fernand0n

Apps: All
Platforms: Windows, macOS and iPad
We have now added the ability to lock all insertion targets (Behind, On Top and Inside) in all apps. This is activated by holding Alt when pressing either of those buttons in the toolbar. This is particularly useful for those who like working from top to bottom in the layer stack, meaning you can now lock Insert Behind on so all new objects you create are inserted below the current selection.
The insertion target buttons are available in the top toolbar on Windows and macOS:

And can be found in the edit menu on iPad as shown below. On iPad you can lock these either by holding Alt when you tap on the appropriate option (from command controller or attached keyboard), or alternatively by long pressing on the button.

Apps: All
Platforms: Windows, macOS and iPad
While transforming any object with the move tool (whether resizing, rotating, skewing or moving) you can now hold space to temporarily toggle Lock Children on or off (to achieve the opposite behaviour of what you currently have set in the context toolbar).

+1

Hi All,
I’m pleased to say that we will be pushing 2.3 live to retail this morning. The beta versions were updated yesterday to the same build (2.3.0.2165) as detailed in Patrick’s post here. This means the beta versions are in effect exactly the same as the retail versions we will push so you can keep them installed if you wish. 
As always it’s been a pleasure working with you all on this release and cannot thank you enough for all the bug reports and other feedback you have given. I mentioned at the start of this beta we are working towards a shorter cadence between updates to help us release improvements and bug fixes sooner - and I hope you agree this has worked very well.
With that in mind we will be starting 2.4 beta very shortly (hopefully in just a couple of weeks). Looking forward to seeing you all on here for that!
Thanks again,
Ash

Couldn't decide what to do next so did this. People on FB said about the Christine movie that featured a '58 Fury, not watched it but it's now on my list.

This could be a new dimension of value, enabling professionals to effortlessly apply intricate procedural setups. Please, consider to introduce this feature too.
Thanks. 

Hi @fernand0n,
As confirmed above - 
I'll be sure to 'bump' this issue with our team to bring it to their attention once again. I hope this helps!

Hi All,
Well, it’s been a pretty crazy week since the launch of V2!
This has been a real labour of love for us over the last year or so, and I can’t even begin to describe how hard the development team have worked on it. Not only getting the V2 apps launched, but also of course finally bringing Publisher to iPad. 
With this being our first paid-for upgrade there has understandably been a lot of feedback / questions around future updates and our pricing policies. I thought it was worth addressing / clarifying our position on some of these personally...
Updates to V2 moving forward
Buying V2 not only gets you all the new features you have seen, but we have various updates planned – including many more new features and improvements – which you will get for free. This will continue until such a time that V3 is released. We’re not sure exactly when V3 will be, but I can confirm we are not going to move to anything as regular as an annual upgrade cycle as has been speculated.
It’s worth saying too that V2 does include many under-the-hood changes to our underlying technology, and we have also been investing in several new areas of research recently. Some of these haven’t manifested themselves into new features yet, but overall V2 does give us a better platform to develop on moving forward and I’m sure you will be pleased with the updates V2 will receive.
Updates to V1 moving forward
While we did say on the FAQ that V1 would no longer receive any updates, I want to clarify that was about new feature updates. We will be updating V1 to fix any critical problems caused by operating system updates in the future. So if the next version of macOS breaks V1 we will endeavour to fix it. There will be a point in time when continuing to maintain V1 in this way will not be tenable, but certainly for the foreseeable future we will continue to patch. In fact, we have an update to V1 queued up for release very shortly with some fixes for Ventura and issues caused by a recent Windows security / quality update. 
We will update our FAQ shortly to make that clearer for everyone.
Offer period
In case you didn’t see, I’m pleased to confirm we have decided to run this initial launch offer until 14th December to give everyone the best chance possible to get it if they wish / have a decent amount of time to trial it. 
Upgrade pricing
It’s been really hard to see some of the comments about us not looking after our existing customers – we’re pretty devasted that anyone feels like that to be honest. But the fact is we felt our hands were tied somewhat with being able to offer upgrade pricing in a fair way. The main reason for this was App Store customers (which make up around 35% of our userbase). The problems with that are two-fold: firstly, we didn’t have a way from within V1 to validate an App Store purchase receipt to reliably ensure customers who were entitled to an upgrade could get one; and secondly, we could not find a good way for people to get that discount via the App Store. Us pushing upgrade customers to go exclusively via our own site (including customers who were previously acquired via the app stores) may also have put us in violation of App Store Ts & Cs which we were obviously concerned about.
I’m not saying that these issues were completely insurmountable, but any solutions we came up with would be messy, and most importantly could have resulted in some bona fide V1 customers struggling to get validated and claim their discount. We certainly don’t have the support resource here if we ended up needing to manually validate tens of thousands of receipts for example.
The only option we felt was safe to move forward with was a general launch offer, which would guarantee that every V1 customer could get the discount, whether they purchased directly through us or the App Stores. We knew a side effect of that would mean some new customers would end up receiving that same discount – but we felt that was a better option than V1 customers missing out. It’s also worth saying that while there has been some good press about V2, all our main marketing has been via email and through social media to our followers. In other words, we felt ok about it because we knew the vast majority of people who would find out about it or take advantage of the offer would be existing customers. I would be surprised if over the offer period customers upgrading from V1 didn’t make up more than 90% of our sales.
Overall I do believe us giving a 40% discount, along with the addition of the new Universal Licence of course, is offering fantastic value for money for those who want to upgrade. 
However, taking on board some of the feedback there is something extra we can do – we will offer a new free bundle of content exclusively for V1 customers upgrading to V2 as an extra thank you for your support. I’ve seen this suggested by a number of customers and it’s a great idea as it does remove the App Store conflict entirely. 
We’ll need a little time to put something together, but all customers who previously registered or purchased V1 and have since upgraded to V2 will receive a voucher code for this via email as soon as we can.
A comment on no subscription
I do want to say that some of the points above are exactly the reason why software companies move to subscription. Whatever you do with upgrade pricing, you still have the issue of customers who bought the previous version 3 months ago vs. those who have had it 2+ years. Offering perpetual licences also gives the additional overhead of needing to maintain the previous version longer than you would if everyone was on subscription / generally always on the latest version.
We are a small team so some of these complications are not ideal — all we really want to do is focus on developing our latest codebase, push out regular updates and continue with our mission to make great creative software accessible to everyone. 
But it does need to be funded somehow. We know you love our no-subscription model, but there also needs to be a level of appreciation that the alternative is having paid-for upgrades from time to time. That unfortunately comes with its own problems.
All of that said, I have to say we have been blown away with the response to V2 - around 3 times as many people have upgraded in the last week than we expected - and we really can't thank you enough for the support you have shown. More than anything the success of this upgrade puts us in a great place to continue investing heavily in development which is ultimately what it's all about, and we’re super excited to crack on with some great updates coming next year!
All the best,
Ash
This is a duplicate post of a thread that is now locked and moved to the questions forum

People say they love Affinity. Apparently not enough to support the team behind it.
They want new features, but don't want to pay for it.
Last time I checked businesses have bills to pay.
 So, if you've paid $50 five years ago, how are they supposed to run forever?
 
Also, I do think there are lots of features missing and I am disappointed for that. I hate to spend money, but I'm aware they need money to keep working.

I have been a customer of Serif's since PagePlus 3 (and maybe from PagePlus 2 - I can't seem to find the floppies for that). I still have PagePlus 3 (and TypePlus and TablePlus, remember those?!) installed in a virtual machine for an occasional nostalgic trip. Should I have expected a free upgrade since then all the way to the last version of PagePlus X? I don't think so. 
I was wary about adding to this thread as I think it's becoming repetitive and the arguments have been made. Some people are not happy. Serif can't please everybody. In the years that I had the V1 apps I saw free updates. Not updates for every feature that I wanted, but certainly I saw some very useful ones.
I bought the V2 versions the day (the hour? the few minutes?) they were released using the special offer. Nobody forced me to do it. I haven't been pressured. I haven't been tricked. I don't feel swindled. I knew what I was doing.

Sorry you are disappointed, but my reply here explains that if there was a promo code for existing users it would give you the 40% and less for everyone else.
We have to eat.

It's been what, 8 years since Designer was released?
I'm ready to pay for a new version of all software as soon as they start selling it

To ALL here: Please do not get personal with your replies. Express your opinions without criticizing others and certainly do not make personal attacks or question motives. It achieves nothing.

Created these two last week as part of a current project I'm working on. It's done fully on Affinity Designer with a mixed workflow of vectors and bitmaps. 

Hi wigglepixel,
This is a known issue that (i believe) is still being looked for 1.8. Although quite a few issues were fixed in the current Beta, there's still some cases/situations that fail with most up to date code revision. I've logged/passed your file to the dev team for checking/testing against new builds. If you happen to have more problematic files involving boolean operations (not necessarily with complex curves as the case you posted) please upload them (you can delete all other objects from the file) for us to check/add to our log. Thanks for your report/support.

We seriously need a OFFSET PATH TOOL and TYPE WARPING.
Offset path tool in Illustrator is some i use almost everytime i open the software. 
WE NEED This. ! The expand stroke tool needs some tweaking as well. It produces some strange results.
 
Gary
 

Dear Affinity Team,
I'd like to preface this post by first outlining that you should be very proud of the care you take in delivering programs with a good user friendly UI. I respect and thank you for that aspect.
Unfortunately though, as a newer customer of both Designer (and Photo), I would like to express my frustration and confusion over the absence of two functions in Designer:
1. Curve/Path offset.
2. Accurate, reliable stroke expanding. 
I really am not wanting (or aiming) to appear as another "me too" whinge over these two hotly argued shortfalls. But I am having immense difficulty reconciling why in this day and age, a vector program would not have the above as integrated, flawless core operating actions? I can't help but restate the obvious here, it's not 1999 anymore.
Stakeholders at Serif: You are not competing to "see" if you can be the first vector software developer to implement a wiz-bang new feature which will soon allow designers to "offset a path"! It has already been in use as a solid operating function for users of design programs for almost a decade and a half (maybe more).
This is not a "feature request" or "program bling". In 2018 it's as embedded in the vector creation process as the foundational mathematical curve points are. It's like building a car, and proclaiming that wheels are optional becsuse you can start the motor without them. So why sleep on it and continue to avoid biting the bullet? If it's simply because you need to capitalise on "hotter" revenue development avenues (ie iPad versions) for cashflow reasons, then with all due respect, that should not be a sacrifice paying user are expected to make.
However, despite the justifications or reasons (which could be argued endlessly from both user and dev perspectives), the one underlying fact remains; If you are charging money to compete in a market as a "ground breaking vector program", isn't it your responsibility and within your best interest to at least deliver the current expected level of functionality that everyday professionals use and rely? Do you really want to alienate that many prospects? I'm sure you don't and I know that nobody can force you to make these happen, but that's not really the only issue at play here is it?
Yes, I can understand and appreciate the pressures and economics of development and re-tooling code, and the financial bourden of adding features then fixing bugs. And yes, I value and understand your desire to do things both "right" and "unique" with AD to separate your offerings from the crowd. But if those things amount to a program that has budding and professional graphic artists alike doing constant time sucking workarounds for everyday tasks, then what is so ground breaking about it being brought to market? Ground breaking should not equal "modern essential functions innovatively omitted". Should it?
I can't help but notice a common theme on the forum, where it's almost expected the customer concede and accept vagueness on core functionality delivery. An almost "we should not be held accountable for what we do, or do not deliver". Maybe your completely overwhelmed and under-staffed, maybe your not! We don't really know do we? But, at risk of sounding a little indifferent, we are not shareholders in the business with you. It's not our role to know. We paid money for an advertised cutting edge design tool. You expected remuneration for your product, then that IS your role; to deliver that product.
I would argue that a vector prgram without a usable expand AND offset function is not actually a vector program. Hard as this is to for you to make happen and embrace, you have decided that you can deliver.
I can imagine it must be tiring and relentless feeling like customers are barking expectations at you through forum posts constantly. I can empathise with that as I'm sure often it's not pleasant. Although this can't dilute the reality of what users would expect they are "buying into" versus what's delivered. Users should not be required to beg for essential modern, core functions.
Users don't expect to pay money for enhanced, ground breaking workflow then go backwards with time consumption. People pay money to have "things" solve problems and save time. As wiser people than me have observed about life; age is not our enemy, time is. So why force users to spend so much time trying to make functions exist where they clearly haven't been programmed to?
Would it be too much to ask if you kindly provide customers the coutesy of when you will implement functional "curve/path offset" into Designer? 
I have been trying to find ways to bounce files between my 12 year old version of Illustrator (I do not enjoy using that program for outlining) for the one path offset process. But the challenges are too many and important layout elements get lost/altered in the EPS saving/transferring/offset/resaving process. Getting designs setup for the type of work I believed I could do with Designer has become a logistical nightmare.
Using the demo for it's full duration didn't reaveal the shortcomings either, as I was focusing on trying to get know the things it could do well.
Could I also please request of users who read this. Be mindful before posting with "expand stroke works fine for me". I have relentlessly tried to "squeeze" everything I can out of that function, but it is essentially useless for the kind of accuracy and complexity of work I need it for. It's limit of use for me has well and truly been exhausted.
And FWIW: it is pointless attempting to think of using it for kerf compensation. Especially for complex "shape within shape" designs.
I am also willing to accept you may completely disagree with my observations here. I won't disrespect that.
All the best in your endeavour.

Hey man, thanks. I followed your advice and found the discussions.
Now another question, later I tried joining other two different shapes using the ADD operation and the gap was still there. Can you tell me why that happened? I remedied that adding a third shape between them.

Progress 4
I've been doing bits all over, I've still not finished the headlights but will do eventually.  Unless I'm missing something if you want them to look realistic however you do them it's a long winded job. Fortunately in this instance you can do one and just modify it a bit for the other side.
Did a bit more of the interior, but plenty missing and nothing is finished. I also just started blocking in the wipers.
I added a few temporary bonnet reflections to see how it's going to look and it's starting to look like a car, not sure what car but a car. Some of the shut lines are so large on a Mk1 Golf that you can see bits in there so in quite a few places a simple shut line won't do, so I've started adding details.
After all those things are done then there's still a chunk of little touches to add.
I'm thinking about trying the background without blurs too. Not sure it will look any good and it's lots of work but it's no fun if it's too easy or even works every time.
 

The font seems to improve a lot after Windows' ClearType. The shapes on the other hand remains pixilated anyway if it a known issue I am confident the problem will be resolved before final release.

Here is a list of many of the fixes and improvements included in Affinity Photo for Windows 1.5.2.69 (changes since 1.5.1.54).
 
These are from our bugs database so are phrased in the negative, but are nevertheless fixed.
New Welcome Screen - Html Page Ensure CI lens correction is always applied. Improved: Equations aren't flagged red if they are not complete and correct Fixed: Unable to drag and drop .abr brushes to import them Fixed: Blend Modes cannot be changed in any Layer Effects Fixed: Some Pantone Palettes show spot icon Channel Image Icons not constrained by width Fixed: Typing a value for Vibrance Adjustment doesn't always apply that value Ctrl runup restores deleted Tone Mapping presets or the Blend Mode dropdown for Adjustments Tone Mapping: Moving a preset doesn't work and causes it to be lost Can load LUT file from folder with Chinese characters ASE Swatch Exchange Palettes import with correct name Fixed: Crash after clicking away from input field in Layer Effects Files saved with selections are reflected correctly when reopened. Able to undo changes made in the Curves Adjustment .hdr export needs colour profile options removing on export The Depth slider in 3D Layer Effects doesn't move with the Radius slider when linked Export to radiance HDR gives incorrect colours Able to type all characters on a Polish programmers keyboard Fixed: Lens Filter says 'No adjustment selected!' when you click it twice Fixed: Unable to change Input minimum/maximum for Curves Adjustment Vibrance presets differ to Mac and should match Able to set Posterise to 1 Fixed: Alt+Backspace shortcut fails to work, plus added fixes for shortcuts fail to save if bindings are only deleted Shift Click layers tab: Improved multiple selections App crashed stitching some screenshots as a panorama Resize Document fix: pixel dimensions changed when we change DPI with Resample unchecked Fixed: Open dialog doesn't let you restrict to a specific file format and the tooltip with all supported formats spans the screen Fixed: Crash when applying a levels adjustment [file specific]. Fixed: Copied swatch does not automatically appear in palette Improvement: Input fields: Shift + up/down keys increments value 0.1 units instead of 10 units Fixed: Affinity Photo creates artboard layers when the document type is set to Devices Fixed: Crash when unhiding UI after closing document Can reset more text style values Fixed: Affinity Photo sometimes crashing when adding Curves Adjustment Adding levels to a 32bit image causes app to crash 'Icon and Text' option remembered when restarting app Fixed: Crash when loading (specific) large HDR file Fixed: Keyboard Shortcuts aren't being saved if focus is lost from dialog Fixed: Pressing close on filter dialog applies filter Fixed: Layer panel jumps/lags with a long layer name Fixed: Some keyboard conflicts are not being reported App no longer lock up selecting font with PDF filter set Improved: Pasting text from Word was added as groups of Artistic Text objects Uninstalling one Affinity app disables the 'Edit in... ' option in the other app more reliably Fixed: Levels Dialog, Color channel reverts to master when altering sliders Fixed: Colour picker loupe dies not display pixels on second monitor on high DPI setup Fixed: Info panel loupe remains stuck to cursor if interrupted during use Improved: Brush lag with History Panel open Fixed: Slice doesn't export at the correct size when exporting single slices 'Remove' button on New Focus Merge window now removes the image Zoom tool - Able to enter value above 500 on context toolbar 'Alternate' dropdown no longer missing from Pixel Tool context toolbar Fixed: Opacity is the default slider in the gradient fill dropdown menu Reset button added under Lens in Develop Persona Fixed: Not all variables available in the transform panel Flood Fill works different to Mac and fills the canvas Fixed: Tone mapping resets when creating/renaming a category Invalid scaling sizes are now immediately reverted in Slices Panel Tint reflected correctly from context toolbars fill flyout Develop Persona - Assistant setting remembered after app is closed Right clicking menu appears at 0,0 when recording macro Clone Tool: Sources panel is displayed automatically when we press Add Global Source button Fixed: Cannot save Lens Filter presets Adding, Renaming or Deleting a preset updates the UI straight away Fixed: Changing document with a Layer Effects will apply it to the second loaded image Improvement: Panels can be hidden by double clicking the header not just the panel label Fixed: Black area left when app is restarted after hiding the UI with floating panels Fixed: JPG compression changes from 85 to 100 when changing file format Fixed: Brush stops painting in original document after drawing in a second document 'Edit Macro' re-enables even if you've right clicked a Macro with no image open. 'Refine Selection Tool' entry is missing from the Keyboard Shortcut dropdown list. Fixed: Loading an animated gif into apply image causes the app to crash Fixed: Unable to move macro into blank category Shadows/Highlights: The effect now look same as on Mac Tone Mapping is not applied when you try to close the app and cancel the File > Save dialog Setting Associated Brush Tool in Photo now works as designed. Fixed: App locks up after Inpainting post Mesh Warp Fixed: Macros - Set effect colour control does not appear for macros Fixed: Export LUT - Loading EXR as preview image causes app to crash Macros: Can now rename layers Fixed: Losing Exif info when editing from Lightroom Fixed: Dragging the Radius slider to the far right initially knocks the effect off Fixed: Crop Tool - No Gridlines when rotating Fixed: Crash when editing a few undocked projects with filters Levels adjustment - using alt modifier now working Improved: Free hand Selection Tool faster on a complex document Fixed: Brush Tool leaves marks while we press Space bar key (panning) Filter no longer applies when a user exits the application Distort Filter: Distort lines are now dotted Fixed: Develop Persona - Reselecting preset does not revert settings Fixed: Tone Map Persona is missing some panels in View > Studio Reset Tone Map Presets added to Clear User Data dialog Help window responds to Windows Key snap shortcuts Fixed WebP intermediate files location (%(RelativeDir) included a ..) Multiple translation improvements Multiple UI tweaks, like clipping and tooltips A number of file specific stability issues fixed Clamp unbounded colour transforms (32-bit mode) to 0 and 1 Fix for misplaced PSD text (Decoded the 'Txt2' tag that holds TextEngine data that we need for positioning). Fixed colour profile conversion being wrong Auto recovery fix, restore the stream position when scanning for FAT tags. Fix image orientation issues. Remember to load the “write thumbnails” preference. Edit -> Fill working on 32bit masks.

@Tourmaline, this is the Windows forum.
 
I'm not sure what is "Change to previously selected input", under Windows, but I'm quite sure that the only reserved keys include Win key, not Ctrl (ok, Ctrl-Alt-Del ;)).
 
1. If you try Windows, you'll notice that Ctl+, Alt+, Shift+, Win+ hotkeys always start with the special key (Ctrl, Alt, Space, Shift, Win). It's a simple UI standard. It's something your fingers learn how to do, not your brain.
 
2. If you try any of the Adobe products, you'll notice that Ctrl+Space is the key to invoke Zoom tool. (Space+Ctrl also works). So if it's possible for Adobe it will be more than possible for Serif ;). And as much as I like Affinity products, the standard was set by Adobe 30 years ago.
 
Serif's Affinity Designer is a great program, which I use daily, and has already convinced more people to switch to from Illustrator.
 
Serif, let's beat the competition once more!

If you hold down the  command key when moving an object you get a copy. Should it not be the same when flipping an object?  
 
Also, flip (which I think is more aptly a 'mirror' or 'reflect' function) should allow users to pick a reference line or point instead of simply turning the object over on itself.
 
I might be overlooking these options  - if not,  please consider...

I second this, or at least the part where you can choose the axis of symmetry, instead of assuming the center of the object.
 
I came on the forums to see how to do this, and by the silence, I suppose I'll assume there isn't a way to do this. I hope this is coming in the near future; I depend on it a lot in AI (the reflect tool that is).

Hi Zibbo,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
Since the Windows platform presents a wide range of possible hardware and software configs and Designer/Photo v1.5 are the first versions running on Windows, we are still fixing/stabilising bugs/issues reported by users that cropped after launch before we move on and add new features. This is why most updates were bugs fixes. Meanwhile we are also readying version 1.6 which will include new features and will be out soon (no eta yet, sorry)