LCamachoDesign

Obviously Affinity has an advantage here. I don't know how fast it will be on Adobe, but it's impossible to beat Affinity here since switching personas takes 0 time. This is not true. Once you move your Illustrator file to Photoshop you loose pretty much all vector information, you can't switch back and forth between them. This is actually a very good question. It's my understanding that's sort of what they've done with their Cloud documents. However right now the .PSDC and .AIC documents seem to be incompatible, or at least the applications will not show each other's files. However the pre-order page for Illustrator on the iPad clearly states that you can "[w]ork on a project across Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Fresco." This seems to indicate the all 3 applications will be able to open and edit PSDC and AIC files after the MAX 2020 update. Or they'll drop/rename AIC files in favour of having everything as PSDC's (or other extension). Also, one of the guest illustrators at a recent Adobe stream literally said she could open her AIC (?) files on Fresco. Missing global colours on the iPad, or not even being able to delete more than one colour swatch at a time on the desktop seems to disagree with that. These are the very basics of drawing, it's literally basic flat colouring of shapes, and it's been missing since the beginning! I mean they have great features, the isometric drawing for example is really, really good. But not if it comes at the expense of being able to literally colour things properly!

Yeah, that’s absolutely true. To me the niche that Affinity Designer filled was illustration, no other application does the mix of vector and raster... unless... And here the crux of the question. By dragging their feet with large releases like were in 1998, instead of putting out monthly releases with small but welcome improvements that build over time they open themselves to be overran by other competitors. From what I can gather Affinity may have the rug pulled from under its feet with the illustration niche advantage I’ve just talked about. As far as I know Illustrator for the iPad will produce editable files that are interchangeable with Fresco. This means you can build the vectors in Illustrator, and raster shade them on Fresco. Pretty much what I think is the only strong use case for their software. If Adobe does it too, but better, then it’s game over for them. No pro will use their software since were all forced to have Creative Cloud subscriptions anyway, might as well make the most of it by using all software you can... That said there’s still advantages to how Affinity does things, and I’m not sure if Adobe or other will catch up on these, but they might and that’s a dangerous game to play.

Yeah, and another thing. My 'File' suggestion (which I've amended to include EPS files) would work wonders for stock patterns. If you hop onto GraphicRiver, ColourBox, Creative Market, etc... all the patterns you can buy there are already stand alone tiles that can be repeated just by placing them next to each other. By being able to open and use these files with the Fill tool the vector pattern issue would be... reduced. Like I said, excellent is the enemy of good, and with the very slow release schedules of Affinity, any quick patch that can be slipped into minor releases is a welcome reprieve.

Cleaner boolean operations is a must of course. But the others, I'm not so sure, to me they'd be 'nice to have' but not critical. I personally think there's two areas that need the most attention right now: Swatches panel: Colouring artwork is the basic of the basics. This panel needs to work reliably all the time, and right now there's a few bugs that need cleaning up. Another very important area is the missing features, stuff like selecting multiple swatches to delete/move at once, select all unused swatches, merge swatches, and a better UI to edit them. Colouring is basics, it needs to be solid. Vector patterns: right now the Fill tool supports patterns, but only bitmap ones. The entirety of the textile industry lives off vector patterns, by continuing to ignore it you're leaving a whole industry out of the loop. Other industries rely on these too, like stationary and to a lesser extent, branding. Right now the quick and dirty solution would be to rename the fill tool 'Bitmap' option to 'File', and allow it to open and use AFDESIGN, EPS and PDF files as patterns, without rasterization obviously. This doesn't solve creating them, but it does solve applying. Obviously the best option would be a full integrated solution like in Illustrator, but you know the saying, excellent is the enemy of good.

You have? Are you talking about just the beta then? On the stable version (1.8.5.703) try as I might I can't get the canvas to rotate with the two finger gesture. I haven't tried the beta yet, I normally only test these if there's a feature I'm really interested in testing first hand. Thanks! VID_20201005_104625.mp4

Can we use the two finger rotate gesture on the Surface Pro to do this as well? Just like in the iPad.

I really don't know why anyone would want mesh fills. They exist in Illustrator, I avoid them like the plague. They're impossible to manage, a pain to create, they're simply awful. If you're considering adding this so people can have multiple flowing colours in one shape, then consider... err... taking inspiration from Illustrator free form gradients. They'll serve most people's needs, and are so, but so, much easier to manage. Of course if we're going into personal requests, then my top vote will always be global colours on the iPad and a 'full rewrite' of the swatches panel on the desktop.

I've came across this issue with the Pen Tool and stylus devices. If you try to draw straight lines with sharp nodes, very often you'll inadvertedly create smooth points instead. I've first noticed this on my Surface Pro 4, but I've also been able to replicate it on my desktop PC with very different hardware. At first I thought it was Windows Ink causing the issue since a similar bug was happening in previous versions, but switching to High Precision or Low Precision does not fix the issue. The 'trick' seems to be the rhythm at which you lay down the points? This is easier to replicate on the Surface Pro and it's pen, or at least it happens more often, seems like a somewhat fast laying down of points trigger this more often? On the desktop seems to be the opposite, slow and deliberate points seem to convert to smooth more often. I also got the feeling the longer the program runs, the more likely it is to trigger unwanted smooth points. Attached are videos showing the issue happening in both hardware / software combinations. There needs to be a higher 'dead zone' before sharp points transition to smooth points, otherwise it's a pain to deal with using the Pen Tool. Thanks! This first video is the Surface Pro 4 + Surface Pen + Windows Ink, while the second video is Desktop PC + Wacom Intuos + High Precision. Surface_Pro_4_+_Surface_Pen_+_Windows_Ink.mp4 Desktop_+_Wacom_Intuos_+_High_Precision.mp4

Err... I just came here to suggest puny a 'select all text objects' option... But I've been clearly and brutally outdone by everyone else. 😂🤣😂🤣😂

I'm currently looking into if I should purchase a display monitor, such an XP-Pen Innovator 16 or a Huion Kamvas 16 Pro, but I came across many reports that drivers for these devices will conflict with Wacom drivers. As I kept looking it seems like the issues lies with WinTab APIs, it seems like each of these drivers will install a different wintab32.dll. So Wacom drivers will install a version/variant of wintab32.dll that only works with those drivers, and when you install let's say a XP-Pen driver, it will overwrite the wintab32.dll file that again only works with itself. Bummer. But it seems like applications that use Windows Ink should be unaffected by this. So long as the drivers are set to use Windows Ink everything should work just fine. At least in theory. And that's my question for anyone using this hardware combo on Windows, were you able to make both drivers work in Windows Ink mode? Were you able to retain pressure (and tilt) sensitivity in both pen devices? Affinity software is a prime example of a software where this is easy to spot since you can easily swap between WinTab and Windows Ink at will. Thanks in advance for any help given.

Does this mean we'll be able to freely rotate the canvas now? I came across a post sometime ago mentioning that the lack of hardware acceleration was the reason we don't have it in Windows. I'm fairly sure it wasn't any of the developers saying it, but I guess asking about it here doesn't hurt.

Fair enough, but then at the very least clean it up to a usable state. I only install InDesign once a year, to work on a product catalogue that's about 150 to 200 pages long. Nothing too fancy, it's a B2B company, so it's mostly grids of photos and product pricing beneath. My work computer is a Ryzen 3700x, 32Gb DDR4 3200Mhz, GeForce GTX 1060 6Gb, and a M.2 970 Samsung SSD. It's an overkill beast for graphic design. And let me tell you, InDesign runs like sh*t. It's dog slow simply scrolling through pages. Editing the contents takes forever. I could go on, every single action is slow. I mean, it's not a 2 page résumé, but it's also not a highly detailed National Geographic book either... come on. And it's been on this state since... ever really. I don't think I've ever seen InDesign perform acceptably over the years. In this case I'm very glad for Affinity Publisher. I use it for all my internal documents, and any client work that does not required very advanced features. Sometimes it's just that, get the basics working, and get them working well and fast. Extra bells and whistles are only useful if the basics are solid. And that gets us back to Affinity Designer. Sure, it has plenty of nice features, but they need to get the basics done well first. For example, what good serves the appearance panel, where I can add dozens of strokes to an object, if I can't get the colours working reliably? I'm supposed to add different colours to each stroke, and then manually go through each of them if I later change my mind on colour combinations? What if I have dozens of such objects? So yeah, your (and mine) request is very much valid. And looking at how others fail in the basics, namely InDesign in... well even scrolling through pages, is a good example of why getting the basic right matters a lot. Is InDesign better than Affinity Publisher? I guess so. Will I ever use it I'm unless forced by a large project? Not in a million years. EDIT: Literally today, the XD team added one new feature that's a massive help on your UX/UI work. You always had the ability to design the UI for (a common example) and iPad and an iPhone in the same file. But then when it came to share that with a client, you had to create an extra screen as a starting place where they could tap to see the iPad or iPhone UIs. I used to do this "hack" all the time. Not anymore, now you can select a number of interactions from your file and create a link that shows only that. From now on I'll create two share links out of the same file, one for the iPhone and another for the iPad. This is the kind of understanding how the designers work, how they interact with clients, that sets the XD team apart from all other teams at Adobe and many other companies. Listen to how your customers work, listen to their pain points, and address that quickly. Today's release literally only has that one feature and nothing else (and keyboard shortcuts to switch between personas), but that's fine, I'm not stressed out by that. I know that next month they'll be back, they'll add yet another nugget of improvement that makes my life easier. They do it in small, but consistent and timely, chunks.

Yeah, that's particularly true now that Illustrator for the iPad is two months away from release, and from what I can scrape from the videos out there, it's at least quite acceptable for a first version. And that's the gamble of not listening to the need of basic features like global colours... people need to remember that there's no such thing as one unified "Adobe". These corporations are collections of "independent companies" which happen to operate under the same name. As such what one of these "companies" achieves, says nothing about what the others will. Just like what one coffee shop does says nothing about the coffee shop down the street. That's why you end up with massively asymmetric softwares called "Adobe something". An excellent example is the XD/InDesign pair. Adobe XD is developed by a team that's very active, releases updates several times per month, is always putting out great new features, keeps up and sometimes sets the pace on UI/UX software. Then you have Adobe InDesign, which let's call it what it is, it's abandonware. It's left to rot in the open fields. They don't even bother fixing glaring issues, "new versions" are nothing more than number bumps with a literal couple of unneeded, not useful, "features" released every... two years? It's that bad. The gamble is, who are the people behind Illustrator for the iPad? The same kind living dead that "work" on InDesign? In that case you don't have to develop global colours... or a pen tool, or anything. Just do a blank app and you'll be ahead for years to come. Or is it a team of relentless folks like those behind XD? Well, if that is the case then Affinity product managers should start sweating profusely... They got lucky with Photoshop for iPad, which for the most part turned out to be dud, and it doesn't look like it will ever catch up. But it's like I said, you don't know who's doing what. Just because the Photoshop team is terrible, doesn't mean the Illustrator team will be.

@ProDesigner global colours do existing in Affinity Designer / Photo / Publisher, and they work as you expect (except for a few bugs). But they are only editable on the desktop version of the apps. My requested you linked above it's just to bring the editor into the iPad. What this means is, if you bring your file into the desktop Affinity Designer and add global colours there, they will work just fine and as expected both on desktop and the iPad. You just can't change them on the iPad itself. This is probably more clear with an example: Create a new Designer file on the iPad, not because it's necessary, but it makes the point I'm trying to make more clear. Create a new Document Palette. It's important to be this type of palette, so that any swatches added are carried within the file itself. Draw a few vector shapes, save the file and bring it into the desktop Affinity Designer via iCloud / OneDrive / Dropbox... On the desktop add a few global colour to the document palette you created in step 2. Don't bother applying them to the shapes, just save the file and take it back to the iPad. On the iPad, apply the newly created swatches to the your shapes. Shapes will change colour, you still can't change the swatches themselves... but save the file again and bring it to the desktop again. On the desktop, edit the global colour swatches. The shapes will change colour accordingly as expected. If you keep doing this iPad <-> Desktop dance you'll realise the 'globalness' of the swatches is never lost. In summary the iPad apps do support global colours, they understand and apply these properties, they're just no editor for them in the iPad. And that's my request on that post, a swatches editor for the iPad. That's it.

We the users don't know. But they need to add it, and they need to add it fast. Like today. I've been saying for a very long while now the swatches panel, both on the desktop and mobile, need an overhaul as they're just bad. In mobile is more obvious than desktop, but both need it. Yet nothing is ever said and a couple versions have gone by without changes... They're going to have their lunch stolen by Adobe. Easily. I'm trying to keep an eye on Illustrator for iPad, it's hard because I don't have a beta invitation (I've asked...), and there's an NDA preventing people from talking about it. But I've gathered a couple of points recently related to this subject. If you watch this YouTube video: At points you can pause and see something interesting, there's a menu entry to change the colour bars to CMYK. This is one of the main advantages Affinity has over many other apps even "full" Photoshop for iPad. Full CMYK support. Well, seems like no more. Then if you look at this video, which seems to be a newer build of the app: You'll be able to pause at times and also see something else interesting, it seems like global swatches are already present, and even better, they seem to be automatically created and applied to every shape you work with. This is superior to even desktop Illustrator! Seems like Adobe might have the upper hand here. Since every single professional designer needs to subscribe at the very least Illustrator, and it's likely this app will be included with that plan, it does seem like it's adoption will be much higher and faster than Photoshop or Fresco. So... yeah. Getting global colours working on the iPad should be a top priority as the lead over the competition is slowing slipping away.

For those wondering, what this actually means is support for fonts installed through Adobe’s Creative Cloud app. Nice!

Yeah, the iPad AI seems to have better pattern functions than even desktop AI. The main problem with these Adobe iPad apps is that none of them, neither the legacy or the new ones, support CMYK. So... we're kind of stuck when it comes to print patterns on the iPad. This is an area where Affinity could do a quick 'land grab'. Getting a proper vector pattern editor, both in Desktop and iPad, would help Designer's adoption a lot, I mean a lot, a lot. For example, I have a client that I could fully migrate to Designer if it had vector patterns editor. But without it, there's no way out of Illustrator for him, it's as simple as that.

As far as I know, all recent drivers actually do the opposite of what @Mark Ingram said. By default it allows more than 1024 levels, and you must activate a compatibility option to limit the levels. Does it matter in any way? Nah. I mean, I'm pretty sure anything over 256 levels is indistinguishable to the user. These pressure levels are just manufacturers err... phallic waving. Like the Ghz race of yesteryear, or the DPI race on phones. Also, Windows Ink isn't bad. It's just not meant for art, or at least that's clearly not the focus of the API (despite what MS might publicly claim). That API is squarely aimed at hand writing on pen enabled screens, and it's good enough for that purpose. Let's be honest here, any Windows tablet (meaning a computer device with a pen enabled screen, not a graphic tablet like Intuos) is just not good enough for art. It's not even the hardware itself, that's... serviceable. It's the software. I've had a Surface Pro 1 and a 4, it's been years now since they first came to the market, and no software ever worked very well on a touch only basis. The UIs have never adapted to a touch first approach. Why bother creating a super accurate API if the software UI essentially doesn't work without a keyboard and a mouse? I've tried to make concessions over the years so it "works" , but in the end I just got an iPad with an Apple Pencil. I'll sell my Surface Pro 4 one of these days, replacing it with a regular laptop.

Changing a gradient type when using the Fill Tool adds huge amounts of the same entry, "Set fill type", to be added to the History panel. This is to the point that it will push everything else away, leaving only these repeated entries in the History panel, essentially denying you any way to undo your work. Steps to reproduce: Create or select an object With the Fill Tool drag across the object to create a simple gradient On the context bar at the bottom, scroll to another fill type, like conical Watch as the History panel get absolutely overwhelmed with the same entry over and over I've actually manage to crash the app doing this, but it doesn't happen always See the attached video for a visual guide on how to trigger this issue. Workaround while this bug isn't fixed: With your object selected, DO NOT trigger the fill type popup by tap the fill type name Instead tap the arrows to the left and right of the fill type name Each tap on these arrows will only had one entry to the History panel If you accidentally trigger the fill type popup, either tap away to close it or directly tap once on another fill type, NEVER SCROLL THROUGH THE LIST Directly tapping another fill type on the popup still adds two duplicate entries to the History panel, but that's still better than flooding it and loosing your undo ability Thanks! RPReplay_Final1592384177.mp4

This is true, changing the Coverage Map to that extent essentially gives the shapes a "fake" stroke and "turns off" anti-aliasing for that shape. But there's a middle ground here that can be useful for some people in some situations. That is borrowing an "old" technique from video games. Just do manual SSAA. SSAA, Super Sampling Anti Aliasing, is a technique where vector objects are rendered at a much higher resolution and then scaled down to the desired resolution. A possible fix for some situations like this is to do the Coverage Map trick of MEB, but instead of dragging the left point all the way up, do it only halfway. Then export the image at higher resolution multiplier. 4x is ok, 8x is a good value, and 16x is great if your computer can handle it (anything over 16x is insane). Once the image is exported, take it to Affinity Photo, and scale it down by the same factor. If you exported at 8x from Designer, scale it down by 8x too. This will get rid of most hairlines without jagging all the edges of your image, any hairlines that remain will either be too small to notice or can be dealt manually.

This is hard to describe in words but I'll try: Create two global colours Create a simple shape Apply one global color to the fill Apply the other to the stroke Notice the global colour used in the stroke is highlighted in the swatches panel Switch to the fill Notice the global colour is not highlighted as expected Upon deselecting the object the global colour used in the fill will be highlighted I've attached a video reproducing the issue, it's much easier to understand what's going on, and what would be the user expectation. Let me know if there's any additional questions. Thanks! recordedVideo_Trim.mp4

This is the third global colors issue I reported just today. While the other two could be considered kind of niche or harder to spot, this one is dead obvious. You guys really, really, really need to spend a whole version just tearing down the Swatches panel and rebuilding it in a way that's user friendly and that actually works well in all situations. Select an object. On the Swatches panel press the add current color as global color. That's it, that's all it takes to reproduce. 🤨 You'd obviously expect the object to have the newly created global swatch applied. It doesn't. You need to actually click on the newly created swatch for it to be applied to the object... Attached is a video reproducing the issue. Really consider spending 100% of the time for version 1.9 rebuilding the Swatches panel. Managing colors is a fundamental part of well done graphic design, guessing if our swatches will work on a given situation is not acceptable. Thanks! 3_Trim.mp4

Create an object and apply a global color to it. Editing the said global color changes the object as expected. Then convert that object into a symbol. Changing the global color no longer changes the object. Say that you now apply the global color to this symbol object, it starts working again as expected, but only for that instance. If you delete it and drag in another instance the global color will no longer work again. See attached video for steps to reproduce. Thanks! 2_Trim.mp4

Let's say you add two fills to an object with the Appearance Panel, and to each fill you attribute a different global colour. If you later modify both global colours you'd expect both fills on the object to change appearance. Instead only the active fill changes. The attached video shows the steps to reproduce. Thanks! 1_Trim.mp4

Yeah, it's a real pain. At the moment what I do is convert to global and re-apply all colours to all shapes on the desktop when I'm done. This is of course a pain and it's only worth it on illustrations that likely will have a reuse/recolour value down the line... The whole swatches panel, both on the desktop and iOS really need a complete rewrite, it feels like it barely works and it's all held by strings. One feature that would be awesome on top of proper support for global colours on the iPad, is "automagic" convert to global, like Illustrator does. On AI you can select the artwork and choose to add all colours found in the shapes as global swatches. This lists all colours used, converts them to global, and reapply them to the shapes, all in one step.