deeds

[M] key for Rectangle, Ellipse, Rounded Rectangle cycling is ridiculous. What does it stand for "Make"? And it's nowhere near where the left hand hovers on a keyboard, meaning the eyes must go down to the keyboard to find it for the left hand, or eyes off screen AND the right hand must come off the mouse/trackpad/tablet to operate the M key. And it needs cycling to get to anything other than rectangle. So, here's a suggestion: E = Ellipse R = Rectangle RR = Rounded Rectangle S = Shapes, Triangle actually, but more on this in a moment S also pops up a list of shapes directly adjacent the mouse for easy, rapid selection, no need to race over to the side menu and click, scroll down, click again. Otherwise, these sequential keys enable a full pick of the shapes, via follow up presses, like so: SD = Diamond ST = Trapezoid SG = polyGon // starts at 6 sided. SGGG = 8 sided. [s, Shift + GG = 4 sided] etc. SS = Star SSS = Double SStar SSQ = Star sQuared SA = Arrow SD = Donut // SDDD = 3 ringed Donut SDS = Donut Sliced // Which the 'Pie' Tool actually is because it's got an inner radius SES = Ellipse Segment // Come on... That's what it is. Segment is an ugly word SEC = Ellipse Cresent // kind of like the obscuring they do. SF = Fluffy cloud // Fluffiness starts at 12. SFFF = 15 Fluffs. Any use of [shift+F] reduces fluffiness SRT = Rectangle Callout SRRT = Rectangle Rounded Callout SET = Ellipse Callout STD = Tear Drop // You and I both know they cause tears. SH = Heart Now, I know you want more: So, for speed of use, and consistency, I suggest. SC = Circle SQ = sQuare SQR = sQuare Rounded SR = Rectangle SRR = Rectangle Rounded SW = Wave // Sine Wave, The more presses of WWWWW the more wave cycles in the line. SAW = sAW // Again, more WWWWs = more cycles of the wave

I haven't changed a thing, just started a new document to record my activities to show this to you... and now it works. Phantom bug, yippee!!!

I'm talking about a future world, in which there's only masking, hence my editing to get it right in terms of lexicon. A transform linked mask acts like a parent to its children, which it both masks and transforms in accordance with any and all transforms applied to the mask. A freeform mask simply masks its children, never impacting their transforms when moved, rotated, scaled, skewed, replaced, etc. The process of discernment between the two is as simple as an icon in the Layer panel and one in the HUD. Switching between them should be as simply as a shortcut, or clicking the link/unlink icon in the HUD or Layer Manager.

I've just realised something. What I was doing is called "CLIPPING" in the lexicon of AD, not masking. Your docs are pretty atrocious on this front, too. This should point out that it's required to drag the object onto the NAME of the layer, not the thumbnail of the layer, and that dragging onto the thumbnail of a layer does masking, not clipping. All in all, I think all three, cropping, clipping and masking could be simplified into one paradigm that serves all purposes. Either it's a transform linked mask (this is clipping), or it's a freely transformable mask, that which both cropping and masking are.

How do I transform masks without transforming the content?

This was never about me, it was always about the royal me. ;)

Seems to me that if you added the ability to control a mask's transforms without impacting it's content's transform, you'd have the same functionality as the Crop Tool is to the Draw Persona, with one huge advantage: There'd no longer be the conflicting conventions of Masking being represented as happening above a Layer (and the layer coming through the mask) vs Cropping (as it is now) being presented as something happening "beneath" the layer, when it's actually operating much like a mask in that it's sitting above and preventing content outside of itself from being seen. So how to do this with Masking? It looks like the [alt/option] key is going unused when editing the transforms of a Mask (Size, Scale, Rotation) ... except for position, in which case it is being used, for duplicate functionality. Almost a perfect solution, but not quite. Perhaps... I have the solution! Right now, [command + drag] is also doing duplication of an object. Leave that, and give up the [alt + drag] to mask editing independent of content and the problem is 100% solved.

Firstly, let me start by saying two enormous positives about your Gaussian Blur: 1. It's a fucking sexy blur. And the Preserve Edges feature being right there.. THANK YOU!!!! 2. The logarithmic scaling (or whatever it is) you have is damn near perfect. Now, the problem. If working with a big image, the fact that it's constantly trying to update, live, becomes a little problematic because it reduces the accuracy a user can find/feel/flow to with the slider. There are two solutions. Adobe's way: Which is to put in a slight delay after any and all slider moment before attempting to do the blurring. Affinity's way, + a Shortcut to temporarily restrain the Live Update of the Blur processing, at which point it behaves like Adobe's, with a little extra time before attempting to blur. Perhaps 0.25 of a second more delay. Might only need to be 0.1 or 0.2 of a second. Won't know until we feel it. Now, where to put such a shortcut? I strongly suggest the CapsLOCK key, as this is what's used in After Effects to "power down" live updates, and it makes nearly perfect sense, because it can be activated and then deactivated, and the signal can be received by the app.

The (fx) icon is already there. Just turn it into a switch for turning all effects on and off on a single click, and make it open the Effects Panel on a double click. Clicking on it and sliding down through a bunch of layers with FX on should turn them all off as they're slid over. Doing the same over FX that are turned off should turn them on.

+10, and aspect ratio awareness and presets in the crop tool, too. So it can be scaled in whatever desired ratio the user has. e.g. 16:9, 4:3, 16:10, 5:4, etc. Selling point? This is great for working with content for video, and UI design.

I can't seem to get cropping to the edges of a cropped object to work. Perhaps I'm missing how to do this. It's not apparent how it works, if it is there.

As per the title. It's normally [C]. Until such time as there's a better alternative, this might work.

For absolutely everything. And the ability to save them to a file, so can then import them into another machine. kthnxbye

Andy Summer's Field of Dreams wrote: "Remember - some workflows can use a fraction of the capability of even AD - never mind Illustrator. Or do you mean *your* workflow?" Your passive aggression has been noted. You can do better, I'm sure. When will keyboard shortcut customisation be implemented?

The context is important. The context remains: The cost of AD is not just $50, it’s also the time it takes to learn it, discern its strengths, weaknesses and appropriateness, and then incorporate it into workflows. This secondary cost is (at least) an order of magnitude more than the sticker price. Yet this secondary price CAN be reduced. ​Reducing the secondary costs of AD will greatly increase sales.

The cost of AD is not just $50, it’s also the time it takes to learn it, discern its strengths, weaknesses and appropriateness, and then incorporate it into workflows. This secondary cost is (at least) an order of magnitude more than the sticker price. Yet this secondary price CAN be reduced. ​Reducing the secondary costs of AD will greatly increase sales. Everything I’ve subsequently suggested aims at either pulling this secondary price down, or making more compelling reasons to pay this secondary price. And… I’ve not yet expressed anything more complex than the most very basic of common sense, nor claimed anything more than common knowledge. If that’s a revelation to you, or in some way needs the support of an exposed pulpit to be preached from so you might consider it, then I can’t help you because you have cognition and discernment issues and problems in need of addressing. In very rough order of their expression in this thread, those matters of common sense and references to common knowledge were: 1. No staff, representatives and certainly not the boss of Affinity should be engaging with anyone questioning a price of $50 for what is a truly staggering piece of software for that price. 2. Nobody from Serif/Affinity should ever be “leading the choir” or in any other way inciting their faithful to tag anyone else in the forum. 3. I’ve reminded folks that this is a public facing forum, but that’s not fully registered, so let me try to be more specific: members of the media have access to it. 4. Adobe is a monopoly, more so on the Mac than on the PC, despite their software running more slowly on the Mac. MUCH more slowly in some cases. 5. Monopolies don’t “play fair”. They can and will do anything within their power to control “THEIR” market, as that’s what they believe it to be. 6. Markets for tools of creativity constitute the entire read of opinion from professional users, those in the media, and last (and least) the faithful in forums. 7. There is no single compelling reason to incorporate AD into a professional workflow at this moment. // The pen and node editing is closest. 8. AD needs to gain a foothold in the market, and climb from there. A foothold is a killer, absolutely compelling, single purpose reason to use AD in a pro workflow. 9. Workflow, speed, creative flow and fluidity of operation is the major concern of professionals - deep consideration should be given to these matters. 10. The utmost care should be given to making learning, adoption and using AD seamless within the really real world of AI dominance on the Mac. 11. Adobe has made AI and their packages incredibly accessible, there is no longer any room to compete on price, it must be on the points above. One more time… all of the above are common sense, and common knowledge. It’s a surprise to me when anyone would suggest otherwise, and I tend to attempt to enlighten those ignorant of common sense and in denial of common knowledge. If any of that comes across as arrogance, “an air of superiority”, negativity, pessimism or whatever else you might deem it (whilst finding it objectionable) the problem is not with me, it’s you. Because you’re failing at common sense, and over time that’s gonna cost you exponentially more than your Adobe subscription. Help yourself out. Take a step back and be a little objective about software, tools, creativity, the markets, media, new mediums and their impacts and the very large shadow Adobe casts over all of this.

Until this post I wasn't sure about your sense of humour. I stand corrected. You're a laugh riot!

+1

Use the forum thread tools to find other threads I've started and contributed to before you go off halfcocked.

Perhaps a recap is in order: Someone expressed concern about the price, that’s the start of the thread. One of the people at Affinity responded with this bullshit response about "fair", to which I responded with this: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4596-why-so-expensive/?p=22116 That’s a warning, if you need it translated, Andy. Don’t quibble the small shit, and certainly don’t do it in public. Someone questioning $50 for this app is suffering all sorts of entitlement issues. Leave them be. That clearer for you? Worse, Tony comes off as having decided what’s fair based on his collective viewpoint of the people he knows via the forum. That’s bordering on an attempt to steer peer group pressure, and some have taken it that way, and rallied behind him. That just looks bad to everyone wondering about the nature of the community and Affinity, forever more, in this forum. The forum you’re purporting to have some purpose for. If that purpose is to make Affinity look as draconian and aloof as Adobe, well, you’re well on your way. Let the yapping dogs yap their support for the team. You should be able to drive out everyone but the loyalists puppy dogs in a couple more months of this kind of carry on. At that point you can turn Affinity use into the circle jerk you seem to desire. Whoopee. But whilst you’re reaching for that “Lifetime Ban” button, please continue reading. Just in case you’re not a complete muppet. My response to the question of the real price (time to become productive and creative in a new piece of software) being a far greater concern than $50, was this: “As such the ONLY consideration and benchmark is what pro users need to be creative and productive. And pro users don't need a taste of all features, just a subset of those that make their lives faster than working in the competing Adobe product.” And the fastest way to empower users is a good array of sensible and well thought out shortcuts. Here, again, Affinity seems to have some pretty grave shortcomings. Shortcuts are how you communicate your (Affinity’s) consideration of your customers. Even more so than the process of activating and using the tools through the GUI, because they give a profound insight into your understanding, or lack their off, of the user processes of doing things with your software. And Shortcuts are often a very personal thing based on work habits, reach, memory, cognitive connections, past experiences, etc etc. And custom shortcuts are how customers shape their experience to the way they’d like it. If they can. So, before anything else, I’d suggest you add user customisable shortcuts to both AD and AP. Pronto. For the love of all that is fast creativity. And allow them to save their custom shortcut themes to an external location so that they may be shared with others. That way someone can make a “Just like AI” setup, immediately, and you’ll have a lot more happy customers spending a lot more time doing a lot more with a lot less effort, and explaining to others why they should invest their expensive time in learning to use AD. Which then creates more people positively talking about AD, which creates more users, which creates more people talking positively about AD… etc etc.. I think you can see the point. I FUCKING HOPE SO!!! So great shortcuts, lexicon, consideration of user workflows and the ability to add customised shortcuts are… you know… SHORTCUTS! To happy, productive users, and MORE SALES!!! See that? So let’s take a moment to see what can be discerned from the Affinity Team’s consideration of their users via their ‘shortcut’ provisions and selections. Sub-selection components of an object have been named “Nodes”, and their Tool for editing them the “Node” Tool. This is a bit odd as Node is a word more commonly associated with whole things than parts of things. Be that as it may, it looks as though the first iterations of AD used the [N] key to activate the Node Editing Tool. Fortunately someone has seen the light, and changed this to [A] so it’s at least in line with the most commonly known shortcut for sub-selection editing. Adobe, in their infinite wisdom, call this the Direct Selection Tool, so I suppose we should at least be grateful Affinity didn’t call it that. So there’s a clear indication that folks at Affinity do, after some prodding, find the energy to fight their own desires to be different for the sake of being different… or whatever other motivations see them coming up with alternative user paradigms for no apparent reason. However, the Help File Shortcut Appendix still has this Node Editing Tool’s ‘shortcut’ listed as [N] . I’ve only just noticed this, because it never occurred to me to ever try the [N] key. From the first moment I started using AD, the very first thing I did was hit the [V] key to see what that did, then the [A] key, followed by the SpaceBar, then the [esc] key. I don’t know about you, but every time I try a new drawing alternative I seek this out to see if they’re doing things the “Adobe way”, or one of the other lesser known ways of handling selection, editing and panning. I’m willing to bet there were a few people grumbling about the [N] key someways back, and someone at Affinity figured they might as well eat a little humble pie and goto the established convention of Illustrator and Photoshop for this. Well done. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. If you’re going to use the established conventions of selection, editing and view control from Adobe’s litany of bullshit (but strongly established) shortcuts, then why not embrace them throughout, wherever and whenever they’re appropriate? For example, colour swapping. You’ve used X to switch between Fill and Outline, and basically copied the entire swatch systems of Adobe Illustrator, so why not the [shift + X] shortcut? And while I’m asking questions about user consideration, what’s up with the Eyedropper needing a double action to activate? All of the above indicates, and prior injections of commentary seem to come from a staff and mindset at Affinity that’s got no affinity with the user experiences of using the app, and even less concern for the obvious transitions and interflow of use between AI and AD. That doesn’t bode well. So, ban me. You’ll only save me the time I was wasting considering how to make Affinity more affined with the prior experiences dominant in its new users. Good luck.

Define "properly constructive", please.

Why are very few top level shortcuts used? As far as I can tell, the following keys do nothing: 1,2,3,4,5 Q,W,E,R S,D,F C Yet they all fall easily to hand.

AND.... [shift + X] combo, PLEASE!!! And, while you’re at it, think about what key you’d like to use to deactivate the currently selected colour. In Illustrator this is the [/] key, but it’s a horrid shortcut, miles away from the left hand’s home position and requires using the right hand most of the time. So I’d be inclined to think that if: [X] = Change edit focus from Outline to Fill to Outline etc & [shift + X] = Swap Fill with Outline then [alt + X] = Deactivate/Activate currently selected Colour (Fill or Outline)

This particular shortcut is a legacy thing from Photoshop. And it's a horrid shortcut, from an abhorrently shortsighted company when it comes to shortcuts and usability. AD’s Shortcuts need a rethink so they're actually... well.. SHORTCUTS! [command + J] requires taking the right hand off the mouse/trackpad (or leaving the screen/tablet with the stylus hand) in order to operate it. It is, therefore, no longer a shortcut, because the very first thing anyone is going to want to do with a duplicated object is to somehow transform it... 90% of the time with the mouse/trackpad/stylus. So if you persist with this ridiculous shortcut you make [command + C, V] into a MUCH faster (but lesser) operation than using the Duplicate function. See, that's ridiculous. [command + D] is the most logical option for a Duplicate function. 'D' fits nicely, also, into the holy triumphant of standardised cut/copy/paste [command + (X & C & V)] as it sits above and in the gap between X&C. // I know, you're going to suggest that should be used for Deselect, I'd strongly suggest there's no need for a Deselect shortcut key beyond using Escape, especially when that's already serving that purpose. Which brings up the disparity between the Help file’s information on Shortcuts and the actual shortcuts. [shift + command + D] is listed as the shortcut for Deselect. It’s not, it’s just [command + D], pressing the suggested [shift + command + D] shortcut results in an error beep, and no action.

Way to miss the point(s).