GarryP

My guess is that the curve which has the text on it was flipped and/or rotated. Look at where the white anchor point is in the Transform Panel. If it’s not at the top-left then that’s usually because the layer has been rotated, or flipped and rotated, or flipped both horizontally and vertically, or maybe something else. I don’t know if there is an easy way to get the text back ‘the right-way-round’, while having the curve looking the same, in this case.

Welcome to the forums @AJW57 In addition to the advice above, in the Affinity applications there is no image “import” functionality, as such. You can Open an image as a new document, or you can Place an image into an already-open document, and there are some other ways which I don't think are relevant to what you are trying to do. The fact that you said that the “Placement policy is shown” is, at first blush, telling me that you might not be using the correct part of the software to do what you want to do. Can you supply a full-screen screenshot so we can see what you can see directly before you are trying to “import”?

Where/what is the “Add curve” button? Do you mean the “Geometry Add” button on the Toolbar, as can be seen in anto’s video above? If so, that seems to be working for me also, with Designer 2.0.4 on Windows 10.

Can you explain what you are trying to do and the precise (step-by-step) workflow that you are using to try and do that? I don’t know which “add tool” you are using (there isn’t an “add tool”, as such), or what you mean by “want this image to be connected” (“connected” could mean lots of things), or what you mean by “use it for what I need” (we don’t know what you “need”). I suspect that you are just using the wrong functionality but, without knowing more details, it’s difficult to advise further without lots of speculation. If you just want to make the curves part of the same path then it sounds like you might need to use the Merge Curves functionality but I can’t be sure from the information you have given so far. If you can also supply the document then, once you have described the situation better, that will help with giving advice.

The “full application window” is everything within the main window of the application you are using, rather than just a photo of a part of it. For an example, see the attached image where we can see everything that you can see on your screen, including menus, tools, the context toolbar and settings, file type and other information, etc., rather than just a part of what’s on the screen. The more we can see of what you can see the better we can help when it comes to diagnosing visual issues. Basically, maximise the application (make it fill as much of the screen as possible) and take a full-screen screenshot with the software which is built into the operating system – plenty of instructions on the web for how to do this.

It would help us to understand the problem, and give a solution, if we could open the document(s) ourselves. If you can’t (or don’t want to) share the document(s) in public then can you give us a full-screen screenshot showing each document where we can see as much of the Layers Panel in each as possible, preferably with any 'problem layers' selected? Also I don’t know what you mean by “copied the clipart”. How are you doing this and why are you doing it?

Designer (V1 or V2) cannot warp (either mesh or perspective) pixel-based graphics, you will need Photo for that.

Welcome to the forums @Max Kaladin As an alternative to the advice above, does my attached video help? The ‘trick’ is to make the Spacing of the grid half the height of the hexagon – I used some easy to calculate numbers. You can use a Triangular grid instead but the Isometric grid has fewer lines. You can create multiple grids by saving them as Presets and switching between them via the Grids dialog (as far as I know there’s not an easier way to switch). You might need to experiment with the snapping options to find out which are best to use (I generally have most of them switched on most of the time). 2023-02-04 08-57-42.mp4

Thanks for looking into this. I’ve popped the zipped package - cvugpackage.zip - into the drop box provided. I’m fairly sure that this was the document which I was manipulating when the problem happened. Basic system specs are in the attached images. If you need further more-specific info’ just ask.

You’re welcome. I hope you get some good use from Photo, it’s certainly got a lot of really great functions. Note: The original image wasn’t by me, I got it off Pixabay, if I remember correctly.

I’ve never used Inkarnate so I don’t now how it works or what things are available for it. Maybe if you share some visual examples of what you are looking for – maybe not the result as such, but the things you want to use to create the result – it might give people a better idea of what you mean. You might not get exactly with you want – Photo wasn’t made for map making, specifically – but you might get some ideas from what people can share.

I know this thread seems to be about Designer but you can get a similar, though probably not as nice, effect in Photo by simply using the Live Add Noise Filter. See attached image where I’m using the non-live Add Noise Filter so it’s easier to see the difference – noisy version on the left. (You might need to open the image properly to see the noise properly.) By doing this you can work with simpler gradient-filled vectors and easily switch the noise on/off as you go. Adding one of the Live Blur Filters below the noise filter may give a pleasing effect in some cases.

Welcome to the forums @Adam M88 Can you explain more about what you mean by “cant export”? Does the software not let you do something which you could do before? If so, what is your old workflow, and what’s ‘missing’? Does the software give you an error message of some kind? If so, what is the error message? Does the output not go where you expect it to? If so, where have you sent to the export to? The more information you give us the better we can help you.

I don’t think they are greyed-out, it’s just how the text is displayed in the Windows versions of the applications. There is a “Text Contrast” setting in Preferences/User-Interface but even the highest contrast setting doesn’t get us white text. This (quite baffling, to me) change from V1 to V2 has been complained about many times but I’ve never seen any reasonable explanation from Serif about why it was changed in the first place. (Not that they have to explain themselves, but it would be nice to know why they made the software harder to use.) I’m glad whoever had the idea for this isn’t in charge of road markings – “Hey, you know those garish yellow lines that are really visible and help drivers to know what to do? Let’s make them a mid-grey instead so they look better against the dark grey road.”

I’m not sure how that would work in practice. If the software allowed multi-line text on a path then, in some situations, at some point, the text could ‘exceed’ the path, and I don’t know what I would expect in those situations – see attached mock-up image. (Or maybe I'm just not thinking about it right and it would be fine.) If it were easier to manipulate curves using a Warp Group then that might not be such a problem.