MattP

Very nicely done! LOTS of work in there!

Are you able to post a screenshot of the whole of your top bar in Photo? We're wondering if you've ever modified the buttons on there, or if they happen to trigger a 'more' button if they would fall off the end of the window on your Mac? We're not seeing the issue here on our devices, so just trying to get as much info as possible - thanks!

The icons in both applications were being updated. Here's a side-by-side of Photo 1.7.0.101 against Designer 1.7.0.3 showing they're the same now. Thanks for bringing it to our attention though - if it wasn't an area we were in the middle of changing then it would've been very worrying indeed!?!

If you can provide us with an example file and the output you'd expect to see, then we have much more chance of fixing the issue Thank you! Matt

Status: Beta Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes Requirements: Purchased Affinity Designer Mac App Store: Not submitted Download: Here Hello, We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the beta of Affinity Designer 1.7 for macOS. Designer 1.7 is a significant change to the currently shipping 1.6 version. Files edited in this version will not be backwards-compatible with the shipping 1.6 version. As such, we would not recommend using this 1.7 version for critical or production work at this stage. It is inevitable that there were will be a number of issues with 1.7 but we hope these will be minor and aim to resolve any issues very quickly, so please use it and explore the new features, but also do keep in mind that you may find snags and we would appreciate your help with finding and reporting these to us. If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry. It’s also worth noting that we aren’t done yet - we are still working through reported bugs from previous releases and hope to fix as many as possible before the final release of 1.7. With all that said, we hope that you will enjoy the new capabilities introduced in this initial release and we look forward to any and all feedback you give to us. Many thanks, Matt Affinity Designer 1.7 - Changes since last Beta release - Fix for crash in Export dialog when only one Artboard is present - Fix for occasional crash when using Construction points - Improved Freehand import slightly - failing to read all of a file shouldn't force it to produce a 'failed to load' response, instead we just load the bits that we *could* read - Improvements to HSL adjustment - PDF import and export improvements - Fix for very poorly named Styles (oops) - Sub-brush editing improvements - New splash screen and Persona icons Affinity Designer 1.7 - Changes Since Last 1.6 Release Tools - We've overhauled most of the core tools, adding subtle new features to make you more productive: - Node tool has a new 'Transform Mode' which provides a containing box for the selected nodes and allows for more freeform editing of the nodes. - Node and Pen tools have an utterly amazing Construction mode which gives easy access to common construction features to help you build complicated shapes or intersections accurately and easily, giving you simple access to parallels, right angles, reflected and mirrored angles, in addition to circular construction snaps and all construction intersections. This really needs a video to show how to use it - but it's awesome. - Pen tool now has a 'rubber band' mode and also a mode to allow future curves to be added to the current object's curves (for example, the character 'a' is constructed of two curves in a single 'curve object' and this mode makes that construction simpler). - Node tool can now auto-snap nodes if you drag a node from one curve over the top of a node from another (selected) curve and pause, it will offer to snap to the same geometry as the node you're hovering over (ie, modify the on and off-curve nodes to match). This is really useful for trying to reconstruct areas of one curve from another curve. - Node tool now allows for lasso selection of nodes by holding the Alt/Option key and dragging a selection lasso. - Pencil tool now offers a 'sculpt' mode that allows for extending or manipulating curves in a more natural way. More to come in this area soon. - Many tools now allow for 'Alignment widgets' which you can toggle the visibility of in the context toolbar. When enabled you can visually adjust the alignment or even, for example, 'align to centre, snapped to the left edge of this object' by simply click/dragging. - Fill tool correctly allows editing of skewed fill handles and newly-created skewed fills draw much nicer now. - Ruler origin can be edited by simply dragging the area where the rulers intersect each other - it can even be snapped onto objects in the document. - Guides can be edited in most tools by simply dragging a guide in the ruler area. - Grid setup is now more interactive: origin can be dragged, axis scale adjusted and angle adjusted on-document, complete with snapping to objects and angles in the document to help you reconstruct useful grids from finished artworks or sketches. - By enabling 'Edit in Plane' on the new Isometric Studio, tools can edit objects and appear to make those edits along the currently active plane - extremely useful for artists who enjoy working with any axonometric projections. - You can now drag the rotation centre point (when enabled on the context toolbar) while holding Ctrl and it will translate the object - this is actually very useful for positioning and snapping objects relative to others. - Shapes tools now have presets so you can create your own favourite shape setups and more easily use them again. - There are just far too many subtle tool changes to mention here, but hopefully you'll find the tools much improved General - New brushes, styles and assets are now shipped with the product. - Visible bleed (accessed from the View menu) so you can more easily design into the bleed area - a common feature request. - “Alternate futures” for document history have been added. Traditionally, if you roll back the undo history then do something else all your changes after that point are lost. Designer will now display a small branch icon in the history tab when you do this. Pressing that button will cycle between all the different “futures” after that history entry - meaning you will never lose work you have done. - New 'Isometric' Studio makes it easy to setup and work with various axonometric projections within the application. - HEIF images can now be loaded directly into Designer. If they contain a depth map, this will also be loaded as a second layer. Because depth maps are typically lower resolution than the main image, optional “smart” upsampling will be performed. - Designer now supports custom document presets - a popular feature request. - A new blend mode - Linear Burn - has been added. - New “Move inside / outside” commands have been added - useful for quickly clipping/unclipping. - New "Merge curves/Separate curves" commands. - Grids now have an editable number of angle subdivisions. - The Hard Mix blend mode has been improved. - Numerous text improvements have been made - including new features such as bullets and numbering. - Significant PDF import / export improvements and fixes. Brushes - Designer 1.7 introduces a new “sub-brush” mechanism, developed in conjunction with Paolo Limoncelli (DAUB® Brushes). This exciting feature allows any brush to have a list of other brushes attached which will draw at the same time. Each sub-brush has a fully separate and customisable set of dynamics. You can control when the sub-brushes are drawn and how they blend with the main brush. - Symmetry (up to 32-way) is now supported - including on-canvas controls and optional mirroring. - Wet edges and accumulation are now available on colour brushes and brushes with HSL variance. - Brushes with multiple nozzle textures have always chosen the nozzle at random. In 1.7, the nozzle choice has a dynamic controller and ramp for greater control. - All pixel brush tools now support left and right arrow keys for rotation - a common feature request. Adjustments - The HSL adjustment layer has been rewritten. It now supports custom hue ranges, a new algorithm, new UI and picker controls. - The Levels adjustment layer now supports output levels - a common feature request. - The White Balance adjustment layer has been rewritten. - The Selective Colour adjustment layer has been rewritten. - PSD import / export of adjustments has been improved. - The Vibrance adjustment layer has been rewritten. - The Recolour adjustment layer has gained a lightness slider. Misc - Numerous other bug fixes - too many to list!

It has no resource manager at present, so no method to manage the linked images. It will pick up linked images when Publisher has sorted all the wrinkles out

Designer shouldn’t be linking images - it’s an accidental inclusion from Publisher, sorry!

I don’t think they wanted to direct traffic here until the Windows builds were ready...

Yes, I've definitely seen this as the way a blend tool is used - but usually it's because you're trying to achieve a certain look. It's very unlikely that the arbitrarily-interpolated results are going to be exactly what you were after if you were intending to use each of them for some particular purpose, so a dedicated tool to perform that action, together with some way of specifying key points/joints and controlling their motion (potentially individually) over the blend would be more appropriate and produce actual results that were desirable. We're simply trying to understand what people are really trying to achieve, because the Blend Tool in most other programs is just a generic answer and doesn't really give the exact results to the problem people were trying to solve, I think?

I just didn't want to only give you the short answer and no explanation of why...

Wonderful design - very nice indeed!

I think there's a thread about it somewhere where Tony Brightman (Head of Serif Labs) was asking for examples of where it was actually used to create things that weren't actually a poor version of what someone was really wanting to achieve via a new (as yet unseen) tool instead. ie If nobody could come up with something compelling then we were going to just implement a new tool that works differently so that we can actually produce the effect that users were actually trying to achieve in the first place. The normal examples are people trying to make wineglass shading out of 10,000 slightly different, blurred shapes that blend together, etc - and this would be much better achieved with a tool that produces a controllable gradient. That kind of thing...

Hi Wafer, Just want to say that I'm sorry we aren't making the right decisions for you, nor are we making them in the timeframe you feel is acceptable. I understand that and accept it. We're working as fast as we can with the resources we have. Whether you agree with our decisions or not, only we really know the factors which guide our business decisions and we're making products we're proud of and excited about. I know nothing about the inner workings of your business, I suspect you know a similar amount about mine - which is fine. Are your devs on your forums talking to customers about the decisions they make and how to improve your features? All of our new construction tools, Node Tool functionality, column guide and Isometric studio features are entirely as the result of talking things through with customers and engineering a solution for their needs, so to suggest we are not delivering for our customers is just not true. How you may view our priorities is guided by what you can observe... but what you can't observe is that actually the person writing a lot of the things you've called out as your priorities is going to be me and I've been writing the iPad version of Designer for the last year, so I've missed almost an entire cycle. As I've explained earlier in this thread, the iPad version is now written so I can get back to adding features... You're now going to say to me that I shouldn't have been developing the iPad version and that I should focus on customer requested features as priorities - and I'm now going to refer you back to the beginning of this response where I do try to politely point out that you can't possibly know what is actually critical for our business to succeed and that we are talking to customers daily and trying our best with our resources to offer something we're proud of and excited about. I have to say that if, as you alluded, you're used to developing large scale products with complicated interactions, then I'm genuinely shocked that you can predict with accuracy the timescales different items will take... We generally find that development of research projects to levels where they're ready for public consumption takes an extremely unpredictable amount of time - and always has. Sometimes things go better than you hope, sometimes they go much worse... but if you're under pressure to hit a timescale then you are forced to pursue a route which will lead to a poor solution There's no doubt in my mind that we offer a genuinely great alternative to just about any other design/illustration application and we're working to improve it to the best of our abilities. We'll get there, but rushing will just wreck the whole thing and it's not what anybody actually wants to receive and not focusing on the things our business requires along the way will result in no products at all... The updates are free, they'll keep on coming and we're trying our hardest. The decisions we make aren't accidents or misguided if you understood our business (which nobody else could unless they worked here and were privy to all our meetings). There's nothing to be too down about, is there? Thanks again, Matt

Hi R C-R, I think Uncle Mez just means that you can start/stop the cloning during the drag by holding/releasing the Command key? (whereas you used to have to hold it prior to drag previously and releasing it would not toggle it off/back on again)? Could be wrong though?

Ha! We just spotted that this morning too - but interestingly it doesn't happen in our debugging version We'll look into it! Matt