Aammppaa

You can edit the gradient on the canvas itself, and can therefore zoom to any level of detail, which is far more flexible than a pop-out window. Just use the fill tool, and click on the gradient line to add a new point.

Fingers crossed. It is terribly basic at present.

It's a really good start, but to improve I'd suggest looking at some reference photos. Also... Consistency in lighting. The reflections should all be pointing towards the same light source. Contact shadows. Whenever two things touch there is going to be a shadow at the join. Variety. All the droplets are exactly the same shape, and in a flat plane parallel to the viewer/screen. Which looks too perfect. Specular colour. The reflected light on the droplets is too white. It should pick up some of the colour of the material itself. Here's an example of an illustration that shows these points in action... https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/lollipops-set-colorful-cake-pops-on-570081067

Use the Alignment Handles...

Oops. Forgot I was testing the 1.9 beta. Here is a version for 1.8 However, this version seems to leave one letter on the preceding line, no matter where I put the handles...? A bug that has been fixed in 1.9 perhaps. Text Path Multiple Curves (Retail).afdesign

This looks like a glitch, perhaps caused by having multiple nodes at the same / very similar locations. I would have to examine the file to be sure. I am not sure why you have so many short straight lines approximating a circle. Was this shape exported from a different piece of software? I'd recommend redrawing this part of the image with the ellipse tool so that you get a clean line with as few nodes as possible.

If you have Affinity Designer, you may be able to use a textured image brush... Draw the repeating section of your path. In the Candyland example that would be a series of rectangles: Orange, Purple, Yellow, Blue, Gold, Green. Export this row of rectangles as a single PNG image. In the brushes panel: Create new textured image brush. Choose the PNG that you exported as the basis of the brush. Use the Vector Brush tool to draw the path for the rectangles to follow. Ensure that your vector line doesn't have a coloured stroke (must be set to transparent) or it will overwrite the colours that you exported.

Draw your curve. Duplicate it a number of times. Select all the copies. Layer > Geometry > Merge Curves. Add text to path. Use the handles to limit the text to the top of the path. The attached file has history saved, so you can step through what I did. Text Path Multiple Curves.afdesign Worth noting that the curves remain editable, so you can add / remove lines as needed, and reshape.

I'm getting very poor performance as discussed in this thread...

Just worked in the same file switching to WARP and found the performance significantly better than using my GFX 1660 as the renderer. Something seems very wrong!

I have found the Designer beta very slow this week. Perhaps it is something to do with my current project, which uses a large number of symbols. I have no other machine to compare with, and I can't load the beta project back into 1.8, so can't say with any certainty why the poor performance is happening. But there have been many occasions where simply typing a letter into a text frame takes 5 seconds or so to update the screen. I did look in Task Manager and Designer was only using 16% of my CPU, and there was memory to spare.

The transparency tool, looks like a wine glass on the Designer tools, has several modes: linear, radial, elliptical etc. You choose these on the context toolbar. Once applied you will get two handles and a slider on the object to which you applied the transparency, that will allow adjustment. Styles will let you save the vignette so that you can reuse it easily in the future.

Here's one way to do it... Draw a rectangle. Fill it black. Add an elliptical transparency. Optionally move the slider to bias the transparency to the edges. Save this as a Style in the Styles panel (and call it Vignette). To use it... Zoom out and drag a rectangle over your entire project. Apply the vignette style. Tweak with the transparency handles, blend mode, fill colour etc. For example, setting the fill to white will fade the project to a white page. Optionally lock this layer so that you can continue to work through it, to the document below.

Glad to have helped 😀

What a horrible file! So many tiny elements made AD struggle on my machine. I was able to clean things up by using the Select Same feature that is in the new 1.9 beta. Open the SVG and ungroup everything. In the layers panel select one of the clipping masks. Select > Select Same > Fill & Stroke. Delete all the selected clipping masks. Clean up remaining objects by hand.

I was able to view Callum's video, but it didn't show anything more sophisticated than dragging an object out of a clipping mask in the layers panel. I can't see that helping with hundreds of clipped objects. Is your SVG file something you can share? Then others might come up with a viable method.

It is helpful to position the tools differently for different personas. At present the tools position is universal across persona, so it is possible to loose them behind other UI panels. Could each persona remember where the tools are? And include this in Studio Preset saves? Thanks.

Was looking at the new Select Same functionality today and noticed that Select Same > Name is not available. This would be very handy! Could it be added? Thanks.

2. I accidentally discovered that this is possible already. Select the bitmap and Convert to Curves. Results in a rectangle with the original bitmap as a fill.

This is a known bug in the current betas when rotating rectangles. Has been reported, so hopefully will get fixed in the next release.

Hi @MattP per object anti-aliasing looks like good progress. Are we any closer to improved aliasing options for text? See this post from 2015 that you participated in. Thanks.

Lining up guides with nodes works so long as you have the shape selected, and Snap to Nodes of Selected Curves enabled in the node tool.

Hi @nicolefally, welcome to the forum. What you are seeing is called 'colour decontamination'. It is mentioned in the help here... https://affinity.help/photo/English.lproj/pages/Selections/selections_refine.html Specifically... Selection and Mask are ideal when applying adjustments and filters after refining the selection area. New layer and New layer with mask are suited to cutting out and compositing; colour 'decontamination' is also used for achieving high-quality cut-out results. If you want a mask without colour decontamination, then duplicate the layer, then refine > mask. Hope this helps!

Drawing a rectangle along a line, by holding right mouse as I drag, is causing major graphical glitches.

I don't have Illustrator, but Merge sounds a lot like Affinify's Divide?