Hokusai

Arie, Hello and welcome to the forums. Here are a couple of links to threads talking about how to open Freehand files in Affinity Designer. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/20485-openingimporting-freehand/?p=95523 https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4639-how-do-i-import-freehand-mx-files/?hl=%2Bimport+%2Bfreehand Best of luck, Hokusai

Michael Lloyd, The request that you posted in your link was originally made in December 2016, that was right around 2 months ago. Two months isn't that long ago. There have been many suggestions made and I'm sure it takes time for the developers to go through them all and then decide which ones to implement and which ones to forget about. As well, they can't add them all at once so they have to prioritize the list so don't think that your suggestion wasn't heard just because it hasn't been added yet. While I feel your pain in regards to having a limited amount of screen space, as TEcHNOpls pointed out in your other thread you can use the Tab key to hide all the tools and studios. Sure it isn't "auto" but at least you have a way to do it for now (although it is manual). Currently you can position palettes (or panels or studios if you prefer) on both sides and that coupled with using the Tab key should help you to save some screen real estate. Best regards, Hokusai

Tia Lapis, Are you being serious or are you just kidding?

mateuspollonio, I don't believe it has been added yet but it is an often requested feature so I would guess that it will be added sometime in the future (but when I have no idea). Hokusai

Sullyman, You might want to post that in the Windows area of the forum as this is the Mac beta thread, just to make sure that they are aware of the issue. Hokusai

Seneca, I can understand your thinking, and I'm sure that there are many others who share your feeling. I just don't think it does much good to think negatively and blame them for not releasing something that they thought would be ready by now. For me I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt. For a small company they have done some amazing things and I'm willing to stay with them to see what else they can bring to the market. In the end I just look at my overall experience with the Affinity products and the staff and I'm very happy with them. I'm very happy with Designer and Photo. Sure there are things that could be improved but I have confidence that they will improve and I think that they will do their best to get Publisher to us as soon as they can. As I mentioned before, I too was hoping for Publisher to be released or at least in beta by now but it appears that it isn't going to happen and lots of negativity isn't going to speed it up. That's just how I see it. Plus in my opinion, them missing a date isn't nearly as bad as another unmentionable company forcing all of its users to switch to a subscription. Hokusai

Fixx, I completely agree with you. Sure in a production environment there are occasions where I would use it (if a customers sends me a terrible low-res jpeg and won't pay for it to be re-made) but for anything else, I would trace it or redraw it because it would be much better than simple auto-tracing. I've never seen an auto-trace program that was as good as a skilled artist. Sure there are times when they are close (simple black and white logos) but normally they can't compete with drawing by a person. If you want something to look the best, then do it the best way (which isn't auto-tracing). Hokusai

Pierrick, I would guess the command + Y is for people who move to Affinity Designer from Illustrator but you can change them as you like in the preferences.

I think that it is refreshing that Tony is being upfront with the users. How many other software companies are like that? Not many if any at all. Am I disappointed that Publisher won't be available for a while? Sure but I understand the difficulty of producing quality things and I think that they are doing the right thing by waiting until things are working right before releasing it. I'm incredibly impressed by Affinity Designer and Photo and it gives me confidence that Publisher will be a worthy addition to my graphic design tools. In the meantime, I can use Quark Xpress or an older pre-subscription version of Indesign to get things done. Consider at how fast Designer and Photo have progressed in such a short amount of time. Be patient, I'm sure that when they finally do get Publisher done, it will be worth the wait.

CNMiles, CS 2 is when Illustrator first got the ability to vectorize raster files. Before then you had to use Streamline to do it. So for 18 years of its existence Illustrator wasn't wearing "big boy" pants?

Sullyman, I requested this too shortly after Affinity Designer was released and I was told that they wanted to get the boolean operations working smoothly before they added anything else (relating to boolean operations). I don't know if that has changed or not? At first I found the lack of a "merge" tool difficult to deal with but slowly I got used to it. I do think that the boolean operations in Affinity Designer work better than the ones in Illustrator (for me anyways) but I still do miss the good old "merge" and there isn't anything comparable in Designer.

bleduc, Thanks for the tip. I was aware of and I've tried out the "isolation" mode (not sure what its official name is) and while that is useful in some situations, it isn't as useful nor as versatile (at least in my opinion) as a "Hide/Show all" that would allow the user to hide objects or grouped objects and show them with a keystroke. It is something that I have been hoping for (and requesting) since I first used Affinity Designer. As it is now, there is no way to simply hide objects (whether single objects or groups of objects). The only way to do it now is to select them and then go to the Layers panel and find them and turn off the visibility. You can use the "find in layers" but that only works for turning off the visibility and it is much slower and less efficient than a simple "Hide" command. There is currently no way to turn on or show items that were hidden without spending lots of time going through the Layers Panel. A "show all" command would remedy this. The way it works in Designer now is nice for somethings but if you have many different items (like you normally do with complex drawings) they are often on different layers and so isolating them by layer isn't always ideal but if you could hide objects, even if they are different layers it wouldn't matter. I know for many people this kind of feature isn't important but for people who work on very complex, multi-layered files, it is a huge time saver. Hokusai

I too think the brush stabilization is going to be great and I too think that a vector eraser would go perfectly with it but I'm hoping the most for a "hide/show all" command and shortcut! I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of cool and interesting things the Affinity team has packed into 1.6!

The mighty mouse ball is super easy to clean. Just place a piece of paper (plain white) on your desk and then turn the mouse over and gently apply some pressure and make the ball turn over the paper and it will clean the ball. My Mighty Mouse's scroll ball wouldn't work and I thought I was going to have to get a new one (3 years ago) and I read about this trick and I tried it and it works great. It has kept my Mighty Mouse working perfectly.

pxls2prnt, If it makes you feel any better, I went through the same thing. I liked the magic mouse (at least for general use things) but it caused me problems with Affinity Designer and if I had to turn off the scrolling, then why use it? I too looked at many different options from other companies (namely Logictech) but in the end I bought a Mighty Mouse and I've been really happy with it (the one with the scroll ball in it). I bought the corded one (as I hate messing with batteries) and I love it. The only downside is, sometimes the ball gets dirty but it is super easy to clean so it isn't a problem. I hope that you are able to find a mouse that you enjoy! Hokusai

I think this is what you are trying to do? Sample.afdesign

jonfuller1004, Sorry there is another probably easier way to do it. Draw your lines you have done using the stroke and then use the "expand stroke". You will probably have to do some cleaning up either with the boolean operations or using the node tool but it should be pretty easy. Hokusai

jonfuller1004, One question, are you creating the lines that make up the wings with lines and then added a stroke to it? If so instead of using lines with a stroke applied, draw an outline of the shape of the wings and that way you can easily overlap and then in the end merge them using the boolean operations. Does that make sense? Hokusai

udesignerwt, If there is an option then of course you can. I think the question that you want to ask is "can I create an animated gif using Affinity Photo?" Is that right? I'm not sure but I would guess that you can't created animated ones yet (maybe you can with the latest Photo but not with the older one). Hokusai

pxls2prnt, I wish I could help you more but I'm not sure what is causing your problems. I would recommend this as a read for you though: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/16674-affinity-designer-magic-mouse-disaster/?hl=%2Bmagic+%2Bmouse Best of luck, Hokusai

pxls2prnt, Are you by any chance using a Magic Mouse?

wscrcom, As far as I know there isn't a way to do this yet (in Designer anyways). In Illustrator you would use the "Warp" filter but those kinds of vector filters or effects haven't been added yet. They have been requested though I believe. You could pretty easily just redraw it from the image (like tracing it), it wouldn't take much time. Good luck, Hokusai

Mau, You mention that this has been "YEARS" but Affinity Designer was only released in November 2014, so barely over 2 years. In perspective, it isn't all that long. I'm sure that the Affinity team has something in the works and when it is ready, they will add it. Until then, we will just have to wait. And yes, the Affinity does listen. They are head and shoulders above the competition when it comes to listening to users' requests. If you think otherwise, then you haven't been using a computer for very long. Hokusai

Str2, No, I don't. As long as the price isn't ungodly high, I think it is just fine to use perpetual licences. I despise subscriptions for software. I don't have any software subscriptions and I stay as far away from them as possible. I can understand why some people would like them but to be forced to use them is unacceptable. Hokusai

I think the title for this thread is wrong, it should be "Please add the ability to save workspaces" as you can already customise it. I too would like the feature, but it isn't something that is pressing as I only use Affinity stuff on one computer and so once I rearrange things, they stay that way. While it would be nice to have, there are other things more pressing. Hokusai