quantos

Wow, this looks great guys, except that I can not find any "Pinning Panel" or any help text referring to it and the current version (1.7.0.293 / Windows). Has been tested and removed or am I somehow looking in the wrong place? See grab attached for for full View / Studio UI options... Many thanks.

+1 I just found this having started using AP in earnest now to produce client documents and reports etc. Many kinds of pictures or 'picture boxes' will need to flow with the text to stay useful. On the other hand, I absolutely love having design/creative tools built into the AP at nearly Affinity Designer levels. Just great - but those lovely little extras will need to go with the flow sometimes!

Oops. I didn't spot that. He's replying on the wrong thread then. :-)

This isn't on opacity issue. It's all to do with ICC color profiling. Something I didn't understand at all when I first replied here. I haven't checked recently but you excellent guys at Affinity do still need to explain this better and I were you I would do it as part on the initial set-up steps. Basically if you're using a modern HDR-style (10bit colour) or any professional-grade colour monitor (above 8bit colour) you need to make sure, on Windows at least, that your Windows colour space matches you colour space inside Affinity - otherwise colours appear washed-out/desaturated, etc. There's a lot more to it than that and all it's to do with ICC. Google it. But as of 2017-18 the best (most flexible) approach is to use a good 8bit colour profile such as sRGB IEC61966-2.1 and have Affinity automatically convert imported images to that colour spec. 8bit colour is 16.7million colours so it's still very, very good for most graphics and certainly most web/tablet graphics work and then save/export your graphics with the 'include ICC profile' included - which tells any wider-gamut (HRD/10bit colour devices) how to display the colours properly. Devices that don't understander ICC profiling then ignore the ICC profile data anyway and you're good to go. That's an incredibly simplified explanation probably only useful to 10bit/HDR Windows users and who, like me, are predominently most concerned with correct colour matching on a wide range of digital devices that may or may not support ICC. If you Google it you'll find a lot more on this. Affinity: Great product guys. I'm a huge fan so keep up the great work - but do get on top of the explanations for this when onboarding new users.

Oops. @MEB. I just realised that feature works differently to expected (and Fireworks where I'm coming from) after I re-read Andy Somerfields' post "Select this slice, then at the top, choose "PNG" and choose a "Matte" colour - your file will then export with the colour as the background"... I was expecting to be able choose the transparency colour (from the colour index) using that tool as I needed to alias out to particular colour. With Fireworks you can select which of your index colours to use for the transparency (which is what I need) and so it seems that might not be possible (after taking another look). Apologies for the confusion - although I still would like to be able select the colour to index out. Q.

Thanks @MEB. Current version (1.5.3.69) of AD on Windows 10 Pro/64bit. I'll test AP too. @Geowil, yep, a straight transparent background export works great for PNG 24 and PNG 8 but sometimes you do want/need to matte out a particular colour to properly alias out/blend into any given background colour - being the query. Thanks guys. Q.

Connected to this, I can't get the 'matte' selection tool to work either. The scenario, a common one, is that I have various objects including cropped bitmaps sitting on a coloured background (shape object). I want the object aliasing to continue to the same background colour as the final export, stripping out the background colour in the export. IE This is a very common requirement. However, I can't get the selected matte colour to render as transparent. It outputs the background colour every time - seemingly ignoring the matte setting. What's the trick I'm missing? Q.

Guys/team Affinity. With a little testing I've just realised that, in my case, I need to use a different Colour Profile to the recommended/default sRGB IEC61966-2.1 for web/digital work. IE using sRGB IEC61966-2.1 seems to desaturate the colours (all colours) of every image I bring into Affinity Designer's workspace. If I switch to Adobe RGB (1998) the colour match (from any other app/browser to Affinity) is much better whereas it's only if I switch to use the colour profile of my DELL U27313H monitor that the colours match perfectly (as far as I can tell). I'm on a Windows 10/64bit workstation here. Request: Can this 'feature' or a good explanation of what's going on here be added to your Help section, tutorials and anywhere you can mention it. I don't have this issue with any other professional design/art programme I use and whereas I'm sure the option must be there some very good reasons that perhaps don't apply to anyone, like me, that only work in the web/digital sphere - unless I've missed a very important tutorial somewhere in my 20+ years working as a digital designer. PS Your otherwise excellent Affinity Designer WorkBook (book) doesn't mention any of this either. IE there's nothing in it at all about colour calibration and the tools/presets that might be needed to work with colour in AD (or AP).

Guys/team Affinity. With a little testing I've just realised that, in my case, I need to use a different Colour Profile to the recommended/default sRGB IEC61966-2.1 for web/digital work. IE using sRGB IEC61966-2.1 seems to desaturate the colours (all colours) of every image I bring into Affinity Designer's workspace. If I switch to Adobe RGB (1998) the colour match (from any other app/browser to Affinity) is much better whereas it's only if I switch to use the colour profile of my DELL U27313H monitor that the colours match perfectly (as far as I can tell). I'm on a Windows 10/64bit workstation here. Request: Can this 'feature' or a good explanation of what's going on here be added to your Help section, tutorials and anywhere you can mention it. I don't have this issue with any other professional design/art programme I use and whereas I'm sure the option must be there some very good reasons that perhaps don't apply to anyone, like me, that only work in the web/digital sphere - unless I've missed a very important tutorial somewhere in my 20+ years working as a digital designer. PS Your otherwise excellent Affinity Designer WorkBook (book) doesn't mention any of this either. IE there's nothing in it at all about colour calibration and the tools/presets that might be needed to work with colour in AD (or AP).

Hi @toltec / guys. Can you possibly help with another colour set-related issue (which is how I found this thread). The issue I thought @hr4art was going to describe is that Affinity Designer (and Photo) both seem to apply some kind of adjustment to their (my) workspace so that images viewed in any other application on the same monitor/session (ie side by side) seem to have completely different properties (roughly 10% desaturated) in the Affinity workspace compared to the same image viewed in Fireworks, Photoshop, any/every browser and every other app I've tried. I'm sure Affinity Designer is doing something really clever but as a professional graphic designer who only works in the digital space, it's driving me mad and can't find any way to turn off this adjustment. The pics shown in the other thread/post show exactly what's going on (but not how to fix/remove it): https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/41155-designer-imported-images-appear-washed-outbrightened/. Many thanks in advance to you/anyone who knows what/where this setting is and how to turn it off. PS I'm using the latest Affinity Designer build but the same issue has been around since pre-release versions. My main workstation here is a Windows 10/64bit, if it makes any difference. Q.

I have the same issue. It's been there all along and I equally have no idea how to change the defaults to avoid this. As Flashdeviant says if I paste any image from any source, but say from the internet, into Affinity Designer it seems to lose around 10% of it's saturation levels compared to the original. I presume this must be a default preference setting somewhere but I can't find it. The default colour options don't seem to be covered at all any tutorial/video either - not to address the issue at least. IE Colours in any app, webbrowser and any other Windows or Adobe application location seem bright and 'normal' then.. Steps to test this seem simple: 1. Search for and copy any brightly coloured image 2. Paste into a new (Control+N) document set to 'Web' type and behold. 3. Colours will appear washed out/desaturated (by around 10% or so) in Affinity Designer workspace. 4. Re-export the image and view in any other app/browser and the colour is 'restored' So how do we avoid this automatic filtering from being applied? It's very disconcerting, to say the least and makes it impossible to draw/colours naturally as most designers would need it (I imagine) - as you want to be able to see web/digital colours in the workspace that will match the exported/real-world colours outside it. Please help/put me out of my misery! Q

@MEB Keep going guys. You're doing a great job. However it does look like you have some background functionality in two of your existing functions (which might be extendable?): 1. Selection Brush Tool under the Pixel Persona menu set does allow a good marquee selection to be created (step 1) with pretty good fidelity and speed. 2. And your Grow/Shrink, Feather Selection and Outline tools already seem to be operating using some kind 'path' logic once that initial selection has been created - but the tool options stop there. 3. I'm not a programmer in any shape or form but would it really be so hard to add 'Now save this path so I can edit it further' option? Just in case it sounded like I might have been describing something more complicated. It just seems you're so really, really close with these tools as they stand and that's all anyone might reasonably desire at that next step.

Thanks for the replies guys. Looks like I'll continue using Fireworks for that - or try Inkscape (thanks Toltec). Generally speaking I think you've done a great job on Affinity Designer and Photo (I've got them both) so keep up the good work. For just about every other feature it beats Fireworks hands done (and blind-folded).

Hi guys, I can't for the life of me workout (or find any tutorials) on converting a marque selection into a path and vice versa. In Fireworks this is easy, and I use it all the time, you just create a new marque (based on colour range selection, say) and use the Selection menu too Convert Marquee to Path and to go in the opposite direction use the Modify menu and click "Convert Path to Marquee". Job done. I just can't find/see any way to do this with Affinity Designer or Photo. Typical example of what I use this for: find a flat pixel graphic that you want to convert into vectors to recolour and scale up etc. I'm trying to create some new maps from some older pixel maps right now. How can/do I do that? Thanks in advance. Q.