anonymized2

How come  this isnt yet on the roadmap. It greatly improves your workflow. Top 3 most usefull tools in Illustrator.

Yes but I see the Blend Tool instead. How come it was prioritized  before the Shape builder ?

hmmm but you just showed  that they are not working.  The point of mockups is to replace the "smart object"   with you own  file and not  redoing the whole perspective/warping  transform

Affinity Windows 10 Hero wallpaper
 
(full resolution in the attachement)
 
 
 
 
since I couldnt find a bigger resolution of the Affinity coming to windows screen
 
 
 
 
 
I decided to do it my own and more faithfull to the orginal Windows 10 hero wallpaper style. Inspired by this tutorial http://abduzeedo.com/node/81683but he missed some steps and its not very clear. Plus requires a lot of eperimentation.

With  some Poster edge filter similar with that from PS  would look much better. Couldnt find a  workaround. Checked an old thread  from here (on Posterize and Edge detect)on that but the result wasnt  good enough.

on bigger monitors thumbnails at the current size are  very small and pretty useless especially in Affinity Photo.  On Photoshop you can  increase their sizes.

The Vanishing Point Filter in PhotoShop makes it very easy to accurately map objects to perspective.
 
Perhaps a new "Mode" option in the existing Perspective Tool can be added to mimic the behavior. OR for a more comprehensive approach, a Vanishing Point persona can be added, allowing greater control and precision. Either way, this would be a great addition. Any thoughts?

Yeah, as I explained briefly sometimes you have to manually go in and move some nodes around to make one shape overlap the other just enough to make the add/join operation work.
 
Better to explain in a video, so here is a 3 minute clip:
 
 

Yeah, the Shape Builder tool is nice in Illustrator but can be finicky at times. But regardless of whether you are in Illustrator or Designer it basically comes down to selecting the divided shapes and adding them together. I assigned a keyboard shortcut to the Add Geometry command so I select two shapes and then Control - A. Sometimes you get a result that does not work as the shapes were not overlapping enough and you have to use the node tool to move points so one is slightly over the other. It can be tedious but it gets the job done.
 
I also tend to use the Donut Tool with a hole radius of 0 to start off making the circles or ellipses. Then when you are ready to do an offset of those circles it is easy enough to select them all and then change the Hole Radius to get the offset. Then I usually convert them all to Curves and then select them all and Divide. Then from that stage it is just a matter of selecting the individual pieces and joining them together.
 
If I have the time maybe I will put together a short video showing how I go about it. In the meantime here is a file where I saved the history with it. Just move the slider in the history panel to see how I went about it. In the beginning I had started a different design but then abandoned it so sorry if that causes any confusion.
knot.afdesign

this  content aware feature would be  more usefull added as a crop tool option. It can work in conjunction with the  Straighten image tool to fill the areas resulted after picture get rotated.
 
Also it kinda works in photohsop because it has further options like "Protect" and because it works with selections.  Damn Gimp also has this ?

This is a very useful feature.
Will we get this in the future?
 

 

So cool feature) Will AD have something like thathttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZF1ye0c4P4

Halftone splash effect
 

 
Affinity Windows 10 Hero wallpaper style
 
 

if you look carefully you can actually see the white house :)

Halftone splash effect
 

 
Affinity Windows 10 Hero wallpaper style
 
 

Halftone splash effect
 

 
Affinity Windows 10 Hero wallpaper style
 
 

With  some Poster edge filter similar with that from PS  would look much better. Couldnt find a  workaround. Checked an old thread  from here (on Posterize and Edge detect)on that but the result wasnt  good enough.

-

Hi Orphydian,
Create a duplicate of the original image layer and apply the (destructive) halftone filter to it. Regarding the pattern file, you can recreate it in Affinity Photo and use it as a regular image (rather than a pattern) to complete the tutorial.

thanks happened to have watched most of the Youtube ones.

-

Indeed, working with big vector pieces can mean mapping out tons of raw geometry, hitting select all, and then using the shape builder tool to merge, subtract, and trim at will without having to think about what is and isn't selected when working with standard boolean operations. It's actually a bigger deal than most people give it credit for and I'm quite surprised Affinity isn't jumping at the chance to put their own spin on something that lies at the heart of vector and object-based design: improving the user experience of working with shapes and operations.

The thing  is you have this "next generation of graphic design apps" marketing (seems like company really knows what they're doing and going for[/size]), a super modern product website, some killer techy professional trailer videos and the new rebranded logos into this more abstract/techy stuff happened in 2015 http://www.creativebloq.com/software/affinity-new-branding-61515327 and then when you first open the app you see these cartoonish icons  youll not find even in Paint or Gimp anymore. The contrast is grotesque.
 
if Serif is marketing  its Afinity suite as the next generation graphic design software for creative professionals some portions of their products UI  would need some further refinement. The current icons from the tools bar are very cartoonish. You would still see these kind of icons on some old open source software or those targeted to amateurs. This is not entirely true anymore since it seems new versions of Gimp and other  porgrams alike will finally made their switch to more  clean professional looking icons. They are not the best clip art icons either since on big monitors they are hardly visible and the monochrome theme makes the things even worse. If Serif wants to step away from its legacy products should pay more attention to these design elements.Its very  predictable that the  ex Serif product users would  be more comfortable with this style of iconography but they should let the UI Design teams of both products to do the right job in fully repurposing/rebranding them.
 
The rebranding of the products  icons that happened in 2015 is one of the best Ive seen in the recent years. Only if those designer will get free hand to continue their work on the tool icons as well...  https://www.behance.net/gallery/32700567/Affinity-App-Logo-System-Redesign-Project
 
 
 
 
 
Modern UI icons come in  lots of flavors. I personally like the approach some very old and  complex programs developed by Autodesk took with their recent release with their  flat  but color coded icons. Just check the screenshots for 3ds Max and Maya

 
 
 most of the people commenting on this video review  expressed their preference for a more clean icon set https://youtu.be/SGojM3A5t-g

That one is here (960 × 600): https://d1x0u4ahgq5hzt.cloudfront.net/teaser-affinity-serif-com/blog-uploads/production/2016/03/affinity-on-windows.jpg
 
If you want more of the background, see this version (1280 × 800): https://cdn.affinity.serif.com/img/home/affinity-windows-010320161137--medium.jpg

I know there is the monochromatic icons option for the UI but this isnt enough, Tool icons  look very "clip art-ish"  and too colourfull. On big resolution monitors they don't scale very properly and they look even worse. My idea is to make them more flatish, cleaner and possibly having a single accent colour.