dizeyner

You're going to get tired of me saying this..but..."in fireworks I can" make a gradient that goes from a solid color to no color. Or rather I can set either of the two colors to whatever transparency I want. One end can be 100% and other 0% for example or anything in between. This is useful for so many things I cant even tell you. Im fiddling with affinity designer and gradient as Im porting things from FW to AF. but I do not see a way to set the second color to no color or even to 0 transparency. Im assuming this is operator error on my part. I swear Im looking at it and clicking on everything. but it looks like the gradient requires two colors and transparency applies to the entire object not to one color of the gradient or even one end of the gradient. Also with fireworks you can add little marker that lets you add other colors to a gradient between the two main colors. I do not see that ability in affinity. If it can do this can someone point me to a tutorial, and if not let me know as Id like to add this as a request for a future ability. In addition controlling the gradient seems a lot harder in FW. In FW I grab the gradient handle--move it to adjust the gradient where I want it and can also use the gradient menu for additional control or features of a gradient.You could pull this handle (sometimes more than one handle depending on type of gradient) far, far, far out beyond the object and thereby do a lot more than a simple gradient. I see sliders in the gradient menu but not a control handle(s). Possible I just don't know how to get the handle? Or its really only the sliders in the gradient menu?

I dont understand how that would feather just the edge. It seems to apply to the whole image selected. Can you explain?

DOH! Thanks guys. Gaussian is working for the most part. In fireworks we had gaussian blur and feather. Gaussian was more for blurring across the entire image as opposed to feathering an edge. Looks like in AF gaussian works like feather. At least on vectors!

Im in the process of trying to convert my fireworks files over to affinity. This means I have to redo a lot of things like gradients and feathering. I cant find a way in affinity to feather the edges of my vectors. is it called something else in Affinity designer? This is something I use a LOT to soften edges. Aliasing doesnt go far enough. thats like one or two pixels. My feathering can go as high as 300 pixels depending on size of the vector and the blend I need. alternate way to do this? Ive uploaded a file which shows a small section of one of the images i have to rework into affinity. It shows a ring which relys on gradients and feathering to create shadows and highlights on my metal ring. Its how I "paint" for lack of a better way to describe it. As noted, I rely heavily on feathering. This image is one of the simplest that I hope demonstrates what Im trying to recreate without having to relearn some other method. Its bad enough, have to say, that Im losing a lot of work that has to be recreated other ways. Really hoping this can be done. Note the brown ring is feathered inside the ring and outside the ring. The blue sphere is feathered around the outside. I have a lot of irregular shaped vectors that are feathered in addition to using gradients on the same vector. These dont use a gradient. But much of my work does use both on same bit of vector. I use these to build up an image in the same way you might build up brush strokes on a painting to get a particular effect. Was desperate enough to go back to Adobe but alas they are no longer affordable. Its over 50 dollars a month if you need illustrator and photoshop. There is nothing in their application setup that can do any of what fireworks could do with regard to effects etc. Nothing. Mind boggling.

Wow you went the xtra mile to show me that tip. I think that would work for smaller projects. Not idea for my really big ones. But good in a pinch. thank you.

Thank you firstdefence. I would not have found that without you!

I have the document set for pixels not points but some things such as stroke is still using points not pixels. is there a way to get fonts and stroke to use pixels not points?

Your response is actually quite offensive. I should just shut up and wait and see what they come up with? instead of diligently trying to explain what I and others actually mean when we ask for pages and master elements? We should all just shut up and not ask the developers for new features? My attempts to clarify are merely rants? Thats great customer service. Sincerely hope you do not represent this company. Because that would be very telling indeed.

I don't think you understood a single thing I said. I for one wasn't talking about master pages for websites. Nor was I talking about browsers and user agents and servers. I think you jumped ahead of the key element of this topic. Which was design productivity. The act of creating web design and application design long before it becomes an actual website, banner ad or iphone application.

Ive just found a program that does what I need it to do with regard to pages, layers, artboards and master elements. This is not a replacement for fireworks or affinity. Im putting the link in for the affinity developers because I do not think we all on the same page with regard to what web designers are hoping for in affinity designer. Its the simplest way I know to show that print designer needs are not the same as web designers needs. NOTE: while the application Im linking to has some essential productivity tools, like pages it does NOT rival affinity for creation of vectors or editing pre-existing web design collateral. This is not me recommending anyone leave affinity. this is me trying as hard as I can to get affinity to understand we are NOT ASKING FOR defunct productivity that is not standard. This is me trying to show that what we are asking for IS standard. And that we are asking for pages that assist in web productivity. Personally I do not need all the wireframing and prefab buttons that usually come with these kinds of web prototype tools. I am not asking that affinity create a web prototyping tool. If I wanted a web prototyping tool Id have one. There are quite a few of them out there. They all have pages, master elements and art boards. None of them can create like fireworks did, or affinity does or illustrator does. Illustrator and affinity are alike at the moment. Neither of them provides web designers with tools we need for efficient production. Both of them offer superior creation tools like bezier curves and gaussian blur. I chose affinity because it gives me HOPE that Ill get what I need. And Im anti adobe at the moment. Plus never loved illustrator because it caters to print. Not at all web centric. I want my pages, my layers. my artboards and my ability to define a master element that can be applied to a master page. and of course symbols. We got the artboards with affinity. yay. we got the symbols. yay. but affinity designer only half the way where I need it to be. https://www.sketchapp.com/ Sketch can do some of what affinity does. but INMHO not as well. Not by a long shot. IF sketch could do what affinity does with regard to creating all my design elements Id jump ship. But it cant and I do not think it ever will. Its not geared toward hybrid people like me who do more than website layout or screens for iphones. Its limited. So hoping affinity folks don't think my link to sketch app is me being disloyal. Im with affinity designer. Its just a huge struggle to use it because it cant do some pretty basic productivity things. Give me pages and master elements or master pages or both. Then Im happy to have lost fireworks and left adobe in the dust.

I wish I could get my hands on a fireworks demo version. I would love to subscribe to just the latest fireworks and get all my files saved out. Alas, in order to use the latest fireworks you have to subscribe to every single one of adobes products. Its quite expensive. And they did it that way on purpose. They know that our newer macs cant run fireworks 4 or 5 consistently. In fact I can open files in both. but I cant save or export anything in 5. I have to go back to 4 and then because the files were created in 5 I lose on export from fw4. That double cross from adobe is why Im placing such high hopes on affinity. Maybe I can never open all my old files and convert them to affinity but if going forward I can even get back the lost productivity of pages and ability to mimic master page elements as we had in fireworks...that would be IT.

Ben we are not interested in global standards. we are interested in efficient productivity. We had it. Adobe removed it because they wanted us to subscribe to MULTIPLE products. We now have to create our vector design elements on one program and go to another web layout application to lay out a web page. that is a ridiculous and painful work flow. What we had was productivity that a VAST majority of web designers depended upon and is now lost. Forget about fireworks proprietary file formats and focus on what we are actually asking for. PAGES. Not side by side pages of a printed book layout application. BUT pages that mimic how one views a website or flips between screens on a phone. End users do not view web pages side by side or the two faces of a banner ad side by side. And when we proof our work neither do we. We want master pages as well so that we can control common elements across all those pages. If I decide the company logo should be on the left instead of the right I should be able to change that across all pages and or artboards. I cant do half of what I could do before in your program. I think we are asking you to be have your standards and give us a productivity and efficiency that print designers have. BUT to understand that we are not print. So viewing web pages side by side instead of clicking through pages and replacing one page with the other the way an end user would is not gonna work. web is not print. I can not judge my banner add by viewing the first screen and the second screen side by side. I need to see that transition the same way an end user would. Print is not king. WEB is. web does not want prints productivity work flo. web has its own.

Im was not actually just talking just about master pages. though now that you mention master pages Im adding that to what I want as well as "stackable pages" or as another user (Mithferion) indicated in another thread "side by side" vs "one in place of the former one". Side by side is for print and does not help me with web page layouts and iterations of web banner ads etc. Not to mention all my other non-print crazy projects and ideas. I do not need a print publication application. I need a versatile vector application program that lets me design and check not only design elements but the UI/UX across proposed web pages and cell phone screens. So I can preview the way a user would preview the finished project. BUT I do not want my vector program limited to website and cell phone layouts. I want versatile creativity so that I do not have to hop from app to app to app the way we now have to do with adobe and its greedy subscriptions.

haakoo you do not show your file to a customer. You show them an end result. There is a HUGE difference between productivity and end product. Fixx, pages laid out next to each other have nothing to do with web design productivity. Web is not print. Im hard pressed to explain it as well as others can. When you flip a page in a book the pages are side by side. when you flip though pages in a website or a phone or anything like that one view instantly replaces the other. This is valuable when you are checking to see that elements are where they belong precisely from web page to web page or screen to screen on a phone. NOTHING must shift and its better to catch that before design goes into production. You do not see a minute shift in a common element in two pages side by side.

Ive thought of leaving the artboards stacked on top of one another as I noted that sometimes the new one pops onto the current one instead of next to it. Not sure what I did to make that happen but it did. And also thought about using layers as stacked pages. Its messy. And tedious in both instances as you have to turn off everything you do not want to see. Its fine if you have two or three things but I very often have as many as 10 to 22. IN addition there does not seem to be a way to lock a layer or an artboard. So grabbing ALL on one artboard or layer and moving anything could cause real problems for anything underneath. And even if you can lock them...that would be great...but even if you could then again thats tedious. Especially when you have one comment element on all that you need to move on 22 pages. no. I think they need perhaps a master page system and ability to stack pages and just work on the stack youve chosen for current. Same productivity as pages in fireworks. Though I hate to even mention fireworks because then people get all hung up on proprietary issues. Im not saying please open my fireworks file and have it save the same way. Im saying please invent the same kind of productivity. At this point I no longer care if I cant one step port my fireworks. I just want to be able to work as efficiently and productively in affinity as I do in other programs. Master pages, stacked pages (for lack of a better term), artboards. Locking a layer, and artboard or a page. I need all that!

Its very ugly to select an object and have the grid all over it. I would like an option to have grid in the background and not all over the bits and pieces Im working on. While I can see why that would be helpful some of the time for some people for me its just annoying. So, at the very least an option to have grid in background only. thank you

Its very ugly to select an object and have the grid all over it. I would like an option to have grid in the background and not all over the bits and pieces Im working on. While I can see why that would be helpful some of the time for some people for me its just annoying. So, at the very least an option to have grid in background only. thank you

Im trying to start a new web document. my item is 512x512. --I select web. --I select custom because I do not want a document the size of a computer screen. --I Select artboard because I will make multiple iterations and might also make some smaller buttons on smaller artboards --I then proceed to change the document size to 512. the moment I type in 512 the setting changes itself from web to device. How do I get a custom page sized for whatever it is I want to make for the WEB if the menu keeps resetting itself to device? And after that the only options apply to ipads and iphones. None of which applies to what Im doing.

I chose web. When I added an artboard it changed itself to print. And changed pixels to points. While I was able to change back to pixels, Im not able to change the document back to web. The option is greyed out and the menu for that does not function. Maybe I did something wrong in the setup? How to I get my document for web and allow for multiple artboards?

Yes please and agreed. Having a huge problem with grids myself. Having to reset every single new document is a real headache. If anyone knows how to make the grid stay BEHIND all my objects and always ON in the background I would really love to know. Im stumped and I know its my fault. But I can't figure it out because affinity is so different than everything else. Not to mention often uses unfamiliar terms. Want to love this program but having a hard time switching over to it.

Im having a couple of problems with grids. I have a distinct way I prefer to use grids and Im not able to figure out how to get affinity to do what I want. In photoshop and fireworks etc when I select to view grid it stays behind all my design elements just as I prefer. Affinity seems to prefer to obliterate all my design elements by putting the grid over top of everything. This is counter productive when Im working with semi transparent items and need to see what they look like. In addition to using grid for placement its how I test the level of transparency I want to have. I also find it more than irritating that whenever I open a new document the grid is not present. Not only is it not present but when I go in and AGAIN have to elect to show grid it has again reset itself to that single pixel grid. Which must be operator error on my part but I cant figure it out. and since I blather on Ill say this is exactly what I want: 1. change grid default to what I want it to be (and have that remain as default until I say otherwise) 2. have application default to show grid ON not off (AND remember my last settings for grid) 3. have grid be background not foreground (this is required for my work) 4. have grid not disappear when I go to another artboard (this is vital when I am comparing elements on multiple artboards against one another) Images attached: first image is how things are in fireworks and photoshop. Just the way I want them. Second image is how affinity is doing things. Need to get affinity to do what I want for the grids please. Thanks for any help.

Since I dont have stacked pages Ive go to adapt my method of productivity. No idea how to do this with artboards. Let me first explain how Id do it in fireworks then perhaps someone can tell me how to adapt with artboard. Create 3 pages in fireworks. Each page is a different color. each page has its own layers of unique items. but also shared items. Say for example a logo. In fireworks I place it in the location I want it on one page. then I go to the layer where the logo exists and select the pages I want to use this item. I can assign it to all or just a few pages I want to share it to. With affinity I would create three artboards and then drag a copy of the logo over to every one of the arboards I want it to be on. and then if I dont want it to show Id turn it off. so instead of one logo displaying where I want it to be I have three logos on three pages. In addition Id have to set up guides and turn snapping on to get that logo to sit in the exact same place on each artboard. Three times the work of fireworks pages. In addition if there are any elements which have a specific spacing relationship to the logo I have to mind the guides and the snapping and place the elements for each and every artboard. I gather I could create a symbol? such that if I want the same logo on every page but want to update it with say a change of color and have it update on every board that might work. However, I dont think I can duplicate that symbol and swap it out for the first logo without having to go through the entire process of laying out the logo on all three artboards all over again. correct? Im hoping that there is a simpler way to do what Im trying to do. similar items on multiple artboards, laid down once and assigned to the same location on multiple artboards? as I would have done with fireworks pages and layers working together? I dont see its possible but Im not expert with this tool so hoping I just need a clue. thanks for any advice. Another example: go to https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/ and scroll down until you see Artboards with no limits. Note the image is of multiple arboards. Presumably of a phone layout. At the top of each one is a common element. the time and battery charge level. In fireworks this would be a master element for lack of a better term. I would place it on a layer and tell it to display on multiple pages. If I wanted to update that by say making the battery level green instead of black it would then update across all pages. I would not have had to physically apply it to every page I created. when I created a page it would have that shared item already on it. Big time saver. How do you do that with artboards in affinity? Do I have to grab all the elements on an artboard and then say create artboard from selected? And then delete anything I do not want? But then doesnt that then create another item in layers? SO instead of ONE battery level in layers Id end up with one for every single page I have? Thats pretty hard to manage. easier way?

taharvey you said it perfectly. this is exactly what we mean when we say we want pages. Sometimes its about a website layout. Sometimes its about multiple iterations of a single design. it could be a suite of buttons. It could be application design. it could be 12 astrological signs. It could be finger nail polish design. The need for pages is about productivity. And artboards side by side simply do not work. I like to think of them as stackable pages with elements that can be shared and or turned off or on as needed. Adobe supposedly has a tool for creating web page layout. but it falls far short of the ways that I used fireworks. And clearly shows adobe didnt understand how fireworks was being used for productivity. why would I want to go into illustrator to create vectors and then have to go into another program for page layout and in neither case having the capability of stacking items to multiple pages and the ease of flipping through those pages. updating a vector and having it play across all the pages. Or turning it off for those that do not need it. It boggles the mind how no one understands how we used fireworks more efficiently and more productively than anything thats out there now. so high five and hope anyone gets the message. Maybe take your topic and make it a POLL? but be sure to add your explanation of why artboards just do not cut the mustard.

When some designers talk about pages they are referring to the pages for page layout in a publishing application. Page layout for a book. When former fireworks (and freehand) users ask for pages we are not talking about pages for laying out a book. We are talking about a productivity feature. In the old days to make 12 astrology signs Id have 12 photoshop files or 12 illustrator files. Or I might have 12 artboards but it was not the kind of productivity we came to rely on with fireworks and the former macromedia freehand. Fireworks offered layers and stacked pages accessed via a menu panel. I could have the 12 characters one on each page all in one file. With a click I could click through each astro sign checking for exact placement. I could have 12 colors on multiple layers. I could share all of those layers with all 12 pages or I could choose to share just one. I would turn them off and on and compare colors against all the signs in each page. I could have a two logos on two layers. I could share these to all the pages. turn off one. save out all the pages. turn off the other turn on the second one save out all the pages and offer up 24 options to the client. Everything remaining editable in ONE file. IF the client loved one thing but not another I could go back into the ONE file and turn off the thing the client doid not want. try another iteration and save all those pages out all over again. ONE button click. Far more productive than opening 12 files and adjusting every single one. pages. we want pages. And layers that can be shared at will with all or some pages. Not side by side pages as found in a publishing program used for page layout for books. Pages in a vector art program where multiple iterations of a single design or a style of button or more is required. Share how you use pages in fireworks. It will help the developers to understand what we need. We dont need fireworks proprietary anything. What we need is for you to reinvent a method of productivity. And I for one will not care if it cant import old fireworks projects. That would be a plus but Ill settle for the productivity with new projects. Its the method and the increased productivity that counts. Make it so each page with its layers could be saved out to a PSD. Not that I care about photoshop anymore but a lot of people still using it.