[How to restore the UI (or at least panels)?]

Was looking in the wrong place - just found it.

 

View - Studio - Reset Studio.  Phew..

[How to restore the UI (or at least panels)?]

I seem to have done something where I "unparked" the layer menu so it started to float.  Clicking on the (X) button turned out to be a bad idea because now that whole panel has vanished.  Ditto for history.  Argh.

 

Is there any way I can do an UI reset so everything is back in the place it was before?  I don't seem to find much data about restoring panels in the manual :(.

[Upside down path text?]

You're a star - I missed that.  I worked with the arrows but it appears I must have overlooked something (the baseline adjuster, which is actually the most logical way of going about it).

 

I obviously have to watch that video again and then experiment with it.

 

Thanks for that!

[Setting a document/canvas background colour?]

Thanks for the reply.  

 

Oh well, workaround it is..

 

Originally I also had a question what the AD layer properties were for (in the layer ctrl-click menu), but I think I've just discovered it - it changes the object highlighting.  Can't find any reference to it in the menu, nor what other effects it may have.

[Upside down path text?]

Hi Seneca, thanks for the reply.

 

Yes, I actually spent quite some time working through quite a large amount of tutorials (that list is very helpful - now I can tick them off :) ).

 

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell my question is not addressed.  At the moment you can only get your text upside down if you're on the "other" side of any path - I presume that is because it uses the path as font baseline whereas it's a bit of a guess what a user considers the "top" of a font, which probably explains why this facility doesn't exist.  I can see that completely go wrong with languages with many diacriticals such as Thai, so on rethinking this it is maybe a problem worth avoiding altogether :).

 

It's not a major issue as I found a way around it - do the two structures once, then group and clone where applicable.  Works :).

[Upside down path text?]

I've now done some work with path text and it's quite usable once you get used to how it works.

 

However, one of the issues I found is that text "radiates out" on circles which means that you have readable text on the top, and ʇxǝʇ uʍop ǝpᴉsdn (upside down text) at the bottom if you stay on the outside.

 

I know this is probably a UI nightmare, but it would be cool if it was possible to insert some sort of switch in text so that ʇxǝʇ uʍop ǝpᴉsdn would turn 180º at that point and became readable text instead.  At the moment, making a button that has both upright top text and upright bottom text requires two separate instances of path text.

 

There is, of course, every chance that I've missed something and you already have this somewhere.  In that case, apologies and please tell me where it's hiding :).

 

Cheers, P

[Rescale document to print format, both AD and AP]

It has the width to handle it (up to A3+, which is bigger) but it needs to be defined as a custom size and there is no way to define any non-standard sizes as borderless.

 

However, I noticed that AD and AP document sizes do not appear to be drawn from the printer driver.  For instance, the 4"x6" format of my printer does not appear, and any borderless A4 or A3 is also venturing onto alien territory.

 

I'll have to check what happens when I specify a custom format.  There appears to be some paper recycling coming up.. :P

[Setting a document/canvas background colour?]

Hi,

 

I frequently need to create fairly light coloured designs, and that is a royal pain* on a transparent or white background, especially if parts of what I do need transparency.

 

At present I draw a page-size box, colour it and lock it in the background (to stop it from being selected), but this feels a kludge - did I miss something?  Is there an alternative to "white" for a non-transparent background?

 

Is there a way in which I can set an alternative colour for the drawing background?  Even just changing the grey boxes in the white-and-grey boxes that represent a transparent background would be a help.  The idea is thus to define an alternative for what remains transparent in export.

 

Cheers, P

 

* presidential pain for nations without royalty :)

[I would like inches instead of pixels in dialogue box. I think in inches.]

Hi David,

 

Can't you just set the document units at the time of creation or later in File - Document setup, or doesn't that work?

 

 

 

Kind regards, P

[New Automatic Palette]

I feel like it could usher in a new generation of ugly church bulletins.

 

Never mess with tradition  :P

[New Automatic Palette]

I already like the animation :).

 

What exactly is this?  Auto-generation of a palette based on colour progression between some points?

[Image Trace - Raster to Vector conversion]

Will you guys post updates to the roadmap when you have passed, umm, some of the road signs you posted?   ;)

[Stupid Work]

Your drawing talents far exceed mine :)

 

Viel Vergnügen :).

[Set camera and exif to show on Flickr]

EXIF handling is always a challenge in image software, and Affinity is (AFAIK) also working on this.  In the meantime, you may want to experiment with manually setting exifdata from the OSX command line using the excellent exiftool - there is nothing better for it.  After doing that you can transfer the files.  It's a couple of extra steps to take (unless you're an Applescript wizard), but it does give you far better control.

[Lack of metadata support]

Quick heads up on handling EXIF data: ALWAYS use the copyright TAG ('-copyright "Copyright ( c) 2016 by TheMadHatter" ' for exiftool users as shown in HMandemaker's post) if you own the copyright.  You can add a copyright notice in image comments, but the "Copyright" tag is there for that specific reason.

 

Also, when manipulating EXIF content, make sure you leave that tag untouched as well as any other copyright notices, you may be otherwise be committing a criminal offence (see US copyright law, chapter 506 "Criminal offences", item (d)).  

 

Don't go panicking immediately, though - it requires a clear indication of criminal intent, and as an apparent Facebook coding error does this at a rate of 400M images per day* I reckon you have some margin ;) .

 

(*) Not that all images coming into Facebook have explicit copyright information, but my tests have shown that whatever there is definitely gets stripped before publication.  You can easily test that yourself - add copyright data to images using exiftool as described above, then pull them down from another account and use exiftool to read what's left (format is simply "exiftool image.png" - no further parameters).

[Rescale document to print format, both AD and AP]

It would be interesting if there was a way to scale up a document to a defined format (printer or whatever else demands the format).  This would mean making a choice of crop or adding blank space for existing content, but at present, any rescale to such a format means:

 

1- decide on format (say, A3 borderless, or SRA3 to make it a bit more challenging);

2 - look up the dimensions of the format on the Internet;

3 - go to doc rescale and enter those values.

 

Admittedly, it means adding doc formats and there are many to choose from (try finding that SRA3 format, for instance, in a printer setup - usually it means using the "custom" setting) so maybe a good way would be an ability to add custom formats which then could either show up in a selected format (pixels, cm or a new category "custom") only, or universal (translated across the spectrum of measurements).  This also requires that entry of such formats should support a variety of entry methods for the dimensions (pixels, mm etc).

 

The benefit of a "custom" approach is that it ensures you don't have to wade through lots of sizes you don't need (unless there is a system to manage the visibility of those options, but all of that gets complicated again) - you can still offer a list of preset formats to help creating such a custom format.

 

So, the process would be:

 

1 - (once) set up custom format and name it (let's stick with SRA3 for now) - also requires custom format manager;

2 - choose document resize, "custom" and select "SRA3" (possible option to add a custom format on the spot as well);

3 - choose either freeform or "fit/fill/original size with added blank space or crop off excess" scaling of existing content (although that can handled by scaling the canvas instead of the document - always have to think which one does what).

 

Unless, of course, you already have this hiding somewhere - I do keep finding new things every time I use the software :).

 

(by the way, is it just me or does the preview not like numbered items?  As a result, I decided not to use them in the text above).

[Print Image Layout feature]

Count me in for this - I'm about to suggest another "target document" feature but this is an excellent idea too.  Especially when you work on multiple images, a method to put many on a single page would be excellent.

[Including AppleScript Functionality in Apps]

Heck, I'd be happy with just a replay facility that would allow me to set up a particular type of manipulation (edit, build, add, delete - the works) and then run it over a set of images, even just to watermark them.  I could probably cook up something basic with Image/GraphicsMagick, but I personally prefer to stick with as few tools as possible.

 

So +1 from me, even just a macro record/replay facility would be awesome.  Correction, more awesome :)

[Cannot print PDF made by Designer]

Have you tried a picture of a gun?  Maybe it's a TSA feature  <_<

[Cannot print PDF made by Designer]

This is interesting.  It prints OK with the OSX PDF viewer, but it appears you have triggered a feature in Adobe Acrobat that stops it from printing there.  No idea how but I would be rather interested to hear from Affinity what happens here.

[preview mode like indesign]

"Publisher"?  Do tell  :) ?

[How on earth did I do this??]

Ah, yes, found it - thank you so much.  Cunningly hidden, AD is so full of features even the best UI designer eventually runs out of space :).

[How on earth did I do this??]

When I was initially evaluating AD I created one file and it contains a colour I'm at a loss to explain, a solid colour with a texture.  I can change the colour, but how did I create the texture?

 

I can't work out how I created it.  Given that I rather like it, I would appreciate any help figuring this out.  Given the level of my design skills (think as close as possible to negative values) it's probably very basic, but I've been looking at this for a while now and I'm still no further.  I've attached it - hope this works.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

 

 

[Live preview layout on iOS]

Shame you corrected it - I rather liked "dartboard"  :D

[Live preview layout on iOS]

I couldn't post this before (had to wait for the :angry: newbie posting limit to expire), but I actually got a friendly email back from Bjango's Marc Edwards himself who drew up some instructions after I pointed him at AD, and he put those online at https://bjango.com/help/skalapreview/affinitydesigner/.

 

Having said that, I note that @mystrawberrymonkey's video also deals with some apparently erroneous format settings which are rather important to make things work properly.

 

By the way, if you're interested in the reverse you should check out AirParrot 2 and Reflector 2 from Air Squirrels.  Airparrot 2 is basically Airplay on steroids (and there's also a Windows version), and Reflector 2 turns your Mac into an Airplay receiver like an Apple TV so you can project iOS output on it - but multiple devices simultaneously, and with recording capability.  I'm not affiliated with them, but I use this quite a bit.

 

If you need to present anything, all you need is a TV with an Apple TV hooked up and you can do everything else wirelessly - even from a (shudder) Windows PC  :)