toltec

It would be handy if a stroke thickness dialogue box could be added to the Context toolbar. Especially with the mousy wheely shortcut thing.

thanks

Oh, thanks. Not as clever as I thought then. Certainly no substitute for saving the files properly. There is no substitute for a good working practice.

Oh, you're right, I didn't understand that. That's actually rather clever . I very particular when it comes to saving. (I never got fired) and in the early days or using Macs they crashed a lot. Boing noises still fill me with dread and don't even mention Windows 95. I've not seen Autosave mentioned, but then I haven't read every single topic on the forum and never needed to find out. I will look it up though. Thanks.

Best to get in touch with Apple then. If you have the original purchase details (they will have you on record anyway) I'm sure they can help. Macintosh sales and upgrades are all handled by Apple, not Serif. So there is nothing Serif can do.

Could it be about good working practices? Affinity are very keen on working non-destructively. Keeping cropped areas. Live Filter Layers, Snapshots, Save History with Document, Autosave etc. I think it is good to embrace the working practices of new software and new ideas. Rather than be stuck in Photoshop mode. If you make a Duplicate into memory alone and don't save it, that is a disaster just waiting to happen! Computer crash, software crash, power failure and the work is gone. There is absolutely no need to make a duplicate in Photo if you just want to make a few experimental changes, that is the purpose of Snapshots. There are not the memory issues of having two documents open in RAM either, especially if one can't save. If you like both versions, create a new document from the snapshot and you have both versions. If you really want to work on a duplicate version just go File > Save as... (obviously save the original first) and save it with a name, you are immediately working on a duplicate document in (almost) total safely. Photo will now save it every 300 seconds as you are working. If you want the original just go File > Open Recent and there it is. In a firm I worked for (decades ago) if you lost more than a few minutes work due to a computer crash, they would give you a warning. Do it twice and they would fire you.

The Inpaint brush is in the group with the healing brushes (top one in picture). Click on it and the pop-out panel appears and shows the other tools. "Pop-out" tools are indicated by the little triangle in the bottom right corner of some tools on the Tools panel. The tools shown here all have more "pop-out" tools One issue is, the last tool you use is the one that stays on display in the panel. So the Tools panel changes, making it hard to find the one you want sometimes. You can also inpaint a pixel selection. Make the selection and go to Edit > Inpaint. This is Photo only, Designer doesn't have Inpaint. P.S. It is possible to change the tools on the Tools panel. Go to View > Customise Tools... and you can drag them where you want. You could make the inpaint brush separate on the panel so you don't lose it again. I did that with a few tools, at least until I became more familiar with Photo.

Does anyone know of a quicker way of setting the stroke thickness. Clicking on the stroke bar opens a menu, then you have to drag the slider or enter a value. It seems there should be a much easier way, like an entry box on the Context toolbar. Or am I missing something?

Should we report New and About as bug reports then? We can give Serif the benefit of the doubt for Open and Place

And don't even mention Lasso. Oh, I see you didn't

Cropping leaves the cropped data behind. It is part of the non destructive way Affinity works. You can remove it by selecting the offending layer and going Layer > Rasterise. That deletes it permanently. Now, if you increase the canvas size, it will be all white, alright?

It seems Serif are a bit hit or miss with the use of ellipsis. The Windows User Interface Guidelines say that “[Ellipses] indicate that a command needs additional information. Don’t use an ellipsis whenever an action displays another window—only when additional information is required.” File > New for example, does not have ellipsis, and it needs a lot of "additional information" File > Print, which is a similar sort of choices menu, does have ellipses. File > Open does have ellipsis but only requires clicking on a file. File > Place too,. So, New probably should, Open and Place perhaps shouldn't ? in the Help menu, About... does, and there is nothing to do. So that definitely shouldn't.

Oh. I see what you mean. I can't see that being useful for many operations though ? Normally a shape needs a fill to cut something out

How do you do that ? ? If I draw a shape, like this and Mask to Below, I get this If I fill the shape, I get this.

It is worth pointing out that in both those cases, the shape must have a fill. It will not work if the shape is transparent.

OK I see. Which, until implemented, would make this the best option for the OP. Save the original. say File 1 go File > Save as say "File 2" go File > Open File 1 I don't know if that would work with a macro ? That will do it, not perfect but far from the five or six steps he thought. If he needs to flatten the image Layer > Merge Visible

Well. the OP is using Windows 10.

Out of idle curiosity, what happens when you duplicate the document. Is it a separate document, or like an embedded image layer type document? i.e. duplicated inside the existing document. Because obviously, to duplicate as a separate document, you only need to "save as" with a different name. i.e. Save the original. say File 1 Save as say File 2 Open File 1 Two identical documents side by side If it is embedded inside, You would just get two of every layer, so what is the point? File size is immediately doubled. Just curious.

Sure, but until then the fewer clicks the better.

Wot 'e said.

You can assign a shortcut to make a snapshot Assign a shortcut to open the snapshot panel Click on the snapshot Click on the create document from snapshot That's 4 clicks (about the same as PS?) if you want to flatten it later, Merge Visible (there is a shortcut) .That's 5 clicks, maximum. If you just want to Flatten it, 1 click. Not much in it, is there?

I just tried it on a Win 10 machine and it did as you said. I clicked on "properties" for the file in the directory and it updated it then.

I just tried that with two different files and it updated instantly. This machine is Windows 7 though.

Well, if all you want to do is flatten it, go Merge Visible. Thats only one click.

That is Windows. If you close the folder and reopen it it should update.