GarryP

Currys have a machine which (at first glance) is like the original example but with 16BG of RAM and it costs around £80 more (there may be other minor differences), so the prices seem to be pretty comparable with PC Specialist.

In addition to the advice above, if you draw the gradient fill in greyscale you can use a Gradient Map Adjustment to create the colours. That way it’s easier to adjust the colours without adjusting the gradient. See attached video where I have used the adjustment to convert white to yellow and black to red, with different opacities on the gradient stops to get the ‘ripples’. 2024-04-07 09-07-20.mp4

Since you are based in the UK, rather than going to Currys, have you considered PC Specialist https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ ? They have lots of different set-ups, which can be customised if necessary, and they aren’t much more expensive than buying from a store when comparing similar products (and their customer support is very good). An example of a low-cost solution, similar to your example (only about £50 more) but which looks like a better deal to me, can be seen here: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/view/Dimension-Spark/ (this is just an example, not a recommendation) Note: You’ll need to specify a mouse and keyboard, if you need to buy them, as they don’t come as standard (they don’t sell you stuff you don’t need/want). And don’t forget that you might need a monitor too (it doesn’t look like the Currys machine comes with one either). Note: If you want to get the most out of using the Affinity software with your new computer I would suggest making sure that the Affinity applications can use Hardware Acceleration with the graphics card which comes with it (see Affinity technical specs for details). You could be disappointed otherwise.

You’re not the only one to get 'caught out' by that change but something like it had been requested by quite a few people to make it easier to open the Panels (two clicks instead of three).

The menu selection of “View → Studio → Brushes” in V1 can be found via menu selection “Window → Brushes” in V2. There’s no ‘version functionality map’ that I know of: you just have to read the release notes in the Help to keep up-to-date with changes as they happen.

When you press the Backspace key you are deleting the layer which is selected, which is kind of expected, I suppose (maybe some people might want to do this while cropping). But I would say that pressing Cancel should probably undo everything that was done with that ‘session’ of the Crop Tool, and the Undo should also work within that ‘session’ (unless there's a good reason no to). So this looks, to me, like a mix of expected behaviour and something else.

Because a mirror reflects in-to-out front-to-back (in relation to the reflective surface), not right-to-left or up-to-down. Or, to put that another way: What’s on your right is still in your right when you look in the mirror – you have to look to your right to see your right shoulder, whether it’s in the mirror or not. And what’s above you is still above you when you look in the mirror – you have to look up to see the ceiling, whether it’s in the mirror or not.

I have a feeling that the problem might be something to do with the interpretation of the NEF image format. The Outline Effect looks for transparent ‘parts’ of the ‘stuff’ that is being outlined (not just the outside 'edge' of what’s there) and puts an ‘outline’ on every ‘part’ that isn’t transparent. Because of this it looks like the software might be ‘seeing’ most of the image as transparent (maybe it’s not looking at the NEF image properly) and could be filling most of the image with the outline. My attached image might show what I mean where you can see that the outline fills the pixels on the right (duplicate of the image on the left) because it’s filling all the ‘stuff’ that exists.

You’re welcome. There’s no need to close/hide the topic as it might be helpful to someone else.

Ah, that may be where the issue arises from. If the organisation doesn’t want users to update at different times then there may be a way for them to disable the update process until they are ready, from a coordinated organisational perspective, to do so.

Where did you get the link from, and do you still have the link to it?

Can you explain that please?

Thanks. Where did you get the software from? If it was from the Serif Store, was it the MSIX or MSI/EXE version?

Can you give us a full-screen screenshot which shows the problem?

You're welcome.

Good to know you’re back on track. This thread has a few alternatives: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/114423-to-create-a-vignette-with-the-gradients-tools/ And this one might be useful too: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/46430-20-ways-to-create-a-vignette-with-affinity-photo/

Thanks Dan, I hadn’t read the recent pledge properly, or just forgot that part.

Welcome to the forums @Miguel Teixeira The Affinity applications can’t handle variable fonts. It has been requested many times but we users have no idea whether it will happen, and Serif have never given any timescales about when it might happen, if it will. You can search the forums for variable font to see how many posts there have been about it.

There are lots of Opacity sliders and other similar controls. Which one are you looking for? Or, to put that another way, what are you trying to apply the opacity to?

Some kind of an indication in the Layers Panel for each layer where the Blend Options have changed from the default has been requested, at least once. But, if I remember correctly, there was an issue with what was deemed to be the ‘default’ as each user can have some different default options, or something like that. I can’t remember exactly but I remember it seeming like a reasonable issue to bring up. Note: The Fill Opacity in the Blend Options is linked to the Fill Opacity in the Layer Effects dialog. They’re just two ways to set the same thing depending on what’s more convenient at the time.

We don’t need to see the History, we only need to see everything that you can see (on the screen that is) when you are trying to do what you are doing, which includes the information as described above.

Have you looked at the Blend Options for each layer?

If you can give us a full-screen screenshot, where the Layers Panel is visible and the ‘problem layer’ is selected and visible in that panel, then we will have more of an idea of what’s going on. Otherwise we are missing a lot of useful information. If you can also share the document that would be even more useful.

You’re welcome. That sort of problem is very easy to have so it’s one of the first things to look at. Another similar problem can be with the Layer Opacity as that can be changed by simply pressing one of the numeric keys accidentally – for instance, pressing the zero key twice in quick succession can lead to the selected layer being invisible = 00% Opacity. Because of this, it’s always worth checking the Layer Opacity, in the Layers Panel, just to see if something unexpected has happened there.

Thanks for the extra screenshots – they help to make things much clearer. Everything you add to a document is a layer. In your first screenshot (of the new ones) you can see there are eight layers, each of which is an Image layer. You can see the type of layer by hovering the mouse pointer over the icon to the left of the layer thumbnail. The problem is that (in the first of your latest screen-grabs) your Opacity for the Stroke is set to 0%, which is invisible.