Petar Petrenko

I've been using Affinity Photo ever since the demo, and have grown to love it - I now use it in work in preference over photoshop and I am considering getting Designer too.
 
There is a couple of things I would suggest changing just from my experience however, but these are very much minor things:
-I use the 'alignment centre/middle' tools a lot in my work, it's very convenient having it in the r/click menu, but I would love it if there was a choice that does both at the same time? Saves a couple of clicks.
 
-Square cropping. A lot of what I do in my work is convert images for Facebook use, and this often entails cropping them into a square. Currently, when you select the square crop, it expands the top and bottom (in landscape) out of the picture rather than (what I think is more intuitive) cut the left and right in. I hope that my description makes sense.
 
As I say, these are only very minor things, but I'd find them very handy.
 
Integration with Apple's haptic feedback would also be nice.

Something that is missing from Adobe Illustrator, and would be good in Affinity Designer are Technical Illustration Tools:-
 
 
Isometric Grid, allowing constraint along 30º as well as vertical
Isometric elipses (35º Elipses, with minor axis constrained to Grid Axis)
 

Ability to join circles and ellipses with a tangent line tool, connecting one circle to another with a line.
 

Ability to delete line or curve up to another intersecting line / lines / curves with a key stroke.
 
 1  Draw a line or curve,
 2  Draw two additional lines / curves, both overlapping original at different locations,
 3  Select the middle part of the first line / curve
 4  Press a key to delete the part of the line / curve up to each of the intersecting lines curves.
 5  Option to select multiple lines / curves and perform this to all of them at the same time would be living the dream :-)

Thanks
Gaz
 
3dtp Ltd

This was asked before.
I include a screen capture of all the options available in the Find & Replace and Select dialog from FreeHand.
It was great to have something like this :-)

Thank you Brett for letting us introduced with your work. It is really very nice and you should work in some of the world's famous cartoon studios like Disney, if not.

this was an exercise in metal textures, embossing, and lighting.    
 
 

I wanted to share a project I completed using Affinity Designer. I worked with a client to redesign her interior design business logo. You can view the work in my portfolio by visiting this link.
 
Aundra Skinner Interiors
 
I know my client is happy with her new logo. I would love to hear what others think as well.

Tribute to Audrey Hepburn, Vector (Affinity Designer)
 
http://b-bertuleit.de/butterfly-wing/

It's just a small bird (Kohlmeise, Great tit), but he has made me a little nervous. So many layers I had previously only in some large portrait illustrations. I thought so a bird is easy to draw, but he is not. Respect, little bird ;)
 
 

I note that if I begin to "paint", I get a note telling me that  the Assistant has created a new "raster" layer for me, and that I am now painting on it.
 
But that layer is designated "pixel" in the layer management panel.
 
Of course, "pixel layer" and "raster layer" are reasonable synonyms, but the apparently-arbitrary use of both terms could well confuse the user.
 
Of course, I may be missing something! It's my first day with this wondrous thing.
 
************
 
A related matter is that I am able to add a "layer" or a "pixel layer", using buttons on the layer management panel. And the two kinds of layers are labeled just like the buttons, "layer" or "pixel layer".
 
But is a "layer" (not "pixel layer") a vector layer? If so, should it perhaps be called that? Or is it something else altogether? And if so, is there such a thing as a vector layer? And if so, how do I make one.
 
Again, of course, I may be missing something!
 
Best regards,
 
Doug Kerr
 

All affinity apps share file format and even edit ability when the hosting app doesn't natively support the feature. So if u open a Photo file with Live Filters in Designer, you can edit the live filter even thought Designer doesn't let u apply them. That's VERY Badass and the Devs Rock for such an ingenious feature!

Too often!  

The only disadvantage is that your OS might work a little bit slower. So, I recomend any font manager for temporary instaling fonts.

You can try "Equation Editor" from MS Office, or "MathType" from http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathtype/

I have 2000+ and there is no problem at all.  :)

So, maybe it is not a bad idea to remove bitmap tools out of Designer, vectors tools out of Photo, and text tools from both of them?

Stefan,
 
I think the best solution would be to request that your clients don't put objects that are needed outside of the canvas. I know, it isn't easy to make clients change their ways but I can't see any other way that will to do it. If I was one of your clients, I wouldn't think it was a ridiculous request. 
 
Good luck,
Hokusai

Yes, please combine these.  It's confusing for those of us who move back and forth between Designer and Photo when a tool (unnecessarily) works differently in each.

Regarding colours, I agree -- that's just a different philosophy. The thing which is bothering me though, is that each time you'll want to change the colour, you need to check the mode you're in (fill or outline). And then, depending on the mode, switch it or leave it. This adds some load to brain, and since this is a task you do all the time, it's a huge amount of load :) The Corel and Xara way is more straightforward -- you always get a predictable result when you choose colour, there are no modes. You don't need to check anything.
 
May be I'm wrong in some way, or just biased. Anyway the tool you have now will be very familiar and comfortable for all Illustrator users, which is great.
 
Regarding Xara -- great idea! I never thought anyone would talk to me on this issue, but why not give it a try! Thank you :)

Thank you Miguel and Matt for quick replies! It all works perfectly!
 
Regarding lines -- all depends on the task you do. Probably people who draw illustrations don't need fussing around pixels. But if you do websites and apps like me, this gets very and very important. May be it's out of your focus now. Still there are lots of web and UX designers out there who have to suffer every day in Illustrator and Photoshop. And Affinity, as well as Xara, works very well for them.
 
There's also Sketch on the market. It's very good for creating pixel-perfect interfaces, but it's more a parametric building tool. Contrary to its name, it's pretty bad for sketching and trying out different ideas. So... I think Affinity has great chances for this market :)
 
Regarding the right button -- may be I'm just too Windows old fart, but it's hard for me to imagine life without a right button. And Mac OS generally makes good use of it. There's also another great thing in Xara and Corel Draw -- clicking the colour in the palette with the right mouse button sets the colour for the outline. Actually after getting used to it I never could switch to the Illustrator style, where you have to be aware of the colour mode you are in: outline or fill. I forget the current mode all the time and often set colour of fill instead of outline and vice versa. Very annoying! But I'm not sure this approach could fit in Affinity. Trying to learn the new way of applying colour here :)

I use Adobe Illustrator since Freehand disappeared. After trying Affinity Designer I can say that is an impressive software. Powerful while intuitive. I can open and edit files without problems illustrator and, best of all, my old files saved in Freehand format .FH. It seems that it is possible to have an excellent professional tool without having to stay with empty pockets. Thanks!

The standard units are:
        px, pix, pixels - pixels
        in, ins, inch, inches - inches
        pt , pts, point, points - point
        mm - millimetre
        cm - centimetre
        m - metre
        ft, foot, feet - foot
        yd, yds, yard, yards - yard
        cat, cats - cat
 
        °, ˚, deg,  degs, degree, degrees - degrees
        rad, rads, radian, radians - radians
 
        pc, perc, percent - percentage
        ‰, permille - permille
 
The standard variables are:
            pi Pi, PI ,π - pi
           phi, Phi, PHI, gr, GR, φ - the golden ratio
            root2, rad2, rt2 - the square root of 2
 
The Transform tab supports variables:
        x,  y, w, h, r, s,
        xposition, yposition, width, height, rotation, shear
 
The Document properties supports variables:
       w, h, l, r, t, b,
       spreadwidth, spreadheight, marginleft, marginright, margintop, marginbottom
 
In the 1.5 beta, the text size controls will support variables:
        x, a, c
        xheight, ascent, capheight
 
So "12pt / x" will make the text x-height be 12pt.
 
We don't plan to allow user-defined units. We did intent to support " and ' for inches and feet, but that doesn't seem to be working in the current release. I'll fix it for 1.5 beta.
 

What is obvious & to whom is a ... wait for it ... gray area. 
 
(Somebody had to say it. It might as well be me.)  :lol:

Richard,
 
I understand your desire for this to work with as few configuration hassles as possible, but please keep in mind that the Nik Collection installer was written to automatically install the plug-ins only for two specific applications, Photoshop & Aperture, and the Aperture plugins use a different format that will not work with any other application. Affinity can't do anything about that, just like they cannot do anything about incompatible plug-ins without the cooperation of the developer of those plug-ins.
 
Regarding your last question about finding the Plug-in Search Folders path to the Adobe Photoshop plug-ins folder, it is whatever folder you designated for plugins in Photoshop. If you did not change anything from the defaults, see this Photoshop plugins troubleshooting page for its location (which will vary slightly depending on the version of Photoshop installed).
 
If you are still having problems finding it, you can do a Finder search for folders named "Google."

It is up to Affinity team to see if it is possible and to react accordingly if they find this interesting.

Thank you MattP. Everything is OK.
But, when I zoom at "Actual size" the values on the rulers are shown in progression by 20 (0, 20, 40...) instead by 10. So, it confused me.  :huh: