Patchwork

I hate to say it, but I'm still having performance issues using the pen tool in creating my designs. It seems to take several seconds between points as I lay them down for this or that shape, which can be very frustrating when you're otherwise used to working quickly. Is there anything I can do to make it flow in real time? Most of my work is dependent on placing and manipulating points with the pen tool to create shapes, so I really need this to work effectively. I hope there might be some help for this. Also, is there some way I can undo the zooming in when I so much as select a single object? I don't want to zoom in on it, because I need to tweak each shape to fit in with the larger image I'm working on. Zooming way in on it instantly is of no use to me at all. Is there an options buried somewhere in preferences to make it stop triggering zoom every time I select an object? I tried looking but didn't see one. My computer specs are: MacOS Sierra iMac Retina 5k 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5 8 GB 1867 MHz DDR3 AMD Radeon R9 M380 2048 MB The lagging with the pen tool is the main thing. I haven't been able to resolve it for months. Posted about this back in October, and even after having it suggested to download the new beta....well....I'm all up to date now, and it's still happening, sadly. :( I hope someone can help me figure this out this time!!!

I've been able to only operate using the beta versions of Affinity Designer for about as long as I've had the app. I tried just now firing up my regular app. version, and it's so laggy, I can't get any momentum going. Points won't highlight when I click on them, handles won't turn up so I can adjust shapes, it takes forever to select anything, it's just a mess and making it impossible to enjoy, so...I'm downloading the latest beta version again. The app version is 1.5.1 and I'm using it on an iMac Retina 5k, running Sierra. Is there an update to the app. I'm missing, perhaps? Please let me know if there's anything that can be done. Thanks!!

I'm just starting to use the new App Store version, and while trying to draw with the pen tool, it keeps trying to force me to use guides and snapping points. I can't find in View where to disable that. Please let me know, because it won't let me lay down a point where I need it to. It keeps wanting me to snap it somewhere else! Thanks in advance!

Another PLEASE DO THIS vote from me. I'm having a devil of a time blending some fine highlights right now... :(

This is really disappointing. Could it be some kind of conflict between my Wacom settings and Designer? I never had this problem with my old MacBook Pro, strangely. I'm using a brand new iMac, and there's not only horrible lag when trying to draw a line at any thickness, and even with fill only, and not only that, there seems to be some kind of spillover drag, too. As if the pen is way too sensitive, and it overshoots the line as I try to end it. I'd use the pen tool, but I'm trying for more of a loose, sketchy, not so perfect line shape, so this is really distracting to me. The more slowly I try to draw, I lose the natural flow of the sketchy line I need to make, so it's just not working. I'm using an Intuos3 tablet, if that helps any. The canvas size isn't any bigger than any I've used before, either...Not sure what's going on. What can I do to help reduce the lag? I'm not getting any spinning wheels, but it's just slowwwwwww.....Hope someone might have some advice asap! Happy New Year to everyone, btw! :) ONE MORE THING: Is there some way I can remap a Japanese key so that I can use command+ again to zoom in? I'm now getting used to a Japanese keyboard, and the plus requires shift to make it zoom in (though I don't have this problem when using other programs). Is it possible to remap shortcuts through Designer? Thanks!!!

Hey all! I've already been a Design user for about a year now, and absolutely love the top quality performance! I love it so much, I'm thinking I'd like to buy Photo to go with it, but I'm at a crossroads. I'm a character designer, and I'm wondering if Photo has enough brushes to be able to create and paint characters in varying styles in it. I've downloaded a few brushes for Design, but since I want to go completely pixel with some character art, I'm wondering if there are enough brushes around to really have some serious fun with it. Pressure sensitive ink brushes? Soft, rich colored pencils for sketching rough underdrawing? Big watercolor brushes for background color without too much lag (I always got lots of lag in PS trying to use large watercolor brushes). Textured canvas? All kinds of line thicknesses? Is canvas rotation possible, and can it sync up with a rotation dial on an Intuos tablet? I need that desperately if I'm planning to draw directly into the computer, and that's one of my goals with this, since I'm about to upgrade my Mac to a more suitable monitor size for that. I will either buy this, or Clip Studio Paint. I'd rather go with this, though, so any info and maybe some examples you can point me to to convince me would be great! I'm looking to buy within the next week, so the sooner the better! :) Thanks to anyone who might be able to help!

I don't get the feeling the reports I've made about problems I've found have had much attention paid to them (I guess because the way I use the program isn't like the majority of other users?), but has anyone done any double checking as to whether the scale stroke setting problem has been fixed? I can't check it anymore because it's embarrassing to keep submitting work to a client, only to have them ask me to fix the stroke scale, because it's blown up to some crazy random width when they opened the SVG file in Illustrator...and then have them ask me why I'm not using Illustrator... To be clearer, a thick outline is required on the character designs I submit. I set it at 45 for all characters, and always have the scale stroke setting checked. Always. It doesn't work, though, so I end up having to outline the stroke, instead, unfortunately, which takes more time. This problem also messes up any shapes I create within the design and put a stroke line around, which can really distort the finished image if somebody opens the file up on any computer that's not my own. I really hope you'll fix this (along with creating a live paint style tool), so I can speak of Affinity Designer proudly to my clients. The impression they seem to have at this point, sadly, is that it's an inferior program I'm using because I'm just being cheap. :( I don't want to have to be forced to go back to Illustrator. I don't believe at all in Adobe's rental system garbage, and don't want to support it. I need a program that can do what I need it to do, though, so unfortunately, I could end up stuck if tools that would help people in the creation of their linear illustrations aren't fine tuned enough to be reliable. I do realize that something about the stroke scaling might have to do with my older MacBook Pro...though I'm not sure to what extent. I should be getting a new Mac next month, will hopefully be able to transfer my app purchase of Affinity Designer over to it, and we'll see if that feature works any better for me then. I'm really grateful to all of you developers for creating a fantastic alternative to Adobe Illustrator! I think it's wonderful, and will continue to support it as best I can. This post isn't meant to smear at all (I hope nobody's getting that impression)! I just hope you'll soon decide to prioritize a few things that character designers, for instance, might find valuable for our linear art that requires outlining, adjusting stroke width, and easily filling in areas bounded by ink lines (rather than going through all the extra time it takes to draw shapes behind the ink lines after completing the line work). Some folks really rely heavily on that live paint feature on a daily basis in our jobs! It just saves so much time! I hope you'll please consider putting it higher on the priority list! I'm downloading the latest update now, and am looking forward to checking it out. :)

....and now I've just tried to open it and it said the app is damaged and needs to be thrown in the trash...I've already made it replace the previous beta, but don't have time to go back and download the first beta again, so I'll have to use the regular version for today until I have time. :( That's too bad. I'm on a 2009 MacBookPro, using El Capitan.

Excellent! I'll be busy trying it out this morning! The only major problem I've been having with it so far is that it doesn't seem to like to remember when I outline strokes. Like it won't obey the command sometimes, and I'll send my file out to my supervisor in SVG form, and have it sent back because the outline has bloated up on his machine. Come to think of it, I guess that also means that the Scale Stroke to match the object doesn't work very well, either. I have it set, but again...I've had to start outlining strokes so they don't bloat up on other people's commputers....Would it be possible to fix that soon? Other than that, is there a shortcut to collapse a series of grouped layers, rather than having to scroll to the top of the layers column to collapse it? It would really save time. The images I'm working on end up made up of hundreds of pieces that need specific grouping, so it would really be helpful to be able to collapse groupings in a single keystroke. :) Oh, and now that reminds me! The object/layer lock doesn't work! Even if I lock a layer down, the object on the layer gets picked up if I copy or try to move them all at once in a group! It gets really frustrating when I'm struggling to select a tiny shape amongst several others that are layered tightly together, and can't get it. My usual way around that is to lock down all the shapes around the one I want to select so I can finally pick it up, but often, the surrounding pieces won't stay locked, and I end up picking it up with the rest! Thanks for all of your hard work! I'm really enjoying working with the beta!

UNION just paralyzed my computer to the point where after 10 minutes waiting for it to put together fat outlines around a bunch of grapes, I had to force restart the whole computer. It would be great to be able to implement some kind of QUIT on some of these functions for when they develop fatal errors, or whatever causes it to stall. I've had this happen to me with Union a few times now. I'm using an older MacBook Pro, so I don't know if that'll be a huge part of it, but none of the rest of the app locks up my computer like this. Otherwise, I'm enjoying the beta version so far.

Ooh, thanks for letting me know about that! Just downloaded it, and happy to see it works on my sad little dinosaur MacBook Pro! :D Tomorrow morning I'll be testing it out as I continue trying to get through this mad dash work craziness!

I would kill to have this feature right now. I'm working on a heavy load for the next 3 weeks, with an art director who insists on changing up colors constantly. It's agonizing and wastes so much time to have to go in by hand and pick each shape to change the colors on, especially on highly detailed, multi-character sheets. This, along with a paint bucket for closed shapes would make projects go by so much more quickly! I hope you might be able to add these features soon!!

Awww, say it ain't so, MEB!!! Most of my way of working with vector drawings is to build line art from shapes and then fill them in! I am fiercely devoted to promoting Affinity Designer, but having to draw colored shapes behind the line work takes so much time, and it would be so convenient if you had something similar to the live paint bucket! I spent the afternoon drawing this fan art thing, and want to have it ready for Halloween, but oh man, the work ahead of me where drawing the color shapes comes in!!!...I think it might be wine o'clock (if not WHINE o'clock!)! ;) I really hope you can come up with a way to do this some day soon! Still and all - I persevere! :)

Thank you both! I'll send it along, and also try what MEB said to do. :)

I do a lot of character art, and I build thick line weight shape by shape with the pen tool, mostly. It makes for about a billion layers I have to use the Geometry features on to get under control by the end of it all. I've found that Designer's Geometry functions are pretty similar to AI's, but am having trouble in a few areas. I'll just ask this one question for now, here, since it's the most pressing to me. I've included images of what I've got. All I'm trying to do is get the white part cut out of the wheel so I'll be able to see through to whatever's behind it. I know that I can use subtract when I first put two circles together to punch out that middle hole, but I didn't think about that as I was going along building this section, and missed the chance. Now, all the Dividing and Subtracting in the world isn't helping me get that shape inside the wheel punched out. I've included a photo of my layers so you can see that the wheel elements are on separate layers from all the spokes, front foot, and other details. The only trouble area is that the back foot has already been cut into the white shape I want to punch out. Is there any way I can Intersect or Divide to get rid of this thing?? Sorry if I'm not asking properly. I almost never see examples of people using these programs with lines as individual shapes. Thanks so much in advance if you can help!!

I don't have any plans for it yet, but I don't know if you'd want to risk "moving" it. I put moving in quotes because 4 months after I bought this machine, the hard drive died. For no reason at all. I've never had that happen to me with a Mac, and was really shocked. When I took it to the Apple Store to have it fixed, I was told "never move it"...y'know...a LAPTOP. So much for being portable, and all that. XD I haven't had problems with it since, but the superdrive on it sucks, too. I have to shove a disc in there 4 or 5 times to get it to accept it. Then, the CD or DVD will just randomly pop out at any given moment, destroying most attempts to burn things or watch movies. That's sucked since about my 3rd year owning this machine, and since I didn't renew AppleCare, I didn't bother getting it fixed. I just get by with it for all of its dysfunction. This is the first time I've ever had problems with a Mac that weren't age related. Really disappointing. Would you still want it with all these problems?...and that's not even counting shipping cost. T_T

Budget is DEFINITELY a concern!! XD Thanks!

I hope someone can help me out with this! I love my MacBook Pro, but it's 6 years old now, and will need to be replaced as soon as possible. I've decided I need a larger screen, and have no use for the portability of a laptop anymore, so I want to go back to a desktop Mac. I've been glimpsing around here and there that the current iMac is perfectly fine for graphic design and illustration. Is that true? Does anyone else run your Affinity programs on an iMac? If so, what are your specs? Is there any lag at all? Beach balls? Even the slightest weakness, please post about here! Affinity Designer works fine on this old MBP, but of course, it's getting slower and slower, and I start losing the ability to drag layers around when things start getting too layer-heavy in a file. I really need some good advice from every day users on this, as I don't really trust the wonderful intentions of anyone being paid by Apple to tell me what will work best, and I haven't really been able to find any forum topics discussing this anywhere else. I'd love to hear from you guys on the Affinity development team! What would you recommend? I'm a professional illustrator, but I work freelance, so investing in something like a Mac Pro or any other super industrial strength Mac is way outside my range. If an iMac will do the trick, I'd love to know exactly which specs you'd recommend for optimum speed! Sounds like, as long as I pick the right model, everything I need will be onboard for doing illustration work. I just need to know which! :) Thanks so much in advance for any help!

This is a great question, but I'm not sure if mine is the same, or how I can fix it. I hope someone can help ASAP, as I'm finishing up a design for a client, but every time I save the file, close it, then open it again, the brush is gone. The layer is still there, but there's nothing in it, and I have to import the image from my desktop again and create the image brush and tweak it all over again. I won't close the file again until I can get an answer, as I'm really getting frustrated with having to rework it again and again. Please help! To start with, I followed the video tutorial about how to save image brushes. I saved the image to my desktop as a .jpg because otherwise it kept saving with a black background, and I needed it to be transparent. So the file on my desktop is just called "arch.jpg". How do I finish transforming this into a full fledged brush that will stay in my brushes collection? Also, and I'm assuming it's because I saved it as a .jpg, I can't get it to the color I want it to be. The range is very limited RGB web safe colors. Is there some way I can make another version of the same brush to be able to use CMYK coloring? Or just expand stroke on it or do something to make the brush (I'm using the brush as a circular border, so it can be an object) an object I can color any way I want to, rather than having to rely on the actual brush to turn up in my list whenever I shut down the app (since I can't seem to get it to do that just now)?

Holy crap, this is the closest I've gotten to the feel of a genuine Col-Erase pencil in my hand! Thank you so much for creating and sharing these brushes! Just wow!!! :D

I'm doing a logo design right now, which includes a few shapes with stroke outlines on them. I'm having trouble converting the entire mess into a single shape, to duplicate and stick behind the original so I can add a stroke outline to the outer edge of the entire design. As soon as I try to select all of the layers, the Geometry options disappear. I thought this was a problem because I didn't expand all of the strokes into shapes, so I tried that, but the Geometry options still didn't turn up. Is there a step I'm missing that might help me get my group of shapes mashed into one large shape I can stick an outline around the back of? I apologize if this was covered elsewhere, I didn't see it while searching the topics. Thanks!!!

Today is the day! I will be buying this fantastic program once I can get out to the conbini and hoard up some iTunes cards! :D I introduced myself months ago, but haven't been around for a while. I'm back, and I have not abandoned you, Affinity Designer developers! Looking forward to jumping back into the fray within just a few hours now! Got lots of ideas, and now I can finally follow through on them.

I didn't get a chance to try it - my trial already ran out!! I'll have to wait until I buy the whole thing to get it to work. Not sure when I'll be able to, but I hope soon!

Oh gee dee it. That Other Vector Program became so ingrained in me through the years, I forgot what a lot of things were called - only knew how to DO them, so please bear with me. I have a question I desperately need answered, but I forget what the technique is technically called... Say I've created a spider web by making 3 rings and a bunch of lines coming from the center. I've got them more or less on different layers. I've grouped all those lines together. NOW I need to punch the button that will cut up and join all those lines to make separate shapes so I can fill in different colors throughout the web, like a mosaic. ...Which is the option I need to choose here to be able to cut up all those lines and make them into the separate shapes? I've tried monkeying with the Add, Subtract, Intersect, Combine, etc, but nothing seems to be doing it. Could one of you fine folks please let me know where I'm going wrong with this?....It's such a simple thing, really, and for whatever reason, I'm messing even IT up. XD Thanks in advance!!!!

Oh, so there IS an intro thread! :) I kind of introduced myself on the Show Your Work thread, so I'll just make this short. I worked in animation and fashion logo and design in Los Angeles for many years, but now I'm just a crafter and hobbyist living in Japan. I'm also an Adobe defector. Don't like the idea of having to rent their software at all, so I'm actively looking for ways to never have to use them again. Started using Adobe software at Illustrator 7 and Photoshop 4. For pixels nowadays, I've been using Clip Studio Paint until I find something I like better. Tried using Inkscape a few times and hated it, and I found out about this program through doing a frustrated search on best vector illustration programs for Mac. I'm currently using the trial version of the program to design a quilt, but look forward to eventually buying the whole thing! Please don't stop supporting older Macs! I'm currently running on a 2009 MacBookPro, and don't know when I'll be able to upgrade. Really loving the program so far!