markem

I do not know all about Affinity but just in case this is not already in there..... Make it so you can rotate an image as if it were a 3D object. Most images are 2D. So you put it on a transparent plane and then allow 3d manipulation so you can rotate the image in 3D. Just an idea. As I have said - still learning. So this might already be in Affinity Designer.

I decided to download, install, and try AD. I did so for about three hours and then I uninstalled it. I design all sorts of things but I am NOT a professional designer. I just use various pieces of software to do what I want to do. The things I usually work on are images for friends, touching up other's work (again for friends), an mainly making items for the D&D games I play in. I usually use Visio 2003, PhotoShop v6.0 (NOT CS# - just version 6.0 from the 1990s - I DO have CS3 but like the version 6.0 better as what I do does not need all of the bells and whistles CS3 has). To this end - I look at a very few, select commands - most of which I have programmed in PHP with GD. These entail the loading and saving of raster images, converting raster images to SVG images and/or EPS or WMF files. I do this because the SVG files scale up nicely while raster images usually have jaggies in them. (Although PhotoShop does an excellent job of scaling things without jaggies in them.) By the way - the trick I have found to prevent jaggies is to scale an image up to three times the size you want it to be and then scale it back down. This allows PhotoShop to know where the jaggies are and to merge them back in to the image as lighter greyscale parts. At least - in PhotoShop version 6.0 this works. So when I downloaded and installed AD, I was looking for some commands. These are: Grid (being able to turn it on/off, change the color of it, being able to do major/minor lines, make transparent, remove transparency, and maybe some other items), Being able to import such things as SVG files, being able to change a raster image to an SVG file, being able to have the program be intelligent about the conversion to SVG (and not just make it a large image converted to base64 in an SVG file. AD did not do this. Serif's DrawPlus X8 would do this. However, neither program did what I had hoped it would do. I used a simple part of a castle's crenelation which was outlined in black with some grey areas and a brown area. I had hoped that the program would follow the black area until it had all of it. Then grab the grey and brown areas. Then it should ask me how I wanted to break the information up. Using a selection tool, I could then select the grey AND black area on each side of the brown area and create that and then select the brown and black area and have it create that. Some other things that would be nice is to be able to load in a figure and (just like above) be able to select what to detach from the image. Why? Because if you wanted to make an animated GIF, you need to be able to take items apart. Then see, if it was a guard I was working with I'd be able to make the arms swing back and forth somewhat and move the feet also thus making it look like the image is moving. Ok - so - don't get upset about this. I have as of yet to find any software that can do what I need and thus - that is why I am writing little PHP scripts. All-in-all though - Affinity Designer looks very snazzy and has a very slick interface. It is not for me but I will recommend it to some of my other friends who do use such programs in their work. Keep it up! :-) It looks very nice! :-)

Downloaded latest version (7/1/2016) - No problems. Uninstalled older version - no problems Installed new version - no problems Still using Windows 7 Pro x64 Booting - no problems Version 1.5.0.4 File->New Artboard Tool 1. Selected 2. Drew small Artboard - no problems. Labeled Artboard1. 3. Drew second small Artboard - no problems. Labeled Artboard2. Fountain Pen Tool : 1. Selected 2. Clicked in Artboard1 - created point - no problem. 3. Clicked several more times creating more points - no problem. 4. Selected white arrow (Node Tool) 5. Single-Left Clicked on point/node. Node selected but no handles appear. 6. Double-left clicked on point/node. Node selected but no handles appear. 7. Tried other points/nodes with same result. 8. Single-right clicked point/node - menu popped up but no handles appeared. 9. Selected black arrow (Move Tool) 10. Tried left and right single and double clicking on points/nodes. Although selected - no handles appear. 11. Decided to try moving a line segment between two points/nodes. When I did that the handles appeared - but only one handle on each of the points/nodes. The Move Tool (black arrow) and Node Tool (white arrow) appear to do the same thing on a line drawn with the Fountain Pen. At least I can grab the line segment between two points/nodes and move it. When I move the line segment, the two handles that are between the two points/nodes now show up rather than like before when the two handles associated with a point showed up. Also, the two handles now act independent of each other. That is to say - before if you moved one handle the other tried to remain 180 degrees opposite of the first handle. Now they ignore each other and simply move independently of the other handle. I am not sure which way they are supposed to work - but this is how they work now. File->Close File->New Fountain Pen Tool - Attempted to draw a freehand line with the pen tool. (Remember just checking to see how the tool works) Selected the black arrow (Move Tool). The entire set of points was selected. The problem with this option is that in order to edit the item you somehow have to be able to click directly onto the pre-existing item. Thus, if you used the Pen Tool to create a line drawing - it can be very hard to click on (or double-click on) the line. Don't know if this can be fixed or not but it is hard to select what you want to work with. Once selected - no problems. But hitting the line is a problem. 1. Double-left click'd and got the object. 2. All of the points/nodes show up as small circles. 3. Double-left click'd on a point. This time I got four handles. Two on the point/node I selected and one on the point/node to the left and one on the point/node to the right (unlike before where I got nothing). 4. These handles act like before. If I grab one of the two handles on the point/node with two handles and move it - the opposite handle rotates with it to remain at 180 degrees. Alt key causes the two handles to act independently of each other. I have no idea why they acted one way the first time and another the second time but the points and handles should act in the same way each time. Vector Brush Tool Works as expected. However, holding down the control button causes the last brush stroke to be selected (the points/nodes along the line selected) and Control+A simply selects the last line in a different way. The actual "Select All" feature will not work (ie: Control+A). You can not select all of the lines you have drawn. File->Close File->New Fill Tool Tried to fill the entire page with a given color - does not work. Used Vector Brush Tool to create crude square Then tried to fill it with Fill Tool - does not work When I accidentally held down the left mouse button while moving the Fill Tool, it drew a line across a rectangle I had drawn and immediately filled it green->to->red. It took me a few moments to figure out how to delete the fill request but it also deleted the rectangle I had drawn. When I re-created the rectangle it was automatically filled with green->to->red. Should not the Fill Tool be turned off if you are trying to draw a new rectangle? (Or maybe not. Unknown which outlook on this is used.) The problem with the Fill Tool is that I created a rectangle and then clicked on the Fill Tool. When I selected a color from the color wheel it automatically made the rectangle that color. The question that comes up is - if the rectangle is going to be colored anyway - why have a Fill Tool? Or - If you have a Fill Tool - why automatically apply a color selection? If, as the help says, "The Fill Tool allows you to adjust the fill and line colours applied to vector and text objects" - they they should not be automatically applied when you select them as that usurps the Fill Tool's purpose. OR - you may want to just change the Help's documentation and say it is only used to do gradients and such and everything else is automatically applied. Decided to try creating letters. Selected Artistic Text 1. Typed in some mumbo-jumbo. 2. Looked under Text->Size->Bigger. It says Control+> will make the letters bigger. 3. Tried the menu option - nothing happened. 4. Tried Control+> (not using the shift key) - nothing happened. 5. Tried Control+> (with shift key) - nothing happened. 6. Selected the Move Tool 7. Tried Control+> (+SHIFT) - letters got bigger 8. Tried Control+> (no SHIFT) - nothing happened. There is some kind of disconnect between creating the text via the Artistic Text option and controlling the size of the letters. Also, shouldn't the Control+>(no SHIFT) also work to increase the size of the letters? Otherwise, shouldn't the menu option actually say "Control+SHIFT+>" so people know they have to hold down the shift key? Just a thought. I next tried not using and using the shift key with the "Control+<" to reduce the size of the letters. WITHOUT the shift key I get the preferences. WITH the shift key I get smaller letters. So the menu should reflect that it actually is Control+SHIFT+< as some people (myself included) take it that just hitting that key is the equivalent of Control+<. The program also froze when I hit the Control+SHIFT+< key several times and then hit the Control+SHIFT+> key combination. The program did not respond to anything for about a minute and then began responding to my asking it to shrink down the letters. Not sure why it did this. Next I tried to set the color of the Artistic Text. First I tried just clicking on a color - did not work. Then I tried the Fill Tool - did not work. Then I tried using the Move Tool to re-select the text to see if that would allow me to apply color. Just clicking on a color did not work again nor did selecting the Fill Tool and then selecting a color work. Nor did using the Fill Tool cursor to select the text do anything. Dragging the Fill Tool across the letters also did not do anything. That's all for tonight. :-) Help I decided to read the help about the Fill Tool because I kept getting strange results. In very dark letters the help screen says "Click Here to Search" - this should be a lot more noticable (like in white letters). I typed in "Fill Tool". About forty entries showed up. The very last entry was "Fill Tool". It should be the first.

Glad to help! :-) Vector Paint Brush : All commands tried with Vector Paint Brush icon selected 1. It is not fast enough to handle a lot of zig-zags. Instead I get a straight line sometimes (See first image). 2. Note that I am doing a Select->Select All. When I do so - none of the vector paint brush objects are selected. 3.If I do a Control+A then I only get the last vector paint brush object and it is only selected for about a second or two and then everything becomes de-selected again. 4. Seems to work ok if you start off-page, and then go on-off-on-off-on-off all around the page. 5. Tried setting line width to maximum. Made a swirl of 200 circles going left to right. Made a swirl of 200 circles going right to left. No problem. 6. Set line width to 0pt. Made a swirl of 200 circles going left to right and right to left - no problems. 7. Set the line width to 0.1pt. Again did 200 circles going left to right and right to left - no problems. 8. Set line width to 1pt. Did 500 circles going left to right - no problems. 9. Did a test where half of the 200 circles I made after selecting red color were off of the page. no problems. 10. Tried changing the line width by hand. First time I tried to change 1pt to 10pt program rejected change and reset to 1pt. Second try set it to 10pt. Thought that maybe it had to do with spacing between number and "pt" but that is not why it happened. Tried multiple spaces between number and "pt" - no problems. 11. Problem. I selected Gaussian Blur and set the Radius to 13pt. But when I went to draw the line at 11pt - Gaussian Blue became deselected. If I then go back and reselect 13pt Gaussian Blur - it is applied to the last line drawn. Should it not remain selected and apply as I draw? Oops! Just noticed that the FIRST image actually is after I had done the Control+A. I had to do the Control+A and then quickly hit the Shift-Print Screen to capture it. Thought I had done it the other way around. :-/ Another Oops! It turns out if you just hold down the Control key it selects the last thing you did which means that is overriding what the Control+A is supposed to do. :-(

Quick addition: If you select the Fountain Pen and put a point onto the page and then put another one onto the page and then hold down the Alt key and try to select one of the two extension points - then sometimes you get a new point and sometimes you move the extension point. Unknown which way it is supposed to work. :-) Sorry - almost forgot my suggestion: When you select an item you can use the Up, Down, Left, and Right arrows to move the item. Suggestion: While holding down the Alt key have the Up, Down, Left, and Right keys do rotations. Rotate Up, Rotate Down, Rotate Left, and Rotate Right. Just a thought.

I'm starting a thread on my feedback. I will include screen snapshots when I can. I have only had about an hour to play with the program. I first tried installing it onto a Windows XP 32bit system - did not work. Then a Windows XP 64bit system - same result. Then a Windows 7 64bit system. This installed without a problem. Then I tried bringing the program up on the Windows 7 64bit system. It came up very quickly and presented me with a blank area. This is a nice touch although at first I was confused as to whether the program had a glitch or not. I selected File->New and was presented with a new sheet of paper to draw on. So for me - I like not having anything coming up as the default but others might want a default new page. I decided to try the Fountain Pen option. I selected it and then clicked on the page. A new point appeared. I then tried dragging the pen with the mouse down. Nothing happened until I let go of the pen and then a new point appeared where I had let go of the mouse. I tried several more times with the same result. I then tried just clicking with the mouse at various places and new points appeared with a connecting line. I then selected the black arrow head (top arrow on the left) and when I did so the lines became grey'd out. I used the arrow to re-select the drawing, it did so. I then double-left clicked on the drawing and it re-selected it and the points re-appeared. I then selected a single point and the two extension points appeared along with one extension point on the point just before and just after the selected point. This caused some confusion because when I went to select the point I wanted to work with the cursor would sometimes jump to either a nearby point or a nearby extension point. I finally got the extension point I wanted to change and I moved it around. The opposite extension point also moved at the same time. Not a lot but probably in response to changes in the line that was being drawn. I wanted to bend the extension point so it no longer was a 180 degrees from the second extension point but the first extension point would not bend. So I decided to try various key combinations in accord with dragging the point and found out that the Alt key would allow me to bend the extension point. Looking around on the screen I noted the help information at the bottom but information on usage of the Alt key were not visible. So I attempted to drag the help information left or right but that did not work. I then tried moving other points around. When I took the last point and placed it over the first point the program automatically joined the lines together. I was wondering if the program shouldn't ask the user if they would like to join the lines together as someone may have just moved it there before doing something else with the first/last point. I noticed that some times extension points would just show up. For instance, I had one point selected but when I went to move the point BOTH of the extension points on the previous point would show up (instead of just one). That is all for now. Have to make myself something to eat. More later. :-) Mark

I downloaded the beta copy and tried to install it onto both my Windows XP 32bit and 64bit computers. It would not install onto them. I'm assuming no XP version (even though there are still millions of people who use XP). :-? I also have a Windows 7 system. Going to try that next.