Hokusai

Metajake, Good suggestion Hokusai

Matt, I brought this up a few betas back and it is still there but I noticed an additional error that might cause some people problems and I wanted to bring it to your attention. Whenever I create a new document, no matter what I have chosen as my "Defaults", it always reverts to the "Grey" colour palette as the default palette even though I almost never want a black/grey palette (I should be able to choose which colour palette loads by default). To make matters worse, when I set up my document as "Print (press-ready)" and CMYK all the colours in the "Grey" colour palette are RGB Blacks and Greys (well they are converted to CMYK but they are converted from RGB values and so 100% Black is C-72, M-68, Y-67, K-88). This could cause some major problems for people who might not notice it. The colour selector on the right (the one that runs horizontally and starts with "none" and then "black", "grey", "white") actually uses 100% black. I've attached a movie that might better show what I'm talking about. Another bug that is still there is the multi-shape tool. We can (since 1.5) add an individual shape tool (star, donut, triangle,etc) to our tools. When I add, say the donut tool and I select the individual donut tool, it also changes the multi-shape tool selector to donut. So now I have two of the same shape in my tools. While this isn't a critical bug, it does seem odd and inconsistent. I know that you and the whole team there are working hard and I wanted to say thanks for working so hard to make Designer (and Photo) such great apps. I do have one question though (about the thing I've been requesting since the beginning of Designer). I too, like Retrograde, am wondering about and hoping for a "Hide" selection, "Show all", "Unlock All" (and some others) commands. Any news on this? Retrograde posted about this on the previous page but nothing was posted in response and I'm curious about it. This is something that would greatly improve the speed, efficiency, and usefulness of Designer for me (and I'm sure for many, many others). Thanks for all the hard work, Hokusai BlackBug.mov

mayahan, I see, that makes sense. That would be a good feature to add. I don't normally use artboards much so I never worried about it but I can see how it would be useful. Hokusai

mayahan, Affinity Designer currently pastes things in place without the need for a separate command (as long as you are near same area you copied it from). If you have an object on one layer and you copy it (or cut it) and then move to another layer and paste, it will be in the exact same place as it was when you copied it or cut it. If you have documents of the same size, this also works between documents too. It even worked for me when I used documents that were different sizes too. Isn't this the same as "paste into place" that is found in Sketch or Illustrator? Hokusai

HarpyG, You are right, there are somethings that need to be added and somethings that need to be fixed. The developers have made a lot of improvements and rather quickly. As someone who was "one of the first to buy it" I couldn't help but notice that you have relatively few posts. Maybe a good way to help the developers to improve their software would be to be more active here on the forums. Making your voice heard and offering different perspectives and feedback is a great way to help improve things. The developers here are great and they do listen (sure they don't always agree but they do listen and way more than anywhere else). So I would recommend that you make your suggestions and see what happens. Just a thought. Hokusai

Dave, Thanks for the explanation! Hokusai

Just curious if this is correct because I thought that shadow effects were always raster. Maybe Dave you could shed some light on to this matter (pun intended). Maybe things have changed and there are now vector shadow effects? Hokusai

retrograde, I completely agree, it would be nice if it worked that way. Hopefully sometime in a future release. Hokusai

LeviA, Use the "join curves" button that is found on "Actions" when you have the two lines selected. It is the second from the left on the "Actions" Hokusai

bleduc, I bought the version of iDraw right before they sold it to Autodesk so I don't know if it changed much after Autodesk got a hold of it but it pretty much underwhelmed me. The only thing that impressed me was the vector eraser. As LilleG pointed out it feels clunky and there are many things missing. In my opinion you can't even compare Designer and Graphic (iDraw) as they aren't in the same category. Graphic (iDraw) seems to me to be something for basic consumers or hobbyists who only need the absolute bare minimum. I also don't have much confidence in Autodesk to do anything worthwhile with it either. In my opinion, Affinity Designer is miles ahead of Graphic and I much prefer to support the developers here than a greedy money grubbing group like Autodesk (or Adobe). Hokusai

LilleG, You are completely right. Before we can start to think about options for a vector eraser, there has to be a vector eraser. I remember that you posted before about Graphic's vector eraser tool and I agree with you 100%. I used it when it was iDraw and it did work well. While the rest of the app wasn't nearly as smooth nor as polished as Designer, the vector eraser tool worked remarkable well. Hokusai

bleduc, Nice video, thanks for the link. I would love to see those kind of eraser options that are in Clip Studio Paint added to Affinity Designer for a vector eraser. Hokusai

MEB, I hope that this is something that is added as it has been has been requested many times and I would love to see it added. I don't care for iDraw (or whatever it eventually became) but the vector eraser in it worked wonderfully. Thanks for considering. Here are just a few of the posts where it was requested (and there are no doubt more): https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/35645-is-there-a-vector-erase-tool-in-affinity-designer/?p=180483 https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/31423-ade-vector-eraser/?hl=%2Bvector+%2Beraser https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/3245-ad-vector-persona-eraser-tool/?hl=%2Bvector+%2Beraser https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/14863-eraser/?p=66582 https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/8505-vector-eraser-simplifying-brush/?hl=%2Bvector+%2Beraser https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/8781-eraser-tool/?p=36379 https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/3697-eraser/?p=14526 https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/1044-vector-eraser/?hl=%2Bvector+%2Beraser https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/3177-feature-suggestions-pencil-eraser-move-eps-version/?hl=%2Bvector+%2Beraser

garters, The developers have stated that they plan on releasing a DAM sometime in the future but unfortunately I don't know when. They are also working on Affinity Publisher (a layout app). Hokusai

Keith, It is odd, you'd think that the original poster could take the time to explain why the plugin is so incredible. Maybe they'll show up sometime later and explain why it is a must-have plugin (so cool that you'd be willing to pay a separate subscription just to use it). I too went to the website to see what all the fuss was about and left unimpressed. Maybe I'm missing something? Hokusai

IvI99, I was worried too as I bought Designer in one country and then a year and a half later I moved to another country but as of yet (9 months after the move) I've had no problems to speak of. I haven't bought or tried to buy any other apps since the move and that might cause problems but so far it hasn't caused me any problems with the apps that I already purchased. Hokusai

Mike, I completely agree with you. Most printers, or at least all the ones that I've worked for or have used, just require a PDF that is built at the right size and with bleed (if necessary) and CMYK or if using spot colours they are set up correctly. But this doesn't explain why so many (Microsoft) Publisher users seem to make more errors with their PDF's than users of other software. I worked for a number of printers and prepress shops and all of them charged more to jobs that came in from Publisher because 9 out of 10 of them required tweaking and often times they required complete rebuilds. I have always done the imposition work using Quark Xpress or Indesign and a specialized plugin for it. I've never seen it done with Illustrator or Corel Draw. Hokusai

mvgraph, I don't know if this is right or not but it seems to me that you have a layer above an Artboard and that is what is causing the problem. I would suggest creating the layers as children (under or inside) of the Artboard. So create your Artboard and then with it selected, created your layers so that they are a subset of the Artboard. Then you can lock the layer you want to lock and it will stay within that layer. Or you could just make your document the exact size of the artboard and then not worry about even using an artboard. Hope that helps, Hokusai

MikeW, I know that Publisher can export CMYK PDF's but the problem was and is that normally someone who is a steadfast Publisher user doesn't have the knowledge (and often doesn't care) to use CMYK images in the first place, so while it can output CMYK files they normally don't because they lack the understanding of what CMYK is and why we don't print using RGB. I completely agree with you, the converted images often didn't turn out so good. We just ask the customer to send us a PDF file and the images and then we rebuild them in Quark Xpress or Indesign because that way we know that we have CMYK images and the bleed is correct. Many of the problems that I ran/run into with Publisher files were simply that the users were unaware of how files should be properly built (they can't for some reason grasp the concept of bleed even though we explain it to them quite simply). Of course I experienced this with people who used Pagemaker (Ragemaker) back in the day, and Quark Xpress, and Indesign today but it seems to be less than with people who use Publisher. I also worked on fixing a ton of Postscript errors too (and for some reason it seemed that Ragemaker was often the culprit). It's my personal dislike of Microsoft Publisher and its horrible reputation in the design and professional printing world that makes me worry that Affinity is making a mistake calling their layout app "Affinity Publisher". I, and many others here, have brought this up but the developers don't seem worried about it. I just know too many prepress guys who hate (Microsoft) Publisher and anyone who is a professional designer would never even considered using it as it is too amateurish. I know if I was building a new kind of revolutionary ship, I sure wouldn't call it the Titanic. Just my opinion of course.

ShelleyAlexa, I completely agree with you, Microsoft Publisher doesn't cut it. As someone who has worked in design and prepress for many years, I don't know how much money I've made rebuilding people's layouts that were originally built in Microsoft Publisher (because the files aren't CMYK, it doesn't support separations, etc) and so you would think I would be happy to see people using it as it makes me money. While I have made money from it (and continue to), I still recommend to everyone who will listen to avoid Microsoft publisher. It will cost you more in the long run to use it than it would to buy a decent page layout app. I don't know much about PagePlus as I've never used it nor have I ever encountered it "in the wild". Most professionals use either Indesign or Quark Xpress to create their layouts from my experience (and those are the apps that I use as well when I build layouts for clients). I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of interesting solutions Affinity Publisher brings to the game. I agree with Alfred, Affinity Publisher (while no doubt better than Microsoft Publisher) will be a work in progress for a few years until they get things ironed out. Best of luck, Hokusai

rfx, Based on what has been posted by the staff before, I doubt that it is possible. At least for now, if you want to use Affinity Designer or Photo on both platforms you have to buy a licence for each platform. Hokusai

Keith, I'd never heard of Avocode before this posting https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/22258-avocode-open-to-supporting-affinity-designer-please-vote/?hl=avocodefrom last year. Funny thing is, the person who posted about it didn't explain anything about what Avocode is nor why should "vote" for it. Maybe it is a thing amongst Avocode users to just assume that everyone knows what it is? Hokusai

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.

Callum, Thanks for the response. I'm looking forward to see more Affinity Reviews in the future. Hokusai

Are there any plans to make any more Affinity Review magazines? I enjoyed reading the first two but I haven't seen any after that. Just curious Hokusai