mondze

Does the community have any ideas how to accomplish this without the blend tool?
Cheers.
 

The algorithms for some of the geometry tools seem to be slightly off when calculating where the finishing shapes should be. In the video, I placed a blue circle under the red one to show that the combined shapes to be divided before I do it don't match the combined shapes after I hit "Divide."
geometry_tool_problem1.mp4

Hello, GabrielM,
but multiply with an upper shadow means that the lower color is preserved, no matter if vector or pixel data! Furthermore, this looks terrible printed in sheet-fed offset.  I have built the whole thing here at home in QuarkXpress and had a professional print output created, looks really good here.
Furthermore, all elements in the affinity file, apart from the shadow effect, are vector data!
Greetings
designy
 
German:
Hallo GabrielM,
aber multiplizieren bei einem obenliegenden Schatten heisst, dass die untenliegende Farbe erhalten bleibt, egal ob Vektor- oder Pixel-Daten! Weiterhin sieht das im Bogenoffset gedruckt ganz fürchterlich aus. Ich habe hier Zuhause das Ganze in QuarkXpress nachgebaut und eine professionelle Druckausgabe erstellen lassen, sieht hierbei richtig gut aus.
Ferner alle Elemente in der Affinity-Datei, abgesehen vom Schatten-Effekt, sind Vektor-Daten!
Gruß
designy

While working on this problem, please also check the print options:
Bleeds on artboards are not printed even though the option "print bleeds" is checked in the printing dialog. 
If there is no artboard created, the bleeds are printed without any problem. So both problems (display and printing of bleed on artboards) seem to be linked.

I hope  to be able create a vector brush from any single vector shape or a group of vector shapes in the future.

I managed to find the solution that does both for me!
1) I selected the skull image
2) Clicked on Layer > Rasterise to Mask
3) dragged the new skull/mask layer underneath the green layer so it became the layer mask
4) placed a photo behine the skull
Now my skull is green and the white is transparant.
Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

What the title says.
I can't reproduce it every time, but it happened to me 4 different times in the last 3 hours.
 
 
Im uploading a file, all you have to do is group all the contents, and the constraint bounding box will jump away.
Most of the times it jumps out of the screen so the whole group just dissapears.
 
 
BUG-group.afdesign

So 2 years since this has been brought up and no progress on the visible bleed?
I came to Affinity as I heard the dev team were highly responsive in implementing features that the customer base needed. It's a little disappointing to see such an obvious feature overlooked and abandoned. Is there any future plans to have the visible bleed? I understand that you guys may be really busy with Publisher but this should be a day one, week one feature.

thanks for this clever work-around while we wait for proper implementation of bleed preview.

It's incredible that there are still no options for bleed marks.
I haven't used Affinity Designer for over six months. Too much trouble, many functions (standards) are missing

Changing to Adobe again!

Hi, I've made an attempt to run Affinity Designer on Linux via Wine. I managed to run the program myself, but it is not possible to create or edit a document. The problem is probably with Direct3D support in Wine or in my GPU (maybe drivers).
I will describe how to install and run the Designer via Wine. Maybe someone can successfully create or edit a document (eg with a different GPU). The operating system used is Ubuntu 18.04.
What we need?
Windows (yes, I know) - it can be a virtual machine. It will be used to extract the installation of the program because the standard installer does not work under the Wine.
Wine with some patches - we must add MoveFileTransactedA/W stubs to kernel32. The building of Wine is required.
Winetricks.
64-bit mscms.dll library.
Affinity Designer installer and license.
Offline installer of .NET Framework 4.0 and .NET Framework 4.7.2.
Step 1 – build Wine
We must build and install 64-bit and 32-bit Wine with patch. Building of Wine on Ubuntu is very well described on the WineHQ wiki: Building Biarch Wine On Ubuntu. Don't forget to apply the patch from attachment (fix.patch). During the building process I installed additional libraries like libvulkan-dev and libvkd3d.
Step 2 – create MSI installer of Designer
This step must be done on Windows. Open the command line (cmd.exe) and go to the directory where the Affinity Designer installer is located. Run the affinity-designer.exe /extract command (the file name may be different). Complete the required data and create an MSI installer. Transfer the created MSI file to your system with Wine.
Step 3 – install Winetricks
The Winetricks installation is described on the project page: Winetricks. I prefer a manual installation of latest Winetricks instead install outdated version from repo.
Step 4 – create Wine prefix and install .Net framework
Installation of .Net Framework with Winetricks doesn't work for me, that's why I do it manually.
Initialize new Wine prefix:
WINEPREFIX=~/Designer wineboot –init Change the system to Windows XP (for correct installation of .Net Framework 4.0) and remove the mono if installed:
WINEPREFIX=~/Designer winetricks winxp WINEPREFIX=~/Designer winetricks remove_mono Download and install .NET Framework 4.0:
wget 'http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/5/A/95A9616B-7A37-4AF6-BC36-D6EA96C8DAAE/dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe' WINEPREFIX=~/Designer wine ./dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe /q Change the system to Windows 7 and switch mscoree to native (this is very important):
WINEPREFIX=~/Designer winetricks win7 WINEPREFIX=~/Designer winecfg Download and install .NET Framework 4.7.2:
wget 'http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/D/3/DD35CC25-6E9C-484B-A746-C5BE0C923290/NDP47-KB3186497-x86-x64-AllOS-ENU.exe' WINEPREFIX=~/Designer wine ./NDP47-KB3186497-x86-x64-AllOS-ENU.exe /q  
Step 5 - run Affinity Designer
Switch system to Windows 8.1 or 10. Designer will not start in Windows 7 mode due to Aero errors.
WINEPREFIX=~/Designer winetricks win81 Install Affinity Designer (in my case MSI installer is Affinity.msi)
WINEPREFIX=~/Designer wine msiexec /passive /i ./Affinity.msi Copy the missing mscms.dll library to Affinity Designer instalation directory. In my case it is ~/Designer/drive_c/Program Files/Affinity/Affinity Designer/. I have found the missing library on dlldownloader.com: mscms.dll.
Start Affinity Designer:
WINEPREFIX=~/Designer wine "C:\Program Files\Affinity\Affinity Designer\Designer.exe" The program should start and you will see the welcome screen.
I can open preferences and change options, but creating a new document causes a crash. In Performance tab my GPU is displayed as Intel(R) HD Graphivs 4000 (I have Intel® UHD Graphics 620).
Crash report:
Attempting to create Direct3D device with adapter Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 c:\buildagent10\work\live\persona\windows\libraries\serif.directx\dxrenderer.cpp(676): error 0x80004001 (Unknown error 0x80004001) In the last step I tried to start the Designer using Vulkan-based D3D10/D3D11 implementation. After this (and install mesa-vulkan-drivers) in Performance tab my GPU is displayed correctly, but the program still crash while creating a new document.
WINEPREFIX=~/Designer winetricks dxvk Crash report:
Attempting to create Direct3D device with adapter Intel(R) UHD Graphics 620 (Kabylake GT2) c:\buildagent10\work\live\persona\windows\libraries\serif.directx\dxrenderer.cpp(676): error 0x80004001 (Unknown error 0x80004001) I know that Serif developers don't provide support for running Affinity programs via Wine. The post is for information purposes only.


fix.patch

I agree that users, and I add that staff, could benefit from a public issue tracking system; but, there are disadvantages for staff (non-technical wall-of-text bug report spam, exposure of sensitive internal communication). I have reated a feature suggestion post that attempts to solve the disadvantages of both sides, and hopefully will promote constructive discussion.
 

Known Situation
I am aware of the following:
Serif code is not open-source, so direct public access to an internal issue tracking software is not likely. The forum itself is not suitable for bug tracking. The forum is not used as an issue tracker by Serif. A forum, for non-tecnical bug reports, is understandable, because a user may produce a wall of text, that must be parsed, tested, and converted into a technical bug report.
Request / Suggestion
Provide the users access to a pre-filtered view of the issue tracking. I.e. users would be permitted some or all of the the following:
see list of issues see platform of issue see related milestone see kind of issue (feature, bug, defect) see status of issue (in progress, queued, backlog, pending review) see date of last activity on issue subscribe to activity But, users would not be permitted the following:
view internal communication about issue comment on bug Benefits
Managing forum posts, that discuss the same bug, could then be as simple as linking to a single bug report. Answering new forum posts, that ask about the status of an old known bug, could be as simple as linking to a single bug report. Users can be informed clearly of known and unknown bugs, thus reducing requests or losing loyalty due to abandonment. Status update posts, of project milestones, could be made with less effort.

Upvote for something like Illustrators Simplify path.
Do we need to move this to feature request?

Linking an image instead of embedding it, would be useful if you're working on different documents with the same file, i.e. a logo in a design phase. So if you change that logo it will be respected in every file it is linked.
Besides that it doesn't increase your Designer file, that could be crucial if you're working with large files and make a lot of versions / copies of your Designer file.
I think it's like the new version of the Photoshop Smartobjects (CC version).
 
Would be great if this makes sense to you too and isn't too hard to implement. Thanks!

Serif obviously can deal with this as they like - but there's numerous commercial software products with public Bug/Feature-Trackers.
I agree with mondze that that one as a user often has no idea whether a bug report or feature-request has even been read by staff.
 

My point is that it is not transparent whether errors are acknowledged or processed.
The code should be serif property and not visible also patches themselves only the status of a report.

Old bug but still there.
 
Group Bug.afdesign

Affinity Design and Photo are perfect. They're the best photo and vector graphic editors I've ever used. I know this is probably a long shot, but having this software somehow ported to Linux would be the greatest thing imaginable. Right now I use Windows 10 in a virtual machine specifically for these two programs. I develop web applications with NodeJS, and Affinity Designer has become an indispensable part of my workflow. Just saying, I would gladly repurchase both programs if there was a Linux version! Thank you for reading and hope you consider this as a possibility down the road!

How I like contributions like this! „This is definitely not the case“! Why do you state something like this without even trying it?
Here an example:
I took 2 instances of one (the same) image (TIF, ZIP compressed) in InDesign (thats, among other app, one I talkerd about):
(a) 5120 x 2880 px, 11,3 MB, 72 dpi, file size: 11,3 MB
(b) 5120 x 2880 px, 11,3 MB, 300 dpi, i, file size: 11,3 MB (the image was of course only recalculated, but not resampled)
I placed image (a) in a newly created InDesign document in a proportional width of 20 cm and saved it. I did exactly the same with image (b).
The first InDesign document with image (a) has a file size of 1,7 MB. The second InDesign document with image (b) has a file size of 1,1 MB (!!) If I now adjust the image in Photoshop by recalculating it to the needed 20 cm/300 dpi and place this image in a third InDesign document, the saved file has a file size of 1 MB You see: What I said „is definitely the case“!

Yeah, fair enough. Maybe there is some kind of caching going on as well? Thats pure speculation, but it clearly this embedded images / file linking / file size issue needs sorting out. 

I just created a comparison layout to compare file sizes between InDesign and Affinity Publisher. The difference in sizes is enormous! A four page document with one large image (spread) and some text with an image calculates out to this:
Affinity Publisher Layout (embedded images): 186 MB
Affinity Publisher Layout (linked images): 165 MB
Adobe InDesign Layout (linked images): 2.07 MB
Affinity Publisher Layout (ZIP file): 94.6 MB
What is making the file sizes so bloated?

Having the new linked resources feature with the resource manager is a very good step in the right direction. But this stil does not solve the problem i mentioned in earlier posts regarding the huge document filesizes that Affinity Designer and Publisher produce. It seems that as in AD the linked images in AP are stil stored within the document. And they stil seem to be stored uncompressed.
Furthermore the filesize is unpredictable. Sometimes after deleting a picture frame with a linked image completely from the document, the filesize drops sigificant. Sometimes it gets even higher!? Overall the filesize increases significant with every single image that is added.
I expected this issue to be solved with the linked resource, but a closer look tells us: it is not.
I placed these two well known sample JPGs in a new blank AP document. As you can see in the Resource Manager both are linked and they are about 380 KB and 780 KB in original filesize.

After saving the AP document the overall document filesize results in round about 3.7 Megabyte! And this is caused by only two midres images (1024 x 768 px). Imagine a poduct brochure with hundreds of images in print resolution. The document filesize will be some hundred Megabyte or more.
But things get even worse after using the exact same linked image with two picture frames. I would expect, that at least both frames internally reference the same image data. But instead after saving the document the document filesize has increased to now 5 Megabyte!

 
I don't know the reason for this stategy - not in Affinity Designer and especially not in Publisher. The latter is a tool by nature that has to deal with lots of external resources in one document. It's main purpose is to bring text and image together in a layout. Not to collect - and not to produce even more - redundant data.
I am absolutely convinced that, like me, the majority of professional users keep a close eye on their computer resources. And it does matter when  a single layout document is bigger than the sum of all its contained images. At the latest when it comes to archiving and backup.
The strategy might be as easy as this (compare it to InDesign or Quark):
1) linked resources might only stored as rough lowres previews within the document. When opening the document the lowres version is displayed which will speedup loading. Then you can decide whether or not to show the layout in full highres resolution in the viewport. The option to switch between rough layout preview and highres design preview will always meet the needs of texters AND designers because both have different priorities when working with layout tool like Publisher.
2) embeded images will be stored within the document. But please, please as references to the embeded original data stream (jpg, tiff, etc.) - not as uncompressed bitmap which drastically increases the document filesize.
I know this needs a huge amount of infrastructure behind the sceenes. But with the introduction of the linked resources you have the chance o build this the right way right from the start. The next step is as background process, that watches for changes in the linked resources and displays notifications about external changes (e.g. like the yellow warn icons in InDesign, that inform about external updates).
 
Now sorry for saying it that clear.
I really appreciate your efforts to provide clever tools (Photo, Designer and Publisher) with a professional, nice and clean UX and some cool features where even the f...... Adobe guys should take an example of.
And i don't expect a "smaller" application with a "lower price" to have the full featureset like an "expensive one" with a "high price" (InDesign, QuarkXPress).
The question is - should Affiity Publisher be a professional tool that is somehow comparable to these "top dogs". Or is it just a "nice small" tool for "low budgets"?
E.g. CorelDraw is out now for almost 30 years. That was my first layout software I had to struggle with in the early 90's. If you look at it now, it's UX is nicer. But under the hood lot's of stuff is done the same way as 25 years ago - no really huge evolution. You can use it professionally if you have to. But it's not comparable at all to an actual version of Affinity Designer or Photo which offers modern techniques and workflow approaches. But the Corel Suite is still sold for actual 594,00 €. Not exactly cheap for a set of software which is not matured in the best manner.
As far as I'm concerned, I was and I am always willing to pay a good, reasonable price for a good software tool. If it makes my daily work as a designer (craftsman) really easier and faster it will always be a good invest.
Cheers.

Columns in text boxes is good, but option to Span columns, so that a title can span the 2 columns of text it's above, without having to make a separate text box for the title please.