Hokusai

justme, I live in Japan and I sometimes use Japanese and it works fine for me. I'm guessing that your Illustrator files are using a Japanese font that you no longer have and so Affinity is defaulting it to a western font (like Arial or Helvetica) and those fonts can't display the Japanese characters so it shows them as rectangular boxes. I have attached a sample that shows a Japanese word (two hiragana characters "Ze" and "N") set in two different fonts. In a Japanese font, it shows up fine. In Helvetica Neue, it doesn't show up at all and instead shows only two rectangles. Do you have any Japanese fonts installed? If so, try highlighting the messed up text and then change the font to a Japanese font and it should work. Hokusai

epompaaa, Did you read my answer to your previous post? https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/6940-help-with-coloringfill-please/. I'm not sure your end goal. You appear to be mixing vectors and rasters, which is fine but you need to be fully aware of the differences between vectors and rasters.

r10K, In the beta there are shortcuts for switching to different views.

epompaaa, Your drawing is nice but your vector work needs some help. Instead of lots of little shapes, draw complete shapes. Also, your Affinity Designer file is set up as RBG. Do you plan to print it or use it on the web? If you are using it on the web then it is fine, if you are planning on using it in print, then CMYK. Step 1:Place your image (the one that you are using for a reference) on the bottom layer. Step 2: create a new layer on top and then redraw your image using whatever colour that you would like for the outlines. Step 3: create a new layer between your image layer and the outline layer and then draw shapes in the negative space areas where you want to add colour . Then choose a colour for the areas that you have drawn. If you use Affinity Photo, it would be easier to colour it as you can use the selection tool and then fill but if you want it to be vector (which makes the quality nicer), then you have no other choice than to draw the areas that you want to colour. It is time consuming but it can produce great results/ I have made a new file for you with these steps started for you. I only did the head of the mermaid as it is rather time consuming. I used the Affinity Beta and so if you are using the App Store version, you will have to download the beta to open the file that I made. The beta is free for those who have bought the App Store version. Good luck, Hokusai Mermaid.afdesign

vladic, You can attach panels to left already. Just drag them over to the left side (but to the right of the tool bar) and they will dock there. Hokusai

rogercrocha, Did you know that you can save colour palettes (a list of colours) and then load them whenever you like.

I can understand that people would like to have a manual to read, it is nice but to be honest, I haven't seen an actual manual in many years. The last time I actually saw a user manual with software was before the year 2000. After that it the trend was to include the manual as a PDF file (but no printed version). Then companies moved it online, and now many companies just do Help Files. In this day and age, I never expect a manual. My question to those who would like a manual is, would you still be asking for a manual if you had to pay for it?

Braceyourself, Currently, you can export your colour Palette from Affinity Designer and Import it into Affinity Photo (and I would guess visa versa). I agree with you, it would be nice if there was a way to sync them but least it can be done with a few clicks! Hokusai

pixelpupil, Welcome to the forums and welcome to the world of illustration. As someone who has been working in design and illustration for a while, I would say that the pros use whatever tool they like best (and one that meets their requirements in terms of features and ease of use). I started out using Illustrator and Freehand and eventually I was forced to use Corel Draw, now I use Affinity Designer. Which one is the best is a matter of opinion. I have always preferred Illustrator over Freehand (but that is just me). Corel Draw, while very powerful, was always a horrible experience for me because its user interface was so bad. Now I'm am very content using Affinity Designer. In fact, I prefer many of Affinity Designer's tools and features over those of Illustrator (the pen and node tool for example are so much better in Affinity Designer in my opinion). Sure there are some areas where Illustrator has the upper hand but Illustrator has been around for a long time and Affinity Designer is not even one year old and it is already incredibly powerful. Affinity Designer is maturing very quickly and I don't think it will be long before Affinity Designer will have feature parity with Illustrator. Affinity Designer has great features (many with lots of niceties like the corner tool) and for the price, you can't beat it. Plus with Affinity Designer, you don't have the hassle of the whole subscription thing to deal with. What can be done with Affinity Designer (or any other vector application for that matter) is like asking "what can you build with a hammer?", you can create anything, the only limitation is your imagination.

Signguy, There is a similar topic worth reading here. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/6475-finder-icon-preview/?hl=%2Bblank+%2Bicon

Tamauro, I would recommend just saving your Illustrator file as a PDF file, it has worked pretty well for me in the past. Hokusai

lesterng, You can download the beta from here https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/6567-affinity-designer-customer-beta-rc3-11223834/ Hokusai

Paekke, I would love this too. Illustrator uses the "/" key for no fill as well so I have major muscle memory. I would also like a "fill with last used colour" and "fill with last used gradient" key as well. Right now (in the beta) you can copy an item that has a fill of none and then when you create a new shape just press Shift + command + V to paste the style (it will basically do what you are asking but it is slightly more difficult because it is a 3 key operation). Don't forget to copy the style first! Hokusai

lesterng, Hello and welcome to the forums. In the beta version of Affinity Designer, you can already do this. You can rearrange the order of the colours to your liking. As well, it automatically names the colours with the colour value. The beta is free to those who purchased the App Store version of Designer. Just remember that the beta version and the App Store versions are incompatible and so if you save a file in the beta, you won't be able to open it in the App Store version. I recommend you download the beta and give it a try. You can run both the App Store version and the beta at the same time with no problems if you have any reservations. The beta is stable, I don't even use the App Store version any more, only the beta because the beta has a lot of added features and improvements.

ronnyb, Thanks for the tips. I have tried repairing permissions but it didn't help. I don't think that it is something that is OS specific as it doesn't affect any other program, only Affinity Designer but if my problems persist, I'll try reinstalling the OS. I really think my problems are being caused by the "RAM Usage" setting (not having enough RAM allocated in the preferences). In the preferences I upped the RAM usage and so far I haven't had any problems. Before I was using the default setting and possibly it was a little low for the type of drawings that I do. If Affinity locks up again, I'll up the settings even more and possibly buy another stick of RAM. By the way, what setting do you use for "RAM Usage"?

A_B_C, Thanks for the link. I think that the issue that I'm having is something like that (similar but a little different). The drawings that i make normally have a lot of shapes, anywhere from 5,000 and up. I'm wondering if it is something as simple as I need to up the "RAM Usage" in the preferences? I don't know why, but I think that the program is having a hard time to draw all the shapes (I have no idea, just a guess). I have increased the amount of RAM Usage and I will see if it eliminates the lockups.

Just a question for anyone who might know a solution or have an idea of what is causing my problems. I've been having intermittent problems and it only happens when I'm using Affinity Designer. I originally thought Affinity Designer was the culprit but after posting about it here, I came to the conclusion that the fact that it only happens when I'm using Affinity Designer is just a coincidence. After reading this article ( was sure that it was something to do with mDNSResponder but now I don't think so (the problems with the mDNSRepsonder don't create the same kind of problems that I'm having). I was just wondering if anyone else is having the same issue or has had the same issue that I'm having. What happens for me is when I'm drawing in Affinity Designer using the Pen tool (with a JPEG on the 1st layer to use as a reference), and I press the space bar to get the Hand tool, the hand tool activates like it is going to pan but what it does is lock the screen. If I'm running iTunes in the background, music still plays and I can move the panning hand tool but it doesn't pan. I can't force quit the program, in fact I can't do anything. I can't switch programs or launch any new ones (the keyboard doesn't appear to work but it is working). I can't even access any menu items either (the cursor still moves and I can turn on the CapsLock but I can't do anything else). The only thing I can do is hard boot my computer to get it back. It isn't iTunes because it also happens when I'm not running iTunes, in fact I'm only running Affinity Designer. The odd thing is, it happens here and there and then it doesn't do it for a few weeks or a month and then it starts doing it again. The only time it has ever done it is when I'm using Affinity Designer. I don't get a crash log from Affinity Designer (I'm guessing because it didn't actually crash but I had to hard boot the computer and so it doesn't seem to generate a crash report, I don't know if this is correct but there isn't a crash log from Affinity Designer). I'm running OS 10.10.2 and it has happened to me with both the Mac App Store version and the beta. I posted about this in January and both MattP and MEB seemed to think it was being caused by something else, which it very well might be (if so, does anyone have any clue as to what might be causing the problem?). I'm not running any add-ons or anything other than a stock OS. My computer is a 2009 27 inch iMac with an ATI Radeon HD 4670 256 MB video card. It only does this when I'm using the Pen tool and I press the spacebar to pan (every single time this has been the case). I was just curious if anyone else has seen this sort of thing? Does anyone know if you hard boot, will it generate a crash report for any programs that were locked up before the hard boot? As I said, this problem isn't something that happens all the time, it is very intermittent but it seems to be happening more lately and I would like to resolve it. Any tips or suggestions that might help me to resolve this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Hokusai

RussellBWilson, Good idea, I think that would be very useful too (and it wouldn't take up very much screen real estate).

Welcome to the forums theconspiracy, I'm sure that there are many Windows users who would like to be able to run Affinity products on Windows but I'm going to have to disagree with you that "most designers work on Windows". I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or not?

Thank you Ben; and the rest of the Affinity team!!!! Very grateful for adding this!

objectref, Sorry I have no idea if you can do it using Affinity Designer but I would guess that you would need to use Affinity Photo (but I don't know for sure, maybe you can and it in Designer but if you can, I don't know how). Best of Luck, Hokusai

objectref, Sorry, I misunderstood you. If you look for this, I believe it is thew "insert target" tool set. It gives you control over where you would like to put something or where to paint.

Objectref, I'm guessing you are looking for Affinity's photo application (appropriately named Affinity Photo). It has a lot more photo tools more like Photoshop whereas Affinity Designer is more like Illustrator. Sure Designer has the pixel persona but it's main focus is vectors (you can mix both vectors and rasters in Designer but its focus is still vectors). Affinity Photo has only been released as a beta so far, and so you will have to sign up to download the beta. If you go to the main page (https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/) and click on the "Get the beta" with Affinity Photo logo, it will take you to a page where you can signup. It is a great application. I recommend that you give it a try. Best of luck, Hokusai

MEB, I'm glad to hear about this too. +1 for being able to set a reference point for alignment! Keep up the great work guys! Hokusai

Chris, Yes, once you have selected all the items that you want to change, just click on a colour swatch and they will all change to that colour. Hokusai