[Symbols and such... help!!]

Hi, VJSHawaii,

"Is there a way to link a design (or symbol) but have it match an area that differs in dimension?  "

Symbol objects can have different dimensions. See attached. Everything was initially 2 instances of a symbol comprised of 4 identical red squares. By turning synching off and on, I changed the dimensions, colors, periphery shapes, etc. 

My experience w. symbols is somewhat limited, but I have noted that there are some operations that will cause symbol elements to detach, and they can not be re-synched. Unfortunatelly, I haven't worked out what exactly is happening in those cases.

Looking at the example illu you posted, I suppose that if it is possible to build symbol(s) to update across the seeming 3D objects, it will nevertheless be quite hard to make.

If you want to just change colors, you can create global colors for the panels, and the color fill can update everywhere the colors appear.

[Snapping Timed Out cause]

I get this pretty often. For instance, I've may have something like 14K objects all bottom aligned, and I want to marquee select those that stick up a certain amount. I'll get the alert while each of the 5 - 6 K objects are being put into the selection. Its nothing to worry about, it just means the snapping sub-routine can't update while all the enumeration goes on.

[Josephine Baker—Another New Fabric Pattern (Designer)]

Like it. You have a great way w. stylization.

Don't have my iPad running just now, but on the desktop, the Preferences setting "user interface" allows showing units to finer levels of decimal precision.

[Resize multiple objects at once]

On Mac, "transform separate."

[Patch Tool is transparent and blury]

58 minutes ago, AffinityJules said:

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

Its a quote from musician Frank Zappa, who also said "There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life."

[How to rotate gradient direction?]

A pen stroke, w. radial gradient, topped by another, but thinner and set to screen blend mode, and a transparency fade from dark end to light.

[How do I create an irregular trapezoid with exact dimensions ?]

Looking at the dimensions, I'm guessing the lightbox is a very slightly distorted square. The best I can make is a reasonable approximation, an average. But, yes, as far as I can tell there are any number of shapes that can be made having only the lengths and no angle or diagonal reference.

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

FWIW, when I was in grade school a million years ago, one of my teachers taught us about regular & irregular geometric shapes using soda straws strung together with string, like a necklace. If you have young children you could do the same with them to maybe give them a head start on STEM.

Going off topic, hereinafter acronymized as GOT, I'm reaching infinity years beyond the last time I needed to use anything beyond elementary geometry. But I do have 2 grandkids. Once they get beyond the anything small enough goes in the mouth stage, I'll be sending them "K'nex" and then "Zometools." I hope those will fascinate them.

Early starts in anything is good. Honestly, start playing Bach by age 6 latest, assuming there is a competent teacher.

[How do I create an irregular trapezoid with exact dimensions ?]

Seems like the inaccurate drawing is technically not a technical drawing.

I searched around, focusing on threads from CAD forums. Some respondents said that w/o at least 1 angle it was impossible. 1 respondent claimed to have a solution, but ended up admitting that it was just less inaccurate than other proposals.

I've tried "fiddly" in 1.6, am going to try 1.7. But if CAD users don't have a method for doing this, I have to wonder how a design illustration app would be useful.

Any rate, another question. Do you have at least a sequence for the 4 lines. That is, A = w, B = x, C = y, D = z?

[How do I create an irregular trapezoid with exact dimensions ?]

Can you be more specific?

Do you only have a list of the lengths? Something like A  B = 12, B C = 13,  etc? Seems like if a series of circles w. those radii were made, it shouldn't be too hard.

Or, w. some fuss, create a protractor w. the cog tool.

[Creating Jagged Edges]

Attached image mostly done on the iPad. I really don't use it enough to be fluent, and so did some later work on the desktop.

Basic method. Draw pen lines w. pressure curve adjustments. I expanded those, and added many together. There were a lot of strokes that turned into "curves" objects. Those needed to be self divided, and the tiny bits selected, and thrown away. 

Then, 2 different operations. Made a pencil scribble over the animal shape, and expanded that. Subtracted it from the animal. Selected all nodes, made them smooth, and then used the smoothing routine to make it look gloppier. Selected portions, duplicated, and gave the duplicates a square dotted line. Expanded the stroke, and subtracted that from the previous shape. Again, selected all nodes, made them smooth, and then used the smoothing routine to make it look gloppier. 

In some places, drew more lines over the shape, and subtracted the expanded strokes.

Continued selecting some smaller portions, making the strokes dotted, and expanding. Copied those, and moved them around, and then subtracted them from the underlying expanded strokes.

Somewhat labor intensive, but it does allow for some areas to be more irregular than other. Seems like a good thing to me.

[Creating Jagged Edges]

Hi, eneuman93,

I think it is do-able. I don't use my iPad much. It appears I'd been using the beta version, which had expired, and so am d-loading Designer again. My connection is hideously slow, been about an hour, and still have about 40% to go.

I do think something similar can be done, been meesing about w. the desktop version. But looking at the image you showed, I'm reminded that Illustrator had a feature called punk&bloat, which randomized nodes. Affinity doesn't have that, and there was a comment a few years ago that it was not likely it would.

I may get back in awhile w. some results, but I do have some things I must get done.

[Layers]

Hi, kconkling,

Just to clarify a little. Text, parametric shapes, free-hand pen shapes, etc, when saved as .svg remain vectors. This means they will be displayed at any size up to the resolution the display device can manage. The exception is if a bitmap has been used as a fill. That will be scaled more or less successfully depending on the image.

[Pixel imperfect: Why don't my tiled shapes line up perfectly?]

Hi, Foomandoonian,

This issue has come up more than a few times. It appears when shapes of the same color are butted together. The 1st time I encountered the problem, the thread mentioned that it was an anti-aliasing routine problem. Essentially, the white of the background was being added into the color of the shape. 

There are 2 solutions. One is to turn "precise clipping" in the performance preference. The other is to add a centered stroke of the same color. I'm not sure how thin the stroke can be. I have a file open just now, and a stroke as thin as .04 pt works.

There have been some problems w. booleans when points have a particular geometry. My recollection is a thread where a diamond was being subtracted from a circle. When the diamond point was placed at the exact center of the circle, the subtract shape would vary between several different point positions. By moving the point a very small amount away from the center, the subtraction worked as expected.

[Digital painting]

Hi, Goldblacc,

Start by going to youtube, and search on "digital painting." A couple hundred tutes and tips will show up, probably a couple hundred hours. And thats just the tip of the iceberg.

Most will be specific to a certain application, such as Corel Painter, Krita, etc, etc, etc. There are a few using Affinity Photo and Designer, tho' neither is specifically a painting program. Search on Frankentoon, for some nice examples of what is being done w. Affinity, and how to do it.

Expect to start by collecting as many "brushes" as you can, and learning how to make your own. Then make a few hundred strokes, dabs, and washes w. each. Then start experimenting w. blend modes, which are much more varied in digital art than in any traditional media I know about.

[Affinity Designer create color swatch]

Hi, dannac,

Perhaps the search failed because  you searched on . afpalette and not .afpalette

[What export option to use to get Rhino into Affinity Designer?]

On 6/19/2017 at 2:01 PM, ronnyb said:

Interesting they have an AI option... I thought the format was proprietary to Adobe...

AFAIK, proprietary code can be licensed if the owner allows. Considering that Rhino  (whose company pre-dates even Adobe) is aimed at 3D,  and Adobe has almost no presence in that field, I suppose it is mutually useful for there to be some file compatibility.

[Lines between (snapped) objects in editor - terrible quality at png]

1 hour ago, StephenKalisch said:

I'll simply do a extrem thin outline around some objects. This works for me.

This is a work around that has been discussed before. Adding a centered stroke of the same color as the object fill escapes the anti-aliasing problem. Going to preferences/performance, and enabling "precise clipping" sometimes, for me, seems to work. I don't understand what is going on, but adding the stroke appears to work reliably. 

[Photo Editing Assistance]

Seems to me the Much Bigger problem is faking the lioness's head where the cub was moved away.

 

[coloring architctural drawings]

Looking at the cv/portfolio, It seems to me that you do a lot of bit map compositing. Affinity Photo is better at isolating portions of bit maps and blending them into composite images. Designer would certainly handle laying out the schematic renderings and photo composites.

Previous posts have brought up problems w. using AutoCad output. AutoCad does not require closed vector entities, and it does not export .svg files. So adding color fills to schematics in Designer can take some work.

As just mentioned above by jc4d, there are quite a few Adobe features that do not now exist in the Affinity suite. I do not use APhoto much, but other users have commented that they can get similar results as Photoshop, sometimes easier, but using methods quite unlike those used in Photoshop. Other times, there are work arounds that are not too difficult. Affinity does not do auto tracing of selections. One must save those off, and use a dedicated utility to create a vector object. My experience is that it takes a minimum of 15 seconds to create a vector object that way, but rarely more than a minute.

One thing in the portfolio that Designer does not do is have the ability to create dimensioning lines. While the data is there, and the on screen display will show  dimensions, there is no tool to create a line showing sizes at defined units.

[coloring architctural drawings]

Hi, d.retagi,

There haven't been lots of discussions about use for architecture. Try a search on "architectural." I can recall a few that used APhoto to enhance 3D renderings, some about coloring floor plans and town plans. Not long ago, there were some questions about using Sketch-Up rendering in a manner similar to Photoshop/Illustrator. I haven't worked w. Sketch-Up for about 10 years, and at least 6 for Illustrator, so the files presented contained lots of details that were out of my scope. 

Perhaps if you offered a small sample of what you've done, there will be people who might comment on Affinity specific methods.

[Affinity Designer/Photo in the Workplace]

Most enterprises doing job recruitment will be needing to continue/expand ongoing projects. At this point, it may mean maintaining work that goes back decades, having been started w. Adobe products, or others from companies whose wares were acquired by Adobe. Thus, the requirement for pre-existing skill w. those apps.

Where I worked, both Adobe and Microsoft  were standard. If there was any way a department could do its work using just their suites, admin would strongly recommend those, if for no other reason that it required fewer people in support, and meant one less license agreement to renew each year.

But many smaller businesses in the area used apps from Corel, among others. Don't know if that is still true. For smaller businesses, economy and standards based software appears more desirable. Affinity seems well positioned to me to be a choice there.

[outline mode preview]

Hi, Sweatman,

The outlines shown are only the overall shape of the bitmap "template." If I'm guessing correctly about what you want to do, the closest I've come is to decrease the template opacity to something low, 10 - 15%, and add a B&W adjustment layer. That gives a temporary grey scale "ghosted" image.

[Desperate to have Brick Fill Option (PS CC) in Affinity Photo ?]

Something I just threw together. A .png file used as a bitmap fill in a layer over the image. Not quite the same, but might work for you.

[**his Gradient layer vs mine rectangle layer** Help!]

My mistake, its the menu command "Edit/Paste Style."

[**his Gradient layer vs mine rectangle layer** Help!]

Affinity allows layer styles to be copied and pasted to other layers. Just make a fill you like in 1 layer, copy the layer. Then select other layers and use the command "layer/Paste Style." That way, all will have the same fill which might be a gradient that can be adjusted in the varoius shapes to work better.