jackamus

Thanks for the latest Beta update. I have noticed that many past and current updates focus a lot on what I would call 'specialist requirements' but there seem to be fewer that apply to direct drawing and the improving the Interface. Can you say what drawing related features you are currently working on to improve?

Hi MEB, I do appreciate that it is not 100% accurate. There is another way which is more time consuming and that is to create the ellipse and construction line either horizontally or vertically and the rotating both to the desired angle. However I eagerly await Matt's snapping updates.

Hi MEB, The best example would moving an ellipse so the handles on the bounding box of the ellipse's minor axis can be aligned with a construction line or guide. Try drawing a line at some odd angle then try and line up an ellipse's minor axis with the line.

Has anyone suggested that it would be a good idea to have an object's bounding box handles to always be in view when being moved? It would make it easier to line up objects with guides and construction lines. Currently they disappear when moved.

Hi Signguy, This wasn't about snapping it was about simply being able to see the handles.

Has anyone suggested that it would be a good idea to have an object's bounding box handles to always be in view when being moved? It would make it easier to line up objects with guides and construction lines. Currently they disappear when moved.

You Can. I use it all the time. Roll the wheel for zooming and press the wheel and hold to pan. You need to set this in AD Preferences>Tools>Use mouse wheel to zoom.

Thanks Jack for this workaround. I'll start collecting some bitmaps to use. Its a pity I don't have a PC anymore as I could 'steal' some from DP! :rolleyes:

Before I offer this as a suggestion for the 'wish list' I thought would ask if it is feasible. Many of the people now using AD migrated from Illustrator I, on the other hand, migrated from Serif's DrawPlus. DP had a load of really good features that AD haven't yet adopted and one of them was being able to use a bitmap fill. These were all manner of textures like rock, wood, gravel, pebbles etc and I used many of these in geological drawings. Is it possible to create bitmap thumbnails of various textures that could be expanded, as opposed to enlarged, to maintain a high resolution and apply to objects as a fill? I imagine the texture to be very large in size but cropped down to thumbnail size to fit a menu. If someone wanted to draw a gear made of say beech wood, then they select the Beech fill and apply to the object and then expand or reduce the texture to the degree of resolution they so desire. If this is not practical for AD developers then perhaps, working in conjunction with a third party company, textured plugins could be created for downloading. I know that there is no immediate plans for AD to use plugins but when there is would this be a feasible feature?

Excellent tutorial video. This was a great help except I only need to go as far as creating the outline. It is a bit more involved than PhotoShop but I can get used to it. My reason for doing this is because I am a cheat! Apart from using AD and AP my hobby is painting with acrylics on canvas. I usually work from photos and to avoid having to draw the image on canvas I just create an edge detected image and have it printed onto a blank canvas. One of my paintings for a jigsaw company is a 20" x 3" aerial view of the Palace of Westminster with a Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane flying over it. Can you imagine how long that would have taken to draw? A few minutes on the computer and £30 for the canvas - its well worth it. Here is a link to my website. http://www.classiccarartist.co.uk/

I'm having another look at this and and following your instructions above I'm getting nowhere. Here are my steps. 1 Colour photo original Layer 1 2 Adjustments tab - selected Black and White OK. Layer 2 3 Layers>Duplicate OK. Layer 3 4 Filters>Detect edges - I get nothing. The B/W photo is still there but with no filter applied.

Got it! Thanks

Although I believe my logic to be reasonable I can see your point regarding the other tools and their context tool bars. Its just an unfortunate clash of terms. I'm not sure about the 'Assistant' I didn't know we had one! :wacko: Where is it located?

Thanks for that it worked a treat! However why not have the 'Select' option in the most obvious place to find it - the 'Select' option at the top of the window? That was the first place I looked - not very intuitive. Also why was there any need to rasterize it? I selected it with and without doing that.

I did try that but it didn't work. I selected the pen tool then clicked out the shape. This produced a new layer. I then went to Select but there wasn't an option that I could use.

Let me put it another way. In PhotoShop I could use the pen tool create my shape and then select it, copy it and paste it in another file. I have a photo of a car and I want to cut round it rather than erase the background. Does this help?

How do I make and select an irregular shape cut out in a photo?

Giving some more thought to short cuts. Don't you think it would be a good idea not to make two short cut keys next to each other? I can understand that it makes sense to using a second key with a letter that may be the initial letter for an action but that isn't going to work every time as short cuts increase. Obviously if there are very many new shortcuts then what I'm suggesting will have its eventual limitations.

This doesn't sound very good because it is too easy to do accidentally. It makes more sense if you want to change opacity that is should be a deliberate action unless a shortcut is used which usually mean using two keys - a very deliberate action. Having said that I often close down my Studio by accidentally pressing 'cmd shift H' instead of 'cmd shift G' for un-grouping objects.

However this brings up another question. I often find the an object will have an unwanted, less than 100% opacity, applied to it. It seems to happen randomly and I've never figured out why. Could I be hitting something accidentally? To change opacity takes a deliberate action and I can't see how you can do it accidentally.

Sorry I hadn't opened the layer! OK now!

On my computer both the layers and the colour opacity show 100%. This was the first thing I checked when I found the problem and the problem is still there. See my screen shot.

Why are these lines grey? Grey lines.afdesign

That was quick! Thanks glad to be of help.

Could this be a AD consistency problem? When I select File>Open I get a window that I can expand by click the 'Open' bar at the top of the window. However if I click on the 'Place image tool' in the Tool bar I get a window that I can only expand by dragging the bottom right corner. It would be easier if all window could be expanded by clicking the Open bar.