jer

@Chris: Very kind and generous of you and I used one of your 10 to complete the course a little while ago. Nice! Short, sweet and every step was basic Affinity Designer and helpful. In fact, I knew the separate steps and what your course did for me was tie the pieces together in a great method to use AD Symbols to produce great border/pattern results. It was very impressive to see the the way you free-handed the designs in the early segment with a paper copy of your guide and a drawing pen! But my work will all be done inside Designer with the Pen Tool and Shapes 'cause I'm lousy with a pencil. So I'll be using the AD skills you showed in the 2nd and later segments by opening the PDF of your pattern Guide you provided in the downloads. I liked the time length of the course; being short allowed me to get right to my own playing around with the new knowledge. I like your ideas to follow-up with another course on framing-out the patterns/borders as many times a good horizontal border doesn't lend itself to rotating vertically and looks funny as a frame. What you did include really inspires a lot of ideas on where patterns can be helpful in posters and other designs. P.S. I'm still happy to PayPal you for specific courses once you figure it out. With PayPal, donations can be sent to any PayPal user that is willing to provide their email address.

Absolutely agree for Windows also. To prevent unintended Moves of other accidentally selected curves (most often due to being zoomed in and not seeing selection indicators on other items) I almost have to put a lock on all other layers or give up any speed advantages by using the modifiers. Usually the latter because locking & unlocking is a nuisance too. I need to read up on locking/unlocking too because I have seen many instances where locking the Group DOES NOT lock layers within the group. Weird Weird Weird.

Chris, your class outlined above looks interesting but, frankly, I have the same aversion to Skillshare as I do to Adobe. That is the reason I'm now an Affinity user. And a Libre Office user. And an emClient user (non Outlook). As I understand it, you can quit anytime from the Skillshare monthly plan but I really don't want to be on anyone's plan (read as give them the right to charge & bill me) for 17,000 courses of which I might take two a year. Is your Decorative Border course somewhere else where I can Paypal it specifically and be done?

Ahh, man! Cool tip! Thanks!

I don't see any evidence of your having started by going to File > New and creating a document of some size or another as your platform. I also don't see rulers on the top and left margins though you may have simply turned them off. And the existing .afdesign file you opened... did it have a document base on which the curves/shapes were created? Unlike Affinity Photo in which you start by opening a photo, Designer needs to have a new document to work from. I apologize if I have stepped back too far and your issue is more complicated.

Wow! I love that. It's going into my inspiration file! Thanks for sharing.

Nice representation of fishing line on two of them. Good shading/hi-lights on the bevel cuts. Not even one winding handle? Oh, I know! They are motorized!

Beautiful work! Welcome and thanks for sharing!

@Dave - this is a great find! I like that the tutorials are written (a.k.a. non-video) and the notes you mentioned describe for what uses the AP feature can be applied. And, under the "Grids" tutorials there are also 100's of grid templates available for purchase if someone wants a quick start. Lovely! Thanks for finding and sharing this link!

Love the way the Effects are adjustable and reusable. Great tutorial. Thanks for creating and sharing it.

Ouch! This was painful for over an hour as I kept fiddling with it, knowing it is supposed to work! Glad I finally decided to do a Forum search and, sure enough, R C-R has thoroughly described the solution and (all the) related bug issues. @R C-R, Thanks! [Must be open shapes - - Argggh!] [ADD isn't the best method - yes, but it is the most intuitive! - - Double Argggh!]

@JimmyJack It did work! For some of the pixel layers I had to Edit in Photo and use the Flood Select Tool (W) to delete some white that began to show up after implementing your suggestion. I don't know why it showed through after Grouping and changing PassThrough to Normal as the Multiply had previously ignored it. Anyway, that done, your suggestion saved me much time and effort. Thank you!

Oooh, great idea - can't wait to try this! Sounds like it might work!

Unfortunately, making my lower Normal layer not visible solves the problem but prevents the vector on that layer from displaying or printing. Adding a Normal layer above my Normal layer limits the Multiplying layers above only if the new layer is completely filled with content. But it blocks the lower Normal layer from displaying or printing. Yes, it does stop all the Multiply layers above from further Multiplying. I'm probably missing something from your suggestions and would appreciate a clarification. What I really need is a switch on my bottom-most Multiply layer that says, okay, all you Multiply guys above need to stop your Multiplying at this point. None of my layers are completely filled with content, except the lower Normal layer acting as a background kind of vector.

How can I make a bottom-ish layer be ignored by about 20+ layers above it, all set with Blend Mode Multiply? Is there a switch or a Blend Mode I can set on the one layer so that all those "Multiply" layers above it are not affected by the one? I am unable to move the one layer above the "Multiply" layers as it is sort of a background vector. Maybe there is a way to insert a "blocking" layer under the Multiply layers (just above my bottom-ish layer) that stops the Multiplying effect? But doesn't block my drawing? (Well, AD does have a lot of magic features, right?) Anyone know how to do this?

Have you moved the download? I get a Not Found 404 error when I click on your download link. Edit: Ah, I see this was posted in June. Maybe you have re-posted the smaller groups since then and deleted the large file.

@Alfred Good job!

Hmm, many questions come to mind. If I understand you, you are interested in a separate file for each month, not a 12-month file, and your goal is to find an easy way to turn Janeiro 2017 into Janeiro 2018. Etc for February, etc for March, etc. And you want to have a separate color for Sunday dates. And I don't know whether you want to use AD or AP or the future APub. My approach would be to create each month using a macro that can access the universal DATE function. This would get you past the Leap Year problem. And with this method you don't need to modify a month for next year - your macro just builds each new month for you. I don't know how to get a date function with Affinity so I would use a spreadsheet then paste the results into AD or AP or the future APub. The spreadsheet columns could be set up with the Sunday colors and, hopefully, it will keep the colors when you paste. You can use Excel or try the free Open Source Libre Office (includes Calc as their spreadsheet) and avoid Microsoft. https://www.libreoffice.org/ Or just find free calendars online using google and paste them into AD or AP or the future APub. This doesn't help with your specific question but it is an alternative. And, hopefully, maybe some AD/AP experts will post with better solutions.

Fire in the Sky appeals to me in the sense of shapes and colors and harmony. Chocolate, on the other hand, is a little unsettling and I can't articulate why. So, two very different viewing experiences. Thanks for sharing them.

Stunning work! The other pieces you have shared over the last few days are incredible also.

Oh, gruesome jack-o-lantern, man! That low brow/eyelids thing is menacing. Great job.

Welcome to AP! "...create a hdr photo" is a bit vague. Suggestions: Take 3 stationary images with your camera where you change the lighting settings for each. Open them in Affinity Photo and merge them. OR Take one image with your camera after you have changed the camera's setting to HDR if it has that setting. Open it in Affinity Photo and make any adjustments. OR Check out these video tutorials in this Forum's Resources area: HDR (High Dynamic Range) HDR: Merging & Tone Mapping HDR: Tone Map Presets HDR: Panoramas HDR: Preprocessing HDR: Advanced Editing HDR: Ghosts Removal HDR: 32-bit Editing OR Take advantage of this member's generosity and download his/her creation of a PDF AP Manual and check page 322+: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/34556-affinity-photo-pdf-manual-for-your-enjoyment/ Post back with more info on your system, AP version, and specific questions if the above doesn't help.

Too funny! But even at x0.25 it was too fast for my head to follow the tools usage. Got the Pen tool and the Node tool, everything else was a blur!

You see the finished colorized image, you see the wonderful detail... but then you watch the time lapse and realize you didn't really see the billions of detail items after all! Like the vast number of highlights and shadows in all the right places. Like the glows from the instruments in the cockpits (my fave!). So impressive!

Beautiful!