Scungio

I am not really surprised by the news. If you use software for any length of time, you see this happen all the time, it is normal. I started out with Freehand and we know how that worked out. My first animation software was Moho, which got bought by a company named Smith Micro and they really did not treat it very well, but then years later the original creator Mike Clifton bought Moho (Anime Studio) from Smith Micro and has been introducing really great features with each new release. Sometimes there is a storybook ending, sometimes companies do uphold their principles and values, although Mike Clifton took a roundabout way to finally get back to what was really important. In terms of a partnership or merging with Canva giving Affinity users a bad name?? Sorry to break it to some people but that ship sailed long ago, it was baked in from the beginning. When you tell somebody you use Affinity Designer, Photo, Publisher, the usual response is one of disdain or disgust. Far too often you are put down if you don't use Adobe software. I am looked down upon because I choose to use Moho over Toon Boom Harmony. I am looked down upon because I choose to use Blender instead of something like Maya. I got back into doing printmaking, doing wood cuts, linocuts and rather than have a fancy conventional press, I instead went the route of having a Slama press which is a handheld baren that has 150 stainless steel balls, and also a Ritualis Press. These two were not cheap and I probably could have bought a second hand etching press for the total cost but I really enjoy the more intimate/hands on nature of the presses that I chose. Yet there are those that would belittle me for the choices that I have made. This is a constant in my life and it does not faze me one bit, does not bother me at all. Oh, you still use Micro 4/3rds cameras?? Yeah, I have a pretty sweet collection of old Olympus lens and cameras that are still fine by me. So, I don't care about some slights that people may lob my way for using Affinity products that are now associated with Canva. One last thing that I might add, I always am on the lookout for new software because I know how things can suddenly change for the worse. That is why I have ON1 Photo Raw in addition to using Affinity Photo. That is why I have VectorStyler and Patternodes and Vectoraster in addition to Affinity Designer. That is why I have Nomad Sculpt and Plasticity in addition to Blender. I have Moho but also bought Procreate Dreams. Yeah, you can have a 401K, stocks and bonds but also Bitcoin. Redundancy is a good thing.

Yeah, I recommend Vectoraster as well. You can't go wrong adding both Vectoraster and Patternodes from Lost Minds to your toolset. They are Mac only. While it would be great to have the Astute plugins for Designer, I find that Vectoraster, Patternodes and VectorStyler work well as companion apps to Designer. They are essentially my plugins for Designer that fill the gaps until Serif develops those tools and functions. If I need to do halftones, I reach for Vectoraster. If I want to do complex repeating patterns, I reach for Patternodes. If I want to do a blend of two lines to get a quick flowing flag type of object, I reach for VectorStyler. VectorStyler also has an Image Trace feature and I am still grappling to learn it. While some may say, hey, that is additional cost in buying those apps, yeah, but if we had Astute Graphics plugins, they have gone subscription, so it would cost you a whole lot more money to the tune of $149 per year.

What is also very handy is the macro functionality with the TourBox. Yeah, Photo can do macros but Designer can't at the moment, but using it with the TourBox, you can do macros. I have a macro set up to do a Blob Brush, a macro that lets me do a Reflect like in Illustrator. Just endless possibilities.

One of the cool things you can do with the TourBox is to take advantage of the ability for it to have multiple presets for a single application. Like I will have a main Designer Preset, and then a Designer [Paint] preset which is tailored specifically when I am using the Pixel Persona. You can set up a button that switches to the other presets. As an example, the Dial in my Designer Preset is set up to Cycle Node Forward and Backward, this also will increase or decrease the stroke. I click the Dial and it brings up a custom menu of tools. But the Dial in my Designer [Paint] Preset has it set up to Rotate Left and Rotate Right the canvas and when you click the Dial it resets the rotation. Another idea for scrolling through the tools is setting up a custom menu to a button. You click the button, the menu pops up and you either pick the tool with your mouse or stylus, OR you use the TourBox Scroll to move up and down the menu of tools and can press the Tall Button to choose the tool.

Third video, Macros. TourBox_Affinity_03.mp4

Second video. TourBox_Affinity_02.mp4

Okay, I have the first of say 4 videos, I will try and keep them under 10 minutes each, I think this one is just under 8 minutes. TourBox_Affinity_01.mp4

Yeah, love my TourBox and using it with Affinity apps is great. It really does allow an artist to customize their workflow. Thank you for posting your bindings, I will pour over them to find some new ideas. I see one thing you discovered is how the Knob and Scroll wheels can be used as toggles. With the Knob I use the Tall, Short, Top and Side buttons to come up with 5 Toggles making up 10 commands. Say you have 4 objects in the layers panel, an Ellipse, a Square Star, a Triangle and a Rectangle. Now imagine you want to move some objects, move some in front of others, move some inside other objects, or change your mind and move an object outside of another object, or group objects, create a compound, etc, With my left hand on my TourBox, I can interact with the Layers panel and have these toggles set up with the Knob: Select Previous/Select Next, Move Forward/Move Backward, Move Inside/Move Outside, Select Parent/Collapse Layer, Group/Ungroup, etc, and then when I press down on the Knob I have a custom Menu. You can have Deselect, New Layer, New Pixel Layer, Rename, etc in this menu. And this custom menu can be pinned so that it stays open if you desire. And you can navigate this menu from the TourBox, use the Scroll wheel and then the Tall Button to make a selection from the menu. I use a Xencelabs Medium Tablet and one of the things it gets dinged for is not having Touch enabled. I had that on my previous Wacom Intuo Pro tablet and always found it flakey and frustrating to use the Touch feature. So, with the TourBox I use the Dial to Rotate Left and Rotate Right the view (canvas) and press down on the Dial to Reset Rotation as I am sketching/painting with the Stylus on the Xencelabs tablet. No, it is not as smooth as say what I get on my iPad Pro but it works. If people are interested I can do some videos showing how easy it is to setup the TourBox to use with Affinity

You misunderstand. Tourbox is an input device that has knobs, dials, buttons that allows you to bind keyboard shortcuts to it. Stream Deck does the same thing, I have 32 buttons on the XL version and you can set up macros with both. Meaning I can have a button fire off a number of commands one after the other so that in Designer I can do what Illustrator users can do with their Actions. Anyway, here is a short movie showing the gist of what I am talking about. I am doing the reflect manually here in less that 5 seconds, but with a macro it will be instantaneous. Reflect.mp4

Interesting. Okay, so firstdefence, with your method I have to duplicate objects, group objects, move transform origin to centre line, rotate 180 degrees and then use the Flip Vertical. I would add that probably a good idea to double click on the transform origin to move it back to center if one wants to keep it as a group. In your method I would want to duplicate the objects first before making a group because I don't want to have two groups that I have to center the origins. All in all though that is still 6 steps and I figure that I can duplicate and flip in 7 steps and have it automated to boot. Make a selection and click a button. Some may say that is too complicated but that is why I love both the Tourbox and Stream Deck. Invest a little time in setting this reflect macro and then the time savings add up later on down the road.

I really miss Illustrator's Reflect Tool. I love Von Glitschka's tutorials and how he will at times do pieces that have symmetry and will build half a face and then use the Reflect tool to complete the other half of the face. So, I got to thinking, how do I do the same in Designer?? Here is my preliminary idea, I use the macro ability of a device like a Tourbox or Stream Deck XL to run a bunch of commands/functions to duplicate and then flip and complete the piece. Say you have a document, and then drag out a vertical guide at the exact midway point of the document. Then you create half of a face with the vertical guide in mind. You have a Layer with all of the curves, shapes comprising your face, but you add one more shape, a rectangle. That will be resized to match the exact same dimensions as the document and we name it Reflect. Give it a fill and stroke of none and put it at the very bottom of the stack and lock it. Now, to automate the duplication and flipping of the face, I hope to do it something like this: First, select the items you want to copy and flip. Then at this point I run a macro, that Duplicates the objects, Groups them, Moves to Back. This Group is now at the bottom of the stack, below the Reflect object, so Move Forward One, moves it above the Reflect object, and Move Inside puts it inside the Reflect object. Now if we use Select Parent, the Reflect object is selected and then Flip Horizontal will create the other half of the face. We are flipping the rectangle that is the same dimensions as the document and the half of the face that we created is a child of the rectangle, and since we created it around that vertical guide, the two halves match up. I see no way to select a child of that Reflect object, so this is where the macro ends for this button. Another button could be created to run a macro that finished the procedure. For example you would have to select the child of the Reflect object, the Group that has the new halve of the face, and then click on a new button/macro that would Move to Outside and then Ungroup. Of course this is me daydreaming, I will in the next day or two try this out and see if it actually works on both the Tourbox and Steam Deck. What other workarounds do people have for a Reflect or Mirror tool???

Well, to be fair, I posted that almost 6 years ago and I had abandoned Adobe at that point. In terms of copy and pasting an object and there being an offset in Designer? I have never seen that in my experience. Also, I rarely use copy and paste in that manner anymore, I use duplicate instead. I have a TourBox and a Stream Deck XL that I use with Designer, Duplicate is mapped to a single button with both devices. Instead of me reaching for the keyboard, contorting my fingers to reach the keys for Copy and then for Paste, I simply press one button for Duplicate. There are many ways to tackle an issue and come away with the same result.

When I go to the Color Picker Tool, there is no lower triangle indicator showing that there is a sub menu/flyout with the Style Picker Tool as I see on the desktop version. With the Knife tool, I can't get the Scissor functionality where you hover over an edge, see the Scissor icon and then can click to make a split. Anybody else having the same issues? Or am I missing something in how to get them to work or function right?

Well, the issue I have with the current trash/delete icon being at the top right when deleting nodes, is that it isn't accessible when one is holding the iPad and working with it in portrait mode if you will. I was swiping, trying to find something to allow the right most icons, specifically the trash/delete icon to come into view and did not have any luck. I would love if it were relocated back to the old spot or even below the question icon on the right side.

Whether you are browsing on a phone or tablet or desktop computer the intro to Universal License is there and it clearly states that you can get the ENTIRE Affinity suite on all your devices, across macOS, Windows and iPadOS. If the argument is that a phone is a device, sure, but does it run macOS, Windows or iPadOS? Of course not, if you have an iPhone it runs iOS. An Android phone does not run any of the platforms stated either. Now, yes, I did check the link on my iPhone and the checkboxes don't show in that section, for whatever reason, sometimes you have websites that will present differently depending on devices viewing it, but still the Introducing the Universal License section is there, is clear and should put an end to this discussion.