AKSturb01

I've given up on Affinity. It seems clear to me they thought they'd be bought out and after four years haven't made the most desired change to the product. I don't think they're working on it and they've basically given up. These guys aren't in the game of writing cutting-edge software, they're playing for buyout money. Have fun, I'm done with the show. People have been asking for one of the most important tools they can have and the response from Affinity has been, as far as I can tell, zero. Seen it a million times before.

I would like to clarify something: I didn't mean to suggest that people further complicate their lives and workflows by attempting to run an old, obsolete version of CorelDraw to access to features like this. I merely wanted to point out that Affinity Designer is being marketed as: "...setting the new industry standard in the world of design. Best in class for creating concept art, print projects, logos, icons, UI designs, mock-ups and more, it's already the top choice of thousands of professional[s]." In my opinion, it's a matter of no inconsiderable amount of chutzpah to market the product that way when it is missing a feature that was available to people using CorelDraw on Windows XP back in 2010. AD is indeed a relative bargain when compared to Illustrator and the latest versions of CD. It's a powerful tool and a good deal with all of the other wonderful things it can do, and I like it! However, the marketing speak above is simply not persuasive to me and many others with these features missing. As I've said, I'm willing to pay extra money if they add them. I'll make the difference back on the first project, so I hope they consider it. Thanks for everyone's additional input. I also don't mean to imply any disrespect for what Affinity has been able to accomplish. Going up against Adobe and Corel on their "home turf" so to speak, is no trivial thing, and I applaud them for doing it. If I had been in the first meeting discussing it, I would have said: "It's a bit like Luxembourg simultaneously declaring war on the United States and Canada, isn't it?" Well, they're punching way above their weight class, so I don't mean to bum them out or anything.

That's a good point but CorelDraw had the Envelope Tool back in version X10 - 2001. I realize that Affinity Designer is priced to be a bargain but Affinity is not marketing this as a "stripped down vector graphics program" and if they can't match some of the most important features of a 10 year old product, it's disappointing because there are so many other areas in which AD excels. Let's put it this way: if they added the tools, I would pay more for the product. Say $75? Done. Tomorrow. I'll buy it and write a review of it. You have to look at the expense vs. the power of the tool, and transforms and envelopes and so forth are part of my workflow. I've used them for years and I can't work without them. Converting things into bitmaps is not a solution for me.

It's been several months since I +1ed this topic and I want to +1 it again, because the fact is that CorelDraw 2021.5 does this, has done it for a long time, and it makes things like this very very easy and fast. It is literally the only thing stopping me from buying Affinity. In this example, the artboard is a deep red, and there are two inner rectangles, one of which is a PowerClip. The photo is in the background and both inner rectangles have transparency and fill effects. The font is "Impact" with a subtle vector pattern fill, adjusted colors, and a white outline, converted to curves. Then I use the "Smear" tool and the "Envelope" tool on the lettering, which perfectly alters the vector shape but maintains the fill. Finally, I apply a mild Perspective effect to the lettering. It's not very apparent but it's there. I know it's a rough example but it took literally 5 minutes. This image is a take-off on one of Corel's free tutorials on transparency. Exported as a CMYK PDF and a CMYK JPEG 300 dpi. Affinity Designer needs these tools. ENVELOPE_AND_TRANSPARENCY_EXAMPLE.pdf

+∞ to this. It's such a drag not to have this because Designer does some things nothing else can do. The lack of this feature is a dagger right through its heart.

Finally for one day (I like this software and want to see it keep improving). I find also that even more splash can be added to text with the contour tool's many options in combination with the 3D layer effect. This is really pretty amazing for less than 10 minutes worth of work and if it was meshable/envelopeable and could export as a vector object - my goodness. Onward and upward, folks! MYNAME3.afdesign

And I find that after converting to curves I can then REAPPLY the 3D layer effect and get even more power from it. Mesh warp...envelope...PLEASE. Lol. Where CorelDraw 2021 is sometimes invaluable to me is that it allows applying vector fills to text that has been converted to curves and then allows those kinds of distortions. Quick examples attached. MYNAME2.afdesign ABALONEY.pdf ABALONEY.eps ABALONEY.cdr

Thank you that works! And I can transform and edit the nodes WITH the 3D effects applied. Very cool. I can tell you gentlemen that you need the Envelope and Mesh Warp functionality. The 3D effect alone is almost worth the price of this software on artistic text. With mesh warping and envelope distort it would be ... awesome. Also if you could get it to export as vector objects we're talking nirvana here. Thank you again, here's my updated file without the underline. A MYNAME.afdesign

I was shocked to discover that AD doesn't have any mesh warp or envelope functionality. CorelDraw does this with everything and also has other kinds of distortion as well as symmetrical drawing. It's a shame because some of AD's layer effects on artistic text are gorgeous, especially 3D. Their 3D effect is awesome but you can't warp it or change the envelope!! Aaaargh. My AD 1.10 crashes instantly whenever I try to convert text containing layer effects to curves. I submitted that as a bug report. It's a real shame because that 3D layer effect when applied to artistic text is almost worth the price all by itself. And if you try to export it, it works "kinda-sorta" but it rasterizes the layer. It preserves the transparency, and then CorelDraw can import and mesh-warp or envelope distort it, but it's not a vector object any more. That's a shame. Bummed me out bigtime. They need to implement these features in a major way!

I have a very simple artistic text layer with a single word in it. It has a couple of layer effects applied. When I select the layer and attempt to Convert to Curves the program crashes instantly. No crash report. The file is attached. MYNAME.afdesign