[Affinity vs Photoshop]

13 minutes ago, >|< said:

Yes, a pixel selection in Affinityspeak.

Yes, you had me at "pixel selection" 

[Affinity vs Photoshop]

4 hours ago, >|< said:

You are repeating Mithferion's misunderstanding. chakko007 is talking about transforming a Pixel Selection, not transforming a selected region of a Pixel object.

 

Ah. You mean transforming the selection boundary (area).

Well, as you said, to transform (resize/rotate etc) press Q (Quickmask) then V (Move tool) to resize, stretch, move, reshape etc. Press Q again to return to normal.

You can also just click inside the selection area and drag it or use the nudge arrows. Unless the Selection Brush is active, in which case you just need to select a Marquee Tool (M) first.

You can also resize, move, squeeze or stretch the selection area with the Transform panel.

Enter a numeric value in the box, press and drag on X Y W or H or turn the mouse wheel over the entry box. I use that quite often to fit an eye or something similar as it is very precise.

[Affinity vs Photoshop]

48 minutes ago, chakko007 said:

No. I mean the transformation of a selection. When you use the select tool to draw a selection, you then have to switch to the quick mask, open the Selection menu, choose Edit selection as layer (or similar), and then you have to switch to the Move tool. Really complicated.

Did you try just pressing the V key (Move Tool shortcut)  to get the transform handles ?

p.s. The layer does need to be unlocked or it is, er, locked,

[Creating a white border around the image?]

6 minutes ago, Ballyshannon said:

BTW, adding borders in AD is super easy.

I think it is exactly the same? If it is an Image layer, you can apply a Stroke,

if it is a Pixel layer, strokes don't work so you have to add an outline.

In Designer, you do have to enter the Pixel Persona to add an Outline.

Do you have an easier method ? please tell 

[Affinity Designer: trim canvas]

50 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Why would anybody care about bleeds, etc. if their project does not involve printing anything? 

 

I think the Affinity version is more accurate (or at least less likely to cause confusion) because it does not suggest that artboards are only for printable artwork:

I know of no simpler, easier to understand description than that. None of these apps are used or usable only for document printing. This is something every user should be aware of, even if they have only used them for that. For Photo & Designer, they also should be aware that either app can open native format documents created by the other without the need for any conversion or causing any data loss, something Adobe cannot claim for its similar products.

I understand you want to keep things simple, but it does not help anybody to oversimplify things so much that users might assume that they are only intended or useful for print oriented work. They are quite useful for much more than that.

I think the problem is, that you and I interpret the word 'page' differently.

OK, I have a project that requires me to be able to describe the differences of each (or identify each) with a single word.

'Canvas', is well used for Photo and Photoshop to describe the area upon which an image is placed on, or cropped to. That is so well established it would be stupid to try and change it.

'Page', is well used to describe a Publisher or InDesign area, organised into pages. A page in other words.

Artboard describes a Designer or Illustrator area, which is sort of half page/half canvas.

 

"XXX" a one word description for a standard Designer area that would help new users. You can't call it a canvas because it has very different properties to a Photo/Photoshop type canvas  (in particular the lack of a trim option) and we need to distinguish the two. It is obviously not an Artboard unless we make it so

I know that Adobe (Illustrator) used to describe this entity as a page, but you don't like that. So what single word would you use to describe it ?

 

I will admit I am a bit biased towards 'pages' because I have been creating pages for 30+ years. Even now, although they are mostly web pages, they are still pages. I am open to sensible options though.

[Creating a white border around the image?]

34 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

@jmwellborn You are missing the resize canvas step, you cannot add a border outside of the document bounds, what HVDB shows in his video is resizing the canvas with enough space to create a border, as long as the canvas is resized more than the border you want to add it can be clipped back as a final step.

So...

1. Make sure your background layer is a pixel layer not an image layer.
2. If it is an image layer, right-click and select rasterise.

Why can't they be Image layers 

 

[Affinity Designer: trim canvas]

43 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Why would you use a Page preset for Facebook content or for anything else designed for the web? What about creating device screen mockups, graphic emails, Designer Assets, bitmap exports for fills or brushes, or pretty much any other kind of project not intended for printed output?

Maybe more to the point, if you would not describe banners, posters, business cards, etc. as pages, why do you keep telling people that Designer is based on pages & does not have a canvas? Can you not see how that could confuse users, particularly those new to the Affinity products?

You have totally twisted (or totally misunderstood). I have been trying very hard to make this simple for new uses (or ex Adobe users) to understand the difference between a Designer, page based document and a Photo, canvas based document because that affects the ability to layout (bleeds etc) and "Trim" the page. Affinity Designer users should bear the difference in mind before starting work and decide whether to create a standard page or an artboard. Ideally!

How are your arguments in any way helping them ?

 

Getting back to basics, are you still saying Affinity Designer is based on the canvas metaphor ? Your first argument

20 hours ago, R C-R said:

That is incorrect & misleading. Affinity Designer is based on the canvas metaphor. 

or could the Adobe description be more accurate (or at least, far more common} ?

18 hours ago, toltec said:

"Artboards represent the regions that can contain printable artwork, similar to pages in InDesign". 

A simple yes or no would be appreciated.

[Creating a white border around the image?]

1 hour ago, jmwellborn said:

I quoted you here rather than duplicating your elegant "how to" above.   Same issue, however.  I am most definitely in the Needing Borders Department, so was glad to find this information.   First, I am on MAC Sierra, so the steps may be slightly different, but I have found a few additional steps that I needed to make in order to use the Pixel layer, Select>Outline procedure.

I highlighted the background layer containing the image, made a new pixel layer, and then clicking on the Image itself (not the thumbnail in the layers panel, which didn't work) went to Select>Outline.   Nothing.   I had to first go to Select>Select All and then Select>Outline in order to get the blinking lines.  The Outline Selection popup worked, except that Alignment Outside would not create an outside border of blinking lines.  (Screenshot missed those on left and top, but they are there.)  Instead, it stopped at the edge of the image.   Edit>Fill turned the whole image to a blank canvass.  I was able to use Alignment Inside, or Centered.    Edit>Fill worked perfectly.  But I also found that I then had to go to Select>Deselect in order to stop the blinking lights.  I have no clue how to use "Outside."   (First image below is "Inside") losing part of the image.   Help?

I'm not 100% sure what is going wrong for you.

First of all, you must Ctrl + click on the layer thumbnail, which I guess is Cmd + click on a Mac. 

Alignment Outside (or Alignment Centre) will only work if the layer is smaller than the canvas. Remember that the OP wanted to place a border around 'floating' images. It won't work if there is no space to fit it.

So, using the 'floating' layer for the deer (floating on a transparent canvas) press Cmd + click on the layer thumbnail to get a selection (as shown).

You can then use the Outline Selection (Outside) to make a  selection border all round  the deer image (say 50 pixels)

Click apply, then you can fill the outline with colour. Edit > Fill.

You will have to press Cmd + D to deselect afterwards.

As I said, Outline will only work for images where there is space on the canvas to apply the border.

Hope that explains it better ?

["Stretching" a picture]

Very hard to say without seeing an exact example but one method is to select one edge and draw it out

Make the canvas wider, based from one edge 

Make a pixel selection of the edge of the image

and use the Move Tool to stretch the selection out

You will probably have to clean it up quite a bit.

The other alternative is to make the canvas bigger, then just copy and paste loads of times.

[Inverted Cog?]

I'm just not geared up to answer those types of question.

[Affinity Designer: trim canvas]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

but it does not help to insist that they all should be considered as 'like a page' 

Not my words but if Adobe and many millions of Adobe Illustrators users do, who am I to argue ?

If I designed a Facebook banner, a T-shirt, a poster or a business card I would not describe them as pages either but I would still use the Page Preset and Page Width / Height options.

I'm not proud 

[Affinity Designer: trim canvas]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

Basically, because when different things are not identical in all respects, it can cause considerable confusion if users expect them to behave in exactly the same way or have exactly the same properties.

I think you have to give people a bit more credit, just as long as you don't mislead or confuse them. Would you describe a Corvette to a visitor from Mongolia as 'like a sedan' or as a 'family car' (small family of two)? Most people would still call it a car and park it in a 'car' park and if not misled, they would soon work out the rest if you just described it as a car. i.e "how many seats ?"

In common Adobe speak ...

A single sided Indesign or Publisher document is a 'Page'

An single side Photoshop or Photo document is a 'Canvas'

A sided Illustrator or Designer document is a 'Page'

A single sided Illustrator or Designer Artboard is 'Like a Page' 

I do agree that Artboards confuse things slightly because although they are described as 'Like a Page' they behave somewhat 'like a canvas'

If you want to know whether the page can be resized later (pages, like Quark, InDesign or Word pages are very hard to resize) look in the help files, or ask. That's what I would do unless someone confused me by saying a Designer page is a canvas and I expected it to work like a Photoshop canvas. There are a lot or former Adobe users out there.

[Inverted Cog?]

Yes, it's nice when people can mesh to come up with new ideas 

[Affinity Designer: trim canvas]

Ah, but you said 

9 hours ago, R C-R said:

Affinity Designer is based on the canvas metaphor.

When it is clearly not based on the canvas metaphor. Neither Adobe Illustrator nor Affinity Designer are.

I am not sure why you are talking about Artboards? I would point out that neither the original posts by the OP or by me were talking of Artboards. We were both talking about using a "standard" Affinity Designer page. The only mention of Artboards was using them as a solution to the OP's  "Trim" question.

Tens of millions of Adobe Illustrator users have been referring to pages as pages since March 1987 (I think) and adopted Artboards as "like pages" when they came along.

You can call them flamingos if you want, but it will only cause confusion to the millions of Adobe Illustrator users who listen to you. I'm sure they all do 

[Affinity Designer: trim canvas]

18 minutes ago, beatrixwillius said:

Is there an official way to do such a feature request or should I contact support?

There is an official forum 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/53-suggestions-for-affinity-designer-on-desktop/

[Affinity Designer: trim canvas]

14 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

Regardless of the differences in viewpoint on this, I’m glad to see this conversation taking place. My needs for Designer are usually  extremely simple (most of my tasks could be cared for in Photo alone, but sometimes I want the benefits of vector-drawn graphics and fonts). Often there are new concepts than what I’m accustomed to in a pixel editor such as Affinity Photo and Photoshop. The way Designer handles the Canvas vs the Document is one of them. And then controlling them between the desktop version and the iPad version is somewhat different as far as the interface goes. 

So please keep up the discussion! It helps everyone.  

I have just read my official Adobe published, Illustrator CS5 book and I quote "Artboards represent the regions that can contain printable artwork, similar to pages in InDesign". Note the use of the word "pages" not "canvas".

That the way I have been thinking of them for the last 30 years and I think that is the only sensible way.

And Adobe agree (Adobe who ? )

[Affinity Designer: trim canvas]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

That is incorrect & misleading. Affinity Designer is based on the canvas metaphor. Even Artboards are in effect just multiple canvases in one document. If you doubt this, refer to the online version of the built-in help & enter "canvas" as a search term, or just think about the Clip to Canvas  or Rotate canvas menu items, or where it says, "Document—to add an artboard at the current document's dimensions to the canvas."

I have to respectfully but completely disagree with you on that. Designer is NOT based on a Canvas !!! 

I appreciate that both programs sometimes confusingly refer to Page or Canvas but the correct (historically) and least confusing term for Designer type pages is Pages.

EDIT. I have just read my official Adobe published Illustrator CS5 book and I quote "Artboards represent the regions that can contain printable artwork, similar to pages in InDesign". Note the use of the word "pages" not "canvas"

You can't resize a canvas in Designer ? The OP was confused because they wanted to resize the "canvas" to an object, which is not possible.

 

Photo does refer to  resizing Canvas, which you can resize to an object (a common term).

We have always referred to an image in a Photoshop type program as being on a canvas, a mixture of pictures and artwork on an Illustrator type program with bleed and crop marks as being on a Page. Photoshop is definitely based on a Canvas and Adobe Illustrator pages are  based on pages or maybe Artboards ? And if you think of canvases in Designer, how would you translate them into multi-page PDF documents 

Of course, there is some overlap with the two programs but your argument will only confuse people even more.

BTW. How will I set up a 6 canvas tri-fold document in Publisher or Designer. And is the canvas on the middle called "Canvas 3" or "Canvas 4"?  And of course, what about the canvasination?

So what would you call them to avoid confusing new users and why is your name better than Adobe's name ?

[Inverted Cog?]

37 minutes ago, Steel Rat said:

Thanks for the reply. Any idea how one would do that?

You could  play around with a cog and a donut as @v_kyr suggests.

See the attached file

 

cognut.afdesign

[Add to a lasso selection]

43 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm curious, for you who are on Windows, does Drag+RightMouse really work to add to a selection? When I try it, I get the proper cursor with a plus sign, but no additional selection is made. When I move the mouse I get no additional marquee drawn.

On the other hand, switching to Add mode, I get the same cursor, and when I drag using the left mouse button I get a new selection added to the prior one. (This happens in both 1.6 and 1.7 of Photo.)

The trick is to hold down the right-hand button and then release the left-hand mouse button first.

[AP - Quick & Simple way to add 'Snow Effect' on my pics?]

24 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Is not that a bit late? :-)

Chinese New Year is February 5th.

Year of the pig, apparently.

[Creating a white border around the image?]

3 hours ago, HVDB Photography said:

Following a hint of a few dedicated forum members, I add borders (inside / outside) via the Select > Outline function.
The video shows how it's done.

You might also want to experiment with one of your macros using Matte.

If you add something like 40 pixels to the canvas all round the image, you can just go Edit > Matte to fill the background. No need to use Outline or anything.

[Change Language]

Restart the program afterwards.

[Text Box]

Hi @Jimmy Rapp

In Designer, this handle resizes the frame and the text inside.

[Using the same RAW settings]

5 minutes ago, nitro912gr said:

Hello, is there a way to save and load settings that I used in a RAW photo processing? Or a way to just load the last used settings?

I do some photoshots to showoff our work and most of the time the images are shot under the same conditions or even the same subject from different angle, so there is no need to change anything on the RAW import settings or there are small adjustments here and there.

 

Thank you!

Sure

In the Basic panel use the burger menu

That saves all your settings as a Preset. You can then apply it to as many images as you want.

[Introducing AP to newbies]

I think I would start with:

Cropping for better image composition / straightening

Perspective correction

Colour balance / Exposure correction (demonstrate the Auto filters and manual correction).

Red Eye Removal / Blemish removal  / Inpainting

Sharpening (Unsharp Mask and Clarity).

To give an idea of something a bit more advanced:

Change the colour of something (that always impresses).

A lens blur or Gaussian blur to lose a messy background.

A bit of composition. Cut out/refine edges and composit.

Those three are pretty easy to do but have a good impact on new users.

Nothing that can't be done in just about any editor but AP does them all very well.

One more. A bit of body shaping with Liquify never hurts !