MattP

That looks awesome! Great work, George! :)

PDF and SVG are both editable vector formats

It's one vector object that forms the outline of the head: It has a black variable width line and a green brush fill. By putting the pixel layers inside it as children, they draw in between the vector object's background (green) and the vector object's foreground (its black line), which is exactly the effect you want. No extras required :) Give it a go when you get home - it'll all make sense :) ...and if you ever fancy sending a .afdesign file my way that'd be great to have a look at, thanks! :)

That's exactly what I've done :) The main green colour for 'gherkin boy' is actually coming from the vector shape that provides the outline. By placing the pixel layers inside the vector shape as children I'm telling the program to draw the vector object's fill in the background, clip the pixel layers to the vector outline, then draw the vector object's line around the outline last. I think this is exactly what you're trying to achieve. I have a number of pixel layers inside that vector shape - I've deliberately set some of them to lighten/darken blend modes and set different opacity on them so that you could see how you'd go about it. Let me know how you get on with it! Matt

Hi George, Take a look at the attached file - yes, it's terrible, but is this the effect you're trying to achieve? If not, just send me a .afdesign file showing how you're working and I can try to help you get going with it :) PaintInside.afdesign Thanks, Matt

Hi retrograde, Take a look at this video showing adding a mask layer and painting away from it. You can do lots of things to mask layers and actually even add vector objects to them that will contribute to their mask. Thanks, Matt

...you can adjust opacity of the line based on the pressure profile! :) The default line doesn't have this property selected, so here's how to enable it: - Draw a curve - Go to the Line Page - Click the 'Properties...' button - Drag the 'Flow variance' slider to the right and you should start to see the effect - Play with the pressure on the curve ...incidentally, up until the other day you could just hit the delete key when you had a node selected in the pressure window - I'll get it fixed :)

Really great illustrations, retrograde! :) I still keep thinking that these effects can also be achieved easily through power duplicate/a general purpose duplicate command with parameters (transform per iteration and how many iterations to do). I also used to view the Blend Tool as a pre-requisite, but I'm really not missing it yet... I'll have a think on it... Thanks, Matt

...he has indeed 'tinkered' just right, by the looks of it :)

Hi Dams, Use the Pen Tool and select Line Mode on the context toolbar. Start dragging then hold Shift to make horiztonal/vertical lines :) Thanks, Matt

Only in-between builds ;)

...and I added Zoom to Selection earlier this afternoon - you should get it in Tuesday's beta :)

It might not be 100% finished before the beta on Tuesday, but I've added this to the current codebase earlier this afternoon so you guys can have a look :)

Yeah, I also don't know why we haven't added it... I'll sort it out :)

...and just to add a little more, is this functionality ever likely to be useful? :) (it's split-screen with a wireframe/standard view - can also be set to mirror)

I've had a quick stab at this over the last hour and I've come up with this so far - there's more to do, but just to prove we're listening to your requests and working on them as hard as we can, I thought I'd share a screenshot!... :)

Just to add a little extra tease to this - I've managed to get dithering working as an app-wide option for all gradient fills and transparencies - it just needs a tiny bit of tinkering before it's ready to be used :)

...well, I was out of the house earlier - if that counts as moving on? Anyway, I'm back now. Don't underestimate us as just 'these guys' - I'm a developer, but also a designer... not as a profession, but my work has been included in shipped products alongside work from other professional designers, so I do understand (and have constantly tried to reiterate) that the little things matter the most. The whole team is genuinely passionate about the product and I think that's the main reason that Affinity is looking like it could have a great future by the time we're done with it! :)

Hi, Just a quick response - Command does scale about centre during drag. The hint line for the tool shows what all the modifiers do :) I didn't add the Cmd-J modifier, so I genuinely don't know why it's not Cmd-D if that's the equivalent? I'll try to resolve these things as soon as I get chance. Incidentally, I just had a quick look and can see Cmd+J discussed as 'Duplicate in exact position' in PhotoShop, so I am sure it was added intentionally to Affinity Photo. I'll consider which of these might make more sense... Take a look at our Pen Tool as a good example of the fact that we are very aware of the importance of subtle modifiers. Our tool does all the Adobe ones do, and then some extras - and there will be even more when the new beta comes out as the Pen Tool has had some attention and extra functionality added :) Bear with us - we can get all of this working, and working very well. Thanks, Matt

Command-drag is our modifier shortcut for drag duplicate :) Command-J, I think, is actually a PhotoShop shortcut - we adopted it to be consistent with Affinity Photo which obviously tries to keep things familiar for PhotoShop users. Snapping is definitely getting a complete overhaul very soon! I'll certainly have a think about the 'select similar vertices' option - never used it before... :) Thanks, Matt

'x' toggle key should be there and working in your version :)

Thank you! Oh, and please don't apologise about your English at all - it's so much better than my Spanish, hehe! ;) Incidentally, I think that Andy has been getting on very well with FreeHand import and he really just has to look at importing text now, so it's all looking very good :) Thanks again, Matt

Hi George! Welcome to the forum! It sounds like Affinity Designer should be a really good fit for you needs - mixing raster and vector together is what it does best :) Let us know how you get on - I'll be very interested to know what you think! p.s. Your website looks great - I really like your work! Cheers, Matt

That's great! :) You know, I'd go so far as to say that I relish seeing your updates! (please, somebody save me from my awful puns!) It's great to hear that you're still enjoying things, Tony :) I'll obviously get to looking at the whole 'node-deletion keeping the curve shape' thing when I get chance - I'm juggling an awful lot of balls in the air at the moment (don't want to get myself in a pickle - oh, save me!!!) We've added a quick toggle between fill/line colour context as an attempt to help you more easily set these colours - just try pressing 'x' to toggle from one to the other. Does that help at all? :) Cheers, Matt

Yes, that bit hasn't been implemented yet - sorry, I wasn't very clear with my description of our plan.