urbanistica

First, let me say that I remain in awe of the Serif products I use: Photo on Mac and iPad, and Designer on Mac. Having worked for years on Adobe products, I came to Affinity to get out from under Adobe's ridiculous subscription model. I tried several contenders but quickly Designer wiped out any impulse to go back to Illustrator – despite a lot of convenience tools that I missed, and largely still miss in Designer. It says a lot that the generally better, uncluttered and powerful UI of your products has kept me firmly out of the previous world (apart from occasional returns for specific effects that Illustrator 5 still provides).
 
I've recently started production on a graphic novel that I've already spent 2 years developing the script and research for. Now I'm heading into drawing, and I'm staking it all on Designer and Photo on the platforms I use them on, with a few other apps like Sketchup and Concepts as parts of the workflow.
 
That said, as I get into it, I find a lot of small workflow frustrations. The latest illustrates: My project requires a LOT of moving documents between Photo and Designer, in various configurations. So why, when I use the "Edit in Photo" option from Designer, does the document in Photo not inherit the units of the Designer document? SO FRUSTRATING. 
 
All the more so, because the option to change units that is usually suggested, Document Resize is greyed out. And of course, I'm not trying to resize the document, I just want to change its units.
 
It took a lot of searching to find out that the best (only!) way to do this, is to select the hand tool, and use the units popup that appears in the toolbar. What has units got to do with the hand tool?? Very counterintuitive, and more to the point, hard to find the workaround. Worse, there are a number of places that you would (reasonably) expect units control to appear (like, say, Preferences, and Document Setup) that it is completely absent from. 
 
As part of the process of trying to work around this, I also found a bug that seemed to crash Designer when changing units with the Guides Manager open (reported). This indicates to me that while you obviously have a very good team of UI people there, there may be some gaps in testing, and in crash reporting.
 
I want this to be positive, so I'll say again that the products are excellent. With my dependence on them over the next year, and as part of a project that will have consumed 3 years of my life when it's done, I am concerned that the products are in a cycle of pushing new things out, and under-resourcing fleshing out feature sets that should have been filled out long long ago. 
 
In my graphic work, I often needed the flexibility that AI's arrowhead and other line termination options provided. Grid distortion tools there are underpowered or absent in Designer, and when I look back at the feature requests, these, and things like them, have been requested consistently for years now. These requests are responded to with "yes, coming up in the next release" type responses, but we are still waiting for them. The iPad Photo is brilliant, and I understand why you would put a focus on it, but there needs to be a clear sense that you're really able to make these products better, and not just more broadly available.

Hey everyone. I've just launched a blog that I'm using to chronicle the development of my graphic novel, Somerton Man. 
 
While I'll be showing some final finished art down the road, the purpose of the blog is to document the creation workflow process. I have a suite of tools I use, that include Photo on both Mac and iPad, and Designer. I also use Concepts, Notes, Scrivener, Sketchup, MakeHuman, Skelly.... well, there's a list. But at the centre are the Affinity suite.
 
I'm inviting anyone interested to drop by and monitor the progress. I've got lots of good things to say about Designer, and a few criticisms, so I'm also open to ways of doing things more efficiently. There's also an FB page - working on getting that to update when the blog does.
 
My project is about using Designer as the central hub for bringing the project together. As such, this is only partly about virtuoso technique, but it's definitely about workflow and thinking out the stages of the book. If that's of interest, I'd love to hear your ideas.
 
Dan, Somerton Man Graphic Novel writer, artist.
 

Hey everyone. I've just launched a blog that I'm using to chronicle the development of my graphic novel, Somerton Man. 
 
While I'll be showing some final finished art down the road, the purpose of the blog is to document the creation workflow process. I have a suite of tools I use, that include Photo on both Mac and iPad, and Designer. I also use Concepts, Notes, Scrivener, Sketchup, MakeHuman, Skelly.... well, there's a list. But at the centre are the Affinity suite.
 
I'm inviting anyone interested to drop by and monitor the progress. I've got lots of good things to say about Designer, and a few criticisms, so I'm also open to ways of doing things more efficiently. There's also an FB page - working on getting that to update when the blog does.
 
My project is about using Designer as the central hub for bringing the project together. As such, this is only partly about virtuoso technique, but it's definitely about workflow and thinking out the stages of the book. If that's of interest, I'd love to hear your ideas.
 
Dan, Somerton Man Graphic Novel writer, artist.
 

Hey everyone. I've just launched a blog that I'm using to chronicle the development of my graphic novel, Somerton Man. 
 
While I'll be showing some final finished art down the road, the purpose of the blog is to document the creation workflow process. I have a suite of tools I use, that include Photo on both Mac and iPad, and Designer. I also use Concepts, Notes, Scrivener, Sketchup, MakeHuman, Skelly.... well, there's a list. But at the centre are the Affinity suite.
 
I'm inviting anyone interested to drop by and monitor the progress. I've got lots of good things to say about Designer, and a few criticisms, so I'm also open to ways of doing things more efficiently. There's also an FB page - working on getting that to update when the blog does.
 
My project is about using Designer as the central hub for bringing the project together. As such, this is only partly about virtuoso technique, but it's definitely about workflow and thinking out the stages of the book. If that's of interest, I'd love to hear your ideas.
 
Dan, Somerton Man Graphic Novel writer, artist.
 

Hey everyone. I've just launched a blog that I'm using to chronicle the development of my graphic novel, Somerton Man. 
 
While I'll be showing some final finished art down the road, the purpose of the blog is to document the creation workflow process. I have a suite of tools I use, that include Photo on both Mac and iPad, and Designer. I also use Concepts, Notes, Scrivener, Sketchup, MakeHuman, Skelly.... well, there's a list. But at the centre are the Affinity suite.
 
I'm inviting anyone interested to drop by and monitor the progress. I've got lots of good things to say about Designer, and a few criticisms, so I'm also open to ways of doing things more efficiently. There's also an FB page - working on getting that to update when the blog does.
 
My project is about using Designer as the central hub for bringing the project together. As such, this is only partly about virtuoso technique, but it's definitely about workflow and thinking out the stages of the book. If that's of interest, I'd love to hear your ideas.
 
Dan, Somerton Man Graphic Novel writer, artist.
 

Hey everyone. I've just launched a blog that I'm using to chronicle the development of my graphic novel, Somerton Man. 
 
While I'll be showing some final finished art down the road, the purpose of the blog is to document the creation workflow process. I have a suite of tools I use, that include Photo on both Mac and iPad, and Designer. I also use Concepts, Notes, Scrivener, Sketchup, MakeHuman, Skelly.... well, there's a list. But at the centre are the Affinity suite.
 
I'm inviting anyone interested to drop by and monitor the progress. I've got lots of good things to say about Designer, and a few criticisms, so I'm also open to ways of doing things more efficiently. There's also an FB page - working on getting that to update when the blog does.
 
My project is about using Designer as the central hub for bringing the project together. As such, this is only partly about virtuoso technique, but it's definitely about workflow and thinking out the stages of the book. If that's of interest, I'd love to hear your ideas.
 
Dan, Somerton Man Graphic Novel writer, artist.
 

Hey everyone. I've just launched a blog that I'm using to chronicle the development of my graphic novel, Somerton Man. 
 
While I'll be showing some final finished art down the road, the purpose of the blog is to document the creation workflow process. I have a suite of tools I use, that include Photo on both Mac and iPad, and Designer. I also use Concepts, Notes, Scrivener, Sketchup, MakeHuman, Skelly.... well, there's a list. But at the centre are the Affinity suite.
 
I'm inviting anyone interested to drop by and monitor the progress. I've got lots of good things to say about Designer, and a few criticisms, so I'm also open to ways of doing things more efficiently. There's also an FB page - working on getting that to update when the blog does.
 
My project is about using Designer as the central hub for bringing the project together. As such, this is only partly about virtuoso technique, but it's definitely about workflow and thinking out the stages of the book. If that's of interest, I'd love to hear your ideas.
 
Dan, Somerton Man Graphic Novel writer, artist.
 

Hey everyone. I've just launched a blog that I'm using to chronicle the development of my graphic novel, Somerton Man. 
 
While I'll be showing some final finished art down the road, the purpose of the blog is to document the creation workflow process. I have a suite of tools I use, that include Photo on both Mac and iPad, and Designer. I also use Concepts, Notes, Scrivener, Sketchup, MakeHuman, Skelly.... well, there's a list. But at the centre are the Affinity suite.
 
I'm inviting anyone interested to drop by and monitor the progress. I've got lots of good things to say about Designer, and a few criticisms, so I'm also open to ways of doing things more efficiently. There's also an FB page - working on getting that to update when the blog does.
 
My project is about using Designer as the central hub for bringing the project together. As such, this is only partly about virtuoso technique, but it's definitely about workflow and thinking out the stages of the book. If that's of interest, I'd love to hear your ideas.
 
Dan, Somerton Man Graphic Novel writer, artist.
 

Hey everyone. I've just launched a blog that I'm using to chronicle the development of my graphic novel, Somerton Man. 
 
While I'll be showing some final finished art down the road, the purpose of the blog is to document the creation workflow process. I have a suite of tools I use, that include Photo on both Mac and iPad, and Designer. I also use Concepts, Notes, Scrivener, Sketchup, MakeHuman, Skelly.... well, there's a list. But at the centre are the Affinity suite.
 
I'm inviting anyone interested to drop by and monitor the progress. I've got lots of good things to say about Designer, and a few criticisms, so I'm also open to ways of doing things more efficiently. There's also an FB page - working on getting that to update when the blog does.
 
My project is about using Designer as the central hub for bringing the project together. As such, this is only partly about virtuoso technique, but it's definitely about workflow and thinking out the stages of the book. If that's of interest, I'd love to hear your ideas.
 
Dan, Somerton Man Graphic Novel writer, artist.
 

You can also change the units from the Context toolbar when the View Tool (hand) is selected. Quicker than going into the Document menu.