Stephen_H

The feature updates are coming faster than I can keep up. :D

I was also excited... until I saw the computing demands. It feels a bit like the special software the CIA has to magically clean up lores images to read number plates off reflections in security camera footage.

Just a wild, crazy thought... why do paragraph and character have to be separate panels at all? Can't we have just one single, long panel with all text settings together. We could call it "Typography". If I'm editing text, I inevitably have both panels open at the same time anyway and it will remove some redundancy. Here's what I'm thinking: The same thing with colour and swatch panels. I also always have both of them open at the same time so they might as well be in the same panel like this... (Note the pull down menu for choosing different swatch display styles – small icon, big icon, list view etc. Just a little idea thrown in for good measure) Since your roadmap includes multiple fills and strokes, perhaps strokes & fills should also be crammed into 1 panel. I'm worried you're going to take Illustrator's approach to multiple fills & strokes... 1 panel for stroke 1 panel for fill 1 panel to list them to define which you have selected. and another panel for for effects, just for good measure?

Just a wild, crazy thought... why do paragraph and character have to be separate panels at all? Can't we have just one single, long panel with all text settings together. If I'm editing text, I inevitably have both panels open at the same time anyway. I'm going to propose this in its own discussion..

+1 all round. (in fact, I didn't even know about the break nodes apart function. I've just been redrawing the path without the segment I wanted to delete. This break nodes function is already a life-saver to me.) BTW, is there a cut tool/function somewhere?

I suspect the colour shift is related to the change in colour format and transparency effects. I suspect the rasterizing is due to AD not coping with that amount of complex vectors. (Even Illustrator sometimes tells you to rasterise or simplify very complex vectors at export) To provide a bullet-proof repro file, I'd provide it as a PDF, but do the following steps first to make it as "simple" as possible to reduce the amount of interpretation the printers' software will have to do: - Make sure you're working in CMYK first (this removes all last minute RGB to CMYK conversions at export/printing) - Make sure your raster resolution of your document is higher than 72ppi. (200ppi will be more than enough for a banner print) - Convert fonts to paths (which you've been doing already) - Merge & rasterise the background and the text's drop shadow into a single pixel-based image layer. (this will remove all transparency. i.e.: the Screen effect of the background and the Multiply of the drop shadow) - Leave just the outline and the white text as vector outlines with transparency as Normal - Export as a PDF/X compliant PDF for safety sake What you are left with is a very simple collection of basic vector shapes sitting on a single image. No complex shapes, no wrong colour modes, no transparency... just nothing to be interpreted incorrectly. I'll be genuinely shocked if you still have these issues after this.

Ya know... a PDF is pretty much just an EPS with compression and a great preview. I'm way more confident using PDFs than EPSs now-a-days. To test the quality of your EPS, run it through Adobe Distiller (if you have it). That will produce a PDF directly from the EPS and this will show if the weird stuff is in the EPS or not.

Not sure what are the issues we need to address here. I'm not spotting huge problems in your image. Are these your concerns? I agree with MikeW. I also usually supply PDFs. The problem with an EPS is its lack of viewable preview. You have to open it up into another application to see what it looks like so you're flying blind. The application you open it in is going to show only how it interprets EPS files – not how the EPS actually is. This might just be an EPS support issue rather than a quality of EPS issue.

Success!!!! My theory works. I've just tested it and that's exactly the result I get. The save for web JPEG has changed to 72ppi. See my screenshot comparison: (you'll notice that the files still have the same pixel count so there has not been any resampling, just a change in resolution)

Can't say without see the actual JPEGs you're referring to. But at a guess... could one JPEG have been "saved" from PhotoShop and the other "Saved for web". When you just save a JPEG, all kinds of extra metadata is embedded in the file. It even supports guides and CMYK color formats. When you save for web, all that stuff is stripped out in favor of a small, web-optimized file. Perhaps one has kept a custom resolution and the other is defaulting to the browser/application's default resolution?

Not to start any rumors, but I wonder if this "pixel-based" layout is a necessity to allow for the documents to be opened between the applications so seamlessly. If it is, we may have stumbled on the reason why Publisher's release keeps getting pushed back. A layout application absolutely has to be resolution independent to maintain the resolution of placed/linked images. The promise of opening all documents up into any of their applications might be creating an impossible challenge. Dear Moderator. Feel free to delete this post if it's out of line. I won't be offended. Rumors are rumors and I have no insight to your development process.

Unfortunately, the raster resolution of a document cannot be changed if you are using art boards. Ah well, at least I have my work around – even if it does mean making multiple documents to leapfrog copied objects from one document to the next. <_<

AWESOME NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "Objects will scale" makes the objects maintain their dimensions when the raster resolution is changed. This is a huge step for me. At least I can match all my documents to the same resolution without messing up my layout. Then copy and pasting will keep the object's dimension. :D :D :D :D

Changing "Objects will Scale" to "Objects will Anchor to page" in document presences also made no difference. (I thought this might be a relative vs absolute setting. Not so it seems, though it has piqued my curiosity as to what it's for...) Oh, I also tried all this processes above in regular documents and in documents with art boards. I thought an art board might define size and positions differently. (Also, no difference in my experience)

Oh, and working in documents with the same resolution wasn't an option because I was opening existing PDF documents. I actually tried changing the raster setting of the problem document down from 400ppi to 300ppi to match my other documents, but all the objects scaled up and fell off the edges of the document. This meant I had to scale everything down to get the files to match – something I had to do manually with careful attention to detail so that document is factionally different to all the rest. (NI doubt anyone will notice, but I know that document isn't perfect) This means everything is defined by pixel-related info and this bothers me because I don't see a simple fix like a checkbox in the preferences.

That's the heart of my confusion – if they are independent of resolution, why is resolution being used to define it's size in my document? I'd question wether vectors don't dave physical dimensions. In maths, you're correct because it's purely an expression of direction and velocity that gets usually expressed in the form of a chart or a wave. In the world of graphics, dimensions play a huge role in vectors. The position of a vector node is defined by distance (in your choice of unit of measure) from the edge of the document and in relation to other vector nodes. Vectors can be expressed by pixels (rasterized to an image or displayed on a screen), but it's definitely defined by dimensions. But this all very complex and mostly irrelevant. I've just tried a test that bugs me because it defies logic. This is what I did. I created an A4 document with a raster dpi of 72 using millimeters as the unit of measure.(note that the document is defined by dimensions) I then created an identical document that's also been defined by page size and uses millimeters as the unit of measure, but gave it a higher raster resolution of 300ppi. I drew a vector object in one. Copied it Pasted it into the second document. The two objects (not pixel layers) have different dimensions. I find this amazing since I've even defined the unit of measure in both documents as millimeters, not pixels. The transform panel displays dimensions – no reference to pixels anywhere. I've also made sure to work in the Draw persona and not accidentally copy and paste in Pixel Persona (I'd expect this result from working this way) The more I try this and find a work process that keeps consistency, the more frustrated I'm becoming (sorry if it's showing in my posts). This tells me that AD, the "vector application" is at its heart completely pixel-based. Alternatively, it means the clipboard being generated is pixel-based which is equally bad since Apple's clipboard supports everything (I think it's PDF-based, but I don't know where I got that impression from). I have found an option in the presences to use SVG for the clipboard, but that didn't make any difference.

On a side note... can I just say thank you for a great question. I suspect a lot of people have no clue and are too shy to ask. This is a basic fundamental to all graphic software and unless you grasp this, you will always be confused between the different applications and personas. The distinctions are very clear in Affinity Designer through the "Draw" and "Pixel" personas. Watch the tools change. In draw, the tools are node, object and creation tools. In pixel, the tools are mostly pixel selections, modifiers, erasers etc.

Common/preferred uses of vectors: - Fonts - Logos - Icons - Anything that's going to scaled up in the future. - Usually EPS, PDF, SVG and most native file formats (though vector file formats can include raster images) Common/preferred uses of rasters: - Photos (anything straight from a camera or scanner) - photo manipulation/effects (lens flares, shadows, holes in zombies) - Screenshots - Usually TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG. (A pure raster image cannot have any vector objects)

Come now people... we're designers so we need pictures. Here's one... As an experiment, you can experience this very easily in AD. - Zoom in reeeeeaaaaalllllyyyy close. If you still have sharp edges then it's vector. If you pixels, then it's a raster image. or - Tap the , key and your screen will split displaying vectors on the left and how they will look as rasters on the right (if you're planning to rasterise them) Word of caution... vector objects can be made into raster objects, but raster objects can't be converted into vector objects.

I think that would drive me crazy. I like consistency and uniformity. If my layers were suddenly pink and green and yellow I'd end up manually changing them back to a single preferred colour. Can I suggest, to speed up changing the colour, could we rather have a few colors as swatches as a quick-select. The custom colour mixer can still be in the Properties, but for a really quick 'n simple colour change, this would be nice.

Thank goodness. I thought I was going blind. :blink:

Ah-hah! That is a nice feature. I often struggle with the bounding box handle colour – it's too similar to sky so changing the colour is very useful. Putting that colour indication under the layer isn't obvious or intuitive because it doesn't look like an attribute of the layer above it, but rather the way the top layer interacts with the layer below. A thin line at the end of the layer would've made more sense and be more obvious. Like this screenshot:

Thanks. That works like a charm... in Photo, but I don't seem to have this option in Designer. Is that right? Here's a screenshot of my view menu... (and I am working in the Pixel Persona)

I'm used to "Command + H" in PhotoShop to hide the marching ants that indicate an active selection, but I can't find any equivalent in AD or AP. I'm trying to do some dodge/burn tool work and the marque is getting in the way and hiding the results. I keep having to deselect and then re-select through History which is a really painful way to have to work. I'm sure it's there, I just can't figure it out. Please help. Thanks.

Well, in Michaels' defense... it's not wonderful. When you hit the TAB key, it's not docking or minimizing the panels, it's hiding absolutely everything. It's not really a work space, but more of a preview mode since you even lose your tools (docked and floating tools). I have to bring back my panels just to change tools or alter a font size. It's too much of a "scorched earth" policy to be part of a workflow. The better option is "Command + Shift + H" as it just hides your studios, and leave your tools and the properties bar visible. (The only short coming of this is that it doesn't just hide your two side studios, but it also hides your floating panels. I think I'm going to request this as a feature. This way you could keep one useful panel (like Layers) open while hiding/revealing all your docked panels) As another work around, you can try working in the old 1990's way of floating your panels (Window/Separated Mode). This way, when you minimize a panel, it does actually take up less space on the screen, not just less space in one of the side studios. It even continues to work in full screen mode which is a nice compromise.