[Asset Manager - Easy Guide // Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer & Affinity Publisher]

When adding elements from inside designer, you dont have to add them (bubbles) separately. Select everything and each element or group will become an asset.

[Creating compound inside symbol doesn't update symbol]

I had a button/icon defined as a symbol. It's a filled circle with a white shapes on top. I used it everywhere but decided I wanted to try it in a different colour on an other artboard, without changing the other artboards. To change the fill and not the Icon I wanted to create a compound, so I could re-color the symbol without losing the shapes/icon on the circle.

When I selected the layers inside the symbol and converted them to a compound, not each instance of the symbol had the same change.

They DID all change into a compound but when I selected the shapes inside the compound to 'substract', only the active shape was affected. The symbol in the librady doesn't follow the substract changes either.

[Artboard divider in layer panel?]

When I scroll through the layer panel, it's hard to see where the next artboard starts. With many objects on each artboard with multiple artboards, it's a fuss to find a layer at the bottom, especially when it is locked.

 

A clear divider between artboards would help a lot.

[Editing inside a group]

I wanted to use cross-selection on the artboard. So if I am on the artboard with let's say 2 groups on top of eachother. Now I want to use the cross selection to select elements from 1 group only. If they don't overlap, you can select with CTRL+drag select. But if the groups overlap, you will select elements from both groups.

If I could freeze everything on the canvas EXCEPT the elements of 1 group, I can select and edit safely inside that group without touching anything outside of the group.

The layers panel won't work with many elements in a group or elements that are not listed together (many, times CTRL+click)

[Editing inside a group]

Is there a way to access/open a group without ungrouping it and selecting ONLY inside that group? In other words, I want to be able to drag-select items inside a group without selecting any elements outside of the group.

[Sync Assets and Color Palettes]

+1

I have a neat assets lib for our applications which makes me able to quickly mock up a screen. I add assets regularly.

I have a collegue who should be able to use the same assets, so that we remain consistent in designs of all of our screens.

It would therefore be very useful to sync assets from/to a single network resource (google drive, network drive, ...)

[Vector/pattern fill]

+1!

 

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[Width and height transform values in %]

You can enter percentages in the width/height property fields under the transform tab.

I just wanted to resize a rectangle by typing because I wanted it to be exactly half the width. I am lazy and bad at calculating by head so I figured I just enter "50%" in the width field of the rectangle under the transform tab.

And it worked

[Ideas for Designer 1.7]

Please please these:

 

Pattern fill

Would be very nice to be able to use pattern fills next to gradient/solid fills. 1st step maybe a preset (lines, dots, grids) and later on custom.

 

Artboard title/border marking

I typically copy a lot of artboards to keep track of older versions and decision making. Next to that, each 'current' artboard could have several states/views. This results in quite a lot of artboards from which a lot are dismissed or not yet decided upon. I'd love to be able to either change the border of the 'current' versions or perhaps change the colour/background of the artboard titles.

[Snap to pixel]

I am using that constantly. On scaling however, pixels still end up anti aliased, all around a rectangle for example. Also, if you scale multiple elements, the scale value can very well end up at 1/2 pixel, you end up with anti aliasing at two or four sides.

Also, the 'move by pixel' option keeps confusing me, I find myself checking it on and off all the time trying to keep pixel perfect shapes pixel perfect.

 

Edit:

just tested it - Force pixel alignment button on + move by whole pixel on > create (pixel perfect) rectangle > drag rectangle > still moves on half (?) pixels

 

Also: draw a rectangle pixel perfect, resize by value, you end up with the other sides anti aliased (obvjously)

 

 

[Snap to pixel]

In good old Fireworks the shortcut key CTRL-K (Snap to Pixel) forced snap all of a shape's nodes to pixel edges. This is especially useful for avoiding anti aliasing edges where you want sharp edges. Would be a very helpful feature since now I often see myself dragging edge nodes to pixel edges after scaling shapes.

[Keyboard zoom centered around selection]

Sorry to bother with Fireworks features but this one I happened to use a lot.

In AD, zooming in with CTRL/+ currently zooms in on the center of the viewport. Fireworks used to do that when you didn't have anyuthing selected. However, if you selected an element on your viewport and hit CTRL/+ you'd zoom in on the selection until ultimately it's full screen centered (similar to double clicking on a thumbnail in the layers panel).

Makes sense since you're working on those and want to watch them closer, not?

[Double click on thumbs in the layer panel!]

I noticed that if I double clicked on an Artboard thumb, the viewport jumps to full screen view of that artwork. NICE!

Then, I tried double clicking on a thumb of an item in the layer panel, and BAM, element selected, zoomed in to full screen view!

Is there a way to, when you select an element on your artboard, jump to that element in the layers panel while expanding the tree there if needed?

[Layer opacity affects symbol opacity]

Oh wow that's really confusing since I am changing the layer opacity on the instance, not the opacity of the curve inside the symbol container.

Thanks for explaining me how it is intended to work. I now also noticed that I need to watch very closely to re-enable the sync again once I am done or any other symbol I make changes to only changes the instance, the rest wont be changed. Tricky.

[Layer opacity affects symbol opacity]

I have two instances of a symbol in a layer. One of them, I want to make transparent. I assume I can treat one instance as a layer and set its opacity, how would I otherwise apply layer effects to one instance?

However, when I adjust the LAYER opacity on a SYMBOL, all other instances of the symbol also go transparent. Looks like a bug to me, since I am not editing the curve inside the symbol.