lucaben

Thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to answer, and happy to see that this is taken into consideration. I will invest some time to learn Affinity and support your efforts. I still believe that you guys should find interaction paradigms that would just work fine. I already found an answer to the questions above myself but I just don't think the way it works is intuitive the way it is now (point 1 to 3 and point 5 in particular).

Thanks for your answer, appreciated. I did find the solution in the end but I think the way it works is very unintuitive. Different interaction paradigm based on which tool is selected? That doesn't make sense to me. This was just one of the problems that I encountered. On one hand I am enthusiast about Affinity products, on the other hand I am struggling to understand how the interface works, each time I put my hands on it. In my post above, I elicited six problems that I encountered, and that was in less than 1 hour spent on Affinity photo/Designer. I'd like to know if this is going to change soon otherwise I am afraid I will have to either switch back to Photoshop (a lot more expensive, but at least I know how it works), or find something else. I also think that the software is missing too many key functionality. Can't change the document background colour, can't see a preview when exporting images, I wouldn't mind paying more for the product but having these basic features is paramount. Thanks.

I think that Affinity photo/designer are both great products, although there's many instances where the interaction is far from optimal. I don't use the product so often but every time that I try to do something, it either takes me a long time to get familiar with the tools, or I just can't get what I want easily. The last examples: 1) if I select a vectorial element I can see the "curve" section in the main toolbar (top left), and edit the stroke properties. If I select two vectorial elements instead of just one, that toolbar disappears. Why is that? How do I edit stroke properties globally then? Please don't tell me that I have to edit them one by one... 2) how do I copy the #value of the colour of the selected element, so I can apply it to another one? 3) why can't I define a #value for the stroke colour? I can only edit that in the right hand panel, but that seems to apply to fill even when I select a line that has no fill. 4) if I multiple select objects and then move arrows keys to move them, they jump to a new location that has nothing to do with the initial position, and then start moving as expected (but from the new location, not the location where they were when they were selected). 5) why can I hold shift to resize a rectangular shape maintaining the aspect ratio, but I cannot do the same with an image? Cmd seems to work instead, but it does not resize from the corner being dragged, and the whole thing is very cumbersome. 6) why is it so difficult to crop an image, or copy and paste a portion of it? I understand that some of these issues might disappear once you get familiar with the tool, but also believe that it should be easier to make changes in the first place. A good UI doesn't need any explanation or long series of trial and error.

Thank you guys, I appreciate your efforts. It looks like this feature is not there yet, I am a bit surprised as it seems such a basic feature to me... Anyone from the Affinity Team is looking at this thread and can let us know if there's a timeline to get this implemented? To be honest I wouldn't mind to pay a bit more in order to get the support I need, instead of looking through dozens of open questions on the forum...

After working on a document with lots of layers for a while, I found out that there's no way to change the background colour of the document from white to transparent, or at least, not an easy and intuitive way... someone in the forum mentioned the menu File > Document Setup but I can't find it under the File menu. I need to set a transparent background in order to export a PNG with transparency. Creating a new document with transparent background doesn't seem to help unless you are willing to loose all your layers and flatten them all into a single layer. Far from ideal! I am surprised such a basic feature seems to be impossible to achieve. I am also surprised that there's no way to contact the customer support directly, I'd be willing to pay a bit more but get the support that I need. Thanks