Herbert123

Perhaps, I am uncertain about the technical implementation - only the devs can answer your question. It is interesting to note that Illustrator (using postscript internally as well, I believe) does not add any nodes. No matter the technical implementation: all the other vector apps I tried do not change the number of nodes - only Affinity Designer. Which is Not A Good Thing ;-) I am sure the devs will address this shortcoming at some point. They will have to.

A stroke stabilizer - that is what is needed. In the meantime you could try Lazy Nezumi.

I can confirm this after testing in Illustrator, Inkscape, Photoline, and Designer: only Designer adds additional control points. The others base the conversion on the font's actual glyph. To be absolutely certain, I opened the same font, which I tested (Fira Sans Ultra), in FontCreator - Designer indeed does not base the conversion on the actual glyph, and adds extra points in the bowls, etc. (curved areas). That is rather problematic indeed. I wonder what reason the dev team would have had in mind NOT to base the conversion on the actual glyph control ponts? Makes no sense to me at all - why re-invent the wheel in this case?

The gradient fill GUI in Designer is, in my opinion, "acceptable". A number of usability issues exist, and when I compare to other software, it is easy to see how it could be improved further: While a gradient fill tool is available in Designer, it is rather awkward that the same tool forces the user to switch the context to stroke before the user is able to control a stroke gradient applied to the same object. And the tool icon state changes when the user switches to stroke context, which is confusing. It is not possible to control both gradients (fill and stroke) simultaneously. This means back and forth switching in order to make changes to both, which is time-consuming to say the very least. The user is forced to move the mouse to the tool properties bar to switch context, then make a change to either the stroke gradient or the fill gradient, and again these steps are required to change the gradient for the other context. The dropdown menu to change gradient context is slow to work with - perhaps buttons instead? An alternative method: select an object, switch to the gradient tool, and both gradients can be simultaneously controlled with similar on-screen widgets: no context switching is required. Color stop colours can only be changed via the colour chooser panel and the gradient editor in the tool properties in Designer, again forcing the user to break the workflow by having to move the mouse cursor from the artwork to either the tool bar or the colour panel. It is not possible to double-click a colour stop, or right-mouse click a colour stop to change to a different colour. Allowing the user to either double-click or right-mouse click a colour stop to quickly change the colour would be much faster, and maintains control context more. To change gradient type properties in Designer, again the user must work through the tool properties only. It would be useful to allow the user to access gradient properties such as gradient type, revert gradient, colour mode, and colour stop interpolation with a simple right-mouse click on the gradient itself, which would speed things up. And it is a shame Designer does not support alternate interpolation modes between colour stops - it makes working with gradients simpler and more effective. When saving a gradient swatch, the actual transformation of the gradient is not saved. I can see why this is, but it is actually quite handy to be able to save the gradient transformation state in the colour swatch. Ideally both options would be available to the user, depending on the context. Finally, the small stuff: it is not possible for the user to click & drag a new colour stop in one action. Colour stops cannot be simply dragged off the gradient widget to remove stops. As far as I can tell, it is not possible to move the entire gradient with linear gradients. It would be nice to have the option to move the mid-point of a circular/elliptical gradient separately from the other control points. Anyway, food for thought. My main gripe with Designer's gradient tool is that it feels a tad clunky and slow to work with when I want to change both the stroke and fill gradients of the same object.

Not entirely correct: Blender Freestyle can export to SVG, and an add-on script exists to export the view to SVG. Also interesting to note is that SVG animations can be exported as well. Outlines work really well. Compared to Dimensions smooth shading is not possible. See: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?282824-SVG-output-script https://www.blender.org/manual/render/freestyle/export_svg.html Examples: Comic artist who uses Freestyle SVG to create backgrounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PoElEZbdwk Architect student:

The best argument I have seen all week for a live blend tool in Designer. Manually duplicating and offsetting copies is just so... Photoshop. Terrible workflow. This takes me 20 seconds in Photoline, and the blend effect is live / non-destructive. Same in Illustrator.

I can confirm this behaviour with my Wacom Intuos Pro 5. It is actually not the first time I have seen this occurring in software: Photoline, Photoshop CS6 (CC 2015 seems to have improved, but it is still there), Krita, Paint (worst of the lot), Gimp, and other drawing software (except for ClipStudio). This is expected behaviour in Windows when: a - drawing is performed on a zoomed out high resolution canvas. The more zoomed out, the worse it gets, and b - no smoothing algorithm is applied (or at the wrong time when drawing). As far as I can tell, the cause is that Windows seems to sample per physical screen pixel; zoom out, and the number of pixels to sample from are reduced, and have to be interpolated between actual positions relative to the zoomed out pixel canvas. In short: the higher resolution the image is, and the more you zoom out, the worse the interpolation errors become and the quality of the lines suffers. For example, try this small experiment in your drawing tool in Windows: 1) create an A4 document at 600ppi 2) zoom out to view the entire canvas. 3) turn off ANY stroke stabilization/smoothing while drawing 4) Draw. Zoom out more. Draw again. Zoom out one last time, and draw a final curvy line. Each line becomes progressively worse when you examine each respective drawn line zoomed in. Try this in Paint, or Krita without stabilizer, and you will be shocked at the line quality (or rather, the distinct lack thereof). A couple of years ago I mentioned this to the Photoline developers, and they implemented a stroke stabilizer comparable to Krita, Lazy Nezumi, and ClipStudio. When I turn this on, I am able to draw beautiful smooth and precise lines, whether in vector or bitmap mode at any resolution, and any zoom level. The same for Krita: turn off any stroke stabilization, and you will notice the same issue. Clipstudio produces extraordinarily nice strokes even with the stabilizer deactivated, and zoomed out on a very high resolution canvas. They must be using some kind of custom interpolation algorithm to achieve this (btw, nothing compares to Clipstudio in regards to drawing feel and quality!). I also discovered that when my Wacom is covering only the screen I am drawing on (instead of all three screens) the jitters do reduce a bit. Affinity Designer does not offer any stroke stabilization while drawing, which results in simliar line quality issues. although the exact end result depends also on the internal interpolation of each application. For example, Paint is terrible when painting zoomed out. The solution is quite simple: implement a stroke stabilizer function. Just do it. Windows is at fault here, as far as I can tell. And this will also improve the drawing functionality of Affinity. And make certain to add this to both Designer and Photo. And aside from solving the interpolation issue while drawing, one more advantage is that you expand the drawing features with an option that is available in most competing drawing software products out there as well (Photoshop being the odd duckling, which requires Lazy Nezumi).

It is hard to believe such an essential feature is not part of Affinity Designer. Photoline has a simplify curve option (and it does not even focus on being a vector app). InkScape can do this. ClipStudio offers a really nice simplify vector line brush tool to simplify curves. And of course many other vector illustration packages such as Illustrator, CorelDraw, Xara... Animation software that works with vectors all offer it: Anime Studio, Toonboom, Flash... Heck, even Freehand has an option to do this. And Freehand is positively ancient! In short, I am afraid it is somewhat odd and slightly bewildering for a modern dedicated vector package NOT to offer it from the get-go.

An excellent Voronoi stippler tool can be downloaded here: http://www.saliences.com/projects/npr/stippling/index.html It converts to a SVG file! A Windows executable is available for download. If you are on a Mac, you must build it yourself. Example I made:

Agreed. It is very quick and easy to arrive at beautiful looking multi-stop gradients in 16bpc mode in Photoline in cubic gradient mode - while in Affinity Designer it is just somewhat awkward, and often required multiple stops to fix things. I truly hope the developers will at least consider additional gradient stop interpolations.

I feel your pain: there is nothing more frustrating than having a tool you've relied on for years discontinued or killed - no matter the circumstances. I am unsure whether it is a good idea to integrate web tools in a DTP application. InDesign attempts this, and the result is abysmal - and it takes a completely different mindset and a LOT of work to keep it updated with current web practices, which are a rapidly moving target. Visual web page building tools always interest me (being a web developer) since I do believe it is possible to create a visual tool that actually writes reasonable, or even good, html and css code. The trouble with both Freeway and Muse, in my opinion, is that they both generate quite terrible html and css code. Currently, I found one visual tool that actually writes quite nice code, and allows the user to base their pages on standard frameworks such as Bootstrap, Foundation, Angular JS, and even the newer Google Materialize. And Wordpress templating is also supported (in the pro WP version). That application is Pinegrow http://pinegrow.com/ It is quite different from Freeway, but it allows for a visual workflow, as well as easy code access. With Atom (free editor) you get real-time bi-directional page and code updating (no saving required!). Most importantly, it is constantly updated (Foundation 6 was supported only a couple of weeks after it was introduced), and the code quality is great. It also supports master pages, components, and other project management tools. The drawback is that you will perhaps need a bit more technical insight in html and css. But I really believe anyone can (should) learn the basics in that regard nowadays. I think Pinegrow gives the designer the best of both worlds.

No, it is definitely not what I meant. Instead of duplicating this discussion here, please refer to https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/photoshops_gradient_editor_needs_an_overhaul Affinity is actually mentioned in that thread as well :-) Gimp and Krita (while I dislike their gradient editors) even offer five different gradient interpolations, and each gradient segment is individually controllable in regards to the interpolation. Try it out for yourself in Photoline, Krita, and Gimp.

I do hope SVG support will be improved in that case. Please see: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/21738-svg-import-remains-problematic/

Unfortunately, when I use a symbol the artefacting remains, since Designer recalculates the live effect for each symbol - including when scaling down. Photoline uses a cached bitmap version of the high resolution one instead, which allows for a reduction or complete removal of artefacts. While symbols are excellent, the code for the 3d and bevel/emboss effect, when custom curves are in use, just has to be given a little bit more attention by the developers. It's almost there.

True, and Photoshop is the worst of them all. To be honest, if I need excellent quality, I create actual 3d objects in Blender, and render the objects at a far higher quality than is possible with the effects in any 2d image editor. But even if I try, I cannot recreate the Photoline workflow in Designer: a large version is often not possible due to the radius limit. And Designer lacks a function to clone a layer, while keeping it live. And then there is the bug of the mesh resolution changing depending on the zoom level. I do hope these things will be resolved at some point. As for the lighting properties: I am not sure I would agree with you on that point, but I guess it isn't that important. As long as the artefacts are reduced to a workable level, it's fine.

Interesting, Photoline on (my seven~eight year old) WIndows machine has no issues editing that file (the actual movement is almost twice as smooth - the recording software caused a slow-down): http://estructor.altervista.org/pl/pl.mp4 But aside from this, I just do not think these EPS files represent real-world examples: the native files would be far lighter.

I found this to be equally frustrating in Photoshop and Illustrator - Photoshop's senior developer considers this to be a non-issue, ridiculously enough! Please observe these two identical gradients in Photoline: A typical three stop radial gradient: white, #3a3e61, white. The left version (linear) is what we get in Photoshop, Illustrator, Affinity Designer, and other applications. The right one is the same gradient, but that gradient is set to a cubic interpolation in Photoline. Notice the soft transition between the center colour stop and the outer two stops. Please consider an option in your gradient editor to assign a cubic interpolation - it makes a huge difference when creating smooth blends with gradients. Also, I found gradient editing to be a bit painful in Affinity Designer - not as painful as Illustrator or (Gods forbid) Photoshop, but Photoline's gradient editor options are user friendlier and more efficient: 1) colours can be picked by right-mouse clicking a stop, or double-clicking a stop; 2) the eliptical and circular gradients are combined in one gradient tool widget in the view; 3) all properties of the gradient can be directly accessed by right-mouse clicking the widget; 4) gradients can be repeated and mirror repeated; 5) starting point and end points can be consistently moved individually, and holding down ALT allows for moving the entire gradient (this works similarly in AD, but is a bit inconsistent depending on the chosen gradient type - for example it is not possible to move the center point of a radial/elliptical gradient in AD separately from the outer stop - both move). The conical gradient is nice to have, though, in AD. And nice to see that AD allow for snapping as well (Photoline's gradients also snap to geometry, and so on) - although in Photoline an arbitrary point of the gradient can be snapped as well. At the very least consider implementing cubic interpolation for gradients in AD. Designers will thank you for this :-)

Both files presented here are rather useless as real-world examples: all the gradients and other elements are deconstructed into their respective separate elements, which only happens when an EPS is written. In a PDF the gradients would be retained, for example, and Designer would have no issues with the flowers file. I am absolutely convinced that if both files would recreated as native files, Young's computer would have far less performance issues. In a nutshell: EPS is a terrible vector format for exchanging the type of content as shown here. This is also the reason why PDF supports gradients natively, since conversion of gradients to individual elements would choke press equipment in the past as well (if very complex such as the flowers). These files say nothing real-world about performance. Let's see that flower file done properly with native gradients.

Ah, yes, I remember that Photoshop GUI proposal. It is fraught with usability problems in my opinion (the layer panel is problematic to say the very least) - although it is nice looking 'eye candy'. At this point I would say a light GUI option is more important to many Affinity users. One other thing that drives me crazy in Affinity Designer (Windows) is that the positioning of dialogs is not respected. I move the curves adjustment dialog to a different position, and the next time I open it: BAM! Back to its original default position. Very frustrating indeed. Does not happen in Photoline or Photoshop, for example. I never noticed it before - only now in Affinity Designer.

The 3d effect results in the same obvious stepping "mesh". The zoom factor again has bearing on the number of divisions. I have attached the PLD version, albeit with an additional 3d effect. I also tend to create virtual layers (instanced layers of the original which update in real-time in Photoline) of the original if I see any artefacting, and create an original which is fairly large, after which I scale down the virtual copy. One more option, which would be nice to have, is the ability to adjust the lighting and shadows with a custom curve. Photoline includes that option, which is pretty cool: And, as you can tell, Photoline does offer more layer effects to play with. The attached version looks like this: circles.zip

Either makes hardly any difference, or that function does not work properly on my system. Still too dark for my taste.

Tried this file in Photoline, Illustrator, and Designer. All work fine with it, although some lagging is expected due to the large amount of anti-aliasing. Editing works fine in all three. In Photoline I can turn off the anti-aliasing, and that does speed up things quite a bit. Moving elements around works best in Photoline. In AD I experience tearing, and in Illustrator CS6 only outlines are used. Windows 7 Pro 64bit, 48GB Ram, old i7 920 @ 3.6ghz. SSD. Nvidia GTX 590. The video card may play an important role too - @Young: I see your Inspiron has a crappy Intel HD Graphics 5500 video chip. That may explain it. Not sure, though: it may also be caused by other software on your machine.

Corel may have reverse-engineered the AI format, or are just outputting the PDF stream and saving it as AI. Most applications read the PDF stream in an AI file, and cannot deal with the older AI format (pre-pdf stream) at all. Even the official Adobe PSD format's documentation is rather lacking (a lot).

True, CQ can be slow. The main advantage of CQ is its quality brush tool that allows the user to control exactly which areas of colour should be preserved in terms of colour quality. And the very nice range of algorithms to down-sample images. Mitchel-Netravali and Catmull-Rom are great for down-sampling images - much better than Lanczos 3 or 8, and Bicubic. The only other image editor offering these two is Photoline

Well, I just exported your graphic as a version without the (admittedly drastic) colour reduction: 192kb - and no manual settings. Still a 14kb extra bandwidth reduction. Reducing to a more sensible 1024 colour reduces the file to 167kb - and in this conservative case no visual difference at all. Why continue to use FS or other tools when CQ gives superior results?