mattspace
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Posts posted by mattspace
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just adding to this, I completely uninstalled (Appcleaner) and reinstalled Designer 1.8.6, and the problem persists on a fresh install, and after resetting the studio. It doesn't manifest in Photo or Publisher:
Here's what it looks like on launch:
Photo and Publisher both launch correctly, with the application centred under the menubar on the menubar monitor. Designer is obviously getting the size of the window correct, but it's got what appears to be a hardcoded left edge position to the left side of the workspace.
I would suspect this is because if it was tested on a multi-display system, those tests were done with "separate spaces for each display" enabled, which prevents windows spanning displays, and as such a hardcoded left edge of zero would theoretically work if the app was launched or moved to the centre display.
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8 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:
Touch the tablet and begin the stroke before pressing Shift.
Or (I think) press Esc before touching the tablet.
ahh yes, ok that seems to be a workaround (though it's not as accurate as snapping to the guides would be).
Still seems like a "this person has never done the work the tool is designed to do"-level weird design choice, to have raster brushstrokes not able to interact with guides (or any vector shapes?). In a Vector illustration app like Designer, maybe I could understand it (but it would still be a bad idea), but in Affinity Photo... 🤷♂️
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6 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:
You can hold the Shift key whiile painting to restrict the brush so it paints a horizontal or vertical line. So you could just trace over the guides with the brush while holding the Shift key.
Yes, but then I don't think I'd have the ability to use the pressure sensitivity of the tablet to change the thickness of the stroke / size of each stamp during the brushstroke. I'd just get a line with everything the same size.
*edit* oh, it does seem to be accepting tablet pressure, but as soon as the pen touches the tablet, it draws a huge long swipe of brushstroke, often off in a diagonal line. weird.
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Hi,
Just want to clarify if what I've read in other posts is still current. Do guides, the ones you drag out of the rulers, not work as snapping targets for the brushes?
I've created a brush, it's an image brush, which stamps out a little image, it has a rotation jitter of 100% so as I draw with it, the image spins around, and it has both a size jitter, and is pressure sensitive for scale with my tablet.
I want to draw a square (or indeed a rectangle), whose proportions are exact, but whose edge has all the randomness generated by freehanding the brush pressure.
In Photoshop, all the way back to CS5, all I'd have to do is pull out the guides for the rectangle or square shape, and then draw roughly over them, the brush would track true to the guide, and I could concentrate on using pressure to work the brush size.
What's the solution to achieve this in AP?
Thanks.
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Hey Chris,
Yeah, I wasn't sure if it would get a bug logged for all apps without a post for each - perhaps the forum could use a "common bug" thread? Also, Designer's Application Window doesn't seem to behave the same way as Photo & Publisher (not respecting display position after quit / launch), so it's hard to predict what's common and what isn't.
BTW you don't need a separate display to trigger the behaviour bug (just shrink the application window and try it), and it was also in 1.8.4.
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High Sierra: When the Tools are a separate floating palette, if the main application window is dragged behind them (eg they're on a separate display), mouse released, then the main window is dragged again, it will capture the tools and drag them along with it.
Problem manifests in 1.8.6 of Designer, Photo and Publisher.
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High Sierra, 3 screens, on launch AD opens the main application window offset to one side, instead of on the main screen where it was on Quit.
The only Affinity App to display this behaviour.
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High Sierra, Pages palette is on a portrait orientation monitor.
Whenever AP is launched, the Pages palette resets to what seems like a preset ratio between Master Pages and Pages, regardless of how you manually set that division while using the application.
Which is somewhat annoying if you end up with a single set of Master pages, and a whole bunch of empty space, then your actual page list is scrolling.
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18 minutes ago, Chris B said:
Hey mattspace,
This only affects High Sierra or earlier I believe. I'll give the bug report another nudge.
hmm, i wonder if it's related to the "dark menubar & dock" setting in HS as opposed to "darkmode" in Mojave onwards.
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Something that's still present, which, now that I'm actually trying to use it is really getting in my way (and which worked fine in Photoshop as far back as 2010's CS5) - once I create a vector shape, and set it to be a vector mask, I don't seem to be able to add any other shapes to that vector mask, so I can't use the Geometry controls (greyed out) to perform boolean additions or subtractors to change the vector mask, while seeing the effects live.
The only way I can figure to get around it, is to pull the vector layer out of mask mode, so it's just a vector layer, then do the changes, because all the boolean geometry functions are working again when it's no longer a mask, then apply it back to the layer, to see what the effects are.
That's something that Photoshop did really well (back in 2010) - a vector mask was excatly the same to work on as a vector layer, the only difference was the effect it had, but the editing / workflow aspect of working on it was identical.
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5 hours ago, Andy Somerfield said:
- Reworked “Studio Presets” from the earlier 1.9 betas. They now work in a more predictable way and store tool / toolbar configuration. A manager dialog is also now provided.
Works fantastic - save the palette layout, move them all about, View -> Studio Preset -> saved preset name - they all reset to where they were when the preset was saved.
👍
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So I think I've identified the source of the problem, and it's really weirdly obscure.
My main display is a Benq SW270c, and it seems to have a janky displayport implementation - waking the display from sleep seems to cause it to drop and reestablish the connection, which I assume the system is interpreting as a lost monitor. My SW240s seem to be a bit odd on DP as well (power LED either solid on, or solid off rather than pulsing when the display sleeps, but only when its on DP, not HDMI), so I shouldn't be surprised.
With the main display running on HDMI, the problem doesn't manifest, however it does reinforce the need for a studio presets system that can save and lock panel locations, so they can be reset/recalled in the event of the displays being haunted.
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Yeah, it seems to have fixed itself.
cheers,
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I'm having some serious problems with my Affinity suite, and I'm starting to suspect that one, or all of them might in fact be causing this problem (which only seems to manifest when an Affinity app - Publisher being my main suspect, is running).
Symptom: on waking the displays of a triple display system, in which there is a single space for all displays (menubar on only one monitor), on some occasions one display will fail to register until the login password is entered. While most apps cope with this fine, Affinity apps can't seem to handle it, and shift their documents over to a space centring on the remaining two displays, as well as all their palettes, some of which will then be unable to be moved back, because their one drag point - their titlebar, is now outside of the screen bounds.
It's making the apps pretty unusable, and like I said, most other apps don't seem to be effected by it - windows that were on the "missing" screen stay on it when it shows back up again - Affinity, and iTunes seem to be the only apps that show any evidence that the problem even occurred.
Screenshots of the aftermath included.
If we had a working (the beta versions of it don't work as they should) option to Save Workspace that locked the palette arrangements, when saved, so that they could be reset by reselecting it from the menu, that might at least mitigate the problem.
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So this looks a bit untidy, and the droplist, which I assume is meant to let you change palettes, as well as the controls to its right, are unable to be clicked upon.
Resetting the studio has no effect.
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Studio Presets Feedback:
A major use of savable workspace presets for palette layouts, is to restore a workspace layout after changes have been made throughout a work session. Or, if something goes wrong and a palette gets lost, or trapped off screen and is no longer reachable.
Photo's Studio Presets seem to have that backwards, in that they autosave any changes to palette layouts, and so provide no recovery capability to get the application back to a specific UI layout.
This is a real problem when (in my case Publisher) can end up with palettes' grab areas off-screen, and unable to be clicked on to move. I imagine it's also an issue for people using laptops and switching between single and dual (internal and external) screen layouts.
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I just tried the Photo 1.9 beta, which has the Studio Presets feature, and it doesn;t really solve the problem, as the implementation seems to be backwards from how the feature is supposed to work.
UI palette presets are supposed to be saved states for UI layout, so you can reset your UI to a specific layout. Photo Beta's Studio Presets keep every change to your palette locations, so if you lose a palette off screen, you can't just refresh the Preset or switch between palette layouts to get back to your saved layout.
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8 hours ago, walt.farrell said:
I think that's a totally different issue than the one of saving workspace layouts.
If you want to know, though, how it will work, just download and install the beta and play with it.
Oh yeah, but a savable workspace layout would theoretically be the solution to that problem, assuming it works the way everyone else who built the feature works - place your palettes where you want them, save the workspace, and then no matter where you move them, switch back to the saved layout and they return to the locations they were during the save.
ill look at the beta when I get a moment.
*edit*
Just tried the Photo 1.9 beta, and the way presets are implemented doesn't solve the problem, because every palette move in a preset is destructive. You configure all your palettes, save a preset, and then if your palettes get moved about those movements are auto-saved as part of the preset, which defeats the purpose.
The point of palette presets, everywhere else they're implemented is that you can reset a palette layout back to a pre-configured setup.
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Problem: on a multi-display system a palette on a secondary portrait orientation monitor, that is taller than the primary landscape display, can be dragged onto the landscape display, and will not resize automatically to fit. It can then be dragged up behind the menubar, whereupon releasing the mouse, its sole drag handle is now behind them menubar, and no longer able to be reached to drag it back. There is a workaround to set the application to full screen , which hides the menubar, revealing the top of the palette, and it can be dragged down.
Further variation of this problem - if the portrait monitor is disconnected, palettes on it will shift to the landscape main display, the full length portrait screen palette may shift onto the landscape screen so far above the top side, that the palette’s grabable top edge is physically outside the monitor's bezels, and cannot be reached, unless the monitor has its rotation set to 90 degrees temporarily to enable the top edge of the palette to be brought back within the bounds of the screen.
Solution: Hopefully the upcoming 1.9 update's saveable workspaces will create a workaround, where palette positions can be reset to user configurations, but there should be an additional safety function to either create a hard stop for palettes at the bottom of the menubar, or some modifier key to make a palette draggable and reposition-able from anywhere within its bounds.
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3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:
They are coming in 1.9, and are currently available (though probably their implementation will change) in Affinity Photo 1.9 beta via the View > Studio Presets menu. They will appear in the 1.9 betas for Designer and Publisher later, and eventually in the 1.9 retail release.
Do you think the way they're implemented will solve my particular problem? I'm actually thinking of filing a bug report about it, because I can drag that pages palette onto the middle screen, and the drag action can carry it under the menubar, at which point after releasing, it's no longer able to be grabbed to drag back out - it really should alto-set itself to have an upper limit of the menubar.
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so just to bump this, cause it happened again...
This is my workspace - what happens if I temporarily lose the left monitor during screen wake - everything on it shifts to the centre screen - that pages palette, because it's longer than the centre screen is high, doesn't resize to fit - it keeps its full size and simply overlaps, above the top and below the bottom of the middle screen, so there's no grabbable part to move it.
The only solution was to set the rotation of the middle screen sideways, then awkwardly try to use the mouse offset 90 degrees to move the palette back, then try to navigate the screen rotation again.
Really need saveable workspace setups.
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48 minutes ago, wonderings said:
Well I think it is probably because Affinity does not seem to have any real cloud functionality like Adobe does in this regard. Would love to see them go away from reg keys and things like that and opt to do it all themselves in the cloud and all you need to do is simply log in with your Affinity account email and password to activate the software.
Saveable workspace setups (as I'm describing them) isn't really connected to Cloud-based accounts (it predates it by decades) - the main reason I used to use it back in the day, was when I had a laptop that I also used part of the time with a second external display. Save different palette layouts etc depending on display configuration, or task.
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11 hours ago, wonderings said:
Great idea, had not really thought about it but it is something I use with Adobe when setting up on a new machine. So many little things get adjusted based on the users preferences. Would nice to not have to do that with a new install or in the case of the OP's issue.
yeah, I was thinking about it from Adobe apps, also Capture One. I was actually a little surprised not to find it in the Affinity suite, since it's a decades-old feature in the Adobe world, you kind of take it as a given, like copy & paste or layering.
1.8.6 Main Window forgets positioning on Quit / Launch
in V1 Bugs found on macOS
Posted
Extra followup: in Separated mode, everything will jump back to the central (menubar) display, but no matter how you rearrange things - palettes etc, if you disable separated mode, it all goes back to one window, and leaps to the left edge again.
There's definitely something about the behaviour of Designer's windows management that does not work the same as Photo or Publisher.