Frozen Death Knight

Speaking of visibility, any chance that mask only assets can be previewed in black and white instead of just being empty? Might be a good idea as well to show a small icon of the object/layer type in one corner, which would help a lot with readability despite there being next to nothing in the thumbnails. If there are multiple layers in one asset I would simply use the top hierarchical layer that the other layers are nested inside, i.e. groups, symbols, clipping mask layers, etc.

Interesting. I tried it myself just now and can confirm that it says "Spiral". However, it's just as well to convert everything into curves. There is only one spiral shape that is compatible with 2.2.1. 2.3: Copy+pasted into 2.2.1:

I made a bunch of presets for the Spiral Tool. I encountered one problem where the preview thumbnails are very inconsistent and hard to see: In my honest opinion, I think that the shape previews should be just shown as thin vector lines rather than fills. All of the shapes I saved look the best when it's only vector lines. The fills just ruin the silhouettes. Doesn't help that the lines are all black and the fills are white. I suggest just dropping the whole fill aspect and just go with lines. Spirals can be used to build filled shapes, but you seldom make filled shapes with spirals. Also, after having made so many presets, I think it would be a good idea to make it so that hovering the thumbnail of each preset will actually preview on the canvas, just like how text fonts and layer blend modes behave. It takes a while to scroll through the list and applying multiple different presets, so being able to preview it when having a shape that works with that tool would be appreciated.

My guess is that it just converts it to a regular vector curve, just like it does when copy+pasting from Inkscape/other vector program inside Affinity. I use Inkscape occassionally just for the spiral shape and the vectors remain compatible across the board by copy+pasting.

Being able to scale in X and Y-axes separately could be powerful as well now when I think about it. Not to mention a shearing option. Would allow for easy effects such as squash and stretch in various ways.

This is my average experience using OpenCL: Been like that since it was added. I did make several reports about multiple bugs. Some have been fixed, but others are still there, like the severe brush lag. I also have compared GPU acceleration between Affinity, Photoshop, and Krita. Affinity performs the worst and I have tried the feature on at least 4-5 different computers with vastly different specs, this one in particular is running a 3060 card. I'll check the G-Sync thing and see if it improves anything. Edit: I had it on already. Shutting it off didn't help.

From my own point of view I think that "Force pixel alignment" should be renamed to "Snap to pixel grid" and then de-couple that from "Move by whole pixels", which should be renamed to "Snap to whole pixel grid". The renaming would help with connecting the relation between snapping and "Show pixel grid" that was added in this patch. As for separating the two snapping options, the reason why is that it is unintuitive to have to activate two buttons just to be able to fully snap to the pixel grid. I know I'm not the only one who've had this experience.

I found a limitation/bug. The Node Tool can throw you out of the operation when changing the nodes of a shape. Sometimes it works, but more often than not it breaks the operation. I also can't re-activate the operation by pressing Enter while using the Node Tool.

I tried duplicating a linked object and it kept the links intact, so good job on that! I hope there will be an option someday to use Duplicate Linked as an alternative to normal Duplicate. It would also be nice if it was possible to edit the Transform Origin while doing the operation to better position the rotation point without needing to undo and repeat the process. Edit: Just realised that I can activate the Transform Origin and edit it live without the window disappearing as well. This is awesome!

Thanks for adding this in! Been playing around with the settings and I like how many shape options there are packed into this tool. Agree with the above posts, but overall, nice job!

Isn't it already possible to snap to the pixel grid?

I do the same. OpenCL just doesn't work well with brushes at all, even with an Nvidia GPU. There are several brush related bugs tied to OpenCL and it overall runs worse than on the CPU with only a few exceptions, most of which are filters related.

Yes, you are correct that it isn't sharing the same settings (I thought it did because the settings I usually have are pretty close to the default for the Paint Mixer Brush), but the keybind is there yet there is no way to alter the settings for the tool. The UI is completely missing. Here's what actually happens. The Paint Brush Tool has different values for the Stabilizer than the Paint Mixer Brush Tool. The feature works for both, but only the former has the UI for it in the upper toolbar.

@Chris B Has this issue been logged? Stabilizer for the Paint Brush Tool is currently tied to the normal Brush Tool.

Agreed, but I would add like to add other things as well such as custom settings, tool sticky settings, macros, studio presets, and more. The devs added the ability to mass import content some versions ago and have done a lot of work to make user content easily shared across all Affinity software, so I hope they continue on with more export options too.

These two menus are pretty useful when working on massive canvases with tons of objects in a scene. Please add these to the Move Tool as well so there is less need to open up the Select menu at the top. There are already other select type operators in here, so I think it would make a lot of sense to add Select Same and Select Object here.

Just resized hundreds of images based on a specific height. I really, really needed this feature.

Regular duplication of symbols keeps the symbol status of the group, so I would consider this a bug as well.

Did you try the Add Pages method that @stokerg mentioned? It worked on my end, so it may work for you too.

Bump.

@tripplejaz You could try Inkscape in the meantime. It has a modifiers system and is all vector based. Would be cool to see that for Affinity as well, although there are non-destructive methods for working with mirrors, arrays, etc. using linked layers and symbols. If the devs ever decide to add vector smoothing/noise type tools it would be cool if it was possible to apply such settings on a layer or group basis. Expanding the Layer Effects settings to have more vector based tools could be a good way of implementing this I think.

Thanks for the help! I was able to salvage the most important parts of my work now. ^-^

@DWright Were you able to replicate the bug?

@stokerg Sent! ^^

Currently not at home, so I will send it later. Thanks!