GarryP

It might only work with some brushes that are ‘real’ vector brushes, so some experimentation may be necessary. If you can’t get it to do what you want then if you give us an example starting shape (preferably in an Affinity document) and a visual example of what you want as the result then we can probably come up with a workflow that will help.

While you are waiting, you can draw your curves with the Vector Brush Tool, Expand the Strokes, and then use the Shape Builder Tool and/or Geometry functions, Separating the curves later if necessary – see attached video. 2024-01-05 12-35-00.mp4

I don’t know what “Arch 3” is, or where it is. There are some document Presets starting with “Arch” (for architectural documents) but they are presets for document set-ups, where you can specify if you want to use an Artboard or not, but they are not Artboards in and of themselves. To create a document which contains an Artboard you can tick the “Create artboard” option in the New Document dialog. To create a new Artboard you can use the Artboard Tool. You might want to read the Help and look at some videos about using Artboards to get more information on them.

Thanks for mentioning the Style Picker Tool, I keep forgetting about it.

I can reproduce the issue. V2.3.0 is working slightly differently than V1.10.6 in that, in V1.10.6, after you have selected a Blend Mode, the Blend Mode field keeps the focus and accepts mouse scrolling, whereas it doesn’t in V2.3.0. See attached video, V1.10.6 first then switching to V2.3.0. I couldn’t say whether it’s supposed to happen like it does in 1.10.6 or in V2.3.0. (Sometimes, only sometimes, with the wind in the right direction, if I right-click the Blend Mode field I can then use the mouse scroll wheel to change the option but I can’t reproduce that on demand.) 2024-01-04 14-45-24.mp4

Photo has a Document menu (containing the Rotate by 90 degrees functionalities, amongst other things) which Designer doesn’t have. The concept of a document in Photo is different to the concept of a document in Designer because they’re designed to work in different ways. In Designer, if you are not using Artboards then I don’t think there’s a quick way to rotate the document by 90 degrees, except for setting up a keyboard shortcut and pressing it a few times. One ‘work-around’, which I think only works on Windows because of a difference between the OS implementations, is to use the Artboard Tool to create an Artboard for the document, then rotate the Artboard via the Transform Panel (make sure that Lock Children is OFF on the Context Toolbar), then delete the Artboard while keeping the layers within it. It’s no quicker than quickly rotating a few times but it might come in useful at some point. If you are using Artboards then you can simply rotate the artboard (making sure the Lock Children is OFF). Alternatively, if you have Publisher then you can use the Photo Persona of that application to rotate the document, but that’s only quicker if you are already working in Publisher.

You’re welcome. I hope you noticed that there’s also a “Paste FX” functionality for just pasting the Effects from one layer to another without the Stroke/Fill formatting.

Unless I’m forgetting an important detail regarding Frame Text layers specifically, you should be able to use "Edit -> Copy" / "Edit -> Paste Style" to copy the formatting from one layer to another. Alternatively, you can create a Style from a layer (right-click layer and choose "Create Style") and then apply the Style later via the Styles Panel.

You're welcome.

Thanks MikeTO. I saw an example somewhere and thought: “I wonder if that’s possible to do easily in the Affinity suite?” And it was.

I’ve listed, below the images, the steps of a technique, using Designer only, which you can use to create a border as you might see on old treasure maps etc. It’s a bit long-winded but not difficult to do, shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to complete, and it should work in both V1 and V2. At each stage, make sure that: Stroke Colour is Black; Fill is None; Scale With Object is OFF. For the base border: Draw a rectangle, you can make it any size you want, and keep it selected; Open the Swatches Panel or Colour Panel; Set the Fill to None; Open The Stroke Panel; Set: Stroke Width to 16px; Join to Mitre; Align to Centre; Open the Appearance Panel; Add a New Stroke and make sure it’s above the previous stroke added; Set: Stroke Width to 12px; Cap to Butt; Join to Mitre; Align to Centre; Style to Dash; Dash Pattern to 5,5,0,0,0,0; Blend Mode to Erase; Also: Make sure that the "Balanced" button is ON or the effect won't be as nice; Add a New Stroke and make sure it’s at the bottom of the ‘stroke stack’ (but above the fill); Set: Stroke Width to 16px; Join to Mitre; Align to Inside; Style to Solid; Blend Mode to Normal; Add a New Stroke and make sure it’s above the previous stroke added; Set: Stroke Width to 14px; Join to Mitre; Align to Inside; Style to Solid; Blend Mode to Erase; Add a New Stroke and make sure it’s at the bottom of the ‘stroke stack’ (but above the fill); Set: Stroke Width to 20px; Join to Mitre; Align to Outside; Style to Solid; Blend Mode to Normal; Add a New Stroke and make sure it’s above the previous stroke added; Set: Stroke Width to 19px; Join to Mitre; Align to Outside; Style to Solid; Blend Mode to Erase. For the optional ‘distressed’ effect: Duplicate the rectangle and select the duplicate layer; Use the “Revert Defaults” button on the Toolbar; Open the Swatches Panel or Colour Panel; Set the Fill to None; Make sure the new (duplicated) rectangle is above the other rectangle in the layer stack and still selected; Open The Stroke Panel; Set: Style to Textured Line Style; Open the Brushes Panel; Select the “Dry Media” category, scroll down and select the “Light Charcoal (for closed curves)” brush; Open The Stroke Panel; Set: Stroke Width to 90px; In the Layers Panel, set the Blend Mode of the duplicated Rectangle layer to Erase and set the Opacity to 60%; Group both rectangles. You can adjust the relative sizes of the strokes, brush pattern, etc. as necessary for different borders. You can also resize the border as you want while still keeping the same general design – if you have added the ‘distressed’ effect then make sure you move/resize the group as a whole. If you don't have the "Dry Media" category of brushes then you will need to choose a different brush from your collection. Important: Because you are using the Erase Blend Mode at various stages, the result will always* be rasterised upon export to any file format. * Unless you set “Rasterise: Nothing” as an export option whereupon the border will not be exported at all.

The only speed increase I can think of would be to double-click on the origin of each layer to reset it and then double-click on the rotation handle of each object to reset the rotation. That would let you reset the rotations without accidentally nudging the layer positions but it’s not much better or quicker. Unfortunately using “Transform Objects Separately” (Context Toolbar option of the Move Tool) doesn’t give any advantage when trying to do what you want: the origins can’t be reset en masse; all of the layers are rotated by the same amount as the newly-given rotation of the ‘transform layer’ (at least I think that’s what’s happening, I didn’t get my calculator out to check); the rotation rotates all of the layers about the origin of the ‘transform layer’. See attached video. I can't think of a better way to do what you want but someone else might be able to. 2024-01-02 13-40-30.mp4

By “contain” I meant ‘have within them somehow’ (I realise that’s still vague). I’ve only ever used JPEGs which are a simple single bitmap with nothing else ‘inside’ so that’s why I asked the question. I they can contain masks then that’s all well and good and I’ve learned something, thanks.

I think it’s reasonable to say that the Affinity software may never be able to open all PSD files with 100% accuracy. So that leaves your question as: “Can Photo open the particular PSD files that I have with enough accuracy that I can use them as I would like to without extra manual work?” And only you can answer that question as only you have those particular PSD files. If we don't know the actual content of the PSDs then we cannot say, with any accuracy (pun intended), whether they will open accurately or not. If you can upload an example file, maybe the most complex one as a decent test, then someone can try opening it for you in V2 and then upload the result for your consideration. (You can request a private dropbox link from the staff if you don’t want the public to see the file.) Or, as has been suggested above, you can try the trial version of V2 and see for yourself, but once that trial has finished you won’t be able to test the trial version again until V3 is released. a later version (maybe V3, maybe earlier than that) is released.

Can JPEGs contain masks? My first guess was that the file extension could have been changed from TIFF to JPEG (the software ignoring the file extension), and that the original TIFF maybe contained clipping paths, but that wouldn’t tell me why it wasn’t looking the same in Preview as it does in Photo. As you say, if we could get a copy of the original image (ZIPped so the forum software doesn’t change it) we would have a better idea of what’s what.

Obviously not. You asked about flipping (vaguely) in your original post. You were given information about how to flip layers. You then explained that you wanted to flip the entire canvas, without using a menu item. You were then told how to do that using a shortcut key. You then said that you wanted to be able to flip an Artboard with a button. You were then told how to do that, by using the information given in the original answer. You then said that you couldn’t find the button. You were then reminded that the answer has already been given. You were then told, in a slightly different way, how to do it. You then thanked that person and said that other people’s answers were ‘muddying the water’. Would you like to explain what I don’t get?

That was basically the same answer as was given in the first answer to your original post.

Unfortunately I don’t think I can be of much extra help with this kind of problem. If you’ve tried all of the usual stuff, and some less-than-usual stuff, then I don’t know what to advise next. It sounds like you need someone with more Windows ‘sysadmin’ knowledge than I have. Hopefully someone else will come along and be able to help you further. (The solution could be something very simple which I’m just not aware of.)

In the Designer Persona of Publisher you will only have access to the functionalities which are available in the Designer Persona of Designer, not the other Personas of Designer, e.g. Pixel Persona, Export Persona. In the Photo Persona of Publisher you will only have access to the functionalities which are available in the Photo Persona of Photo, not the other Personas of Photo, e.g. Liquify Persona, Develop Persona, etc. I hope that helps to explain things a bit better.

Given the things you have already said that you have tried, the only thing I can think of next is to get Windows to rebuild its font cache. Instructions can be found here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-reset-font-settings-in-windows-10/e3739be7-31e0-4dcd-aa52-2f662e1b8fcf ...and here: https://www.thewindowsclub.com/rebuild-font-cache-in-windows ...and elsewhere, just search the web for windows rebuild font cache and see which instructions look like something you feel up to trying, ...but the process is not for the ‘feint-hearted’.

It does sound a bit strange to go up/down by 5% increments of the last value, rather than ‘pure’ 5% increment/decrements, but the same thing is done in other parts of the software too so I guess that’s a bit of consistency. From a creative point-of-view I don’t think it really matters much to me either way as 122%, for example, isn’t much different from 120% considering all of the other things that need to be taken into consideration when using the tool, e.g. brush, hardness, opacity, flow, wet edges, etc. As long as I get the result that I want, the exact scale value doesn’t really matter so much. However, I do think that it would be nice if is was easier to get back to 100% than it is now as that’s a ‘normal’ thing to want to do. Happy New Year to you too. Note: If you have a scroll wheel on your mouse you can use that the with Shift pressed down, while hovering the mouse pointer over the value field, to go up/down by 10% increments. (This works with most other numeric fields too.)

Welcome to the forums @tareksobh If you have deleted a font which the Affinity applications rely on being there then you may need to restore the default fonts and/or fix the font registry. This video should tell you what you can do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCCohFBBSa0 It’s also worth noting that some versions of the V1 applications had problems with the font drop-down so it’s probably best if you can upgrade to the latest version of V1 (currently 1.10.6 on Windows) first and see if that fixes things, unless you are already using the latest version of V1.

Welcome to the forums @Elzevir Block The value change is logical but it just looks a bit odd. As far as I can figure it out, when you press the up-arrow key you are adding 5% to the underlying scale value each time while the displayed value is rounded to the nearest integer. So we get: 100 + 5% = 105 (exactly), then; 105 + 5% = 110.25 (rounded down to 110), then; 110.25 + 5% = 115.7625 (rounded up to 116), then; 115.7625 + 5% = 121.550625 (rounded up to 122), then; 121.550625 + 5% = 127.62815625 (rounded up to 128), then; 127.62815625 + 5% = 134.0095640625 (rounded down to 134), etc. It’s a similar thing for the down-arrow key. As for the application crashing, that shouldn’t happen so that sounds like a bug to me but without a reproducible workflow it may be difficult for the developers to find what the cause could be and fix it.

I’ve just tried the same thing in Designer V2.3.0 and it works like it does in Photo V1.10.6. Hopefully someone who uses this functionality more than me will come along and say whether I’m just doing something wrong or not.

You’re welcome. In V2.3.0 I’ve just tried making a Gradient Map Adjustment into an Asset, deleting the Gradient Map Layer, and then dragging the Asset onto an image but it doesn’t seem to be getting applied as it does in V1.10.6 – see video, V1.10.6 first then V2.3.0. I think you might have found a bug, unless I’m missing something important (I don’t tend to use Assets much). 2023-12-30 14-28-29.mp4