Gear maker

Well, that is because your “two” curves are the same object in the layers hierarchy, Mike. As far as I understood this function (and I am not sure if this is actually the very best implementation one can think of), the curves to be joined must be two different items in the layers list. Otherwise they won’t join. In short, you will have to (Boolean-)divide your object, open the paths resulting from the division, and then you will be able to join the curves as desired.
 
Just try it with my version of your file …
 
Hope that makes sense … at least, as far as the current implementation makes sense … 
Cheers, Alex
 
 
Test-ABC.afdesign
 

 

Twice in the last 2 days I have had a rough O and was basically tuning it into a rough C.  I broke both curves then tried to join them into one curve.  No matter what I tried it will not join.  Is this just me or does this not work in 1.6 beta 4?
 
I am using the Align to selected nodes of curves.  I drag one node in one curve so it snaps to a node in the other curve.  Press Join curves.  But they don't.  Does this work for anyone else? 
 

Test.afdesign

Matt, I should have waited an hour.  Who knew? 
 
Thanks.
Mike

Hi Matt,
 
is there a chance to remove the Nudge Distances settings from the Preferences and put them at the bottom of the Transform Panel? It is somewhat tedious to open the Preferences, find the right Tab, adjust the settings, go back to the art work … hmm …
 
Thanks for considering,
Alex 

R C-R, FYI you might want to add that the Show Rotation Center must be selected or the appendages rotate from the actual center.
 
Mike

Is this a feature or a bug.  If I click on the eyedropper in the Color Panel, but don't move it then the color in the sample circle (picked color swatch) is assigned to the selected layer.  Just as if I had clicked on the sample circle.
 
In a way it's handy if you expect it, I usually don't (something about short term memory vs long term I think).  Then it causes an undo.
 
I'm not seeing anything in Help that explains/mentions this "feature".

Hey Steve if I can jump on Alex's train here — hope you don't mind Alex ;)
 
I've noticed in several places in the UI in the Preferences panel specifically but generally in the UI as well, the lower parts of the UI text fields (set to Large in the UI section, and I have a non-retina MBP) seem to be cropping the fonts descenders... Again it's minor, but I whole-heartedly agree with Alex that the UI refinement via consistency and attention to details and polish translates for a more efficient and professional tool to use.
Attached are some places to look into when you have time...
 
Also my account is reaching it's total upload quota... can one of the Admin's up my quota again? Thanks!
 
 

Frequently when I have been working in a multi-object drawing I select an existing layer by clicking on it.  Then to move the object slightly I give it a nudge using a shift direction arrow key.  It will first jump a seemingly random direction and distance with the first key stroke.  After that it acts like it should.
 
To get it to do it again I have to be working on another object for awhile.
 
I believe it did this in the last beta.  I'm not sure if it did this in MAS.
 
27" iMac late 2009 running Yosemite.

Hi Steve,
 
great to hear from you. It is really so nice to see this evolving, and though these are all minor things, they will make the user experience so much better. Well, I think one of my main suggestions for the next iteration would be caring for the distances, the alignment, and the distribution of the elements on a pixel level.
 
When you take out your pixel ruler, you will see that many of the distances among the elements of the toolbars and in the panels are quite random. Just have a look at the Pencil context toolbar or the Character panel, for instance. I would really suggest that you take measure of these things in every part of the interface, and though the required adjustments are very subtle in most cases (very often only +/– one pixel), you will see that slightly correcting these disparities will clean up the interface considerably.
 
As an example, let me append a review of the context toolbar for the Pencil tool. You will find similar thingies in many other parts of the interface as well. As I said, these are pretty small ones, but I think you will agree that getting these straight (compare my rough attempt in the screen shot below) will be beneficial to the overall user experience.
 
Great work! Love it …
Alex  :)

Here's my notes on blend modes.
 
Any additions, corrections, pointers, etc. most welcome.
 
Regards -- Dave
-----------------------------------------------------
 
Update 10-Jun-17: Added version two of document
 
_______________________________
 
Update 22-Jun-17: Added version three of document
 
_______________________________
Updated 29-Jul-17: Added version four of document
----------------------------------------------------
Updated 16-Oct-17 in a separate post here.
_______________________________
Blend modes notes V1.pdf
Blend modes notes V2.pdf
Blend modes notes V3.pdf
Blend modes notes V4.pdf

Hi Joe,
 
The Adjustment layers actually act as masks on there own so you don't need to apply an adjustment to a mask. If you hold ALT then click the black and white thumbnail in your screenshot you will be able to see your mask. You can select your adjustment layer in the layers tab and use the paintbrush tool to paint Black to remove areas of the mask or White to add areas to the mask. 
 
C

Excellent work by Toltec
 
Other options with reflections are to replace the background with a different one.
 
Or if the original background is important have the photographer go back and take a photo of the landscape from the other side of the glass then replace the current background with that photo which will not have any reflections on it.
 
The benefit of the second approach is that the photographer could take a sharper/better picture of the landscape, if indeed the view from that location acts as an additional selling point for whatever it is this picture is promoting.
 
 

Actually, I can put it more succinctly: if you just want features, we can get them in faster. If you want features that are great to use, we have to make sure they're written by the right people, in the right order :) There are lots of other vector packages - and I personally don't enjoy using them as much...

With all due respect for your rights to comment as you see fit, please consider the following:
 
1. Technically, this is not a public release. It is a customer (not public) beta.
2. Concept & implementation are two different things. This is particularly true of beta software, which by accepted industry standards are expected to have implementation bugs that need to be discovered by beta testers. That is the purpose of betas, whether public or restricted.
3. This is just the first beta version of the update. It is not unusual for early betas to have a substantial number of cosmetic defects. The highest priority for early betas is -- & for practical reasons must be -- the discovery & elimination of functional defects. This is in part because fixing functional issues may require UI or UX changes in later versions, which in turn may require cosmetic changes.
4. There is certainly nothing unreasonable about reporting cosmetic defects at any stage of beta development, but please keep in mind they are unlikely to take precedence over any problems that affect functionality, & so are likely to be among the last things fixed before the version becomes a release candidate.

Hi Alex, here's a non-retina version of the screenshot.
 
Steve

I fear people all to easily underestimate the complexities of programming work. But apart from that, there is another point to consider. Honestly, would it make sense, for instance, just to throw in a search field for the layers panel? What we would really need, in my opinion, is a more complex search engine that would allow entering properties of objects, searching for text attributes … and that would feature, particularly in the latter case, a find and replace function as well as the option of using regular expressions (think of Publisher).
 
Now imagine, we had a simple search field in the layers panel at the moment. Then people would start using it, making a habit of using it, presumably flooding the forum with complaints about its insufficiency, and later on, it would nonetheless have to be replaced by something better. Then people would again start complaing because they already had become accustomed to something that was intended to be temporary from the outset. The same goes for arrowheads and the like.
 
In short, I believe app development is not only about managing complexities, but also about strategic decisions. It does not make sense to waste time adding insufficient functionality to an application that has to be purged out later on with utmost care. To be sure, purging is no less difficult than adding. And I think the latest additions to Designer and Photo are pretty well-conceived and a huge step forward in usability. The new font selector is amazing, blurry icons notwithstanding …  ;)
 
Hope that makes sense …  :)

We finally had some good weather in my area a week ago, after months and months of cloud cover! These are Arrow Root flowers and they bloom by the thousands in my area. It's been so cold that the bloom is quite a bit later than it normally is.
 
Flower2 by Greg Murray, on Flickr

One of the banes of sharpening, especially in landscapes, is that light lines appear around horizons, trees and so on, forcing you to scale back your sharpening efforts. This can be a nuisance when everythings' great, apart from those darned halos!
 
A very simple solution:
 
1. Duplicate the pixel layer.
 
2. Sharpen away. Use Unsharp Mask and turn up the radius as far as you like. Ignore the light halos around things.
 
3. Here's the magic: Blend mode: Darken.
 
Ole! The halos disappear!
 
So what's happening? For those who are not saying 'but that's obvious': 
 
Sharpening finds edges and makes one side lighter and the other side darker to trick the eye into taking greater notice of the edge.
 
In Darken blend mode, Affinity compares pixels in both the duplicate and original images and shows the darker pixel (not the lighter one). Any pixels which have been darkened will be in the sharpened, duplicated layer along edges, and will be shown. Any which have been lightened (on the other side of the sharpened line) will not be shown as the darker pixels from the original layer will be used. Any pixels not affected by the sharpening will be the same, so the blend has no colour-changing effect.
 
Just like that.
 
If there are parts of the picture where you want to keep the light edges in the sharpening, then of course all you need to do is add a white mask to the original layer (or between the original and duplicate) and paint black over the areas to keep this light edging.
 
Note: You can use Difference blend mode to see the sharpened area and guide any masking. Add a temporary Invert layer at the top to make this easier to see, if you like.
 
Corollary: If you blend with Lighten mode, you can probably use this one-sided sharpening to create a glow around things.

Sorry, looks like we need to add that close shortcut...
 
Interestingly, the Pencil on iPad Pro creates beautiful smooth curves - so much so that I've not even enabled the stabilisers on iPad yet - probably will do though :)

From  this thread.
 
Please consider this for the new feature. At least this will be more familiar to Adobe users.
I think it is not hard to do, maybe. :D
 
Cheers.

Have you considered using text for this? You could use either the bullet character • (Unicode U+2022) or the Black Circle character ● (Unicode U+25CF) in a suitable font & style. Type the required number of dots & then by changing the tracking value in the Characters panel (with or without using typed spaces between the dots) you can adjust the spacing as desired.
 
This also sort of works with curves converted to text paths, although the spacing isn't preserved if the curve is too abrupt.

No thanks. This has been brought up before and it seemed like a horrible idea to me then as it does now. How horrible is it to have to pay a monthly fee to Adobe and then on top of that, a monthly fee to other companies? Many people left Adobe and luckily found the powerful graphics programs that Affinity makes without the unwanted aspects of a subscription. They left Adobe because they were/are trying to get away from leasing software (like Adobe's subscription model) so it doesn't really make sense to me that those same people would want to sign up for a plugin, a plugin-not a program but just a plugin mind you, that uses the subscription model. 

Would something like this help you?  Using an Outer Glow fx (with Multiply blend mode and a black color and an Intensity at 100%) or an Inner Glow fx on a group of lines having the color the same as the background.
 
Test.afdesign

Thanks for all the clues R C-R.
 
Here's the problem that someone like me faces.  
 
The first instinct is going to the Search under the Help menu. That proves fruitless. Color Picker and Color Panel gets nothing of value. 
 
Then, selecting the built in help slowly brings a useless page with a big logo...oh, there's the new Menu symbol...why waste a step? put the glossary on the first page. Whatever. Now what? What to choose. Color? Which of the sub-categories? Pick one. The one you recommended doesn't exist. 
 
Ah! Search. Color Picker goes in the wrong direction. Only tells of that feature and the recommended other topics are a rabbit hole, never delivering the idea of Panel.
 
If I had thought of Color Panel, I would have looked in the color panel of the Fill box on the main top bar that I have been using successfully...I would never have thought of going to View:Studio:Color – why would I? And even then the obscure Pref tool changes depending on the style, and I would have given up if I didn't see it right in front of me from my clay's post.
 
Now I know. But, it is beyond cumbersome. And I still can't find Color Panel: Color selection preferences and color models
 
Having used it for a few days, I think I disagree with your concept of Preferences as well. Perhaps it is because I don't like keeping the Color Panel open all the time because the pull downs from the top bar are so convenient but missing that pref tool. But I really believe that it is because I will always now work in 16bit and it is my instinct to set that from the applications preferences panel.
 
But, thanks. Don't mean to vent on you in particular, but in case a Affinity person needs to know how a not unintelligent 32 year user of Mac graphic programs expects to think with his tools and their help. 

Hi there, 
 
Request for better visual contrast between Smooth Nodes and their Control Handles.
Blue Circles, all!
 
Because the Control Handles are only distinguishable by being a bit smaller, when you've selected a bunch of nodes, it can be a real visual challenge to sort them out.
 
It's not a big deal if you're mostly drawing straight lines.
But when you draw complex, organic shapes (like sketching in vectors with a stylus),
you get long lines full of nodes, and when you select them,
it looks like a string of blue Christmas lights!
 
(<—Click attached JPG of the same path: Top is nodes unselected, Bottom is selected.)
 
The Control Handles make it look like 3 times as many nodes.
 
Personally I'd prefer if Control Handles were either
- a different colour than nodes, or
- a different shape, or 
- both. (Or customizable in Prefs!)
 
Thanks,
 
- pbass