R C-R

What is obvious & to whom is a ... wait for it ... gray area. 
 
(Somebody had to say it. It might as well be me.)  :lol:

Grouping is in no way just busywork for most users. If you want a very good example of why that is, download & open from the Welcome screen Johnathan Ball's "Space" file from the PokedStudio section.
 
Open the Layers panel & start expanding the "cheesy blocks 1" layer. Expand the "cheese block 1" group & the first group in it. Do the same for the other cheese block layers. Do the same for the cheesy blocks 2" layer, or the Rocket layer, or most of the other layers.
 
Imagine trying to make changes to this or similarly complex documents without organizing anything into groups. Want to move the cheese block 1 group a bit to the left? How much fun do you think that would be if it was just an ungrouped bunch of ellipses & curves? What if you wanted to apply a Gaussian blur or other effect to cheese block 1? How would even do that if it wasn't a group?
 
Something else you may not be aware of is how both groups & layers make it easy to zoom in on one, or temporarily view just it with everything else hidden, from the Layers panel. There are a lot of things like that, too many to mention here.
 
But forget all that for a minute. If you want an efficient, time saving way to move things associated with each other up or down without going through a lot of steps, or resizing or rotating or moving them on the canvas all together, groups & layers are the only way to go. Try it with your skulls -- all of them except the ones in the lower left corner are spaced far enough apart that you can just drag a marquee around each of them & use the keyboard shortcut to collect them into one group. It should not take more than a minute or two.
 
Do that & you will have a compact, easy to manage Layers panel, a very simple way to rearrange any of them on the page, an easy way to lock or hide ones you don't want to alter by accident, or do any of the other things people who perform that "busywork" routinely do to take advantage of all of that.

What is obvious & to whom is a ... wait for it ... gray area. 
 
(Somebody had to say it. It might as well be me.)  :lol:

Richard,
 
I understand your desire for this to work with as few configuration hassles as possible, but please keep in mind that the Nik Collection installer was written to automatically install the plug-ins only for two specific applications, Photoshop & Aperture, and the Aperture plugins use a different format that will not work with any other application. Affinity can't do anything about that, just like they cannot do anything about incompatible plug-ins without the cooperation of the developer of those plug-ins.
 
Regarding your last question about finding the Plug-in Search Folders path to the Adobe Photoshop plug-ins folder, it is whatever folder you designated for plugins in Photoshop. If you did not change anything from the defaults, see this Photoshop plugins troubleshooting page for its location (which will vary slightly depending on the version of Photoshop installed).
 
If you are still having problems finding it, you can do a Finder search for folders named "Google."

As an aside, remember that the beta versions are not intended for production or any other critical work.

Yes, but if you go to any of the other instances, they are all still linked in all respects, so if you turned syncing back on, they'll act like they originally did (but won't modify the detached elements of that other symbol instance). It's only the specific attributes on that particular instance that you detach when you modify something without syncing turned on. :)

So basically you are saying that only unmodified attributes will remain synced, & that this applies to all instances of the same symbol?
 
I think I understand what you mean but I will have to play around with this some more to see if I really get it.

In the digital realm, grayscale images are defined as those having only one value per image pixel, which specifies its intensity (also known as brightness, grayness, luminosity or luma). They have no color channels, no color space from which color information can be extracted.
 
Without some other external reference for this information, like a neural network AI that has analyzed thousands of color images & can recognize the similarities in the grayscale image to make an educated guess about what its colors should be, there is no way this would be possible.
 
In short, you can't manufacture information out of nothing.

Staff member MEB mentioned something recently in another post that might make this seem less weird, at least conceptually: in Affinity a layer is just a container object, which can contain many different things, including a hierarchy of other layers, each potentially with its own groups, masks, clipping layers, etc.
 
So when you click on a layer, you are actually selecting everything it contains, often including a great many 'things behind other things.' To drill all the way down to one thing, you can use the alt-click method or the Layers panel.
 
Regarding the age thing, I am almost 70. I have been using vector apps for more decades than I can remember. (Sadly, that is literally true.) They all had a learning curve; every one of them seemed a little weird at first but not so much after I used them for a while. I think you will find Affinity is no different -- once you use it for a while, the weirdness will vanish ... mostly.  :blink:

Regarding your #5, if you select an item with the Move tool, it will move when you drag inside its bounding box. It seems to me that if it did anything else, that would be weird.  :wacko:
 
Regarding #6, I suspect your wobbly triangle is actually a "curves" or compound object, one in which the inner curve subtracts the fill from the outer one. So while it seems empty inside, it isn't really. If I'm right about that, if you double-click on it with the Move tool or select the Node tool & click on it, you should see two curve paths instead of one.
 
Either way, to select an item under another one, try selecting it with the alt key held down. (I use a Mac so I'm not sure if the Alt key is the one for Windows, but it should be something similar.)
 
For blurring things, have you tried using the Gaussian blur effect? It has a slider that controls the blur radius. 

I assume you are referring to this video tutorial. Note that in it the image also disappears (because it is hidden behind the new pixel layer). At about the 0:22 second mark, the new pixel layer is set to the Overlay blend mode, revealing the image layer behind it. From then on, the gradient colors are adjusted for the effects you see in the video.

Yes, it made perfect sense once I understood that the thumbnail is always square (& resizes to fit the available space in the panel?).
 
I think this may also explain why sometimes a regular duplicated layer in the Layers panel sometimes has a smaller thumbnail than the original, something else I have wondered about for quite a while.
 
Thanks!

@R C-R
 
The change in the thumbnail size when you rotate an object on the page is to be expected. The symbol is not actually changing size, only the thumbnail in the Symbols panel which appears to change size. This is due to the fact the thumbnail in the panel is always square.
 
This happens in the Layers panel too. However, it is easier to understand because the thumbnail's background is dark, whereas in the Symbol panel there is no background.
 
As an example:
Display both the Symbol and Layers panels. Add a perfect square to the page and convert it to a symbol. In both panels, the square fills the entire thumbnail space. Expand the (Symbol) item on the Layers panel and then select the child (Rectangle) layer and rotate it. Notice on the Layers panel, the thumbnail now gets a black background and the square will appear to shrink, so it still appears fully in the thumbnail area. This also happens on the Symbols panel, you just don't see the black background and therefore the shrinking is more obvious. Does that make sense?

... veering away from personal attacks, a clue could be had from the initial releases of both AD and AP. APUB won't "have it all" at version 1 or even 1.75.  GREP for publisher would be best in the Feature Requests section. We won't really know what Publisher has or has not until it gets released. I kinda know what GREP is, and I have absolutely no need for it. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be seriously considered as a feature. 
 
So, please, let's not be like the rest of the internet. Let's have some courtesy and realize that we all use Affinity software in our own unique ways for our specific work.

One way is from File > Document setup > Color tab choose either Gray/8 or Gray/16.

I am seeing an odd problem with both of the two SVG file attachments in https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/22837-svg-how-to-separateextract-nodesfrom-singleobject/ posted by af-user.
 
Both files open OK in 1.5-Beta 6 (or Beta 5 before I replaced it yesterday) with a single "Curves" object in the Layers panel. The problem is selecting that in the Layers panel does not activate the "Divide" operation, so it can't be split into its individual curves.
 
However, if I open the files in the retail 1.4.2 version of Designer & select the layer, the Divide operation is active & splits the Curves object into its parts as expected.

I think you should be able to use function keys with no modifiers in Affinity only if you have the "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard functions keys" item checked in System Preferences > Keyboards > Keyboard tab ... but even that doesn't seem to be working as it should on my Mac running El Capitan 10.11.6.
 
What happens for me is with that option checked I can add a function key with no modifier to the Affinity preference, but it just beeps like it does for you. Without the option checked, I can't even add a function key with no modifier to the Affinity preference, except for F5 & F6, which have no "special feature" associated with them.

I am seeing an odd problem with both of the two SVG file attachments in https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/22837-svg-how-to-separateextract-nodesfrom-singleobject/ posted by af-user.
 
Both files open OK in 1.5-Beta 6 (or Beta 5 before I replaced it yesterday) with a single "Curves" object in the Layers panel. The problem is selecting that in the Layers panel does not activate the "Divide" operation, so it can't be split into its individual curves.
 
However, if I open the files in the retail 1.4.2 version of Designer & select the layer, the Divide operation is active & splits the Curves object into its parts as expected.

In addition to what VIPStephan said, in v1.4.2, you can use the View > "Customize tools..." menu item to add a never hidden Artboard tool to the Tools palette (& optionally replace the two-tool Move/Artboard tool icon with a Move only one). This will make it more like the default layout of the Tools palette in the 1.5 beta.
 
In either version you can customize the order of the tool icons in the palette, the number of columns they are arranged in, & which ones appear in it.

I've always thought the software was too cheap for what it offers. Would've gone for the £79/$99 price range myself. If I were to look at it another way, for me to buy either Windows or Mac version I would obviously have a machine to run it on, so I pay $50 or whatever for the app and let's say I create a few logo's for "friends" as i'm a beginner (oh yeah, and free tutorials as well, what would they cost privately £30 pph?) or edit a few pics for "friends" and charge £20/30 that's the app paid for.
 
As a trainer for Apple, I had the opportunity to get both apps for free, I chose to buy both as I personally think the dev's have done an amazing job and shock up the design and photo world (and way to many reasons to list here). If I ever got a Windows machine, i'd happily pay again. :)
 
What will someone earn using either app professionally? Certainly more than they paid for it even on both platforms...
 
Anyway, after talking to and meeting some of the team personally, I'm pretty confident they are not in to make money, naturally that will come from sales based on their vision to create amazing design and photo editing software.
 
 
Allan

Not to start yet another silly 1990's style Mac vs. PC debate, but as an end user the Mac App Store is anything but "terrible" for me. Some of the reasons I like it:
 
• Very liberal licensing terms for all MAS apps. For non-commercial purposes, one license covers installing an app on an unlimited number of Macs the buyer owns or controls. For commercial uses, the license covers either one seat (one Mac) or all the Macs used exclusively by a commercial user.
• No license keys or registration procedures to go through to use the apps.
• Bargain prices! Most MAS apps cost substantially less than they would if they were distributed by a developer. (See below)
• Simple, no hassle updates (optionally automatically installed as they are released).
• Easy searches for hundreds of thousands of apps, by category or popularity.
• No hassle, secure payment method -- no need to give what may be a dodgy developer or scammer my credit card info or worry about how good a legitimate developer's security is.
• Very little chance of malware or spyware included as a "bonus" feature, unlike several independent sites that distribute apps with "extras" nobody in their right mind would want.
 
On the developer/distributor side, there are no costs associated with billing end users, keeping track of license codes, or any of the other administrative/marketing/legal/maintenance stuff that is part of the software business. Sure, Apple takes 30% (but soon less for apps that meet certain criteria) but according to a number of independent developers I have spoken with, that is less than it would cost them to do all that on their own, they often don't know how to do it, or just don't want to deal with anything besides developing their stuff & offering customer support.
 
Even some major software houses (Autodesk & Adobe to name two) sell some of their products through the MAS. They aren't doing this because it is "terrible" for them. Instead, it is because it improves their bottom line.

Maybe this has been mentioned before & I missed it, but I keep having an issue where if a file has been opened in Designer 1.4.2 or in 1.5 beta 4 & then closed, the other version refuses to open it with a 'file in use' error. I can work around this by quitting the app that last opened the file (but sometimes I have to quit both of them), so it seems to be a problem in how one (or both?) apps notifies the file system that the file has been closed, if that makes any sense.
 
So far, I have most often seen this when the file is an SVG one, so I think it does not have anything to do with the incompatibility of the older & newer Affinity file formats. Likewise, it does not seem to matter if I save the file in the first app to open it as a native Affinity file before I close it, or if I export it to the same format as the original, overwriting the original or saving it to a different location or with a different name so that both versions exist on my drive.
 
This is very similar to a 'file in use' error I occasionally get with Preview.app, so maybe it is Apple's bug to squash or it is the result of some problem unique to my system?

Alfred's file was saved in the 1.5 version format. Currently, only the Designer 1.5 beta supports that format. If you have a Windows PC, you can download the Windows beta for free (it will expire when the retail version goes on sale). If you have a Mac, you must have bought a retail version of Designer to download & use the Mac 1.5.x beta.
 
The betas can be found at https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/32-affinity-beta-support/

Those are bitmap (raster) image file formats that can not contain vector shapes. The "Convert to Curves" feature in Affinity only works on vector shapes (rectangles, circles, the many special shapes like stars, & so on). What you want is often called bitmap tracing, & is not supported in Affinity.
 
It is an often requested feature but the staff have said it will not appear in an update to version 1.x. So it is at least a year away & probably part of a paid upgrade to version 2.x if/when it is implemented.

Red signifies the starting node. The shapes indicate the type of node; round for Bézier (smooth), square for Sharp, & round with a dot for Smart.
 
There are some illustrations of this in the included help system: open Affinity Designer Help from the Help menu (Mac); click on "Drawing Lines & Shapes" > "About lines & shapes" to see them.