retrograde

Cheers @Ash I've been waiting for this one.

Agreed. On my mac there doesn't appear to be any difference in contrast or shade....

Cool! Yes but it can be any key. I assigned the F key because in my brain I'm basically thinking FIND the layer please. 🙂

With the Auto Scroll option off I assigned the F key to jump to the layer of a selected object when I do want to see the layer in the layer panel. Works great and I don't have a jumpy layers panel anymore.

Hey Bit Arts, this isn't a solution to your request and I definitely feel your pain but do you know about the little tiny almost hidden icon in the bottom right corner of the transform panel? See the screenshots. This may give you a bit more control over scaling effects and strokes. I came upon it accidentally and used it recently on a job and it really came in handy.

Yes it would be awesome if serif came out with some kind of animation app or an animation component of Designer or Photo, but not likely as it's been requested for literally years now. I found a cheap vector animation app called Keyshape that comes close to what you're looking for I think. It's a vector based app, and mac only at the moment on the app store. https://www.keyshapeapp.com/

Also if you have a mouse with a scroll wheel you can set a preference to "use mouse wheel to zoom" in preferences > tools

Good solution @Aammppaa I removed the heavy stroke on the shadow (bottom) layer and added a drop shadow with an offset to the bottom right for an angled shadow. Works great!

Good god that's a lot of info.

It's a bit unintuitive and hidden for new users. Why not add a percentage option? Even if it's under a right click or something?

Yeah it's not perfect for all scenarios but hopefully is a little less destructive. Sometimes these non destructive workflows can be more work in the end. It's a balance I guess depending on what you need to do.

Not sure if this helps but... I tried using some copied combined shapes as a compound shape by marquee selecting all of the copied shapes and control clicking (mac) on the 'add' boolean icon to create a non destructive compound shape of all of the selected shapes, then you can apply an outline and drop shadow to the compound shape. It's not perfect but it keeps all of the original shapes intact incase you need to reposition or transform or remove anything later as opposed to creating a destructive 'add' boolean. To edit the individual shapes you'll need to select them in the layers panel if you want to transform them as once made into a compound shapes you won't be able to see the individual shapes outline even in outline view mode. Then you can make a style of the outline and drop shadow of the compound shape for a quick one click application to any new shapes. Like I say it's not perfect but it's a little less destructive than combining all of the shapes into one vector shape. It might add up to a lot of shapes though if you have a ton of objects in your file.

This is super cool. Nicely done. I grew up in the 70's and I remember that red number style on some early digital watches.

Thanks @Dan C

What is DDS?

fwiw Inkscape can generate vector QR codes and barcodes and it's free. Bar and QR code bits starts at around 9:50. There are some other cool features Inkscape has in this video but that would be another discussion...

Also for just one stroke on type, it seems you can't reorder the stroke in the appearance panel to be behind the fill. At least not when I tried. It drags and looks like it will work but pops back to the top. It does work as expected on shapes though. ___________ EDIT: it seems you need to click on the appropriate stacking "order" icon in the stroke panel which then updates it in the appearance panel. Serif can we get a fix on this that allows you to drag the order in the appearance panel and it updates it in the stroke panel? Pretty please? 🙂

Wow, good to know. And yeah I've been a user for years and didn't know this either. Or maybe I forgot about it....

I tend to agree that the make a layer or group workflow isn't as intuitive as it could be and deserves a rethink in how it's currently implemented. I deselect "auto scrolling" and use a shortcut to find the active "layer" when I need to see it.

I'm getting this as well. It seems to rounding the numbers or not registering small increments. It's very annoying. Please fix!

+1 Yes PLEASE add a global scale with object feature or at least everything that is selected including nested artwork.

OMG yes. The world needs a smart new competitor for AE even just a nice capable little 2d animator. Until that time comes 😏 I'm been using Blender and Keyshape for my 2d animation work, which are not bad actually.

Will definitely do @NathanC thanks for the nod. 🙂

Hi @NathanC Export Persona is great and I do use it when it makes the most sense (lot's of exports or batches or different file formats or sizes etc...), but I think the expected behaviour should be when you "export as" with a single particular artboard that the export filename take on the artboards name. Similarly and sort of related is the expected behaviour that when you add an artboard it should add a 002 or some sort of "copy or new" indication to the end of the name otherwise you end up with a bunch of Artboard 1's in your layer stack which is basically, well... what's the point frankly. Admittedly, I'm no software engineer or programmer so please tell me if this type of request would be extremely difficult to implement. But I think these expected behaviours aren't too out there. Seems by version 2 now some of this basic artboard housekeeping should get some love. I use Designer everyday for professional work and would love to see this little update make it in sometime soon. Pretty please. 🙂 Big fan of AD but somewhat mystified by these 2 artboard related oversights.

Yeah, tried it and nope. It's actually been there from the start of Designer V1. It's intermittent so sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and I can forget about it. It's so weird.