misc33

This just happened to me, too. There was no other error message. My disk space was almost gone, mysteriously - it's been going crazy up and down lately making it impossible to work. How does an iMac hard drive go from 19GB to 128MB in seconds, with nothing going on on my part? I've cleared up hard drive space, but the file still won't save and won't let me save as in another location. Any tips welcome - I've looked up the problem but haven't found anything yet in Apple land. BTW there was no code number, nothing else in the error message except "save failed because the file could not be written to"

Yes - I figured that out after about 30 seconds of confusion! Good to know there's a way to do both, and thanks for the extra tips.

Alfred, thank you! This is fantastic. I now know how to put my black and white line drawings onto a transparent background in both AP and AD - just what I needed.

I think it depends how complex the contents of each artboard. I regulary work with AD files that contain over 30 artboards with no problem at all. Each artboard typically contains a black line drawing, often complex with placed images.

Plus one for this request. It would be a truly useful plugin for AP!

I've been using an Apple Pencil on iPad Pro with Astropad to do line drawings with the vector brush, and it's been great. For me, the amount of smoothing they've built in is just right - when working at big enough sizes. When working small, it's way too much - so I join you in your request to hand over some smoothing control to the end user. Maybe you should submit your resumé to Serif and see what happens!

Thank you, that's just what I was looking for!

In Affinity Designer's Pixel Persona, I want to switch back and forth rapidly between the paintbrush and the eraser. Is there any other way to do this, other than pressing the keyboard shortcut E for eraser, and the letter B, TWICE, for the paintbrush? I'm looking for a single key toggle that can take me back and forth rapidly between these two tools. Is there such a thing? Is there any way to determine which tool the keyboard shortcut B selects first? It's very frustrating having to press B twice (first world problems, I know), because it seems like an unnecessary movement and sometimes I forget I've only pressed it once and end up using the pixel tool.

Prior to the update I was able to specify paragraph leading as a % of type size. Now I can't do that - it keeps on flipping back to 100%, and the tick takes itself away from % and back to Default in the Spacing dropdown. Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bug?? I'd love to be able to create a series of defaults so that any document I create is all set to go with my own preferred font/size/leading. How do I do this? Is there also a way to set a default stroke width?

I've just completed a large project ready for printing; my first serious project using Affinity Designer exclusively. What a joy to use! I'm really happy on the whole with my shift away from AI. While working, I made a series of notes as I came across things I couldn't do, or which behaved in a manner I didn't expect, and which I would love to see as features in future versions: 1. Hover pen tool over anchor point (which becomes visible while I'm hovering) at end of unjoined line without first selecting the path, and click to activate it and continue drawing. 2. Join two open paths by clicking on each in turn with the pen tool, rather than having to select two paths and choose the Join command. 3. Eye dropper - copy styles to selected object or text, as well as colours and gradients. 4. Insert in front/behind/inside: keyboard shortcuts please 5. Stroke presets to click on; also tiny up / down arrows to change stroke by preset increments. 6. Keyboard shortcut to change the point size up/down by single rather than double increments. 7. Use the direct selection tool to select nodes that define a segment of a path, and copy just that segment. When I try this with the node tool, the whole shape is selected rather than just the part I wanted. I'd rather not have to drag a marquee around the part I'm trying to select; just choosing a couple of anchor points should do the trick in my opinion. 8. Have a padlock as part of each layer to simplify locking and unlocking layers. I’m aware I can select the padlock at the top of the layers panel, and that I can CTRL click to bring up a menu to lock - but as I’m doing this so often, one more movement of the mouse or an extra click really does feel cumbersome and not fluid at all. Thank you for considering these suggestions!

Callum, thank you! It'll be great to get continuous export up and running. I wasn't expecting leading rules to be in Paragraph, but it makes sense now that I know it's there. I'll get to and post the rest of my points in the appropriate place. JokeRat, I just tried again closing the Document setup box, and it worked as you described. Not sure why I was having a problem before.

I've just completed a large project ready for printing; my first using Affinity Designer. While working, I made a series of notes as I came across things I couldn't do, or which behaved in a manner I didn't expect. I'm happy to post feature requests, but I thought I'd ask here first in case some of these things have been disregarded, or perhaps there's a way I don't know of to do what I'm trying to do. THINGS I WANT TO BE ABLE TO DO IN AFFINITY DESIGNER: ☐Hover pen tool over anchor point (which becomes visible at that point) at end of unjoined line without first selecting the path, and click to activate it and continue drawing. ☐Join two open paths by clicking on each in turn with the pen tool, rather than having to select two paths and choose the Join command. ☐Eye dropper - copy styles to selected object or text, as well as colours and gradients. ☐Continuous export in Export Persona: it's always greyed out; why? This would be a really useful feature if I could use it. ☐Insert in front/behind/inside: keyboard shortcuts please ☐Stroke presets to click on; also up / down arrow to change stroke by preset increments. Is there a keyboard shortcut to change the point size up/down by single rather than double increments? ☐Use the direct selection tool to select a segment of a path, and copy just that segment. When I try this with the node tool, the whole shape is selected rather than just the part I wanted. I'd rather not have to drag a marquee around the part I'm trying to select; just choosing a couple of anchor points should do the trick in my opinion. ☐Command+Shift+{ is supposed to be the shortcut for range left text. Half the time it performs an operation called Move Nodes to Bottom - what even is that, and why does it get in the way of range left text? ☐Default leading is the same as the font size - needs to be defined as a percentage, eg. 120% of font size. This is really important! I really hope this is just a hidden option that I haven't yet been able to find. ☐Document setup box should close when Return (or another key, like esc) is pressed. It’s super annoying having to pick up the mouse each time to close the dialogue box. ☐Have a padlock as part of each layer to simplify locking and unlocking layers. I’m aware I can select the padlock at the top of the layers panel, and that I can CTRL click to lock - but as I’m doing this so often, one more movement of the mouse or an extra click really does feel cumbersome and not fluid at all.

Thank you, thank you! I missed the More button. This is EXACTLY what I've been hoping for!

This is sounding very much like something you need to do in Affinity Photo, not Designer. In Photo you will be able to select the edge of the part of the photo you want to keep, then refine the edge until it looks right. You'll be able to choose to have your selection as a mask on its own layer.

I've started the project in AI, will still check this thread in the hopes that I can transfer to AD if it can do what I need it to do.

I've searched the forum unsuccessfully for an answer to this question: Can AD export a file that I can send to my printer, the same way I can with Illustrator? In Illustrator I have a preset which includes crop marks and printer's marks. I can't find these options in AD. It's really important for me to know whether the series of A3 posters with bleed that I need to begin creating asap should be done in Illustrator rather than AD. If I can't export the finished product with accurate colour and in a format that my printer can work with, I'll have to stick with Illustrator for this project. Here's a screenshot of an A3 poster created in Illustrator, exported as a pdf in the way I need it to be:

Have you tried the pen tool? Another way to do it would be to let A/C and B/D join, use a boolean operation to punch out the small shape from the larger one, then draw a rectangle to represent the desired negative space and Subtract it. Not being able to simply click to join separate curves to join them is one of my big AD frustrations, so I feel your pain!

I've had this happen quite a few times. When I restart AD, the problem goes away and I can drag to reorder layers again. Just now AD wouldn't let me drag layers, but selecting the target layer and using the Arrange keyboard shortcuts (Move forward one / Move back one) worked. Seems to be an intermittent bug. I didn't do anything in particular out of the ordinary before it happened, just working on a design and trying to keep the template layer on top.

Haha - yes! It feels a bit like that, doesn't it. Makes me remember all the effort we used to have to put in, sending type to the typesetter, rubbing down Letraset, drawing up a design on a board with printer instructions in blue pencil. Old school nostalgia perhaps, but still I'm very glad for what we can now do digitally, even if some things have to wait!

In the meantime you could always slide your mouse along your desk, pressed up to a ruler. Crude solution, but it should give a straight line.

Making a frame around your picture: select the picture, specify colour and width of stroke. What do you mean by conservation of quality? Are you wanting the width of the stroke to remain the same no matter how you resize the photo? If so, that should happen by default. To make the stroke or frame around your picture scale proportionately, you would have to select 'Scale with object' in the Stroke panel.

One way is to press Convert to Curves, then manipulate the letter shapes as a group till they look right.

I have a similar problem, and would like to see the ability to change the sizing of UI elements. In the meantime, rather than change the resolution of my screen to get things bigger, I simply press Ctrl and scroll to enlarge portions of the entire screen as needed. Not an ideal solution, but still very quick and does the job.

How complex is your gradient going to be? If it's as simple as one colour fading out into transparency, you can use the Inner Shadow effect. That will follow the curve exactly. Hmm, maybe not. Painting one by building it up using a masked pixel layer seems to be the best way so far until the new super gradient goodies come out:

Ok, thanks. I think you're right that dragging is indeed the issue here, because I'm not used to cmd creating a copy.