[Import Serif DrawPlus DPP files directly]

I'm sticking to what I said before, but with a little extra explanation ....

 

Given enough time, resources, skills and money, yes: you can build anything. Because it is always one of the mentioned points that stops us from doing it.

[Freeform paint tool in Designer]

No problem, I can understand French too.

I already found the vector brush tool and together with boolean operations on objects I can also get the desired effect.

[Freeform paint tool in Designer]

I could not find it, so I wondered: Does Affinity Designer have a freeform paint tool like Drawplus has?

 

If it does not have such a freeform tool, is there a plan to add it to Designer?

 

Or do I from now on need do it by converting objects to curves and start editing?

[Import Serif DrawPlus DPP files directly]

I do not recall ever having said that a conversion would be an easy task. But please don't use the "it's a completely different program so it is technically not going to work 100% of the cases" as an argument. I am in IT myself as programmer, designer and now IT architect. I know that technically you can build **anything**.

 

If Serif would have said it was too much effort in terms of money and resources, that would be a fair argument. But the way Designer is coded (and how its own file format is different) is by itself not an argument.

 

If you only look at it technically the answer to the question "can you build a DPP converter?" Is very simple: yes you can.

 

I'm pretty sure that if Serif had been market leader it would have built such a converter/importer.

 

Anyway ... it is as it is. Let me end on a positive note ... the Affinity products are fantastic. Lack of a converter is not a show stopper for me.

[Import Serif DrawPlus DPP files directly]

Hi MEB,

I've seen you talking about the fact that the Affinity applications are built from scratch and thus are totally different from the xxxPlus applications. That is of course completely irrelevant.

Yes, you probably coded them from scratch, using another programming language maybe, possibly using different graphical protocols. But that is not the point ... The important thing is how these applications behave. And then all of a sudden they are much more similar to the old applications. Like I said before. Designer and Drawplus both are vector based drawing programs and that thus means they behave very similar. There aren't that many ways to make such programs, even when the underlying code is totally different and even when using different techniques.

Just to see if that was true I took the old "wine glass tutorial" from Drawplus and tried to repeat that it in Designer. And indeed in Designer you can follow that virtually unchanged and get the same result.

 

By the way .... I take back my remark about the conversion-via-PDF loosing my layer groupings. Picking snother PDF version to convert to did the trick.

 

By the way 2 .... any idea when Designer comes to the ipad?

[Import Serif DrawPlus DPP files directly]

"I understand that Affinity Designer was always intended to be an entirely new product rather than a direct successor to Drawplus"

 

Well ... they are both vector based drawing programs. That means they cannot differ that much. As evidenced by the fact I felt readonably at home when moving to Designer.

And if Designer indeed is supposed to be a different beast altogether I assume that Drawplus then will be further developed too.

 

 

"Publishing to PDF or exporting to SVG is, in effect, that conversion tool (but built in to DrawPlus instead of being separate)."

 

Tried that ... SVG is not always properly converting, PDF - at least with me - worked better but lost the layer grouping.

 

I'm surprised it is accepted so easily. Apparently the number of Drawplus (or Photoplus, for that matter) projects in the world is not that big.

Think what would have happened if Microsoft - when moving from .xls to .xlsx - had said: "we won't support old .xls file anymore. Export in CSV format and import into the new Excel again. And rewrite your macros."

 

Anyway, it has not dampened my enthousiasm for Designer too much, so I'm still a happy bunny, despite this conversion issue.

[Import Serif DrawPlus DPP files directly]

What should you do with gradient meshes? The answer is very simple. Designer should have supported it. Making a successor to an already great product and then not support everything that product had on board is yet another bad decision.

Don't get me wrong. I like Designer very much - can't wait until it arrives for the Ipad - but I do feel Serif has made some mistakes while designing Designer (and Photo).

Even a separate conversion tool for the xxxxPlus to Affinity applications, with a caveat that not all functionality converts properly would have been better than nothing.

[Import Serif DrawPlus DPP files directly]

Now that I have got myself Affinity Designer(which is great, by the way) I am really shocked to learn that you cannot import Drawplus files, but have to perform some U-turn via SVG or PDF to do so. How can a company that on the one hand makes such beautiful products make such an incredible mistake. You can import all kinds of file types, except its own predecessor? Unbelievable!

The fact that the file structure of Designer is different may be so, but is of course totally irrelevant. Nobody needs an export to Drawplus. We only want to convert to Designer. If you can do it yourself via SVG, then Designer could do it directly too.

And what about the Designer files I am now going to make? Do I run the risk of losing them in -say- 10 years when Serif creates the successor to Designer?

(The same is valid for Affinity Photo and Photoplus files.)