Hokusai

ianrobertdouglas, I do the same as you. I use subtract (from the Boolean operations) to "erase" things. It doesn't work nearly as well as a vector eraser would but it does work. When I began my search for an alternative to Adobe Illustrator, I bought two programs. Affinity Designer and iDraw (sorry I forgot the company but they have sense been bought out by another company). After trying them both out, I decided on Affinity Designer and I'm glad I did. While I'm glad I did, I do miss the vector eraser in iDraw. It worked well. I hope that the development team can add a vector eraser soon! It would be much appreciated! Hokusai

Str2, You sound like a "subscription apologist" or maybe I'm misunderstanding your post? Hokusai

RockDoc, Are you using a Mac that is running Classic (OS 9 or before)? If you are running any version of OS X then you can make PDF files if you are running CorelDraw in OS X. I don't remember when Corel pulled out of the Mac market, maybe it was pre-OS X but I thought that they made at least one version for OS X. Here is a link to a statement made by Tony, https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/10884-support-cdr-files/?p=46547 Hokusai

T_Y, As someone who recently started playing around with Blocs, I agree with your comments. I came from GoLive and then Dreamweaver but I didn't need all the power (nor the subscription) so I decided to try something else. I tried Rapidweaver but it is worthless unless you shell out a fortune for a ton of extras that should be included but aren't. Blocs looks promising but as you mentioned, it isn't without faults. The templates are okay but rather lacking in my opinion (I also wondered who, other than Apple, would be using iPhone description pages?) I hate the assets in Blocs. I know it is supposed to be a feature but instead it is a huge time waster. Also, you can't delete things using the delete key? It does super simple sites well but it needs a lot more work to be worth the $80 price. If the developer was like the developers here, I might be more positive but it is just one guy (and while he is nice, I worry that he can't keep up and he lacks vision). My major problem with the program isn't flexible enough to handle anything beyond the templates provided. I hope that the developer continues to improve it. Until Affinity releases their own (which is highly unlikely) I will stick with it, at least for a while or until I find something better. Hokusai

eduguedes, Hello and welcome to the forums as you appear to be rather new. I can understand your frustration about having to keep and run multiple software titles but that is to be expected. If you had ever experienced a software transition, you would know that you always have to keep the old software around (at least for a while) until you get things moved over to your new software. I think you have unrealistic expectations if you think that you can use one software package for a long time and then suddenly drop it and start using another one and expect the new package to open everything that was created in the old software. Transitioning old projects over takes time and effort and it isn't without challenges. While it is challenging sometimes, it is worth it in the end. Designer is a great piece of software and after a little work and time you should be able to ditch CorelDraw completely (as long as you have moved all of your old Corel files over to Designer). Why not just save out your old CorelDraw files as PDF and open them up in Designer? Best of luck, Hokusai

MEB, Thanks for the link! Designer 1.6 is going to be great! Any chance my number one feature request might make its way into 1.6? Thanks, Hokusai

As someone who finds the current dark theme visually pleasing, the new lighter UI shown in the video that MEB posted a link to also looks very nice. So nice that when it comes out, I might use the lighter one! I think it is great that the developers are letting us, the users, choose what works best for us. Way to go developers! I'm looking forward to 1.6! Is there a list anywhere of features that are going to be included in 1.6? Hokusai

Transrobotism, I think that some people have mentioned here have mentioned using Affinity Designer to draw the fonts and then they cut and paste them (or copy or import them) into Glyphs (https://www.glyphsapp.com) or Fontographer (or Font Lab). I think that a full featured font creation app would be beyond the scope of Designer. Creating a font is rather complex and I would say that it would take more than a plugin to make one properly (just a guess). I would recommend drawing your fonts in Designer and then find a way to get them into your font creation program. I would check out the font programs first to make sure that you can get your font from Designer to it properly. Hokusai

Stokestack, I requested this before but it was a long time ago (probably within the first month of Designer's release) and I completely agree with you. This is important to anyone who uses a lot of Boolean operations. It is difficult and annoying to try to select what you want when there are other items on top (but they have holes or spaces cut out of them). It would be helpful if there was a preference for selecting behaviour. Hokusai

fernandolins86, Sorry, I'm not sure what the difference is? You are right though, there is a difference. I am using the Affinity Designer Beta (version 1.5.5) but I thought that this was added awhile back to the Mac App store version too. The Windows version must be a little behind or maybe the Mac App Store version doesn't have it yet either, I'm not sure. Maybe someone on the development team can tell you more. Hokusai

roadtreker, Your screenshot shows Apple's Photo and I don't even see Affinity Photo in your dock. Maybe you have to have Affinity Photo running? Hokusai

befehr, Nice request. I watched the video and that kind of functionality would be great to add to Designer. To be honest, it doesn't sounds all that interesting and it seems like something you could easily do with the Boolean operations but after seeing it in action I can see how it would be useful. Hokusai

fernandolins86, Your welcome. I believe that If you still have the scrubby zoom enable you can hold down Option (Alt) when you have the zoom tool and it will give you the old zooming behaviour (the marquee rectangle style). This doesn't work with every tool though. I much prefer the marquee style zooming. Best of Luck, Hokusai

fernadolins86, There is a preference for it. You can also use a different key combination to get it but it doesn't always work so I prefer to use the preference. It is under Tools and just uncheck the "Use Scrubby Zoom". Hokusai

Chris B, Thanks for looking into it. I'm sure you are right and it is just an odd permissions thing. I won't worry about it unless it starts happening more frequently. Hokusai

Chris B, It originally happened with an .ai file that I opened in the Designer beta. I only had the file open in the Designer beta and it was the first time to have the file open on my computer. I did try saving it under a different name (well same name but with the .afdesign extension instead of the .ai extension) but no luck. Then after that it wouldn't let me save anything (I couldn't even save newly created documents either). I had to quit and then reboot in order to get things back to normal. I didn't try to import the .ai after that, instead I converted it to a pdf instead and then opened it in the Mac store version of Designer instead of the beta and it everything was okay. I brought it up because the error message said "Please report this to Serif" which is the first time I had seen such a message. Thanks, Hokusai

MEB, I was simply trying to save the file to my "User/Documents" folder (and not on a server). Nothing unusual or odd. Any advice or help you can offer would be much appreciated. Thanks, Hokusai

It seems that now I can't use the Designer beta at all. I can't save anything, no matter what the content of the document. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks, Hokusai

retrograde, I'm hoping it will show up soon too! I'm also hoping for a "Hide/Show all" but I'm always hoping for that. The latest beta has a "Lock" & "Unlock" but I have no idea what good the "Unlock" is for? Do you? The only way (as far as I can tell) that it can be used is if you happen to have an object selected and you Lock it and then without unselecting it you decide that you want to Unlock it, you can. Otherwise it isn't much help because if something is locked, you can't select it unless you find it and select it in the Layers Palette which isn't helpful because if I have to travel to the Layers Palette to select it, I might as well Unlock it there anyways. An Unlock All would be great and I hope that the current Unlock manages to evolve into an Unlock All! I can hope! Hokusai

I'm not sure if this is a known bug or perhaps it is something odd that happened on my end? I was working on a file, an imported Illustrator file, and I made some changes in Designer Beta and when I tried to save the file I couldn't. When I tried to export, I couldn't. One of the messages asked me to "report it to Serif" and so I thought I would pass it along. Thanks for all the hard work, I'm looking forward to the 1.6! Hokusai

MrFlexo, I completely agree with you about wanting a separation preview, it would be a welcomed addition. I think most people are eagerly waiting for a more powerful way to select multiple objects and hopefully it will be added soon! I do have a few questions about your list. There are already 2 different kinds of zooming in Designer, the regular kind that shows the box (maybe it is called "marquee" zooming) and scrubby zooming. Does Illustrator have a 3rd kind of zooming that I don't know about? Have you tried both kinds of zooming? I'm not sure why you added "locking-unlocking selected objects? You can lock and unlock items now in Designer. You can even lock things easily with a shortcut, the problem comes with unlocking. There currently isn't an easy way to unlock items without digging through the layers palette (which wastes time). An "unlock all" is what is needed. I'm not sure why but there is already an "unlock" shortcut in Designer but you have to have the object selected in order to use it (and you can't have it selected if it is locked). The only way to use it is if you have an item selected and you lock it, then you change your mind you can unlock it but once you click something else you have to travel to the Layers Palette. It doesn't make sense, unless there is something I'm missing? I am always requesting a "Hide/Show All" as well because it is a much needed time saver and it is hard to talk about a "lock/unlock all" without talking about "hide/show all". Hokusai

Fixx, Thanks, that works and it works differently than I imagined (but it works well)! Hokusai

I would love to have a Convert Vectors to B&W filter. Sure it seems pretty trivial but if you have ever had to convert a vector file with thousands of shapes and hundreds of different colours to black and white then you can appreciate how handy this is. Especially if you have a file that has lots of gradients, it is a nightmare! Hokusai

Chris B, Thanks, that worked. In every program that I have ever used it is always Black and White so the grey threw me. Hokusai

It seems odd but for the longest time something has been bothering me and I can't seem to get rid of it. Every new document that I create starts with two colours, black and 10% Grey. I want it to start with Black and White but for unknown reasons, I can't. Why would it start as 10% Grey? Does anyone know how to get it back to Black and White? Thanks in advance, Hokusai