Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Peter Werner

Members
  • Posts

    264
  • Joined

Reputation Activity

  1. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from Krustysimplex in Add option Paragraph composer   
    Agreed. For me, what still keeps me away from using Publisher for more projects instead of InDesign is primarily the lack of an equivalent to Adobe's multi-line paragraph composer and Adobe's much superior Optical Margin Alignment feature (in Publisher, activating that option without extensive manual tweaking just makes everything worse unless the font has specific information embedded, which most fonts do not).
    I hate to say it, but especially text in narrow columns still looks signifantly better in InDesign. I'd be very happy if that changed.
  2. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from Aammppaa in Command to make two objects switch position   
    It's really interesting to see all these different ways to achive the desired result, but I think these demo videos being 20 seconds long are a testimony to the fact that there is indeed a potential to save time with a dedicated command.
    I think it's one of these small things that can really add up if you use a software every day. All of these can be achieved in some other fashion, but after a while of using these workarounds, it just feels like there should be a faster way.
    A similar thing that I run into constantly is whishing for a command to quickly break a multi-column text frame into individual linked frames (corresponding feature request post here).
     
  3. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from D.VE in Disable automatic tool switching?   
    Definitely – with the current behavior, you always have to check which tool you are in before pressing a shortcut key.
  4. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from Kambro in Add option Paragraph composer   
    Agreed. For me, what still keeps me away from using Publisher for more projects instead of InDesign is primarily the lack of an equivalent to Adobe's multi-line paragraph composer and Adobe's much superior Optical Margin Alignment feature (in Publisher, activating that option without extensive manual tweaking just makes everything worse unless the font has specific information embedded, which most fonts do not).
    I hate to say it, but especially text in narrow columns still looks signifantly better in InDesign. I'd be very happy if that changed.
  5. Like
    Peter Werner reacted to Kambro in Add option Paragraph composer   
    It would be very valuable if Affinity Publisher would integrate the option of a paragraph composer and not only his line composer. This would avoid many rivers of white in the texts. It seems an essential feature.
    Thanks in advance to the team.
  6. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from deeds in Adjust color with wheels like DaVinci Resolve   
    The great thing is, purely mathematically speaking, the Lift/Gamma/Gain/Offset wheels don't do anything different from what is already possible with the Levels tool. It's just a different interface.
    That means if this feature is added to Photo, it could be written to PSD files as a Levels adjustment layer so the file would still come out looking correct in Photoshop or other software.
    DaVinci Resolve, 3D LUT Creator and similar software have tons of great tools that clearly show that Adobe's color adjustment toolset has not developed much since the 1990ies. Some minor advancements have made it into Camera Raw, but not a lot. I'd be very happy to see some more of these great tools from the film and video world make it into Affinity.
  7. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from Richs in Adjust color with wheels like DaVinci Resolve   
    The great thing is, purely mathematically speaking, the Lift/Gamma/Gain/Offset wheels don't do anything different from what is already possible with the Levels tool. It's just a different interface.
    That means if this feature is added to Photo, it could be written to PSD files as a Levels adjustment layer so the file would still come out looking correct in Photoshop or other software.
    DaVinci Resolve, 3D LUT Creator and similar software have tons of great tools that clearly show that Adobe's color adjustment toolset has not developed much since the 1990ies. Some minor advancements have made it into Camera Raw, but not a lot. I'd be very happy to see some more of these great tools from the film and video world make it into Affinity.
  8. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from RichardMH in Adjust color with wheels like DaVinci Resolve   
    The great thing is, purely mathematically speaking, the Lift/Gamma/Gain/Offset wheels don't do anything different from what is already possible with the Levels tool. It's just a different interface.
    That means if this feature is added to Photo, it could be written to PSD files as a Levels adjustment layer so the file would still come out looking correct in Photoshop or other software.
    DaVinci Resolve, 3D LUT Creator and similar software have tons of great tools that clearly show that Adobe's color adjustment toolset has not developed much since the 1990ies. Some minor advancements have made it into Camera Raw, but not a lot. I'd be very happy to see some more of these great tools from the film and video world make it into Affinity.
  9. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from GripsholmLion in Command to make two objects switch position   
    I did write one for breaking a frame into columns in InDesign at some point. I ended up using it so often that I wondered why they never added it to the core feature set.
    Could you give some other examples? Most of the ones I can think of are already there ("Align Vertically", "Convert Art Text to Text Frame", "Swap Stroke and Fill Color", "Duplicate Layer", …)
    I'm actually genuinely curious because if these things aren't added, I'm thinking about writing a script as soon as we have support for that.
    I did. My point is that these are not one or two click solutions. 12 seconds versus 2 seconds easily adds up.
  10. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from GripsholmLion in Command to make two objects switch position   
    It would work and it's certainly a better approach than manually repositioning them.
    But it has disadvantages over a dedicated command:
    It's a minimum of 7 operations (group, flip, ungroup, select, flip, select, flip), 10 if you have to flip in both directions It will not respect the transform origin set in the Transform panel It is not an intuitive process for a user, particularly if the objects are on different pages or artboards It does not have an option to rewire text frames within a text flow (we'd have to discuss if this is desireable behaviour or not though)
  11. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from ezez in Improved window management   
    The ability to dock panels, toolbars, and the main window toolbar, in Separated Mode just like in the Mac version of Adobe products, Macromedia FreeHand, or older versions of Microsoft Office, would allow for much neater workspace organization. It would also make everything cleaner when placing panels on secondary monitors in Non-Separated Mode. A setting to have these screen-edge docks collapsed and only open up when moving the mouse to the screen edge (just like the OS X Dock with "Hide Dock" activated or the menu/toolbar sliding in on regular OS X applications like Safari in full screen mode) would further improve usability on small screens such as smaller laptops. The ability to arrange documents next to each other in all modes would be very useful. The nicest implementation of this is probably in Microsoft Visual Studio, where it is very easy to arrange documents in a variety of different ways just by dragging the tabs. Adobe products can sort-of do this, but not when using floating windows because it cannot dock two views in one window, it only works when activating their Application Frame.
    Currently, Affinity Photo has a very useful option "View > New View" that opens up a new document tab for the same document, but this is utterly useless in non-separated mode since there is no way to actually put the two views next to each other to work on detail while looking at the whole document. In separated mode, it would be useful to be able to split the tool options from the main window toolbar so one doesn't have to drag the bulky main window toolbar around with it In separated mode, currently the status bar completely disappears, and in non-separated mode on the other hand, there seems to be no way to hide it The Character/Paragraph buttons in the text tool options bar only show these panels, but they don't open them if they are collapsed. Chances are that a user wants to actually use them, so un-collapsing them would make sense. It might also be confusing if these are already on the screen in collapsed state since it will then appear to the user as if nothing happens when they press the button.  
  12. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from Pedro Dias in Japanese Vertical Text   
    Affinity currently lacks a lot of options required for full professional CJK typesetting, including things like Furigana and Warichu, dedicated composition/line break options etc., it's not just vertical text.
    My understanding is that they are going to get the basic features for roman typesetting done first to make Publisher and the rest of the Affinity range as usable as possible as a layout software for the roman languages and only then add features for full CJK and RTL language support a later point in time, which is completely understandable.
    At least IME for CJK languages seems to work fine now in Affinity 1.7 after being completely broken in earlier releases. That's already a good indication that this topic isn't ignored by the development team.
    I hope that one day we will have full CJK and RTL script support in Publisher. The last thing we could hope for is a messy and fragmented situation like with InDesign where you have to install multiple versions of InDesign in parallel, all of them developed by third party companies where you can only hope they don't mess each other's files up.
  13. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from Cealcrest in Improved Gradient Map feature   
    The current Gradient Map feature is quite basic like the one in Photoshop, but in many ways, it could be a much more useful tool with the following additions:
     
    HSL Mode: Instead of going based only on Luminance, this would use the input hue or saturation as the lookup index. In combination with HSL blend modes, this would allow for some fantastic workflows like basically warping the color wheel to taste, similar to the "HSL Wheels" feature in Magic Bullet Colorista (Note: don't be fooled by the name of the feature, this is NOT referring to the three-way color corrector). Just use a gradient of the HSL spectrum and drag or re-define stops, set the result to "Hue" blend mode, and you have an extremely powerful color correction tool that gives you results that would be difficult to achieve in any other way.  
    Circular Editor Option: Like the Colorama filter built-into in After Effects, this makes it easy to work on maps that are supposed to start and end with the same color. In combination with an input for a number of revolutions (cycles) to use, this would also make it easy to create gradient effects where a few stops are repeated multiple times across the spectrum (like, say, alternating black-white-black-white). This would also massively improve usability in conjunction with the HSL mode option suggested above.  
    Access to swatches: This would make it easy to re-use gradients by defining them or recalling them from swatches as an alternative to using Adjustment Presets.  
    Interpolation control: Sometimes the transition from one color to the next needs fine-tuning – this is something that Affinity's gradient editor already supports, but not in the Gradient Map dialog. A Constant Interpolation setting where the color would just be constant up until the next stop would also be useful since it would eliminate the need for duplicate stops in the same position, which are really hard to select. Possibly, the curve editor could also be re-used to define falloff using a Bézier or Catmull-Rom-Spline.  
    Duplicate Stop option: Often, it is necessary to use the same color multiple times in a gradient. Adding a button for this and/or enabling Option+Drag to duplicate would be useful. Photoshop aggravatingly always inserts new stops with the same color instead of the color that is already there at that position in the gradient, but the (better) implementation of this in Affinity had the side effect that duplicating stops became harder.  
    On-image sampling: While the dialog box is open, it would be useful to highlight the value under the mouse pointer in the gradient display to be able to place a stop exactly at the desired position. Clicking in the image would insert a stop.  
    On-image highlighting: Conversely, when editing/dragging a stop in the gradient editor, an option to highlight the affected pixels in the image would be helpful. The options could be: off (nothing) all pixels that have exactly the value represented by the position of the stop (similar to focus peaking) the zone that will be affected in the image. The overlay would start at 100% intensity at the value represented by the stop and fall off to 0% on each side until the position of the next stop respectively, taking the falloff into account (see "Interpolation Control" above). Optionally, two different colors could be used to represent each side of the stop.  
    Resizable dialog box for more precision: When editing 16-bit images or editing falloff from one stop to the next or when placing stops very close to each other, it would be useful to have more room to work with. Making gradient editor dialog boxes in the application resizable would alleviate this problem.  
    Snap to Luminosity button: Sometimes, it is useful to place stops exactly at the point in the gradient that corresponds to their luminosity, especially when they are defined by selecting swatches from a color palette. Adding a button that moves all selected stops to that position would make this really quick. For instance, tinting an image with two tones while keeping black and white intact could be achieved very quickly by selecting a black-to-white preset, then adding two stop, selecting a color from the document color palette for each, and clicking that "Snap Selected Stops to Luminosity" button.  
    Ability to move start and end stops. The values before the first stop and after the last one would simply use constant extrapolation. This would eliminate the need for duplicate stops, which take longer to create and are harder to edit since all operations need to be performed twice.
  14. Like
    Peter Werner reacted to Callum in Arrowheads clipped in Symbol Groups   
    This is caused by constraint groups clipping everything outside of their bounds this is logged with our developers to be improved in the future.
    Thanks
    C
  15. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from Artem M in Trapping, Knockout and Separation-Preview   
    A designer specializing in layout work who doesn't know or care about separations is an expensive accident waiting to happen. Black RGB text that prints blurry, or black text at 7pt that's not set to overprint, or images with an RGB black background which auto-separates into rich black that are placed inside a CMYK K-only black rectangle in the hope of it looking seamless – the client is not going to be happy.
    I routinely check anything that goes to print in separations preview, and one out of three times, I spot a last-minute problem that needs to be fixed. Partly this is because of idiosyncrasies of InDesign's quirky transparency flattener, but still, it's an important step in any software that helps you prevent costly situations like re-printing 500 000 copies of a document because you missed a very small but very stupid problem.
    While in my opinion not absolutely essential for a 1.0 release (a software like Acrobat can be used to check the PDFs if need be), it's definitely far from just a "nice to have" feature.
  16. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from Jens Krebs in 3 page spread   
    I can think of the following two workarounds:
    Create separate artboards in Designer and then place those as linked or embedded files on a single all-encompassing page (Publisher) or dartboard (Designer). That way you can export the whole thing, but you also have the ability to export every artboard as a separate PDF. The disadvantage is that you have two separate files to deal with (though you can at least open both in either application) Have 3 individual artboards next to each other and one overlapping artboard that encompasses the other 3.
  17. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from StanleyHarrison in Trapping, Knockout and Separation-Preview   
    I think it is worth mentioning that now with that Publisher has shipped with Studio Link enabled, you can just go to the Photo persona and use the Channels panel to check your separations. For some reason, page/spread borders disappear, but it's still a viable workaround. You need Affinity Photo installed in order for this to work.
  18. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from StanleyHarrison in Trapping, Knockout and Separation-Preview   
    @mac_heibu, I by no means meant to imply you are not professional, sorry if it came across that way.
    Seems like we essentially agree anyway  
    I've actually had issues with Acrobat's separations preview not being accurate in the past. And as many designers are looking at Affinity as a way to get them out of an Adobe subscription, I'm sure that eliminating that last step at some point in the future would certainly be welcomed by many.
     
  19. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from StanleyHarrison in Trapping, Knockout and Separation-Preview   
    A designer specializing in layout work who doesn't know or care about separations is an expensive accident waiting to happen. Black RGB text that prints blurry, or black text at 7pt that's not set to overprint, or images with an RGB black background which auto-separates into rich black that are placed inside a CMYK K-only black rectangle in the hope of it looking seamless – the client is not going to be happy.
    I routinely check anything that goes to print in separations preview, and one out of three times, I spot a last-minute problem that needs to be fixed. Partly this is because of idiosyncrasies of InDesign's quirky transparency flattener, but still, it's an important step in any software that helps you prevent costly situations like re-printing 500 000 copies of a document because you missed a very small but very stupid problem.
    While in my opinion not absolutely essential for a 1.0 release (a software like Acrobat can be used to check the PDFs if need be), it's definitely far from just a "nice to have" feature.
  20. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from sbgraphic in Trapping, Knockout and Separation-Preview   
    A designer specializing in layout work who doesn't know or care about separations is an expensive accident waiting to happen. Black RGB text that prints blurry, or black text at 7pt that's not set to overprint, or images with an RGB black background which auto-separates into rich black that are placed inside a CMYK K-only black rectangle in the hope of it looking seamless – the client is not going to be happy.
    I routinely check anything that goes to print in separations preview, and one out of three times, I spot a last-minute problem that needs to be fixed. Partly this is because of idiosyncrasies of InDesign's quirky transparency flattener, but still, it's an important step in any software that helps you prevent costly situations like re-printing 500 000 copies of a document because you missed a very small but very stupid problem.
    While in my opinion not absolutely essential for a 1.0 release (a software like Acrobat can be used to check the PDFs if need be), it's definitely far from just a "nice to have" feature.
  21. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from DenalB in Preference for default zoom to not exceed 100% in Photo   
    By default, all images are set to fit to the viewport when they are opened. For images that are smaller than the viewport, this leads to a zoom percentage greater than 100%.
     
    Personally, I usually prefer images not to be enlarged as it gives a wrong impression about the pixel-level quality. It prevents checking if the file is sharp, while not giving any real benefit since enlarging them does not provide any additional information, unlike in the case of larger-than-screen images. So fitting larger files by default is fine, but I find myself routinely pressing Cmd+1 every time I open a low-res file in Photo.
  22. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from parararatiruriru in Scripting   
    I've run into a Publisher crash yesterday that somehow involved Apple's JavaScriptCore library – I do wonder if that's an indication of something coming up 
    That being said, I'm still hoping for Python instead of or at least in addition to JavaScript. Having written extensions for different software with both languages, I found that writing extensions in Python was always quick, easy, efficient and even fun, and there are tons of great third party libraries available, whereas any kind of JavaScript extensions, particularly for Adobe programs, have consistently been a royal pain. Getting good integration into the user interface of the host applications (like adding custom menu commands or panels) has never been very robust with any JavaScript-based extensions in any application I have come in contact with. And it's so easy to learn the basics of Python that I believe anyone with JavaScript experience would be able to get started in no time.
    I realize that's a rather controversial point and everybody has their own personal preference, but I do encourage everyone to have a look at a few basic Python tutorials and form their own opinion.
  23. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from Gussisaurio in Scripting   
    I've run into a Publisher crash yesterday that somehow involved Apple's JavaScriptCore library – I do wonder if that's an indication of something coming up 
    That being said, I'm still hoping for Python instead of or at least in addition to JavaScript. Having written extensions for different software with both languages, I found that writing extensions in Python was always quick, easy, efficient and even fun, and there are tons of great third party libraries available, whereas any kind of JavaScript extensions, particularly for Adobe programs, have consistently been a royal pain. Getting good integration into the user interface of the host applications (like adding custom menu commands or panels) has never been very robust with any JavaScript-based extensions in any application I have come in contact with. And it's so easy to learn the basics of Python that I believe anyone with JavaScript experience would be able to get started in no time.
    I realize that's a rather controversial point and everybody has their own personal preference, but I do encourage everyone to have a look at a few basic Python tutorials and form their own opinion.
  24. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from Robert Laskey in Trapping, Knockout and Separation-Preview   
    I think it is worth mentioning that now with that Publisher has shipped with Studio Link enabled, you can just go to the Photo persona and use the Channels panel to check your separations. For some reason, page/spread borders disappear, but it's still a viable workaround. You need Affinity Photo installed in order for this to work.
  25. Like
    Peter Werner got a reaction from AdamRatai in Can you edit layer masks like a normal layer?   
    I see, fantastic, thank you! Great to be able to do this non-destructively as well.
     
    But to be honest, I think this feature would be much easier to discover and also much faster to use if the Curves layer was added in the correct nesting position automatically if a mask is selected in the layers panel. Thus the workflow would be as simple as Select layer mask and press Cmd+M. Ideally, the user would even be presented with the drop down in the Curves dialog set to "Alpha" already.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.