GarryP

Welcome to the forums @frm5993 Hangman asked Rawi for an example document which exhibited the problem but they have not yet done that, so we cannot know what the problem is/was. If you are having a similar problem then I would suggest that you follow the same advice and attach a document so that we can experiment with the intention of diagnosing the issue. Otherwise, without something to look at, we are just guessing.

Welcome to the forums @UEDA Clip to Canvas is not available as an option when you have Artboards as layers outside of the Artboards should be visible anyway, unless they are visually obscured by Artboards or other layers. A layer, when it is in an Artboard, whose boundary is only partially inside the boundary of that Artboard, will only be partially visible and, I believe, that is expected behaviour for the software because of how Artboards are supposed to be used.

You're welcome. (Are you also forum user pbbailey, who started the thread, or is the similar name just a coincidence?)

You’re welcome. I’ve heard of this happening before but no-one (that I know of) has been able to reproduce it without wanting it to happen so it’s difficult to tell if there’s some tiny ‘buglet’ in there somewhere which is doing it by itself 'randomly' or whether it’s always just by user accident.

Welcome to the forums @peternoot What you described as a “workaround” is simply what you need to do because the Affinity applications work this way. It’s not a bug, it’s just how the software has been designed to work. If you want pixel-perfect export then you need to make sure that the layers in the export (and their contents/formatting in some cases) are pixel-aligned (integer pixel values). Otherwise the software will create extra pixels to accommodate the ‘missing information’ for the ‘sub-pixels’ upon export. To try to make sure that layers are pixel-aligned you can set “Force Pixel Alignment” ON and “Move By Whole Pixels” OFF in the Toolbar, but this is not retroactive so any existing non-aligned layers may need to be moved. There are some people who don’t like it, and have said so many times in these forums, but it’s what we’ve got.

There should be a “Keep selected” check box on the Context Toolbar.

Here’s a slightly different method: Draw an Ellipse; Give it a Fill of None; Give it a small Stroke so you can see it more easily; Convert To Curves (not always necessary but can be useful); Duplicate it; Use the Contour Tool to create a duplicate which is a bit larger – this gives you the ‘gap’ between the ‘swooshes’; Bake its appearance (may not be necessary, try it and see if it is); Select the inside Ellipse (Curve); Set the Stroke Colour to Blue; Set Align Stroke to Inside; Set the Stroke Width to a larger value (you can change it later) Set the Pressure Curve as shown in the video (approx. values are (X,Y): 0,0; 1,0; 2,1; 4,0); Select the outside Ellipse (Curve); Set the Stroke Colour to Red; Set Align Stroke to Outside; Set the Stroke Width to a larger value (you can change it later) Set the Pressure Curve as shown in the video (approx. values are (X,Y): 0,0; 1.5,0; 2,1; 4,0); Select both curves; Rotate as necessary. (Some of the steps in the video are in the wrong order but I'm not going to record it again.) You can now manipulate the Pressure Curves and Stroke Widths until you think the ‘swooshes’ look as you want them. 2024-01-11 13-35-56.mp4

It might help us to give better advice if you tell us what you mean by “painting” as that can mean different things to different people in different circumstances. However, if all you want to do is to have a flat colour outside of the ellipse at the bottom then one thing you can do is to create a filled rectangle which is wider than the ellipse and then Subtract the ellipse from the Rectangle – see attached video (alternatively you can use Alt+Subtract to keep the shapes as a Compound so they can be more easily modified later). 2024-01-11 08-48-40.mp4

Basically, if the layer is not pixel-aligned (e.g. X/Y = 0.7 pixels) then the software will have ‘partial pixels’ (e.g. 0.3 of a pixel) ‘left over’ which need to go somewhere so that the information isn’t lost so the software (on-the-fly) creates new pixels for the contents of the ‘partial pixels’ to go in. This isn’t the full technical description of exactly what happens but it’s usually enough to know why it happens without knowing what is happening. If pixels are important then it’s usually a good idea to set “Force Pixel Alignment” to ON and “Move by Whole Pixels” to OFF on the Toolbar and you shouldn’t (normally) have the problem again.

I’ve just looked at a variety of puzzle books and each seems to have selected a cell size which consistently accommodates pretty much all the puzzles in the book, except for a few outliers if any. In other words, they seem to have looked at all of the puzzles, found the one with the largest grid (they don't differ too much), sized the cells of that puzzle to nicely fit the page, and then used that cell size for (pretty much) all the other puzzles. This seems reasonable to me as the reader can get used to having the cell sizes of a certain size and can, when they first pick the book up, quickly see if they are comfortable using cells of that size (will their writing fit in the cells?). If there is sometimes too much space around a puzzle you can always quickly add a ‘fancy flourish graphic’, or something to fill the gaps. Having said that, from what I remember, puzzle books for kids use different sizes of grid and other things to keep the layout ‘fresh’ across different pages, so what’s best will probably depend on the intended audience.

The number of views a thread has received cannot be taken, by any reasonable person, as a measure of popularity, intent of participation, or even interest in the subject of that thread. Just because a traffic accident happens near someone as they were out walking doesn’t mean they were wanting/expecting to see it. Just because lots of people will watch footage of a disaster on the evening TV news doesn’t mean that they want to be part of it. Just because a CCTV system records footage of a dog playing with a ball doesn’t mean that the CCTV system was installed to record footage of dogs playing with balls. Since you have no knowledge of who, or what, is accessing a thread, or why they/it are doing so, it would be foolish to infer any intent/interest from that action. Without context, the number of views is just a number, no more than that.

You didn’t say which Affinity application(s) you have available or which version(s) they are. However, none of the V1 applications can do vector warping (e.g. Perspective) but Designer V2 can do it via the Warp Group functionality. In the case of your first example image I would suggest adding the warping to the text and background shapes at the same time so its easier to get things ‘lined-up’ – see attached example.

You're welcome. For what it's worth, I agree that it might be nice to be able to flip layers through the Transform Origin when it is visible.

Some quite reasonable examples there I think. As for the last one, while you are waiting, you might like to try using the Bitmap Gradient Fill with the Mirror option to get two images side-by-side but flipped. See attached video for a quick demonstration. I think there have been other requests which have gone further than this one, asking to be able to flip a layer through any user-specified straight line. 2024-01-09 12-48-20.mp4

As far as I know, and as the Help suggests, the Flip functionality does not use the Transform Origin and always flips through the centre (horizontal/vertical) of the selected layer or combined layer selection. Can you give us a good example of when it would be useful to be able to flip through a user-specified point?

I think that’s because Rectangles have the Corner parameters: Radius; Absolute; Type; Size.

I don’t think Presets are applicable to Ellipses as they have no parametric values to be saved/restored. I think some of the Help text may have been copied from that of another tool without being edited properly.

You can use the Gradient Tool and select the Bitmap fill type from the Context Toolbar. The bitmap that you use for such a fill will need to be taken from storage rather than the document itself.

As per the forums guidelines, questions for different subjects should be asked in one thread for each question. This helps to keep the replies to each question separate and easier to read - less 'cross-talking'. ----- The Presets are there to store and retrieve the values of the parametric variables in Quick Shapes, e.g. Number of Sides, Corner Type, etc. Once you have done something which causes a Quick Shape to become a Curve, or Curves, layer, such as using the Geometry functionality, you can no longer make a Preset from it as the parametric variables are lost. What I think you need to use is Assets which are reusable shapes which have no parametric variables – they are ‘static’ shapes. ----- You cannot have a dotted line which has zero values for all those dash settings as that wouldn’t make sense – there would be nothing to draw.

Welcome to the forums @jimpap Some versions of the PDF format don’t allow for exporting with layers intact. Also, if you have used Effects and/or some other functionalities then the export may not, in some situations, contain any layers because of rasterisation. There may also be various other issues. If you can share the AFDESIGN document then we can have a look at it and try to see what the problem is. Otherwise we are just guessing at what the problem could be because of the many possibilities. Also, can you give us screenshots of your export options so we can check them against what you are trying to do? Note: Some PDF viewers may not handle layers so if you can tell us which PDF viewer(s) you are using we can check them (in a basic way) for ‘compliance’ with the exported PDF. Note: Starting to export to a PDF version which allows for layers, turning ON Include Layers, then switching to a PDF version which doesn’t allow for layers will automatically turn Include Layers OFF, and it will not be automatically turned back ON when switching back to a PDF version that does allow for layers. (This is something that the developers might need to fix.)

There are various of possibilities and, without more details, we would just be guessing at what the problem could be. If you can share the document, or a cut-down version of it with the ‘problem areas’ still intact, then we should probably be able to find the problem and give you an answer quite quickly.

It sounds like the Gradient Map Adjustment could be of some use – see attached image. If not, we might need an example of ‘before and after’ that you are trying to replicate.

In Designer, V1 or V2, Document Setup can be found via menu “File → Document Setup…”, or deselecting all layers and pressing the “Document Setup…” button on the Context Toolbar when the Move Tool is active. If you type document setup into the Help search box and press enter, the first or second link is for Document Setup and the page which that link sends you to tells you this. In Designer V1, the Resource Manager can be found via menu “View → Resource Manager...” In Designer V2, the Resource Manager can be found via menu “Window → Resource Manager…” If you type resource manager into the Help search box and press enter, the first link is for Resource Manager and the page which that link sends you to tells you this.

As mentioned above, you need to make sure that the placed screenshot has integer X and Y values. See attached video where I fix the values. Unless/until you need to do otherwise, I would recommend setting, on the Toolbar, “Force Pixel Alignment” to ON and “Move by Whole Pixels” to OFF. These can be seen at the centre-top of the window in my video – the buttons with red icons to the left of the ‘robot face’ (hover the mouse pointer over each to see which is which). Attached are two screen-grabs, first from V1 next from V2, to show the difference. 2024-01-06 09-24-49.mp4

That’s a very good point but, in this case, it was just about creating the effect rather than giving an accurate idea of scale. Maybe someone can come up with a way to incorporate some kind of (automatic?) scaling into the technique, and share it here for others to use.