Stephen_H

It would be great to be able to specify the entire font size list in the preferences somewhere. I would love to add 4pt and 5pt which are super useful for stationery.
 
I do, however find the list very long and the 96/144/288pt feel a bit random. I'd like to be able to shorten it and add just one huge top end point size that I can just jump my font to.
 
I have used an app in the distant past that allowed me to make my own list of font sizes (FreeHand? Painter? I can't remember…). I think it also allowed for default stroke thicknesses to be defined as well.

I know we get used to drag and drop, but copy and paste also works.

Combining Designer, Photo and Publisher makes as much sense as Lamborghini building a sports car/SUV/minivan/pickup truck combination in an effort to satisfy every single potential use for an automobile all in one vehicle.

Thanks, Stephen_H for talking a little sense on the subject.

I think it's an awesome feature. I'd hate to lose it, so a lock button would be the best solution.

We've had this topic raised before....
 
I have to say that even though this sounds like really good idea - it's a totally flawed idea.  Just because we render our guides on pixel, the precision can be sub-pixel, depending upon your zoom level - we quantise the screen image just to make it look crisp. The "real" location of the object is a different matter.  The concept of where the physical boundary lies is actually not the issue.
 
The reality is - if we used two pixel guides - all our guides would look thicker, but nothing is gained.  The physical position of the thing rendered may not exist at the precise position between the two pixels of the guide.  So - what would you render if the position is half way across a pixel? A three pixel guide??
 
This idea only works if you can only place geometry on whole pixels, and view it at 100%.  If you have finer precision than that (as we do - see our 1,000,000% zoom!), the whole concept makes no sense at all.  If you zoom out so a document pixel is smaller than a screen pixel - how do you draw your guide?

I vote for keeping them as separate, focussed apps.
 
I believe that if one app did everything, it would become a consumer product.
 
A designer is a bit of a vague term and covers so many disciplines, but professionals are largely specialists in their fields. If you imagine ADesigner as being aimed at illustrators and creative conceptualisers, and APublisher being aimed at layout, DTP , then you understand why ADesigner doesn't have drop caps, master pages and paragraph styles, and why APublisher probably won't have the artistic brushes and warp mesh tools – they're just not used by the same disciplines.
 
I'm a bit bummed by the current poor PDF exporting of ADesigner, but I realise that it's aimed at exporting images to be placed on websites and in brochures – not actually exporting complete websites and brochures. I'm quite certain that APublisher is going to have awesome PDF export abilities because that's the tool to create print-ready documents that will need soft proofing, bleed & cropmarks, custom compression and so on.
 
Sure you can make a simple z-fold flyer in Illustrator because it supports multiple pages, but have you ever tried making a 16 page brochure in it? It's possible, but it will drive you absolutely insane, guaranteed! Adobe has lost it's "tool for the job" focus and has left us with over engineered "Jack of All Trades" that have us all so desperate for new alternatives like Affinity's products.
 
Let's not drive Affinity in the same direction as Adobe – it will only hurt us when we [again] find ourselves looking for fresh new products in 10 years time.

CMD+Alt also brings up the colour picker. Oh joy...

Wowoah! Hold your horses everyone… I've just stumbled across a colour picker keyboard short cut!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  (sort of)
 
With my circle object tool selected, I held down my Alt key and clicked and dragged. I was expecting a circle to draw outwards from the center, but instead my cursor became the colour picker loupe.
 
It didn't really help all that much because I still had to go over to that silly little "picker colour apply" icon to do anything with the selected colour, and if I try do the same thing with my general select tool, I just end up duplicating the object I click on, but it does give me hope.
 
I suspect the developers have this functionality in place already – they're just struggling to figure out the logistics of how to apply its usage, consistently, with any tool selected. 
 
Perhaps instead of asking for this feature, we need to recommend a solution that doesn't interfere with another tool? I've seen 2 recommendations in this thread that I can see working...
 
1 - Click and hold for 2 seconds suggested by the OP. (might be a bit slow, but it's an original concept that eliminates the need for any keyboard shortcuts at all. Follow it up with a tap of the ESC key and we carry on.)
 
2 - Use the i key. (here i must add my 2 cents – it should be a colour picker for only as long as the i key is held down and immediately return to the previous tool the moment the i key is released so we don't have to learn 20 other keyboard shortcuts to return to your previous tool. This would also be super quick to do)
 
 
Hmm, I'm starting to think it's less about the colour picker, but rather the real problem is lying in the added step required to apply the selected colour. Adding a short cut key (or whatever) is a small feature addition, but the extra step is a whole workflow issue driven by the developers' views on using colour – something that we, the user base, seems to dislike.
 
If this extra step is here to stay, then is there any way we can get a tutorial on colour use that explains the thinking behind colour workflows? Perhaps if we could change our thinking to this workflow, we could buy in and work with it instead of fighting against something that currently seems unintuitive.

When matching a colour selected from a colour swatch book, the odds are that I want simple, rounded off numbers like 50% cyan, rather than its lesser-spotted cousin, 52% cyan.
 
Could you introduce some way to snap to increments of 5% when dragging a slider? Perhaps holding the shift key while dragging?
 
(this is a personal issue I have with Illustrator… the sliders always seem to hop from 49% to 51% as if it's intentionally trying to avoid the common 50%. I seem to end up having to type 50% after a few frustrating attempts) I don't have this exact problem with AD or AP's sliders, but snapping would be a great option in my life.

When matching a colour selected from a colour swatch book, the odds are that I want simple, rounded off numbers like 50% cyan, rather than its lesser-spotted cousin, 52% cyan.
 
Could you introduce some way to snap to increments of 5% when dragging a slider? Perhaps holding the shift key while dragging?
 
(this is a personal issue I have with Illustrator… the sliders always seem to hop from 49% to 51% as if it's intentionally trying to avoid the common 50%. I seem to end up having to type 50% after a few frustrating attempts) I don't have this exact problem with AD or AP's sliders, but snapping would be a great option in my life.

Actually you already have that.
 
Ctrl+Alt and left click. Horizontally, you change the brush size, vertically, the hardness. And while you do this, you have your two circles to see what you're doing.
 
:)

I vote for keeping them as separate, focussed apps.
 
I believe that if one app did everything, it would become a consumer product.
 
A designer is a bit of a vague term and covers so many disciplines, but professionals are largely specialists in their fields. If you imagine ADesigner as being aimed at illustrators and creative conceptualisers, and APublisher being aimed at layout, DTP , then you understand why ADesigner doesn't have drop caps, master pages and paragraph styles, and why APublisher probably won't have the artistic brushes and warp mesh tools – they're just not used by the same disciplines.
 
I'm a bit bummed by the current poor PDF exporting of ADesigner, but I realise that it's aimed at exporting images to be placed on websites and in brochures – not actually exporting complete websites and brochures. I'm quite certain that APublisher is going to have awesome PDF export abilities because that's the tool to create print-ready documents that will need soft proofing, bleed & cropmarks, custom compression and so on.
 
Sure you can make a simple z-fold flyer in Illustrator because it supports multiple pages, but have you ever tried making a 16 page brochure in it? It's possible, but it will drive you absolutely insane, guaranteed! Adobe has lost it's "tool for the job" focus and has left us with over engineered "Jack of All Trades" that have us all so desperate for new alternatives like Affinity's products.
 
Let's not drive Affinity in the same direction as Adobe – it will only hurt us when we [again] find ourselves looking for fresh new products in 10 years time.

I know, I was referring to ADesigner holding content but not displaying it on the pasteboard – not ID or QXP. (Those are the apps that have made me so reliant on using a pasteboard that I don't know how to work without it, Though QXP was a pain because we became reliant on a pasteboard extension to make it large enough to use, which if you didn't have the extension, you couldn't open the document – terrible for sharing documents) 

I vote for keeping them as separate, focussed apps.
 
I believe that if one app did everything, it would become a consumer product.
 
A designer is a bit of a vague term and covers so many disciplines, but professionals are largely specialists in their fields. If you imagine ADesigner as being aimed at illustrators and creative conceptualisers, and APublisher being aimed at layout, DTP , then you understand why ADesigner doesn't have drop caps, master pages and paragraph styles, and why APublisher probably won't have the artistic brushes and warp mesh tools – they're just not used by the same disciplines.
 
I'm a bit bummed by the current poor PDF exporting of ADesigner, but I realise that it's aimed at exporting images to be placed on websites and in brochures – not actually exporting complete websites and brochures. I'm quite certain that APublisher is going to have awesome PDF export abilities because that's the tool to create print-ready documents that will need soft proofing, bleed & cropmarks, custom compression and so on.
 
Sure you can make a simple z-fold flyer in Illustrator because it supports multiple pages, but have you ever tried making a 16 page brochure in it? It's possible, but it will drive you absolutely insane, guaranteed! Adobe has lost it's "tool for the job" focus and has left us with over engineered "Jack of All Trades" that have us all so desperate for new alternatives like Affinity's products.
 
Let's not drive Affinity in the same direction as Adobe – it will only hurt us when we [again] find ourselves looking for fresh new products in 10 years time.

I hope it isn't Ilimited to just batch processing RAW files. I'd love batch processing of other features like creating a contact-sheet, adding a watermark, repeating an action/filter/style to multiple documents...
 
Corel's Painter has an absolutely awesome feature in the "batch processing" category. You can save ALL the work done in a single document as a script and play it back on another document. The primary reason for this is to do an illustration in a low resolution document, and then automatically "redo" it at a higher resolution. Just sit back and watch your 50MB painting re-create itself, identically, just now as a 500MB file which would previously take forever for the brush strokes to draw themselves. Inspired!
 
Maybe batch processing will be loosely linked to scripting? It could kill two birds with one stone if well implemented.

Lightroom has an awesome preview as its brush curser. Instead of just a circle indicating the outer edge of the brush, it displays an outer AND inner edge.
 
The inner circle shows where the brush is at its densest. This means that a brush with quite a hard edge will have a large inner circle, and a brush with a soft edge will have a small inner circle. (though both will have the same outer circle because they will have the same brush size/diameter)
 
This would allow for instant understanding of what brush edge my tool has without looking up the hardness slider and doing some maths in my head.
 
If you could add some form of keyboard + click-n-drag feature to dynamically scale a brush on the page, then you could extend it by adding Alt to the mix and allow for click-n-drag changing of the edge as well.
 
Cool.

I vote for keeping them as separate, focussed apps.
 
I believe that if one app did everything, it would become a consumer product.
 
A designer is a bit of a vague term and covers so many disciplines, but professionals are largely specialists in their fields. If you imagine ADesigner as being aimed at illustrators and creative conceptualisers, and APublisher being aimed at layout, DTP , then you understand why ADesigner doesn't have drop caps, master pages and paragraph styles, and why APublisher probably won't have the artistic brushes and warp mesh tools – they're just not used by the same disciplines.
 
I'm a bit bummed by the current poor PDF exporting of ADesigner, but I realise that it's aimed at exporting images to be placed on websites and in brochures – not actually exporting complete websites and brochures. I'm quite certain that APublisher is going to have awesome PDF export abilities because that's the tool to create print-ready documents that will need soft proofing, bleed & cropmarks, custom compression and so on.
 
Sure you can make a simple z-fold flyer in Illustrator because it supports multiple pages, but have you ever tried making a 16 page brochure in it? It's possible, but it will drive you absolutely insane, guaranteed! Adobe has lost it's "tool for the job" focus and has left us with over engineered "Jack of All Trades" that have us all so desperate for new alternatives like Affinity's products.
 
Let's not drive Affinity in the same direction as Adobe – it will only hurt us when we [again] find ourselves looking for fresh new products in 10 years time.

Oval,
 
I would guess that the reason for this is because if they did, the program would be "a Jack of all trades and master of none". The program would be mediocre at many things but not good at anything. For me, I'd rather not have a program like that. A layout program and vector program have different focuses and as well different tool sets. So it is natural to separate them. Think of a hammer. A hammer is for hammering nails but you could use it for other things like opening glass bottles or as a paperweight (there are probably plenty of other uses as well) but those things are not what a hammer was designed for. Can you use it for other purposes? Yes you can but you would be better off using a tool that was specifically designed for that purpose. The same is true in this case. I know lots of people who use Illustrator (and before Freehand) to do page layout. Sure it works but it isn't the right tool for the job and in the end it doesn't work as well as if they had used a proper layout program. It will do in a pinch but it isn't the right tool for the job and using the right tool for the job makes all the difference in the world. Think of those multi-tool things that they sell that have different screw drivers and some other different tools all combined. Do they work? Yes, they do but they aren't nearly as a regular (singularly focused) tool. They are designed for the average joe, not the professional. Most professionals wouldn't use them because they don't work as well. Of course there is going to be some crossover tools but in general specialization is better. 
 
Hoksuai

Hey Affinity,
 
Will AD be able to import Adobe Illustrator vector brush libraries? Would be very handy to be able to tap into the thousands of brushes out there... Keep up the awesome work!

Simple solution… you'll see that the imported EPS is called an Embedded Document in the layers palette.
 
Double-click on that imported EPS / Embedded document and it will open up into its own working window. (the actual object, not in the layer palette)
 
In the Preferences window of that document, turn on the transparent background.
 
Save and close that window. 
 
Your imported EPS now has no background...
 
Ta-daaaa.

+1 on this. I too fumbled around with it until I discovered the drag to select thinking (actually, I had to read the manual which we all know that guys don't like asking for directions). Even though I now know how to use it, I still find myself pressing command, space bar or alt keys trying to create a temporary eyedropper tool.
 
I've also found adding a mixed or selected colour to the swatches palette equally un-intuitive. I still can't do it despite having found a pull-down menu called "Add to swatch". Mind, looking at it right now, it seems my swatch palette is completely broken – I don't have any swatches in the pull-down swatch families. (oh wait… I've just restarted AD and I have all my swatches back. Fixed, but clearly not a particularly robust system. I'm running OSX 10.8.5.  Could this be the reason?)
 
I suspect the whole colour engine might need a tweak somewhere. I also can't export CMYK EPS files – it automatically converts my EPS files to RGB which is amazing since EPS is the "original print file" we used to use back in the 90's.

Our work process is resulting in more and more layers in a document and scrolling through them can be confusing – especially if you're on a laptop instead of a 27" iMac. Grouping is one way to control the clutter, but imagine this...
 
What if we could open a group into its own layers palette?
 
For example, instead of 3 groups of 30 layers each (totalling 90 layers to navigate through), we could have 3 floating layer palettes each with only 30 layers in each.
 
It would be the same concept as opening a new window/tab as a new view, but with palettes. (in fact, this idea could be extended to colour swatch palettes as well)
 
Keep up the good work guys.
This is the most exciting movement in design software since Adobe bought out Macromedia. A real breath of fresh air.

Our work process is resulting in more and more layers in a document and scrolling through them can be confusing – especially if you're on a laptop instead of a 27" iMac. Grouping is one way to control the clutter, but imagine this...
 
What if we could open a group into its own layers palette?
 
For example, instead of 3 groups of 30 layers each (totalling 90 layers to navigate through), we could have 3 floating layer palettes each with only 30 layers in each.
 
It would be the same concept as opening a new window/tab as a new view, but with palettes. (in fact, this idea could be extended to colour swatch palettes as well)
 
Keep up the good work guys.
This is the most exciting movement in design software since Adobe bought out Macromedia. A real breath of fresh air.