mwcs

Hello Serif. In 2014 you mentioned a "Mesh warp/distort tool" in your roadmap.  How's that coming along? It's September 2022 and we still need a non-destructive vector distort tool please.  

When is Transform tool coming to ADesigner? We really need a tool to warp or perspective our graphics/text as vectors, (no rasterized)

I seem to have made a mistake of switching to Affinity products a while ago with not enough research. Now I keep reading 5 years old forum threads requesting some of the most basic features present in vector graphic software, yet half a decade later still missing from Affinity Designer. Is Gimp with its horrendous UI really the only reasonable choice against Adobe scamming practices?  This is extremely disappointing.

It would be very nice if you could collapse all layers at once in the layers panel. Layers become very difficult to work with when you have many of them since selecting objects expands the parent layer, so you have to scroll back up and manually collapse them yourself.
Perhaps you could have it so that layers are only expanded for as long as the item within it is selected? That way, after deselecting an object, the layer expansion goes back to its previous state, which is ether expanded or collapsed. Am I making any sense?

Knife tool????...

Its on the road map.

The question is not so much whether Affinity Designer is still developed (it obviously is) but whether Serif still has any kind of ambition of delivering a viable Adobe Illustrator competitor, and are devoting the development resources needed to do that.
The answer to that question once appeared to be yes, about five years ago. Today, I think the answer is pretty clearly no.
When AD launched back in 2014, its biggest shortcomings versus the industry leader were acknowledged and actively pursued. Artboards were at the top of the list, and indeed, were one of AD 1.4's marquee features the next year, proudly marked off the now-infamous 1.x roadmap. 
Then Affinity Photo happened, and AD development slowed to a trickle. Not a standstill – updates such as improvements to the pen tool continued to show up a few times a year. But by the time Affinity Publisher came around, the original Designer roadmap had not only been abandoned, but deleted from the site. Six years after Affinity Designer 1.0, most of the software's original ambition remains unrealized. The improvements that continue to ship every now and then are certainly welcome, but are a far cry from what was once planned.
The intended use for AD has clearly shifted. Once positioned as a tool for working professionals, it's now aimed at hobbyists and people who need vector software for side projects. And as someone who uses AD for side projects, it works well for that! If I were doing vector illustration in my day job, though, there's no way I'd choose AD over Illustrator. The time savings of features like shape blends, vector art brushes, envelope distorts, scatter/pattern brushes, isolation mode, and more would have me (however grudgingly) paying Adobe's stupid subscription fee.
Of course, Adobe has teams upon teams of developers, product managers, UX designers, and QAs working on Illustrator. Serif, as best I can tell, has one person working on Affinity Designer. But I guess that's not a bad fit – Serif's side project is the tool I use for my own side projects.

I agree Serif has every right to include or exclude features based on their plans and priorities, but they are also beholden to their customers or else they will fail to exist. Serif risks their product being viewed as an amateur alternative if universally understood expectations for professional software are not met sooner than later.
Everyone feels their tool preferences are "essential" and I know not everyone agrees on what is truly necessary to make Affinity products stand on their own.
I think many would agree with my perspective, that properly functioning boolean operations, true vector brushes and text warp are a few examples of basic necessities for a wide majority of designers.
How can anyone create professional designs if the boolean operations create dirty geometry and parts go missing? How limiting is it that only raster brushes can be unique? Why has text warp been available in Photo but not Designer for years?
I'm excited about the little new features like being able to port your brushes to any installed version of the apps on different devices automatically... that is cool - but it feels like we're getting excited about new fancy rims on a car and ignoring the fact that we've never installed brakes. I'd rather a car with brakes and the other essentials over one that has fancy rims and no brakes.....
Yeah the car looks nice with the new rims, but it can never leave the driveway safely... I'd much rather we get the car drive-able first and then worry about making it look flashy.
I'm using an outdated version of Adobe CS6 Illustrator to do my vector work.... I have to paste anything i do in Designer over to Illustrator to merge vectors so they are not a mess. I rely on Illustrator or Vectorstyler to make blends and make text warps. If I want to fill in sections of negative space in a design, I have to also paste it in illustrator to do a live fill or use a blob tool or use the merge tool with a fill behind the negative space to cookie-cutter it. I care WAY more about basic function than I do about the bells and whistles.
 

Well, here is what I have been thinking lately about some of the major missing features in the Affinity line.
Since Serif is getting very close to the next version 2.0 release of the entire line, isn't it understandable that those missing features will probably debut in the 2.0 upgrades? 
I have Mac, Win and iOS versions of the apps and will be happy to buy the version 2.0s if those features are available. But if they aren't?  Then Serif is going to have a hard time convincing their users to upgrade to version 2.0 of Designer aren't they?? They have to know this, if some sort of bitmap to vector conversion feature is available, if some sort of vector distortion/envelope feature is available, etc, then that will greatly boost sales for a 2.0 of Designer.
That is my hope anyway.
 

New little set. Playing again.

Wood Styles.afstyles.zip

We already have a contour tool in the back-end, and it's interactive - but it's just not finished properly at the moment... expect one to arrive one day soon!

I want to make it easy for Affinity developers to identify and prioritise the most popular feature requests. After looking around this website for a while, I cannot see an obvious way of doing this. I suggest adding three big buttons at the top, namely:
"1. see feature roadmap"       "2. search feature requests"      "3. add new feature request"     
Also, within a specific feature request post, the developers of this forum should make it clear how to vote for a feature. Is this currently done through clicking the heart button?
Here's an example:
I want to find out how to "select and copy just a segment of a path"
I do a general search If I can't find how to do it or if it's not possible - I search "feature roadmap" If it's not there, I search "requests" If it's not already listed, I add the request If many vote for it, and it is feasible, it gets added to the roadmap If there is already a system for this, please let me know the correct way of doing it.

We will add support for additional file formats over time and DXF is a good candidate.
 
Many thanks,
TonyB.

Please add an offset path tool/capability in AD and Publisher to inset a second, stroked path inside an irregularly shaped object. This is invaluable for logo creation.
thanks,
lettergothic

And, here a video showing the new rotate-on-plane feature of the Move tool.  A new shape is created into a grid, using the "Edit In Grid Plane" mode.  Then, with the mode on, any rotations maintain the grid plane perspective.
 
RotateOnPlane.mov
 

And, here is a video glimpse of some of the improvements coming to the Node tool.
 
NodeTool.mov
 

Thought I'd give you a glimpse of some of the features that will be coming in 1.7.
 
Please note - this thread is only for discussing the features detailed here.  Postings related to other feature requests should be posted on their own thread (else they will get deleted from this thread).
 
We have spent considerable time overhauling the internals of some of our main tools.  It's been a labour of love, but it's going to open up greater possibilities for our core tool set.
 
The core tools are:
- Move tool
- Pen tool
- Node tool
- Shape creation tools
- Text tools
- Fill and Transparency tools
- Place Image tool
- Vector Crop tool
 
So, what improvements can be expected?
 
- Advanced grid editing on spread (move the grid origin and edit it's axis with a handy new widget, with full snapping of course)
- Guides can be created and moved in all the core tools, plus a toggle to turn guide editing off
- Move the artboard ruler origin (with editing toggle)
- Create objects and shapes into an arbitrary grid
- Rotate and flip objects in grid planes (great for people working in isometric), plus an option to rotate shapes in plane using the Move tool
- The Move tool will now allow you to cycle though selection boxes, including regular boxes and grid plane aligned boxes
- Snapping performance improvements
 

maybe I'm missing it, but is there an option to open a JPEG, or bitmap image
and trace,or convert it to a vector file for further editing? If not there should be one, it would be a great option. even if it had only a few modes like black and white, and 5 color
it would make me convince me to convert from adobe illustrator

The ability to bring in a raster image and trace into vector would be a good feature. This is something I often use in Illustrator and would love to see in Affinity, ideally with more control. 
 
While switching tools between personas is great, only being able to rasterize a vector and not the reverse is troublesome. 

Good morning everybody,
I am finding another thing that seems to be missing from Designer which I use an awful lot in CorelDRAW and which is kind worrying to me unless maybe I'm missing something. In Corel I have a blend tool. I believe Illustrator has the same thing though I don't use Illustrator. It allows me to create two objects and blend them together. This is particularly useful for creating interesting drop shadows and so on. Is there really no way to do this in Designer? I'm attaching a screenshot to show you what I mean. Corel allows me to choose which aspects of each object interact with one another.
Hopefully there is some way of doing this or it will be added as it seems like a very important tool to me.
Thanks very much and let me know!
Phil

Huh, yeah, a tool like this and i would buy Designer too. A "morphing tool" would be a really reason to have booth apps.
 
But this tool should also create an "export layer" with all between-steps inside, placed vertically below each other, each step in a "size-placeholder" container.
The biggest object determines the "container-size", all other "between steps must have the same container size, independingly from its real (object) size.
Lets say i morph serif-text in 24p to a non-serif text (other letters) in 12p and back to a phat text in eg 36p - in this case the 36p (plus a small frame) must be the size of the container in vertically and the longest text in horizontally and the size of this BIGGEST STRETCH is the placeholder-container for  EACH single-step!
And yeah, this tool should be able to morph more complicated stuff than rectangle to circle;-) 
It must not be 100% smooth/perfect, in the opposite, our eyes are sluggish, often 5-10 steps are enough, like the dock-animation or simple gif-stunts....
 
 
 
 

I am surprised (no, amazed!) this is not already part of PNG export: it is an absolutely essential option for web, mobile and game design.

Hi, would it be possible to integrate pngquant (https://pngquant.org) for exporting PNG files? It allows to create 8 bit, indexed PNGs but with full 8 bit alpha channel. Files are thus very small but still retain full transparency and great quality (in most cases) through indexing and dithering.
 
 

Hello,
 
I'm sorely missing the feature to export palettized PNG-8 with alpha from Affinity Designer for web development. I can export PNG-24 with alpha or PNG-8 with binary (on or off) transparency, but not PNG-8 using a palette in which the colors of the palette have alpha values attached. This is a feature that's supported by both the standalone tool ImageAlpha (converts PNG-24 to PNG-8 with alpha) and by Photoshop's Export dialog that you get by right-clicking layers.
 
I'm using PNG-8 with alpha for image size optimization, especially for spritesheets and graphics that would not quite work as SVG.
 
At the moment my workflow is: Export PNG-24, open each PNG in ImageAlpha, manually adjust the settings there, save.
I have to repeat this in parts every time I change a graphic, cancelling the benefits continuous export would provide me with.
 
Please add this feature
Cheers
-- Alina
 
ImageAlpha is using "pngquant and pngnq-s9 and alpha-channel-aware posterizer."
ImageAlpha: https://pngmini.com

Over eager left studio is definitely a good description! Still happening in AD for me too...