Brian_J

Unfortunately no, the Context Toolbar can’t be customized.

I have the same issue. This issue occurred in the V1 apps, too. I find it frustrating, as well — it makes comparing two documents difficult. I have Hardware Acceleration (OpenCL) disabled. Changing Retina Rendering from Automatic to High quality didn’t have any effect for me.

But what you said was... With all due respect, that's not paraphrasing — it's incorrect information that you used to support the statement that Serif is "dishonest." Serif provided their reasoning for not going the route of identifying customers who purchased on platforms other than the Serif Store. I'm not trying to be argumentative, and frankly, I don't like contributing to the back-and-forth between users in these forums. But I think it's important we get our facts straight so everyone has the ability to reach their own conclusions based on facts.

If you live outside the U.S., I'm guessing the issue is due to the geographic reference in the URL... /en-us/. Does the generic Serif site URL work for you: https://affinity.serif.com?

There are differences between traditional manufacturing companies and software companies, but I think there are some basic models, constraints, economic considerations — whatever they may be called — that apply to pricing strategy in most consumer product industries. Setting a product's price intentionally high, then offering a discount, may be common for products sold in TV commercials and retail stores, but I don't think it would be an effective approach for a software company. I haven't seen Serif claim it's impossible. This is what Ash, Serif Managing Director wrote in his post:

@PaulEC Thanks for catching that. I often forget that the Serif URLs include a country reference, so they’re unique to different locations. I think removing the country should make the URLwork for everyone. https://affinity.serif.com/affinity-2-faq/

If the Affinity apps don’t meet your needs, not buying is probably a good decision. Find apps that work for you. I think of it in terms of the value I’m receiving. I think 40% of an already reasonably priced product is great. Serif has mentioned the challenges providing discounts to existing customers due to the different sources the apps can be purchased from — Serif doesn’t receive information about customers who purchase from the Apple and Windows stores. Serif priced the launch discount at a level they thought would please everyone… but it’s hard to please everyone. The forums and other online platforms aren’t an accurate representation of the sentiment of the entire customer base. I don’t think any of us has enough information to make assumptions about the overall feelings of customers. I think Serif made some significant mistakes in V2. I also think V2 is a good value and will be improved upon. My hope is that Serif has systems in place to learn from the mistakes they made developing and launching V2, and are able to improve their internal processes/procedures… time will tell.

The Serif FAQ page explains what Boldlinedesign mentioned in the ‘Will V2 receive free updates?’ section, and might address other questions you may have. https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/affinity-2-faq/

In the V1 apps, if the cursor is active in a text object, clicking the text layer in the Layers Panel escapes the cursor... resulting in the text layer being selected with no active cursor, so I can to use a keyboard shortcut (i.e., using a shortcut doesn't type anything into the selected text). In V2, clicking a text layer does not escape the cursor from the text object. I often use the ESC key to escape the cursor, but depending on where I'm at in my workflow, it's convenient to have the option to click the text layer. I'm assuming this is a bug because I don't know why it would have changed in V2. There are several posts about an issue selecting text. The issue I'm reporting seems unrelated, but I mention it in case the code is somehow related.

Sure thing. In Affinity Photo v2, the Color Picker displays in the Tools Panel 1-column view as well. So you’ll have that to look forward to if you consider upgrading in the future. 🙂

Ah, the menu was changed in v2. Look in the View menu.

The Color Picker is visible when the Tools Panel is set to 2 or more columns. View > Customize Tools, for Number of Columns select 2 or more.

@jmwellborn Thanks! I was bummed I missed out on the first two cats in Designer v1. Happy to have them now. 🙂 🐈

@Gideon Cool. Hopefully Serif can get it sorted out for you.

I'm not aware of a way to change the functionality of the Escape key, but you can use a different hotkey (shortcut) for Deselect. The default shortcut in Windows for Deselect is Ctrl+D... I think that may be Command+D on Mac, but not sure. You can verify the shortcut, or change it by navigating to: Edit > Preferences > Shortcuts. Filter shortcuts using the second drop-down list... choose 'Select'.

Until Serif can look into this… Is the offending ‘A’ text or curves? If it’s text, have you tried converting it to curves to see if that fixes the issue?

I don’t know what Apple’s terms are for sellers, but they may have rules against efforts to lead customers away from the App Store. Regardless, many customers probably prefer purchasing from the App Store, so preventing it could be a barrier to entry for a significant number of potential customers.

For me, a downside of buying from the App Store is that Microsoft (or Apple) takes a cut of the sale. I'd like to support Serif and have them get all the proceeds — not only for selfless reasons, though... more profit at Serif hopefully translates into increased investment in development.

@Seneca Or, it could be you and François disagree about what constitutes "taking off."

In the menu: Window > Transform.

Cool, thanks Chris. @TrickyWidget What I meant by "align the source image to whole pixels" is: In the image you're copying from, select the Move Tool. Click on the tent image layer to select it. In the Transform Panel, make sure the X and Y values are whole pixels (i.e., no decimals). After I posted my comment, I took another look at your screenshots and thought, maybe my idea isn't likely to be the issue. Copy and paste worked fine for me... I didn't have the issue you're having. I was able to kind of reproduce your results by moving the tent image 0.5 px on both the X and Y coordinates, then copying. But the resulting New From Clipboard file was 201 x 201... so probably not the issue you're having. The fact that the tent image is a locked Background layer means it's likely you opened the file in Photo and haven't moved it accidentally, in which case it should be aligned to pixels. I don't know what the bug is that Chris mentioned or if would do any good to close and reopen the tent photo and trying the copy/paste again.

I'm guessing the tent image you are copying from isn't aligned to whole pixels. Align the source image to whole pixels and see if that takes care of it.

Beautiful. Very nice job. I wonder what the bird on the left sees. 🙂

Is the missing 'r' by any chance outside the page margin in the master Publisher logo file? Edit: Never mind about checking the margin, I thought the margin of the master file might cut off the graphic when embedded, but it doesn't. It would be most helpful if you could provide the master Publisher logo file, but you may not want to do that given it's your logo. Maybe taking a screenshot of the master logo file, with the entire logo selected and the Layers Panel visible in the screenshot would help someone identify a potential issue.

This Serif help page should answer your questions: https://store.serif.com/en-us/help/.