tokai

In some situations I get this odd extra rectangular handles (or guides?) for linear gradients in the Transparency or Gradient Tools, see screenshot. E.g. this happens when I copy an object with a "Linear" gradient and then Paste Style it onto another object. I didn't found anything about it in the documentation. What are those things exactly useful for (fill shear?) and how could I trigger their view manually while in the respective tools? Also it shows "Linear" as type for the gradient during this, but it actually doesn't seem to be a "Linear" fill anymore (click again on "Linear" in the selection makes the gradient jump back to the original linear handles and reverts the adjustments/ look too.) It's a little bit confusing. Perhaps a little bit buggy too (shouldn't switch the gradient type/ modus during the copy+paste operation and the UI also properly should reflect the "Fill Shear" gradient type, I guess)

In the Affinity Designer help under Appendix > System Requirements it states that "1.27MB of available hard-disk space" are required. I don't believe that for a second while looking at that 1.16 GiB monster in my application folder!

Just sharing some random improvements (?) I did. (Yes, I forgot to flip the cacti pot for correct light direction… maybe next time. )

There's an odd and ugly "floating" circular "close" element on some of the info panels in Affinity Designer. Visually it doesn't even seem to belong to the info box (see screenshot, the black thing with the cross behind the window). Personal Opinion: Why are there two separate elements offering the same function on such small panel? Wouldn't the normal and proper "Close" button be enough?

(latest version of Affinity Designer 1.7.1 from the Apple Store, OS X 10.10 with the "latest" updates) After changing the document dimensions with "File > Document Setup…" I experience refresh issues on the background area of the document (doesn't seem to matter if the background is transparent or a color). This especially happens very often after adding extra space to a document by using the "Anchor to Page" option. Perhaps related to the fact if it has to trigger a new zoom level afterwards or not. Usually on the right side of the document parts are missing then or I get bars in the UI background color. See the vertical bar in the screenshot (no such rectangle part of my test document). Moving the document around in the viewport will repaint those areas properly. This is easily reproducible.

Would be nice to have all the tutorials in one downloadable (zip) package (not necessarily has to be in 4K, of course. 720 would be fine, IMHO. ) , so one can fetch them in one go and comfortable watch locally with VLC. My slow network connection struggles with the online streams. Always buffers; one can't quickly pause and seek back in case one missed something, rebuffering, etc. In the end I don't watch the tutorials at all for this reason.

Was just testing some new things in Affinity Designer 1.7.1 and had this random blob (curve) on the screen, and it looked like an animal, so —a tiny bit later— this came out. Tested the new stroke arrow options too (the feet). The vectorised voronoi pattern was generated with CINEMA 4D, rendered out, passed through "potrace", and then imported as curve into Affinity Designer. Not sure that's the best way, but works for me.

That's why I wrote "felt" (as in "it feels like"). It's definitely a psychological thingy and (probably?) not an actual delay thingy. If you got an idea in your head and just want to get started and then you get this… hmmm... what is essentially a popup window in the middle… you know. Half the thoughts are lost at that point already (chicken brain syndrome) The launch is so quick (on my rather slow and old machine) the popup doesn't feel really necessary as a progress indicator either… not sure how this acts on much quicker machines (I doubt the user should be able to read anything in that short time… unless there's a forced delay, of course ) (I'm someone with muscle memory on Cmd+Q when I'm done with a task, so applications get launched frequently rather than sitting and waiting there all day in the Dock and eating memory, so I see those splash screens like 20 or 30 times a day… at least.)

Hi, please add an option to allow me to disable the splash screen that appears during launch of the application for a second and an unnecessary felt delay (the one that looks identical to the Aboutbox; not talking about the welcome screen that can be launched via Help menu.) I don't mind typing a 'default' command in Terminal to do so (doesn't have to be a UI option). For some reason I recall such option existed in the past, but I'm unable to find it in the Preferences now. The pictures are nice and everything (though I'm not such a big fan of the new simple square icons/logos w/o defining outline) and I get the desire to do some "branding", but for me as user it also gets quickly boring and then the 3rd or 4th time it gets annoying. Just showing up with the UI, so I can quickly get started with my work, would be best, IMHO. (this goes for all 3 apps, not just Designer, of course) Thanks.

Updated to 1.7.1 today and the toolbar was reset again. I made a before-update screenshot and an after-update screenshot.

Updating solved the issue for me. <insert a "thumbs up" emoji here> That StudioLink window maybe could have been more verbose about the actual problem ("Affinity Photo/Designer not up-to-date" as message rather than offering "Buy" buttons and stuff. ) (suggestion @ affinity team)

Anyone knows if this Studio Link works across Affinity Store vs. Apple Store releases? I have Designer and Photo via the Apple Store, and Publisher via the Affinity Store. When I try to switch personas in Publisher a StudioLink window opens asking me to install/launch the two other apps and offering "Buy" buttons. Launching the two other apps doesn't help. I also tried it in various orders, etc., of course. /edit Oh... wait. Seems there are unexpectedly new updates for Designer and Photo (didn't I just update a few days ago? ).

Having a simple document and trying to export it as PNG file: (1) Selecting "File > Export..." from the menu and Export Window opens (2) Selecting "PNG" and clicking the "Export" button… (3) a Mac OS X "Save As" panel opens (4) I click "Save" in this panel (5) a new Window opens "Confirm access to export folder" (6) I click the "Confirm" button (7) error alert pops up that it couldn't save/export the file. I'm not entirely sure what triggers it. It failed 3 times like that in a row, but then suddenly started working normally (w/o the strange confirm access window). This is on a Yosemite machine (with all the "latest" updates: 10.10.5 (14F2511)). System Log reported this: 05/06/19 6:23:00,679 PM com.apple.appkit.xpc.openAndSavePanelService[51214]: *** Assertion failure in -[NSOpenPanelServicePanel _reactToPanelDismissalWithReturnCode:], /SourceCache/AppKit/AppKit-1348.17/Nav.subproj/NSSavePanel.m:5277 05/06/19 6:23:00,680 PM com.apple.appkit.xpc.openAndSavePanelService[51214]: -[NSSavePanel _reactToPanelDismissalWithReturnCode:] : unexpected nil URL value while handling NSFileHandlingPanelOKButton result! 05/06/19 6:23:00,686 PM com.apple.appkit.xpc.openAndSavePanelService[51214]: ( 0 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff8fb7f03c __exceptionPreprocess + 172 1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x00007fff9656476e objc_exception_throw + 43 2 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff8fb7ee1a +[NSException raise:format:arguments:] + 106 3 Foundation 0x00007fff9111a97b -[NSAssertionHandler handleFailureInMethod:object:file:lineNumber:description:] + 195 4 AppKit 0x00007fff9492bf3f -[NSSavePanel _reactToPanelDismissalWithReturnCode:] + 225 5 AppKit 0x00007fff9492c131 -[NSSavePanel _dismissWindowWithReturnCode:willRunSeamlessOpening:] + 26 6 com.apple.appkit.xpc.openAndSavePanelService 0x000000010907328a com.apple.appkit.xpc.openAndSavePanelService + 21130 7 AppKit 0x00007fff9492c565 -[NSSavePanel ok:] + 342 8 com.apple.appkit.xpc.openAndSavePanelService 0x00000001090732c0 com.apple.appkit.xpc.openAndSavePanelService + 21184 9 libsystem_trace.dylib 0x00007fff97ffecd7 _os_activity_initiate + 75 10 AppKit 0x00007fff944deeb1 -[NSApplication sendAction:to:from:] + 452 11 AppKit 0x00007fff944f4946 -[NSControl sendAction:to:] + 86 12 AppKit 0x00007fff944f4862 __26-[NSCell _sendActionFrom:]_block_invoke + 131 13 libsystem_trace.dylib 0x00007fff97ffecd7 _os_activity_initiate + 75 14 AppKit 0x00007fff944f47bf -[NSCell _sendActionFrom:] + 144 15 libsystem_trace.dylib 0x00007fff97ffecd7 _os_activity_initiate + 75 16 AppKit 0x00007fff944f2cb3 -[NSCell trackMouse:inRect:ofView:untilMouseUp:] + 2821 17 AppKit 0x00007fff9454b34f -[NSButtonCell trackMouse:inRect:ofView:untilMouseUp:] + 770 18 AppKit 0x00007fff944f1366 -[NSControl mouseDown:] + 714 19 AppKit 0x00007fff94a5b2dc -[NSWindow _reallySendEvent:isDelayedEvent:] + 14125 20 AppKit 0x00007fff943eac86 -[NSWindow sendEvent:] + 470 21 AppKit 0x00007fff943e7212 -[NSApplication sendEvent:] + 2504 22 ViewBridge 0x00007fff8dd58e7b -[NSViewServiceApplication sendEventWithoutCatch:withForwarding:] + 652 23 ViewBridge 0x00007fff8dd5958d -[NSViewServiceApplication sendEvent:withForwarding:] + 29 24 AppKit 0x00007fff94310b68 -[NSApplication run] + 711 25 AppKit 0x00007fff9428d244 NSApplicationMain + 1832 26 libxpc.dylib 0x00007fff8cd90928 _xpc_objc_main + 793 27 libxpc.dylib 0x00007fff8cd92030 _parse_sysctl_once + 0 28 ViewBridge 0x00007fff8dda7ba5 xpc_connection_handler + 0 29 ViewBridge 0x00007fff8dd5c656 NSViewServiceApplicationMain + 2035 30 com.apple.appkit.xpc.openAndSavePanelService 0x0000000109074035 main + 208 31 libdyld.dylib 0x00007fff936e45c9 start + 1 32 ??? 0x0000000000000001 0x0 + 1 ) In fact the 'com.apple.appkit.xpc.openAndSavePanelService' crashed silently (only to be noticed by the generated User Diagnostic Report): "Application Specific Information: Crashing on exception: -[NSSavePanel _reactToPanelDismissalWithReturnCode:] : unexpected nil URL value while handling NSFileHandlingPanelOKButton result!" ---- Currently the problem seems to have disappeared and I can not reproduce it anymore. I'll will investigate further, if it might pop up again.

Here's what I got in the Pixel and Export personas (sorry I can't provide screenshots of the Designer Persona), Also note the slightly broken look of the button (marked with red arrow).

Functionality as in the stuff I had configured up there… it really confuses muscle memory if things aren't in the same place or missing suddenly, but it's also hard to recall exactly how it was. When I launched the new version I got some shorter toolbar config (but not identical to the default toolbar it offers me in the config panel). It had some sort of "baseline grid" (?) button at first position which looked somewhat broken. For some reason the toolbar config panel doesn't offer it, so I can't bring it back in (whatever new function this was) or make a screenshot of it after I just kicked it out. Broken look as in: the button had like a lot more border padding on the left side compared to its right side.

Is it normal that the toolbar messes up with the update? All my config is lost… and so I'm lost… tons of functionality missing now at the top of the window… next time I need to make a screenshot before updating, I guess. Any way to restore the toolbar config from before the update? (Doesn't sound like a big deal, but rather than looking for new features and having fun I'm now trying to remember how I had my toolbar to bring back my workflow. Slight damper in my excitement for the new version ;) )

Oh... that's cool. Everything is there already. :-) One just has to know. Thanks for the information!

Hi there, I see there are fields (or "placeholders" as I call them ) for "Page Number", "Next…" and "Previous Frame Page Number", but there's no field for a self-updating "Total Number of Pages", so one easily could add something like "Page 1 of 10", "Page 2 of 10", and so on, to the document. Also it would be nice to have some fields for time values (current date: day, month, year, current time: hour, minutes, seconds... with or w/o leading zeros). Those could update on save or export.

I actually just tried the beta earlier already (still on Yosemite for a bunch of reasons)... after I read the whole thread here. And it works (at least it launches and shows up... didn't dig in yet). What doesn't work is switching to the 2 other personas (doesn't like Apple Store bought Designer/Photo it seems) A weekend ahead.. so I hopefully will find some time to test things and see, if it fits into my pipeline/ is useful for my workflow. What I hope the final version gets some "Privacy" settings (at launch it fired up a whole bunch of network connections... some even still over port 80). That's something I don't like at all, I'm very honest about. Hopefully that's just for the beta. Also it should inform the user about the privacy implication (what data do you collect, what do you do with the collected data; how can I force their deletion, etc. the whole GDPR shebang that is required these days. :) ). Better it doesn't do unasked network connections at all, of course.

I hope compatibility with the somewhat out-of-date versions of Mac OS X comes soon, so I can give this a test drive too. :) Anyone has an idea why I can't use cursor movements in this input field here? Yikes... makes it hard to write/edit one's post. :)

I just made a quick test and the plugins from the NIK collection works much smoother now. This is really nice! Just need to import all my custom presets now. One thing I noticed that in Affinity Photo no new layer is automatically generated (in PS the result of the NIK plugins ends up in a new layer... which can be useful when one want to tone down the result and/ or change the blending mode). I probably need to configure something.

The PDF import creates all the artboards already (one for each page), so I'm was not creating them myself in this particular case. Good to know anyway.

I was making a multipage layout where every page of it has to follow certain layout rules. But for example guides I set up in artboard #1 were not existent in artboard #2 and so on. Also I like to show/hide pages quickly to show the underlying page to properly compare them how their layout (etc.) matches. If I have all pages besides each other (compared to having them on top of each other) in much smaller rectangles it's much harder, if not impossible, for me to judge things visually (I don't have the biggest monitor to begin with ). Functions I use often, like "Zoom to Fit", did not do what I expected them to do either (shwoing all artboards rather than fitting the current one onto the screen). I know "Zoom to Selection" would work in that case, but it means I need to entirely adjust mentally what I usually do to navigate around in a document (it just kills time.) I never really used artboards before besides a few test (maybe I miss their magic?) and when one just wants to get some things done quickly then one doesn't want to waste time trying to figure things out. BTW, I found a slight improvement to my earlier method. After importing I select all artboards and use the align tool to center them (they end up on top of each other), before I convert them one by one. Still... the "Convert Artboard to Object" function should recognise multiple selected artboards and convert them all in one go. </feature request>

Hi, what would be the quickest way to import a multipage PDF into layers (one layer group per page)? Or rather is there a quicker way to what I do currently? Right now —when I import a multipage PDF— I end up with those hard-to-use and rather confusing artboards. And it's a real pain to manually convert those to the layers I want. For each page I have to go to the menu and select the conversion function "Convert Artboard to Object" (doesn't work for all at once). Once that is done I have to go through each page again and fix the offsets to x=0,y=0 manually (doesn't seem to work for all at once either). It's a real time eater. Usually takes half an hour.

Thanks for the feedback, guys! The little spider was pretty much the last thing I added, a real last minute idea. Even got a whole bunch of eyes (even those aren't really visible anymore at the final image size)