Macmonkey

Hi there, I've lost my right-hand side panels and I can't figure out how to get them back I'm sure its something pretty simple that i'm overlooking many thanks in advance dave

I have just realised that the Affinity toolset lets you marquee select only the nodes of the selected object which makes extending sections really easy. In illustrator it's very messy and you start dragging around other geometry instead. So thats another reason to like Affinity more :) Ooh and thanks for the postscript font support and the cmd-space zoom… very nice

Yep yep. two thumbs up from me too :)

Hey there rui mac,Yep yep, I hear you, everyone one has their own method :) I like to use me them there modifier keys, dragging out curves and breaking those handles on the fly. When I started out about fifteen years ago I worked at a catalogue production agency, and spent many a long day, honing the technique, putting clipping paths around product shots... Urgghhh... Artfully spilled out boxes of screws and springs were the worst. In glad those days are behind me :) Have good one Dave

Ah yes each to their own I guess :) modifier key or preference is probably the safest route. I'm probably just used to the illustrator workflow.

Hi everyone, This is another project that i have been working on this week. A slightly different but equally simple style ;) I am creating a whole bunch of people to populate a village scene. Thoughts this week: This is already turning out to be my go to app for character illustration. I was using illustrator this week for an old project and I found myself thinking I wish i could do a simple alpha grad :) and i was also missing the functionality of the select tool in affinity and being able to click to add points without juggling with keyboard shortcuts. Because I like the illustrating workflow in Affinity i decided to try doing some packaging artwork, but I quickly discovered that I have quite a few Postscript Type 1 fonts :( do you have any idea when/ if these will be supported? It's a shame because i really like the way the text tool works to drag out a size when you first click. Also because I do a few iterations of the designs I found myself really missing illustrators art boards. So I think I will be sticking with illustrator for packaging design …for now. Pen tool - when i am drawing out straight edged shapes it would be handy if when i click and drag on a line it could drag the edge instead of bending it. The bending is really cool for curves but when working with straight edged shapes it gets in the way. I guess the behaviour should be determined by the node type i.e if smooth then bend , but if sharp then move the entire edge. I'm really looking forward to a wacom friendly zoom method, the mouse wheel works just great when using the mouse, but I was working in Affinity for about 6 hours straight yesterday and the RSI was starting to kick in a little ;) Anyways… as always great work guys looking forward to the next update (fingers crossed for any of the following zoom shortcut, rounded corners, eraser tool, art boards) Have a good one Dave

Cheers guys, I'm glad that you like them, I still have quite a few more to do, so I will be sure to post updates. And mr somerfield, if you could sneak out those rounded corners in the next update you would be a (ninja) star ;)

Hi Everyone Some work and some notes :) I have a series of illustrations to do for an estate agent client so i decided to put Affinity Designer through it’s paces. The layout was created a little while ago in inDesign I have included it here for context. I was really pleased with my time spent with the app, for my simple style it held up really well. These are my observations: I would love to be able to reposition shapes whilst I’m creating them, in illustrator you can press space whilst drawing out the shape to reposition whilst drawing that is really helpful, I couldn’t figure out if/how you can do that here. An eyedropper tool would really handy, the cmd-c then cmd-shift-v works but slows down the workflow. I love the way that the outline of the selected object disappears when you are changing a colour. It would be good if this happened during all operations especially line weight, gaussian blur drop shadow etc where it would be good if the outline wasn’t visible. I spent a really long time getting frustrated when i was drawing shapes with the bezier tool because they had no fill or line weight as default and as soon as i dropped the tool i kept losing them and had to go to outline view to find them. But then I clicked on “use fill” and that helped a lot ;) There were a lot of times that illustrators rounded corners would have been very useful, just to soften out some of the sharp corners. if you can get that functionality that would be great For the longest time i couldn’t figure out how to separate items that had been created in a boolean action, so that you can select them independently but I figured it out eventually (layer>geometry>divide) Dynamic shapes were great the trapezoid and the segment shapes were very useful and really helped speed up shape building. Anyways… great job guys Affinity Designer keeps getting better every week!! Best Regards Dave

Hey MEB, thanks for your welcome and kind words. I'm glad that you liked the illustration, with regards to the light I'm trying to take a few cues from Pascal Campion, that guys is a genius!! I see what you mean about checking the forums. Its seems that we are all on the same page :) And I even discovered that "Adjustable Colour Swatches" that I requested… thats Global Swatches to everyone else, are already in illustrator …oops … that's embarrassing I've only been using it for about 15 years!! All this time it's been hiding there in plain sight :) Thanks again Dave

Cheers Matt, I'm glad that you liked the illustration. And good to hear about all of those updates, sounds like you've got a busy few months ahead :) I'll be eagerly following your progress… and I look forward to becoming better acquainted with this great piece of kit that you guys are putting together. Take care, and good luck Dave

Hey everyone, I've just been playing with the software, it started out as a quick doodle to play around and I'll be damned if t didn't just suck me in ;). I certainly like the way that Affinity Designer is headed. It has the key functionality from illustrator, but doesn't make you jump through as many hoops. Things I love: The dynamic shapes - there is similar functionality in illustrator with one of the astute graphics plugins but there is a much more extensive range here. i love the eclipse tool, really handy for shadows sand highlights on spherical objects. The transparency tool - is really great, no need to mess around with image masks to create a simple alpha grad The pressure graph - a great way to control the thickness of the lines. Insert inside - I didn't know that this functionality was available inside illustrator until i found it here Elipse gradient - Same again Things I would Love to see: Multiple fills strokes and effects - I have only just started using these in Sketch, iDraw and illustrator but they have become really handy for creating a more efficient workflow. I especially like the implementation in Sketch Outline stroke - Sometimes nice to use a stroke as a starting point expand it then tweak it. Offset path - Really handy to be able to expand a complex shape outward or inward Select Same… - It would be nice to be able to select the same fill or stroke colour to be able to easily recolour artwork. Adjustable Colour Swatches - I haven't seen this in any of the vector packages I've used but would be great to be able to assign a colour from the swatch palette to multiple objects and by updating the swatch you could automatically update the colour on all the objects (kind of like in inDesign). I've used this briefly in ToonBoom Animate and it worked really well. Quick Zoom Shortcut - I really missed the cmd-space shortcut to zoom. I was using a pen /tablet combo so couldn't use a scroll wheel… but I guess i would get use dot the trackpad alternative ;) Release compound path - I couldn't figure out how to separate booleaned objects (but that's probably just me) Anyways just some thoughts. as I said I'm liking the way it's headed and look forward to doing some more doodles sometime soon. Take it easy. Dave