MattP

Are you talking about the stroke alignment modes that are available in the Stroke panel? These allow you to select inside, outside or centre alignment of the stroke. You can't specify an arbitrary alignment at the moment yet though - i.e. 30% inside, 70% outside

I certainly like the idea - it's the same as when you select a number of objects and adjust the colour opacity - it affects only that channel of the colour, rather than setting the whole of the colour. The problem comes when some of those colours weren't specified as HSL you have to adjust their apparent saturation by converting to HSL then back into their original space - which could introduce colour casts or all sorts of unintended things... definitely worth thinking over a bit though, thanks :)

Hi Kevin, The current and all future betas and App Store updates will all share the same (higher) archive version number. At present, the App Store version of Designer is using a slightly older version so this is why it is unable to open files from the beta version. In a few weeks, I'm hoping to submit to the Mac App Store and then you'll receive an update there which will mean that it is also running with the higher archive version number so you will no longer have compatibility issues. It was necessary to increment the version number simply to introduce a few safety-related things we needed for the future and with the Affinity Photo beta looming it was felt to be the right time so that Photo started out creating these higher archive version number files right from the beginning. In about a month or so, this won't be something you'll need to worry about any more because all versions will be running the new archive number :) Thanks, Matt

...we're kind of hoping that this new iPad Pro becomes a reality - if so, then Designer would run very well on it and be a genuine productivity platform when you haven't got your full computer with you, or you may just use it in preference because there's something very appealing about drawing on the screen! :)

I was hoping that someone with real world experience might have come along, but I didn't want you to think you were being ignored in the meantime! :) I've taken a look at the specs of Cut Studio and it does say that it's compatible with EPS files, so in theory as long as you export to EPS (which, at present, is much better in the beta version of Affinity Designer than in the official release version) then you should get good, predictable results. Let us know how you get on with it :)

Nice colours and a cool, minimalist design - very fun! :) (and good to see Designer on the screen, hehe) ;)

Just to add to this, the next beta is going to have a 1.1.2.xxxx version numbering to avoid this confusion.

It's amazing how well that works!?! :) The real version should be coming soon - but this way might get people out of a bind if they need something effective right now :)

Hahaha! But in all seriousness, yes it's already done... and it's in Photo :)

We're obviously doing our best to make sure the beta versions are stable and reliable, and whenever we release a new beta we will very closely monitor the crash reports afterwards and resolve any common problems to make sure that you have a dependable build. So, if you need some of the fixes available in the beta version, then it shouldn't be terribly risky in reality - plus, if you tell us there is something dreadful wrong then we'll be able to sort it out quickly (normally) and push out a new beta build with that fixed asap - whereas we have very little control of when the app store version gets updated as it is often many weeks after we submit a version before it appears. That said, if you could achieve the task in the Mac App Store version instead, it's always advisable to do so, as it has had more testing. Personally, I'm only ever using the beta versions when I need to achieve something, so in the real world I don't think you'll have too many issues with doing so too - but I don't think anyone would ever want to guarantee you'll get the same level of dependability as the official release... (although I am not finding problems personally...)

In short. Yes. You need to use the beta and turn off that option - then you can hit Cmd+Space, or Space+Cmd and get the same result - a zoom cursor that lets you zoom in... Add Alt/Option to the mix and you get a zoom out cursor. :)

Hi Pui, Oh my, that looks yummy! There are a few things that may or may not be helping you, so here's what to check first.... - Download the latest beta version and take a look at it in there... does it look more like the output you've generated, or more like what you used to see in Affinity Designer? There were a few issues in the Mac App Store version of Affinity Designer that affected how colours looked and they weren't being represented accurately. The beta version should be displaying the real colours you'd get on output, so you won't get those noticeable differences like you're currently seeing. If you tweaked the colours of the document in the beta to match what you originally intended, then you should have something reliable to work from now. - If that didn't help, could you tell us what document colour format and profile you're using (go to File->Document Setup and the dialog will tell you) and also give us an example of one of the colours that doesn't look correct. Eg "I am using CMYK(0,100,0,0) and it looks wrong" Hopefully we can sort things out for you :) Thanks, Matt

I'll add this to my 'to do' list (that is getting pretty big!) ;)

Great, was just about to suggest to you that it sounds like an accidental OS X Lion bug that the beta version fixes - I'm really glad it's working okay for you now :)

Lovely colours - great pose and fluid curves. He almost looks a little too regal to be such a baddie!?! And I don't know why, but my head is telling me his hook is pointing in the wrong direction? It's a fantastic piece though - really like it! :)

@VectorCat - "Next year's Mac" - haha! That's possibly very true! (worryingly!!!!) @ronnyb - Interestingly, the only thing we use hardware acceleration for is displaying the results of our backend's document draw onto a surface for you to see. It's only a small number of quads with simple textures so just about any modern (or fairly old!) graphics card can cope with this without breaking a sweat in the frame time allowed for a 60fps operation. So, in theory, you'd gain extremely little by throwing more GPUs at it. There are many things that make Affinity nippy - but they're all backend and they're all done in software - that's why the iPad version we teased a few weeks ago only took a few days over the Christmas holiday to bolt together and make it work - we just needed to replace the presentation layer at the top with the iOS equivalent and then bingo - fully functioning all formats editing of gigapixel images... on an iPad/iPhone... now we just need some time to finish it, haha! ;)

Hi Steve, Really glad you're enjoying the trial! :) You can open as many documents as you like - just go back to the File->Open dialog and try some more and they'll all open at once - you can even multi-select them in the open dialog to load/import many simultaneously :) As Miguel says, Affinity Designer is only available from the Mac App Store, so you need to buy it through there, but it means that you get Apple's iCloud support and automatic updating so it's a nice way to buy things, generally :) Once you've got the Mac App Store version, why not try the beta version available on our forums here so you can try out all the upcoming features before they're released! :) Thanks again! Matt

Excellent - thanks for that :) We'll add something to preferences when we get chance :)

I think your system is absolutely fine - I know I'll be making sure Affinity runs well on my MacBook Pro for many years to come - I even did (and continue to do!) a lot of the performance tuning on my old 2008 MacBook Pro, so you've got a long time before you'll need to worry about your system! :) Incidentally, there's currently a bug that means that if you open your drawing on the retina screen then move it onto the non-retina screen it will continue to do all the work for the retina version for no reason because it doesn't realise the new screen is not retina anymore... Similarly, if you move your design from the non-retina screen to the retina screen it won't spot that the retina property is different and you won't get a retina view... Just thought I'd mention it incase you ever see any weirdness before I get around to fixing it! :S Thanks again, Matt

Hi VectorCat, I think you'll find this is already in and working in the current beta version :) You have to turn off the System Preferences option for Spotlight (in the Keyboard options) when you use this key-combo, but you have to do that to make Adobe's one work, too. Thanks, Matt

Hi Lojza, As Miguel says, we're definitely always open to ideas and feedback - we just want to make the best program we can, so we don't ever want to be ignoring great ideas and saying 'we just do it that way' without there being a very good reason for it... During the beta of Designer we've had all sorts of combinations going on - from a version that had more rules than the current one for times when/when not to constrain with/without modifier, to versions that never constrained without modifier (just like Illustrator) because people were asking for different things and we were trying to make it fit... However, we've got to the point that the rationale behind the logic is simple (as Miguel says: if it has a natural aspect ratio - text and images, it will be honoured, otherwise it will not) and I think it's fair to say that if you have an image and you want to make it bigger you don't normally want to modify its aspect ratio, so why should you expect to hold down a modifier to make that happen? The answer is probably just 'because that's what other programs made me do for consistency, so it's what I'm used to' - this is fine, but we don't want to just be a clone of another app's decisions that we don't agree with 'just because'. Instead, I think I'd prefer to see the addition of a preferences option that made it act this way if you prefer it... just like how we have a preferences option to make selection act the same as in Illustrator (which I personally don't like as much) Hope that explains some of the reasoning behind it :) Thanks! Matt

No worries, I'm sure we'll be able to sort it out - sorry for the inconvenience in the meantime :(

Ah, that makes more sense now - thanks for the screen recordings :) I was setting the blend mode to be Erase on the Layers Panel, not on the Context Toolbar of the tool itself. Interestingly, it's the control on the Context Toolbar that is broken for the 'Erase' entry! :S I'll get this looked at - sorry! All other blend modes seem to be working, it's just Erase that's acting funny - although that's fine if you use it from the Layers Panel instead!?! Thanks :) Matt

Thanks everyone! :) Your good wishes obviously worked because my son slept better last night - he's only 2 but has diabetes and his numbers have been very scary recently thanks to a dreadful cold we've all been sharing. We nearly ended up in hospital again over the weekend with it, so hopefully we're past that now and things will return to normal :) *presses Post button* *wipes Post button* *coughs* *wipes Post button again* :)

Hi Herojas, Nice work! :D Just wanted to address your problem about performance issues... Is it when you're doing anything in particular? Using tools or when you're just zooming in/out panning around? I have a late-2013 15" Retina MacBook Pro with Iris Pro graphics, just like yours and it runs really well for me. I'm running OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 at the moment. From looking at your document I think that the only place I can imagine causing you any performance issues is the use of layer effects. Whenever you use Layer Effects (fx) then you're telling the program to do a per-pixel light-based algorithm with many sample inputs per-pixel: They're expensive operations but we do them every time you update the screen and with your Mac you have 4x the amount of pixels on your screen so you may see a small pause or a slight difference before the final image is rendered to the screen. This is pretty much unavoidable unless we start to cache the results of the effects - something which most other applications do to achieve performance... but in doing so, we will start to consume potentially huge amounts of memory and will always be offering up a rendering which is not of the highest quality because it's based on an effect that was rendered at one given size only. There are normally ways to achieve the same visual effect, but by creating additional semi-transparent, gradient filled vector shapes that overlay and blend into each other - rendering dozens of vector shapes would typically be faster than a trivial layer effect - but it obviously takes more time to draw in the first place! Thanks, Matt