gdenby

Just select 1 curve, and make sure its stroke is set to .5. Use the Edit/copy command, and then select all the others. Then use the edit/paste style command. This will transfer the .5 stroke attribute to all the selected at once.

Looking at the drawing, I have to think the different drawing portions are not objects, but groups of curves, or just curves associated by placement in space.. Each curve would have whatever the line weight that the tool that made it had when in use. The line weight panel you show only applies to the stroke as it will be applied currently, not how it was applied before. I hope that made sense, 'cause I'm inferring a lot from looking at the screen shot. If you select 1 layer(curve) that does in fact have a .5 stroke, and copy it, the rest of the the curves can be selected, and have "paste style" applied, which will transfer the .5 line stroke attribute to all. Its been years since I last used Illustrator, but layers in AD vs. AI do not quite refer to the same thing. If my recollection is correct, an AI layer can be a group of objects placed on a sheet of tracing paper, as it were, to be hidden or exposed as needed. AD layers can also be hidden or exposed groups of object. But there is a hierarchy of effects and clipping within AD passed between the top most layer, and each underlaying ones.

Hi, GrimR, When you draw a rectangle, you should get a H & W readout as it is made. Typically, snapping to grid needs to be turned on for size changes in regular increments. But if working free hand, after the rectangle is roughed in, one can use the transform studio panel, usually located at the bottom right corner, to enter exact sizes and positions. If using the pen, select the polygon line mode, hold down the shift ket, and the lines will be constrained to horizontal, vertical, and 45 degree directions. Expect to spend some time looking at vid tutorials, and puzzling out the help files. Once you get the hang of it, the app is really easy to use.

I s'pose cursive fonts might generate too many nodes when expanded. But for simple text, works OK. First attachment, Text at 128 pt., 2nd, 12 pt. Pretty much the same using subtract, top character, or expand.

Thanks for the post. I will have to try that. Always good to have another bit of finesse.

Hi, graf, That is how divide works when there is one vector inside another. Each becomes its own solid shape. You then have to select each pair, and subtract the inner from the outer. A slightly easier method is to create the text, set the fill to none, and make a stroke set to inside thick enough to fill the shape. Convert the letters to curves, ungroup, and use command expand curve.

I only worked on the image. I haven't looked much at the articles text. I've had some success, but have had to use a much different approach. Attached is a sample. I think the text and photo areas might need to be reworked as selected areas, so the grey scale image are and the nominally black and white text each have appropriate treatments. On my Mac, if I'm logged into the board, and click on the image, when it opens in its own frame, I can just drag it to my desktop.

Hi, American, I don't do much more than dabble w. Photo, but attached is what I was able to do. Sadly, I forgot to save with history, so here's what I remember. Crop and rotate. Use invert adjustment. Select the pixel layer, and apply frequency separation. I used a small percent change on the low pass side. Tossed the high pass that had all the little squares. Did an extreme luminance denoise. Played w. shadows and highlight setting, but decided it wasn't warranted. Used the clarity sharpening filter.

Hi, kateo, My understanding of SVG syntax is rudimentary. What I know of XML is that "xmlns" is used to disambiguate terms that might have the same letter set, but mean different things in different vocabularies. I'm guessing that the declaration (xmlns:serif="http://www.serif.com/") is a way to clarify that the term serif, usually part of a letter form, can mean in the file a reference to the Serif corporation. Why Canva has a problem w. that, I'm pretty much clueless. Cut it out of the file, and see if Designer has a problem. I've used svg files from various sources, none upon quick review have the line you posted, and they open fine w. Designer. Its only when I mangle the file w. clumsy larger scale editing that I get errors.

Hi, JuanGea, I looked at my pure vector files. I have some w what seems a lot to me, 17K+ objects, but none were near the file size you mention by an order of magnitude. So I generated a file w. 1.5M+ rectangles, with several clipping layers. Those were half the size of your smallest file. At that size, my machine, see sig below, could not redraw the vectors w/o seconds of lag. It was not as bad as much smaller files w. lots of fx, but the display did stutter. I s'pose you might need to come up w. a visual short hand for the expanses of floor boards and tiles, rather like what would have been done when using pen and ink. Put in a little panel showing the shorthand representation w. a small sample of the complete representation. In other words, 8 squares placed irregularly instead of 64. Floor boards, a couple of dashed lines

Hi, Michael Shaver, Most of the "pop" has less to do w. the colors, and much more to due the luminance value of each area. Contrast is not the quite quite right term, because there is both color and B & W contrast. The eye mostly sees in grey scale, elicited from the large numbers of "rod" cells.. The larger the difference between B & W, the clearer the form is. Use an HSL adjustment on the original image, drop the saturation to zero (no color) and note that the image by its luminance still shows clear forms. Note how the colored eyebrows, nose and lip lines become close to black. Their color was not very important to see those as prominent features. The color issue, from my understanding, is this. The "cone" cells have the strongest response between antagonist colors. The shape is defined by differences between opposite colors. Blue vs yellow, red vs green. etc. Standard art teaching I received was that warm colors stand in contrast to cool colors. This is a very inexact description. For instance, a saturated yellow has a perceived luminance above 90%, while a saturated blue is in the low 40%. In that case, the luminance perception based on the color alone is much more dramatic than from other color pairs. If there are areas of high color contrast, the receptors get tired rather quickly, and if one stares off to look at a neutral grey, one will see the image in the reverse color scheme. This was often used in late '60s Op-Art to produce novel transient effects while viewing the art work, and experiencing the effect during the normal saccadic eye trembles. However, if one does not bump together antagonist colors, but ones within the same color range, there is a boost effect. Resonance, if you will. If there is a luminance variation, the shapes remain clear, but the color perception remains high for a longer time. Eventually, the cone cells will tire, but the immediate response is a perception of very intense colors. Note how in the "Mystic beast" the yellow to red shapes are separate from the blue-ish ones. There isn't much "antagonist" variance as if they were interspersed. Hope this helps you get a handle on the topic.

Hi, Karina, I don't do this sort of work much, but I recalled the Daub papers tile seamlessly. Just tried a few, and they did. Drag the asset onto the workspace, and duplicate it over and over to fill the space. Then use the menu "File/Edit in photo" In Photo, according to the Daub tutorial, the paper is used as a mask for the brush strokes. The paper texture blends w. the color stroke, adding the light or dark changes from the paper bumps.

I have no camera that produces RAW. But I found this Affinity related article helped me understand what was going on. Maybe it will give you a clue.

This is only my guess, but from using Illustrator quite a bit, not Photoshop, I can't imagine the lines in side "Strong" were not done by hand. The outline of the letters vary in size and shape, but there is not a line everywhere. Look at the bottom of the "S". The main stroke has no inner line, and no part of the embellishments has any. The method hengkidh shows would work to make an expanded stroke that could be subtracted from the letter to show the black layer underneath. But only after being carefully positioned. I looked up the creator of the "Freedom, Fairness...: illustration, who I suppose is also the maker of the "Strong" pic. It appears he does his work all by hand to start. Pencil, followed by technical pen. He does sell some fonts, but none of those have the dark center lines. I think all his work is basically ink on paper, then carefully digitized and turned to vectors. Here is the only help I can offer, 2 letters made by hand, but vector from the start. Fa.afdesign

Check out symbols. Will probably be just what you need.

Yes, cutting away the unwanted curves remains. I used the term "weeding" because it is what the vinyl sign sellers called removing the unwanted bits before they delivered the cut out letters or designs. At this point, very old school.

To clarify my verbiage, my understanding of the way Designer works is that the vector implies an enclosed area. In ordinary use, one will see at least unclosed fills and stroke lines. In my example above, by joining the vector curves, that reduces the problem of Designer's default of closing open paths. As I mentioned, one get's a "snake" that can cut out from the underlying area w/o adding a delimiting line between the ends of each separate curve.

I'm using the Mac version, so perhaps the trackpad is hardware specific.

tomgreen, I came up w. something that might work, tho' it is a bit tedious, and has some quirks depending on what the shapes are like. Good to know you are sending the files to a laser cutter which explains why expanded and masked strokes don't work. Here's a quick description of what is in the attached illustration. There is a "moon" crescent. A bunch of simple vectors over it. Those vectors are all selected, and in node mode, joined. Here is one of the quirks. In most of what I tried, the join operation snakes from one curve to the next, but sometimes does add an odd diagonal. Not certain how to work around that. Then, the joined vectors are subtracted from the crescent. Select the resulting curves in node tool mode, select all, and use the break curve widget. Sometimes this will separate every line segment. Other times there will be remaining "curves," which need to be divided. Then the tedious part. Weeding thru all the curves not needed, and deleting them. In the example I show, it was not terribly hard, no more clicks than playing some solitaire, and much more certain to "win" w. a set of exactly cut vectors.

Hello, 4personnen, I don't have a track pad, but I notice there is a preference that will enable one for rotation use. I can only use the menu, or make a keyboard shortcut to rotate by 15 degree increments. I use the the "Paste Style," and "Paste LayerFX" keyboard combinations continuously. One can also create a style in the style palette, and apply it across various documents.

Hi, Clavote, The group isn't broken when the view changes to outline. Only the selection method changes. In outline view, the objects of the group can be selected one by one, or group selected w. a marquee. In vector mode, a single click or a marquee selects the whole group, but an opt/alt click is needed to select individual members of the group. I find the outline selection works a lot better when I have literally hundreds of overlapping curves, many in different groups, and I need to get to just a few to make an attribute adjustment.

Hey, JimmyJack. Took me 4 - 5 tries to realize that it was the crescent shape, rotated times 4. Couldn't quite figure out how to get the shading and blends right. Good work.

I'll do that.

Hi, tomgreen, Unfortunately, the way Illustrator, for example, and Designer work appear to be fundamentally different. At present, Designer works w. enclosed areas with stroke and fill attributes, thus the need for expanding a stroke to cut strokes so the stroke itself is a defined area. Lots of people on this forum have expressed the desire for a knife/scissor tool, and or a vector eraser. Be glad to see them. Don't know if the attached works for your purposes, but it took a couple of minutes. QuickClip.afdesign

The stabilizer is quite useful. I think the base problem is w. the hardware of the tablets. The surface is way too slick. A stylus can be very hard, or as sticky as a physical pencil eraser. One skates around the surface, the other starts and stops w. tugs. There is a resource for iPads called "Paper," a slightly draggy plastic that gives a little of the resistance on would get from paper, as well as protection from surface scratches. I searched around, and it appears it is made out of a product that can be purchased in standardized sizes. I don't have any notes on what it was called. Sorry. And it was hard to apply w/o air bubbles. But it did help some.