatches (Corporate colours that must never ever change) and the swatches don't follow into the new document. The global swatch is there "sort of" because the colour palette says my object's fill is a global swatch and I can even edit it, but I can never apply it to another object because it's not in the swatches palette anywhere.
Major fail...
Here's a screenshot showing the global colour in use, but no document palette or global swatches in my swatches palette.
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On 12/9/2015 at 12:06 AM, A_B_C said:
Exactly, Stephen … that’s what I meant when I said “that this Persona should be able to open and evaluate PDF files, in the very same way Acrobat currently allows to do” …
Ah, I see. I thought that once it had been brought into that persona, it would be editable as an open Designer file – requiring saving again after inspection. If it's just a viewing persona only, then I can go with you on that one.
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Master A layer was sitting in the middle of a group of layers. The moment I selected the group, I would automatically get that master layer.
I thing the true bug is that we can select & group the master layer with other object-layers. If they make it non-selectable and always at the bottom, bellow all the other layers, this wouldn't happen.
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Oh, wait. rusty5, you are a genius. I've just done a more careful search and I did infect find that layer. I noticed when doing a "Select All" command, I seemed to be selecting something that looked like the page's margins.
Now, if I select everything except that layer/object, it works perfectly.
Thank you.
Perhaps I should list this "Master A" as a bug of its own???
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No. There is no "Master A" layer... just the objects in my layout. The master page also doesn't have a layer waiting for me. Creating one before pasting makes no difference.
I"ve just tried selecting every object manually and then Copy-n-paste them across in smaller batches. No crashes when I do this.
I've tried doing this with all the text only, then the arrows, then the shapes... again no crashes. I am able to get everything onto the master page, I just can't do it all at once.
It only crashes when I take everything across at once. I suspect there might just be clipboard limit at play here.
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Here's a screencast of my experience. It's still happening every single time.
(surprising really... problems usually disappear the moment someone else is trying to fix it)
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Here you go.
Select All.
Go to Master page.
Paste.
(All done as keyboard commands)
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I copy a collection of simple text boxes, circles and a few arrows (I've drawn an organogram) from my page.
I go to my master page.
I paste. Publisher crashes immediately.
I did this a few times in a row to confirm that it happens consistently.
If I manually select the items, it works just fine. It only crashes if I have selected the items by using the command "Select all", then copy and paste. Clearly, I'm picking up something extra that's not a physical object on the page. That invisible something is causing the crash.
Can we just get the basics that are missing, and not worry about unique, cutting edge features for now?
in Feedback for Affinity Designer V1 on Desktop
Posted
I forgot to add another problem with swatches not carrying over to another document via copy-n-paste... if your swatch is a SPOT color, the SPOT swatch is left behind. Try and re-make that swatch from your pasted object and you'll only create a CMYK swatch. Your SPOT color is gone for good.
This is a blinding oversight that should be treated as a bug fix rather than a missing feature.