SWB

Came here to make the same request.
I'm an engineer and use my 3Dconnexion device all day long in CAD software like Altium Designer and SolidWorks. I feel crippled anytime I'm working in Adobe products, or now Designer/Photo/Publisher, and intuitively reach for my 3D mouse to pan/zoom and it doesn't work. These devices are huge productivity boosters, and supporting them would be yet another way to differentiate your offerings from Adobe's.
Please add this!

Came here to make the same request.
I'm an engineer and use my 3Dconnexion device all day long in CAD software like Altium Designer and SolidWorks. I feel crippled anytime I'm working in Adobe products, or now Designer/Photo/Publisher, and intuitively reach for my 3D mouse to pan/zoom and it doesn't work. These devices are huge productivity boosters, and supporting them would be yet another way to differentiate your offerings from Adobe's.
Please add this!

Came here to make the same request.
I'm an engineer and use my 3Dconnexion device all day long in CAD software like Altium Designer and SolidWorks. I feel crippled anytime I'm working in Adobe products, or now Designer/Photo/Publisher, and intuitively reach for my 3D mouse to pan/zoom and it doesn't work. These devices are huge productivity boosters, and supporting them would be yet another way to differentiate your offerings from Adobe's.
Please add this!

I love Publisher  but IMHO it has the worst colour system I have ever seen (in over 30 years).
How did LAB, RGB and CMYK end up on the same palette when I only work in CMYK and the publication was set for CMYK? I NEVER work in LAB.
 I have 68 colours like this: "Rick 13-EN_No Photo 2 is the name of the publication. Useless as colour information for an in-document palette.
It should be simple to create my own custom CMYK palette but instead it's horribly complicated, if not impossible. It's a monumental time waster. Why can I change a colour in this dialogue but not in that one. And then I can only change it in THAT dialogue, but not this one. A lot of things seem too clever by half in Publisher but colour handling is a serious fault in an otherwise pretty good app.

I'm very new to Infinity Publisher, installed it yesterday, but an old fox using first Quark Xpress since 1995 and later on Adobe InDesign.
We have developed a way to work with our printing documents where we mix RGB and CMYK colourspaces, everything in color is in RGB, images, vector objects and so on.
The only thing in CMYK is black text, and color objects that are supposed to have a certain cmyk value, for example you know that you want 100% Cyan for some reason.
Every color object in RGB is then later separated to the requested iso cmyk profile specified by the printers.
 
So i have tried to create a test document using this technique but it does not seem to work, if i change the color mode for one object and select the next on the color mode does not switch in the settings box and therefore i believe that this setting is not selected per object but more for the entire document, am i right here?
 
I have tried to export a PDF file and running it trough our existing workflows and my supposed 100% K text is converted into a cmyk value, this means that the input PDF file had the color setting for this object in RGB rather than cmyk.
So is it possible to work with both cmyk and rgb colors in the same document as we have done for many years with InDesign documents.

Hey, because the discussion board is full of requests and I don't really know where to put my thoughts and experiences from the first run of Affinity Publisher I put them here in a quick list for further discussion
UI
    Doubleclick on Color in Color selector opens a different dialog to a doubleclick on a swatch     mac OS Proxy Icons for file management     monochrome tool icons Color Management / Spot Colors:
    Device independent color workflow     generally mixed colorspaces (like in Indesign and PDF)     Overprint preview, separations preview     Better Overprint/Spot-Color-Management     Make Spot Color from existing color     Spot Colors in LAB-Color-Space for PDF Export     Document Management 
    Spreads which consist of more than two sides     Printing Booklets / Imposition  Export
    select Pages for export by a list of numbers     Use .joboptions for the definition of pdf-Properties (really important)     Define PDF-X Output Intend     Export print separations / separated color channels     Interactive PDFs with page transitions and video content
  Import
    IDML

I'm a graphic designer and prepress specialist. I've used Illustrator since version 1.1 on a Mac Plus (it came with a video tape with John Warnock himself showing you how to use it). I've used practically all the vector illustration tools that have come to market since. Thus, I have a pretty good idea about how such programs behave, and which were the ones for professional use and which were for dilettantes to make pretty pictures, but not for making a brand identity for a Fortune 500 company.
I bought the whole Affinity Suite with the hopes that I could cut the cord on Adobe's pay-us-every-month-or-else scheme. What you have created so far is to be commended and I see a lot of bright potential. I really, really, really love StudioLink, for instance. Its amazing. But, man... there is so much.
I am not making this topic to troll you. I am making it in the hopes that, from the perspective of someone who has done serious work for serious clients both on the creative end and the technical end, you guys can get some feedback to make both Designer and the whole suite something everybody wants to move to. My plan is to keep coming back to it and adding quirks, bugs, and major issues so that you can hone these apps. I hope to pay for upgrades with some of these things I say in them, and some things that are even better than what I suggest.
Soooo... lets start with color. Because its bad.
The problem is the paradigm. A person who is a web designer will have no issues with this, because it seems built to fit their needs. Make a quick graphic, mess around with the RGB sliders until its pretty, and your done. Professionals who work for big clients need their work to be repurposed to all media forms: web/screen, offset press, digital printing, signage, you name it. Thus, colors have to be carefully managed.
What Designer uses is a color mixing panel, and a Swatches panel that has lots of different palettes in it for you to dig around and play with. What it needs is a color mixing panel, and a Swatches panel that automatically, and only, shows used colors from the document, whose view is set it "small icon list" by default. If you mix up a color and use it, it shows up automatically in the Swatches panel under a "Document" palette. You can have your "Application" palette, but anything you choose from it needs to show up in that "Document" palette. Knowing what you are using will be your first clue that you have mixed colorspaces and have too many instances of a particular "spot color."
Graphic designers who have never worked on the technical side are horrendous with making graphics that will not separate correctly and come out with unexpected results when used in any medium other than on-screen display. One time I had some students come to my work and they brought their best artwork with them. I loaded them up on the Mac, and asked them to tell me what their intent was in making their work. I then ran it through the prepress workflow. None of them had their spot colors correct, and they actively mixed RGB, CMYK, and Spot versions of the same colors, and it showed how they would end up not matching if actually put onto product. (Consider this: Draw a large box, and then draw a a small circle in it. Make a CMYK blue, and assign it to the box. Then make an RGB blue color in the circle that visually matches the CMYK mix on screen. Send it to a commercial printer and have them make a professional proof of it. I can bet you will see the circle in the middle.) I then showed them how to fix these problems and prevent them. Most were gracious about it, but some were downright livid and thought I was trying to shame them. I was just trying to save their future careers.
The morass of swatch pallets you have needs to be collected and renamed. You can still have them accessible, and I can see where people will use them. But you need to track those colors as people click on them in that Document swatch palette, and never let people confuse between the swatch palettes and the color choosers.
Tinting should be more accessible and visible. Lets say you added PANTONE 286 C to your pallet, and you want to use the Fill tool to make a gradient with it. So, you have the 100% version already. To make a tint of it (and make sure that, unlike 98% of graphic designers out there with under 2 years experience, you end up turning most of your gradient to CMYK or RGB), make it so you can right-click and pop up the menu on the swatch and choose "Make Tint of this color..." Note that I did not say "Make Tint..." because this implies that it can be a tint of anything. (See where I am going with this? Professionals need control, and management, not just freedom.) You should then have the nice window you have for setting the tint, with an OK or Done button along with Cancel. Once that OK button is clicked, a new swatch should be added called "PANTONE 286 C 0%." AND IT SHOULD ALWAYS WORK. Right now you have to right click on a swatch, make a copy, and then right-click it, choose "Edit Fill..." and scroll all the way down to the bottom and choose "Tint." And god forbid if that color is a "Global" color, because as far as I can tell, you can't tint them. Frankly, this is sooooo CorelDraw. Nice cheap software for people to make pretty pictures at home for use on the church website and newsletter. Not for professionals who want to carefully create artwork that will color match anywhere.
Back to that gradient. The tip of the gradients should be then filled with the 100% and 0% versions of the swatch, and if the designer gets silly and chooses the white swatch (what is the color definition of that swatch anyway? K 0%? C 0 M 0 Y 0 K 0? R 255 G 255 G 255?), a warning should pop up telling them that "Mixing spot and process color will result in the gradient being converted to process using the document colorspace!" That will hopefully ward off that bad practice. AND ONE MORE THING: colors used in between those two swatches in that gradient should not show up in the Document palette as used swatches. I had that happen to me once and had no clue why.
Then you need to choose Separation Preview and look at your list of channels, turning them on and off to make sure you did it right. What Separation Preview you say? The one you didn't put into Designer and Publisher, but is in Illustrator and InDesign. That's what. Have it show overprinting by default without the ability to turn it off.
Next you need to save gradients into that Document swatch palette automatically too and have a means to locate where they are used and be able to edit them and reuse them. But that's another issue, and I am done for now. Just keep this in mind: your competition isn't Microsoft Publisher and CorelDraw. Its Adobe InDesign and Illustrator. Be different, but be better. People like me will pay you for it. See you when I have more time to give more feedback. You really have a good thing going; it just needs a lot of polish.

Has anyone of you used any CAD program? I had them in school (Pro/Desktop; Pro/Engineer; SolidWorks...) and I think it would help a lot with logo design the most if there was an option for adding visible dimensions. something like this https://btechecar.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/main-driving-sketch.png

Also I would like to ask again is there support for 3d mouses like 3dconnexion products? :)

It would be great, when Affinity Photo would work with 3d connection space mouse. At least zooming and changing the of a size of a pen. I'd like to use it with my old wacom tablet. Pen in one hand and simple zooming and navigating with 3d mouse would be perfect.
Thank you!

I'm not sure if it's there (support for these devices) as I'm waiting for windows version but if not, can you add it?

Hello,
I'm a digital artist who would like to use Affinity Photo in my Workflow. I work on a large Wacom Cintiq and typically use a 3D Mouse.
Contrary to it's name, a 3D mouse is useful for much more than just 3D Work. 3D Mice are a knob like input device that can take input on several axis/motions (eg, pushing up down, side to side, rotating, twisting).

 
If there was 3D Mouse Support, I could easily work with my pen, moving the canvas around using the 3D Mouse in my other hand. I could rotate the entire canvas whilst I work by twisting the mouse from side to side, dynamically zoom the document in and out by pushing the mouse downwards or pulling it upwards, in the same way I do as I work with 3D documents. This would be a very ergonomic solution, especially for people like me, who do not have newer, touch capable devices where tasks such as zooming, rotating canvas etc are tasks involving several steps that require keyboard or mouse input, both of which devices are difficult to keep in arms reach/use when you have a large tablet screen right up against you.
My 3D Mouse is a 3DConnexion Device. 3D Connexion Devices could be supported natively by your software, or you could accept Joystick input for zooming/rotating/panning the canvas, which most 3D Mice including mine can emulate and this would be a solution that anybody can use and would make Affinity more accessible for people such as myself.
 
Best,
Roboko

I've searched the forums and it seems its been brought up a few times in the past, but I would love to see more support for 3D Connexion devices.  I have a Surface Dial and I honestly think I'm going to sell it because it's just too laggy and slow when compared to things like the Space Navigator.  I think Microsoft made a big effort to save battery life on the Dial and it causes it to power down quickly.  The Space Navigator is USB powered, so it's always on.
All I'm looking for is pan, zoom and rotation - nothing else.  I don't want to resize brushes with a wheel - just navigate my canvas.
Any chance it could be added to Designer & Photo (Windows specifically)?
 
-Paul