ianrobertdouglas

In the beta 9 release notes MattP said "Hopefully resolved file save/restore issues seen when starting from a 'recovery file.'"
 
I am still seeing what I think is that bug in the beta 10 release, but I cannot pin down exactly what triggers it. What I sometimes see is the 'file in use by another app' notice when I try to reopen an AD file when no other app has it open.
 
As best as I can tell, this occurs only if I make some change in the AD file & then close it with the 'Don't save changes' option. But that alone doesn't trigger the notice when I try to reopen the file -- there has to be some other step(s) between closing the file with unsaved changes & opening it again.
 
I know this is a bug & that no other app is using the file because simply quitting & restarting AD beta 10 eliminates the notice & I can reopen the file without problems.

Hi R C-R,
 
I can completely believe you - we just need to try to find out how to reproduce it... As long as you're seeing an issue then we'll continue to try to find ways for it to manifest. If you get anywhere with pinpointing it, then please let us know! :)
 
Thanks,
Matt

1+ for the original request here. Back on an earlier version (I don't remember which), if you were looking (auditioning is a good word) for a font you could go through your list one by one. Having seen one on your design, when you clicked on the font menu it would take you back to that font and you could key down to the next. Now (since a couple of versions), in my view, it doesn't work anywhere near as well. You get "recent fonts", which may be useful in other circumstances but not in font picking.
 
In addition (and this is the worst thing, in my opinion), if you type a font name, it will take you to that font in the recent fonts section, instead of that font in your full font list.
 
In my opinion, the earlier way of font selection was much better.

Nice tip! Thank you!
In that case, let the notification disappear: one less click to make!

You can get the list again by setting the font category to Missing in the Character panel.

Tiny issue: I'd love that the notification that fonts are missing in a document stay on the screen and not disappear automatically. It used to stay until dismissed. Right now, it disappears faster than I can take a screenshot or note which ones are missing.

Status: Beta Release
Purpose: New features, fixes
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Designer
Mac App Store: Not Submitted
Download: Here
 
 
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PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THIS VERSION WILL RESET EVERYTHING BACK TO DEFAULTS. Please make sure that if you have created any palettes, styles, assets, brushes, etc in the current beta that you export them in the current version first BEFORE installing this beta otherwise you will lose them. This was unfortunately necessary for this build and should hopefully not be required again.
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This is a beta of a substantial change to our codebase and as much as we have tried to ensure the quality of the code, it should be considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that you may be adversely affected by the application failing. In addition it is definitely worth noting that files created in Affinity 1.5 cannot be opened in 1.4 so always make a copy of your important documents before opening them in 1.5 to ensure you do not accidentally overwrite them and are unable to open them in your 1.4 version.
 
To use this beta, simply download the file from the link given above and double-click on the file to open the installer. Follow the instructions to install the beta version. The beta sits alongside the Mac App Store version and will not interfere with it.
 
Fixes/Improvements:
Fix for all adjustments that use curve splines Fixed 'Bake Corners' in Corner Tool Fix for Divide geometry operation being incorrectly disabled Fix for incorrect colours being generated when a vector object is masked with a semi-transparent mask Symbols can be nested inside containers and the containers can be added to Assets correctly now
Stop Artboards reparenting into other Artboards while they are being dragged around Hopefully resolved file save/restore issues seen when starting from a 'recovery file' Fix for file corruption issues associated with certain SMB network shares Fix for crash seen when cancelling the Fill Tool's drag operations Fix for matte colour in Export Persona Fix for constraints applied to objects with have no width or no height Prevent nested symbols creating dangerous cross-document links! SVG export of relative coordinates uses a relative move for subpaths SVG import of <a> tags implemented Many text style bug fixes and tweaks PDF export improvements Asset panel UI improvements when interacting with it Fixed hex colour input not working as expected for the 'b' slider Fixed line properties flyout showing incorrectly rounded width in some circumstances Page Up/Down/Home/End should appear correctly as customisable shortcuts now Updated icon and cursor for Artboard Tool Slice Tool can now nudge with arrow keys, Slices now work correctly with document snapshots Added 'Space Horizontally' and 'Space Vertically' alignment options to complement the 'Distribute' variants Miscellaneous other small fixes

Here's mine (in a .zip because we don't seem to allow the .afpalette format as an acceptable file type! *sigh*)
 
Greys.afpalette.zip

Can we get a new beta with Boolean functions working properly?

thanks Matt.
While I have you here, I really, really hope that a vector erase tool comes soon. I manage by using any shape above the layer I want to amend and subtracting. But clearly this is a little ... well, crazy. But I still love you guys, and AD!

Ian, I can't reproduce this on my Mac running OS X 10.11.6. I tried it with both the Layers panel docked in the Studio & undocked, & with different System Preference > General settings for showing or hiding the scroll bar.
 
Maybe resetting the app would help?

Big fan. Love the beta.
 
There are some extremely annoying consequences when moving a canvas/artboard to a non-pixel aligned position (like 50.3): when exporting the artboard the image will not have the correct pixel dimensions, and there will be visible edge/clipping artefacts. When I have enabled "Force Pixel Alignment" and "Move by Whole Pixels" I keep expecting that even the artboard should be forced to the pixel grid.
 
Put another way: I don't get why the position of an artboard affects how the content is rendered? Internally the artboard pixel grid and elements within the artboard are perfectly pixel aligned - why will the output use the global meta-offset that in theory shouldn't even exist? I mean, between the artboards - there are no actual pixels.. Shouldn't the output just be relative to the artboard bounds?

thanks Matt.
While I have you here, I really, really hope that a vector erase tool comes soon. I manage by using any shape above the layer I want to amend and subtracting. But clearly this is a little ... well, crazy. But I still love you guys, and AD!

Since technically "erasing" part of a vector shape is equivalent to changing its path, I usually draw a new shape with the Pen tool outlining the part I want to remove & use the Subtract boolean operation to remove it.
 
But since this is a destructive operation what I sometimes do instead is to switch to the Pixel persona, use one or more of its selection tools to select the part to be "erased," invert that, & convert it to a mask. No only is this non-destructive, I can refine the mask in the usual ways to add things like a featured edge or paint out part of it or add to it with a pixel brush.

Hi ianrobertdouglas,
Apart from the Smooth Curve command in the context toolbar for the Node Tool there isn't other "automated" way to reduce the number of nodes other than deleting them manually. If you are performing several geometric operations, you may want to try to perform them non-destructiveli pressing ⌥ (option/alt) while clicking on the respective geometric operation icon in the main toolbar. This will generate a compound object that have the same number of nodes (that come from the original shapes).
 
If you are expanding strokes then there's isn't yet any elegant solution available other than using the Smooth Curves command mentioned above.

crabtrem,
 
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that, I was under the assumption that the erase tool only worked on pixels. The help guide's explanation is rather vague. While it does say that you can erase vectors (and you can maintain vector editing capabilities) it doesn't say that the end result will be a vector. Is it? From what I can tried, it will erase vectors but it still makes them pixels in the end. Yes, the vector is still there and still editable but whatever I have erased becomes pixels if I export it. Maybe I'm doing something wrong? I tend to stay away from anything that will be rasterised and so I don't use the eraser as it is. I'm looking forward to a true vector eraser.
 
Hokusai

I keep getting this message when I try to reopen a file I was working on and then closed:
 

 
If I press either option I get the following:
 

 
I have to quit AD and reopen it to get around this.

I keep getting this message when I try to reopen a file I was working on and then closed:
 

 
If I press either option I get the following:
 

 
I have to quit AD and reopen it to get around this.

Hi ianrobertdouglas,
No, currently there's no way to open an embedded PSD object directly in Photoshop by double-clicking on it. I'm moving this thread to the Feature Requests section.

You can use one of side outlines of the shape as a reference (you have to break its end nodes to turn it into a single line - don't change its position) then apply a stroke to it, until you find the middle of of the original shape (it should have half the width of your original shape). Finally convert this stroke to a shape and break  the end nodes again to separate the part that follow the middle of the original shape from the rest.

A raster preview would be a good idea, but personally I'd still be unable to use it. I cannot have any rasterised content at all in nearly everything I do. I understand that raster content doesn't matter so much, say, in app or web development. But I need my work to scale sometimes to the size of a billboard. I cannot go raster, period.
 
I'm hoping that the AD development team can give this a fresh look at some point in the future. There are a number things you can do in Illustrator while remaining vector that cannot be done yet in AD. I'm sure this is probably due to where AD is focusing (closer to Sketch than Illustrator).
 
I know the team are working very, very hard. I have to be patient.

The addition of the recent fonts at the top of the font list in Affinity Designer 1.4 is great when you have just a couple of fonts you're using for a project and you need to switch between them. However, I've found it gets in the way when I'm in the early phase of choosing fonts to use.
 
If I'm auditioning fonts, going through my font collection methodically, I lose my place each time I select something new. I can't use the keyboard to jump back by typing the font name either, because it jumps to the recents at the top.
 
A potential solution would be to always start back at the current font's position in the list instead of in the recents, since it's much easier to scroll to the top than to find your place again. And all things considered, the recent font menu may be something of a stopgap anyway until Designer gets text styles via Affinity Publisher.

Thank you! Exporting to .png / .jpg from my example indeed gets rid of the line, which is weird; I could have sworn I've seen lines like this pass over into bitmap exports before. Otherwise I have no real problem with that line. But that preference option does the trick within AD, so I'm doubly covered. Thanks!

Go to Preferences -> Performance and check 'Use precise clipping'. This has a very small performance overhead, but should resolve the issue for you. At export time, this setting would've been applied to any images you generate, so it would not have been visible in the exports. The reason for this being visible in the view by default is that it's an artefact you'll actually be able to find in most vector drawing software, introduced by the way that scanline rasterizers work and how you typically tend to implement clipping. We have a separate path that does something a little more clever, but it can't optimise away so much, so it's a tiny bit slower...

One of the advantages of something like Anime Studio for 2D animation of vector objects is you can animate their individual nodes & stroke thicknesses, which can produce much smoother & more flexible keyframe based transitions than what can be done with rasterized bitmaps. That isn't always necessary -- for example, if you just want to reveal, move, and/or maybe squish something, a transparent bitmap may be all you need, particularly if it has a higher resolution than the size it will be displayed at anywhere in the animation.
 
You can also often use animated mask layers & switches to hide or turn on & off bitmaps or parts of them.
 
So for something like your 'dots' animation, you might be able to reduce your 400 vector shapes to a much smaller number, export each set as a bitmap at sufficiently high resolution, & import each of them into Anime. In fact, if that will meet your needs, you could use the much cheaper "Debut" version, which lacks vector import capabilities but supports importing bitmap images in most common formats.