krollian

Well. You can read this PDF: http://www.freehandforum.org/images/AI_FH_UI_and_Features.pdf And follow 2 twitter accounts: https://twitter.com/FreeHandForum https://twitter.com/adobeuigripes I do not say Illustrator is a bad application. What I said is that has routines or ways of make work done complicated. In FreeHand yo can do a lot of things in the Inspector panel. You can edit all the corners at once or one by one of a squares, for example. You can see this pool of images in Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/krollian/albums/72157645962387176 Indeed, Javier Zarracina says that fire up FreeHand is a Zen experience, because the app is so powerful for draw and has not a lot of panels to do day to day work. I love, for example not to have a lot of colors that I do not actually need in a given document. Say, I use 3 colors. Why I have in the swatches panel so many colors, gradients or so on? Hey. I do not want to say how people have to work. Is my opinion. I had a stationary document that is used to create a new document in FreeHand with the basic colors: CMYK and RGB, White and Black, guides, and bleeds. I do not like elements in my screen that I do not use. See how to apply Pantones or the different tones of tone color in FreeHand: A real pleasure!! ---- And apologies: AD is Affinity Designer, AP is Affinity Photo and AP is Affinity Publisher. Sorry!!

I disagree. Because a good application works well when has a clear mission. Do you want to draw, edit, apply effects (some good effects) an so on? AD Do you want to create or edit a bitmap image? AF Do you want to publish complex documents? AP Do not try to catch all in one app. That is a wrong way. Because one app can not do all well. Imagine the User interface, the windows, and all the panes you can put in one app. And could we talk about updates of a monster app? Indeed, you can go wrong with just an app that tries to do well in one area. Illustrator, for example is tremendously confusing. A lot of panels, so many panels that do a lot of things. Affinity Designer can do the same things faster and simpler than Illustrator. The routines and options are simpler and clever. Is like eat food. You need spoon for soup. And a knife to cut bread. You can not eat soup with a knife... Er well, you can do, but the results are not practical and desirable. I have been involved in DTP since 1983. Do you know about Common Ground, xRes, Canvas? One app that can do all sort of things usually do not work well in any area.

Quick questions: 1. I do not see the bleed of a document. I see it when I export it and choose the options. 2. Why any object is hidden when is placed out of the page? 3- What about this? https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/21035-apply-a-colour-to-a-gray-image Thanks a lot ;)

Uau! Thanks, MEB. I am an old FreeHand user and you had a command called [Cut Contents] in the Edit Menu.

Hi! If I paste inside several elements I know that with Command + clic I can select and edit isolated elements one by one. But I just want how to revert the paste inside. I mean select the group of the elements ”pasted inside” and be able to ”set them free”. Thanks a lot!

Hello I just want if a simple technique that is available in nearly all graphic applications works on AD. I tried, but it does not work as expected. If I place a image in say, a TIFF format in gray mode, usually I can apply it the colour I desire. But in AD I get an undesired effect. See the image. From up to down: 1. Gray image. 2. Colour applied in AD. 3. The result that is OK (made it apart on other application). Thanks so much for a grrrreat app!!

I totally agree, Jim. FreeHand was (and in some way is) the king of vector work. SO simple, so awesome. With 4 panels you can do the 85% of the work, changing everything in no time. The Inspector panel, for example: change any corner of a square. The gradations. the different tones of the same color in a useful panel, replicate forms and multiple elements in no time so so easy... Illustrator: Lot of panels and effects, replicate is a real pain. Change a tone of a simple colour a real adventure for a new user. Just try to convert the 4 corners selected of a square at the same time to round corners: You must to convert 3, and then, select the last point and change to round corner. A lot of common and simple techniques are so complicated and intrincated that I think that the engineers behind Illustrator are real sadic and mad or crazy people. Here I remember other one: Why Illustrator need to draw all all the time? Please! redraw or show selected what I have selected. No other thing. And remember: to select a element in the artboard zoom, zoom, zoom, zoooooom. With the view at 400% or more you can select the element you want to select. SO here are the parody of this things: http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/post/95263642574/illustrator-smart-guide-snap-accuracy-changes For me Illustrator is Frustrator from Hell's Cave software.

You can navigate to FreeHand Forum and ask why Adobe killed FreeHand and if you do not have, enough you can smile visiting Adobe gripes: http://freehandforum.org http://adobegripes.tumblr.com So, will Adobe open its proprietary format? I am afraid that the answer will be a big NO. Some more lessons about the mood at Adobe putting difficulties to FreeHand to improve support of PDF format in FreeHand: http://www.faq-mac.com/2012/03/entrevista-con-el-creador-de-freehand-james-von-ehr

So the actual state is that version 1.5 beta is so advanced in unleashing a lot of big things that the time between the release of 1.4.2 and 1.5 will be very short. Keep on the good work, guys! BTW, I do not like a lot of versions containing little changes and new features. I think is best to release 4 incremental versions or so along the year. Or maybe not exactly that way. Maybe if a very good feature is ready and that means a version 1.6.8 becomes a 1.7 version in a time of just a week between the old and the new version it will be OK. :D

Well. I Contact sheet as in Photoshop will be very good “as is”. But that is an interesting option.

When I create a polygon with some opacity or gradient and try to use it as a container when I paste inside a polygon or image it does not work. I need to create 2 polygons: One for transparency and other as a container.

Vectorize image is one of the basic features to be in a mature version of Affinity Designer. Great!

Hi! I think AD will be more productive if it can manage text columns. When there is a lot of text and styles the obvious way to do is to switch to Affinity Publisher. I mean that AD must to be able to manage text boxes in a better way when the texts are not too much long. Just in the way FreeHand manage to do. Thanks and keep the good products rolling!

rui_mac: You say: Speaking of that... FreeHand had an ability to do one thing that was sooooooo useful. You could define Tints (percentages) of a color. Let's say you define a color X. Then you create, for example, a color that is 35% of color X. You can apply the Tint color as any other color. And, if you change the color X, the Tint changes accordingly. This is specially useful for Spot colors (but it works with any type of color) since when we are creating layouts with solid colors we usually use several shades of the same Spot colors. --------- I know this question very well. I have worked lots and lots of hours in prepress with FreeHand since 3.1 version to MX version. It was so simple to edit colors in just one trip to the menu to get this things done: - To name all colors that a document has but are not defined in the color pane. That way, all the colors that contain the document are defined and named in the colors pane. - Delete all unused colors. And yes. FreeHand has a pane for gradients (or tones) of a given color defined in colors pane (including steps from 90 to 10% predefined) So, so simple... See the “tones pane” (I do not know how in english version is defined) at the bottom left of this image. Is from my flickr account: https://www.flickr.com/photos/krollian/14773300344/in/set-72157645962387176

I never understood the local colors thing.

Awesome answer. We call it pedagogy. And is a must for all. Because the common sense is the few common of the senses. That is the attitude. I, as graphic designer and power user of macs since 1992, am fed up of not logical solutions. I know that every decision is a compromise, but this kind of things must have to listen a very important voice: the voice of the productivity of a person that spend a lot of hours drawing and drawing and drawing. If you improve the the way that a operation or routine is executed we will be happier. FreeHand always has this philosophy. The application was conceived and developed by designers to designers. That's the naked true. The proof is the image of this answer attached (In spanish language). This afternoon I needed to join a group of simple objects. I have a collection of CDs containing 150.000 clip-art EPSs. Well this file has several silhouettes. Well, really there are the silhouettes and a duplicate behind of the same silhouettes without fill and a stroke of a certain thickness. I do not understand and never will understand the obsession of Illustrator to make groups by himself. If you have groups, then be ready to suffer, because you must ungroup all the time to be able to manipulate any object in the screen. Why, oh why Illustrator says you can not join several figures and even Illustrator shows a window that says: You must use the Join Command when the window that appears is the result of apply the Join Command. Sorry by the rude language, but this is a joke from the real hell. Or using another words a Big S*it. Imagine all the day with things like this. I hate hate hate Illustrator!!! If I can not do certain operations who writes the code an the UX of Illustrator? I professional pranker? The Joker of Batman? Are you joking at me? The same thing in Affinity Designer (or Freehand): Select the figures -> Join. Work Done!!!! Ladies and Gentleman: incredible. I can work. I can breathe, I can keep on working, I can go to the next step of the design. My work is not interrupted with silly things. I am HAPPY. So, to all the team behind Serif Affinity Designer: We love you. We love you so much... Thanks for make the graphic designers, illustrators, artists of drawing all around the world, happy people that not have to be worried about the internals of a application. They just want to do their job. Why Adobe keep on make things worse and worse? Deep mystery for me... Maybe because as the second software company behind Microsoft is right now in hands of financial executives nor artists. Art and customer satisfaction is behind the money. Bad for them... All interested people in this things know about its monopolistic practices. http://www.enrichdesign.com/fhblog/index.php?m=02&y=12&entry=entry120210-103505 In spanish: http://www.faq-mac.com/noticias/entrevista-creador-freehand-james-von-ehr/47510 Again: thank you very much. Really :)

The famous text on a circle question was in the famous too document that FreeFreeHand forum made to put clear the advantages of FreeHand versus Illustrator: http://www.freehandforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=919

Mmmm... ¡Yes! Read this thread: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/1670-text-to-path/?hl=%2Btext+%2Bpath The roadmap is upon us! As a historical and loyal user of FreeHand is famous the trick: Write a text. Return. Write a text. Create a Circle. Insert the text on the circle. Text at top and text at the bottom tied at the circle following its path in 2 seconds.

Read this thread: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/1060-to-the-basics-2-what-about-bleed/?hl=%2Bthe+%2Bbasics I think until AD will be able to support bleeds, you can do very easy the trick. If you need to design with a format, say, of 148x210 mm with bleeds, design the format at 154x216. Then put file in the image box of your publishing application.

Hello I would like to improve a way to make a pseudo effect in 3D a lá FreeHand. The example is if I use the square tool with rounded squares, I would like to get a kind of isometric effect like the image I show. Actually is a little tricky to get done. OK. I see this thread and maybe the distortions tools include the effect I mentioned: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/1957-blend-object-along-curve/?hl=text&p=7960

Added ability to replace images in-place. A large number of users, including many ex-Freehand users, wanted Linked images. This will be an Affinity Publisher feature - but we have added a simple "Replace Image" / "Replace Embedded Document" button in the context-toolbar. This should carry people over until Publisher is done. ---- Very good work. But when a image is replaced, the name of the original images dos not change in the tool bar. If you replace the image again dos not work in any form.

Again, We must say something about the way FreeHand does this stuff. The Classic option of put text around a path, inside a closed polygon or around a circle. So you write Affinity + Return + Designer and you can Flow around a circle the text. The result is the word Affinity in the top of the circle and the word Designer in the bottom. And the 2 words flow the circle's shape. Now you can make more changes: edit the text, paste a image that will flow with the text, move the point of the origin and that way you can drag the text moving it to adjust the way you desire.

Here you have an example of a mockup of a Weather App: https://www.behance.net/gallery/19946545/iPhone-6-weather-app

Hey, do you remember Adobe Streamline? Illustrator had eaten it. Tracing is a very good feature when you need an unique “aspect” of roughness. I used to work with scanned images or printed logos, for example, and get the material in a hurry when you do not need a lot of precision on the fidelity compared with the original. And is a very good option to raster a photograph or image and reduce the colors to any desired number. All converted to vectors and with the number of color or tones that you desire.

OK, thanks. Thank you very very much. I will keep a big eye on the roadmap thread of this forum. I think that all the things that will you put on Affinity Design in the final release are very very big, necessary and in a good number. Lot of stuff, men!!! So I thought that the bleeds it will be available in one of those betas that you release every now and then... Anyway, ladys and gentleman, this thread is a MUST READ: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/842-affinity-designer-feature-roadmap/?hl=roadmap Pro Printing -Publishing PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, PDF/X-4 -PDF Image compression -Trim and Bleed control -Overprint control -Printer marks including crop, registration, colour bars and Info -Pantone, Spot and Registration colours -Linked/Global colours -Tints of colours -Named colours and palette list mode -Font sub-setting control -Phase II transparency flattener Illustration & Design -Mesh fill tool -Mesh warp/distort tool -Text on a path -Knife tool -Line alignment -Calligraphic line styles -Symbols -Export slices previews with actual export data -Pages and Art-boards -Text features including Text Styles, Bullets and Numbering -Dashed line styles -Knockout groups Usability -Pasteboard design area -Replicate/Blend -Guides and grid improvements -User categories in the media browser for shapes and objects -Customisable shortcut keys