Kuttyjoe

I started with Serif DrawPlus in 2008. The issues you're showing in this thread are at least as old as DrawPlus X3, but I guess these problems are much older since there were at least 7 or 8 versions before X3.

Also, some of the critical ones are missing.

Check out Serif's discontinued DrawPlus or Coreldraw to get an idea of what I'm talking about. DrawPlus was far more customizable than what's possible with Designer.

Then how about a toolbar that can be customized to hide the tools we don't need. Serif DrawPlus could do that. You could customize the whole UI and make a toolbar that had only the tools you needed. I created a toolbar that made sense for working with just stylus on a small screen and maximized my workspace that way. AD doesn't have any of that great functionality.

It's interesting that you're able to work fine with a ton of tiny dots in Illustrator as well. I had a project like that and Illustrator really struggled with it. Now that I have a brand new PC that's well beyond the old one, and Illustrator recently had a noticeable performance improvemen, I wonder if the same project will be much easier to deal with. I was trying to see if it were possible to do some of the texturing work that Affinity Designer does with raster brushes, but using vectors instead. It didn't work out very well. I'm going to give it another shot on the new machine and see how it works out.

Windows 10 virtual keyboard is extremely random. It pops up in some dialogs in some programs and does not pop up in other dialogs in the same programs. For years, it didn't pop up at all which I thought was aggravating considering that Windows 7 was just about perfect. But now, it's started popping up, but not in a predictable and useful way.

Version 1.7.3 doesn't have any of these problems. It's the very latest version that has issues. I tried uninstalling everything, and reinstalling but the same problems persist. Windows Ink was indeed the problem with not being able to go from mouse to stylus without the application partially freezing. I resolved that problem. But it still seems to freeze very quickly after launching the app. Yesterday I open the app, made a bunch of strokes just to test some brushes. Then I pressed and held Control Z. It froze and never recovered. All of these problems happen within a minute of launching the app. There are also regular pauses where the app freezes for a few seconds, then recovers. I haven't tried to see what happens if I just use a mouse and not touch the stylus at all. I use a Wacom Cintiq 27QHD with latest drivers. Windows 10 Home. AMD Ryzen 9 3900. Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics. 32 gigs ram.

lol. So, does this image inspire hope, or futility? I can't tell. If he got halfway up the incline, then that looks like hope. But, I can't imagine that he can push a boulder that size up that incline, so that makes it futile.

The knife tool is an incredible speed enhancer, but in order to have a very fast workflow with it, the software also needs to make very good use of key modifiers. While using the knife tool, you should be able to hold a key modifier and access other tools that are always needed rather than constantly going back to the toolbox to switch tools. For now, Affinity Designer makes very little use of key modifiers. Better use of key modifiers would be a game changer, in terms of workflow across all of the tools in Affinity Designer.

I wonder what would happen if one was using a mouse with just one button. I mean, it is possible. Recently I bought an old iMac, circa 2009 in order to bring back to life some projects involving very old software, plugins, etc. It came with one of the one-button Apple mice with the little plastic trackball in the middle. I would guess that there are probably still some people out there using one button mice.

Yeah, that would take it up another notch. To be able to choose for yourself when to focus the cursor inside a dialog would be even better. I wonder if anything has that level of customization.

Right there, you mentioned (rounded rectangles) in particular and stated that it was not a live effect in CS6. But it was absolutely live, elegant, and have great functionality. It did everything that is expected of a "live" effect and did it well. If you wish to characterize it as a workaround, then that's fine. I can't disprove or prove opinions, just the facts.

I quoted, and responded very specifically to your comment about "rounded rectangle corners" being live or not in CS6. In Illustrator CS6, you could create an ordinary shape, rectangle or otherwise, and apply rounded corners as a "live effect" through the effects menu. You could turn it on or off, or make adjustments to it after the fact, or even apply it to a layer, or to other objects. That's very much a live rounded corner. I did not comment on any other features or functions. I only pointed out that "rounded rectangle corners" was indeed a live effect in CS6. Nothing more.

Affinity Designer 1.8x is partially freezing within a few seconds of using any brush/eraser. I can still make some changes to the brush, but I can't touch any of the palettes, toolbar, or the "X" to close the program. I have to force quit every single time within a 20 seconds of using the brushes. I've reverted back to 1.7 where none of that is happening. Also, the wet edges problem is still not fixed. I'm on a Windows 10 PC. Edit: I have one more detail for this problem. It seems that I can not switch from stylus to mouse. I can use one or the other. If I use the stylus, then try to tap on any part of the UI, nothing works. I can't tap on anything, unless I use the stylus. If I keep at it for awhile, it may eventually begin to work again. Both the stylus and the mouse can make brush marks, but only one or the other can access the UI, palettes, toolbox, etc.

This bug is STILLLLLL not fixed in the very latest update, March 2020.

Keying in the desired value(s) in the already visible non-modal Transform panel means making a trip across the screen to wherever you keep that dialog open. That trip represents an extra step. Dismiss the dialog (press enter just like Illustrator), is another step. Then make another trip back across the screen back to your object is another step. That's 5 steps in Designer, and 4 in Illustrator. Plus two of Designer's steps are time consuming movements across the UI. It's much faster to do it all right there on the spot. It's not really a big deal for me personally because lots of things in every program require trips all over the UI to enter values, but where we can avoid those trips, we will save a little time. In this case, Illustrator is doing it faster and also doing it with less steps. I also do not believe that this is some kind of happy accident since Illustrator works this way with other dialogs including things like the character or text dialogs. With a single key command, you can not only open a text palette which may currently may not even be visible, but simultaneously placing the cursor in the box, and highlighting the current font name, so you can simply type the name of the font you're looking for. That's not likely a mere accident. Coreldraw does similar things. With key command you can pop up tiny dialog boxes right on top of your object to enter sizes, or change text characteristics, etc. None of that is likely to have been done by accident. But if it was, I'm not sure why it matters. That's incorrect. Rounded rectangles were indeed live effects in CS6 and the whole live effects system was very mature by CS6. And because Adobe does tend to revisit and improve existing features, Illustrator currently has the best rounded corner implementation of any popular vector software, by far. Any corner can be rounded at any time. Even if you just take the pen tool and draw a path with 3 points. If the one in the middle is a corner, you can grab it and round it, chamfer, fillet, or straight, directly on that point. And there's a setting that determines how the rounded corner behaves when you scale the object. It's thorough.

I'm not sure what you're calling personal insults, but whatever that is, I don't think it's worse than you constantly spreading false information. How about this. Tell the truth, or shut up. Deal?

That was a very interesting video.

Exactly, what good is your 35 years of experience, when everything you say is wrong? It makes no sense. I'm expressing how this tool is being used by my own experiences. For decades. Those are facts, not nonsensical speculation. But you're here telling us that it only has certain uses, and the results are never better than this or that. Those are lies. It's that simple. First of all, I never said you "can't" or "shouldn't" use a separate program for tracing. I questioned why you would argue in favor of it being a separate program. I used it as a separate program during the 90's when Adobe had a separate program called Streamline, and Corel had a separate program called "Corel Trace". You probably don't remember those with your 35 years of amazing, all knowing experience. A better question is, why NOT bring these functions into a single program? People are using this feature daily, several times a day, everyday. Count the steps. 1. Open a separate program. 2. Import an image. 3. Trace it. 4. Save it. 5. Open another program. 6. import that trace result into the 2nd program. 6 steps. Or you could, 1. Import the image into your already open main program. 2. Trace it. 2 steps. It's 6 steps, vs 2 steps x however often you do it. Do the math. As for it being essential, I've already detailed that in a rather long-winded post above. Everything is essential, and nothing is essential. It depends on the work you're doing. 90% of Serif's DrawPlus, and Affinity Designer are not essential, for me. I have enough sense to understand that. With that little bit of common sense, I can refrain from concluding, therefore these things also can not be essential to anybody else because I have 35 years of experience and I know things.

It doesn't matter if you have 500 years of experience. Everything you've said is incorrect. Absolutely everything. I could go line by line and prove it but why bother. You have an agenda. You have decided that you hate Adobe so facts are unimportant. Good luck with that.

LOL Some of us just can't help it.

No. I also don't fantasize that I know all that there is to know.

It's kind of amazing that this can't be disabled.

I suppose the problem with understanding "very good" is in your idea about how tracing is actually being used. If you assume it's about converting a photograph into an artistic vector rendition, then it make sense. But for people working in print, vector tracing is about faithfully recreating images with limited colors such as logos as vectors that can be color separated, and/or enlarged to any size with perfect quality, for print. Makes sense, right? The only question is whether or not there is vector software that is up to that task. The answer is, absolutely! And there is absolutely software that is not good enough for this work. I've been using vector tracing this way for decades. Since the days of Adobe streamline, and Corel Trace as separate programs. Bringing them into Coreldraw and Illustrator simply made the process faster. It's odd to see people like Jet arguing against it. A quality vector tracing tool for the work I do is one that can achieve an accurate result, or near accurate result and do it in a short amount of time. I did say that above actually. " One click and a few seconds worth of adjustments and I'm done. " Illustrator's tracing absolutely does that. Coreldraw has historically not been up to the task, but the latest update is a real improvement, though still not as good as Illustrator. Inkscape is OK, but messy. DrawPlus was too unpredictable for serious use. And there are some others with varying degrees of accuracy and time. But Illustrator also has other tools that work well with tracing. For example, if I trace a logo and get a pretty good result that still needs work, I switch to the brush tool, which can toggle the node editor and the magical path smoothing tool. I don't actually use the brush, just the node editor and the path smoother. I select the object, and go over a line and it magically smooths out. I do this at the speed of someone doing doing rough sketches. It is an incredibly fast workflow to get a great result. Mission accomplished. But what if vector tracing did not exist? Logo recreation that takes me between 10 seconds, and 2 minutes, might end up taking me 45 minutes to redraw with other tools. I can't speak for what this tool means for anyone else, but I do know very well how critical it is for the work I do. Think about it. I'm working at X dollars per hour. A customer sends me a logo and says, send me back a "pdf" version of this. You may not know it, but in the print industry, there's so much frustration with customers providing garbage quality raster art that many company are flat out refusing any "photoshop" art. That has also caused a brain drain where company no longer have people with the skills to even deal with photoshop art, but that's another, interesting conversation. Anyway, "pdf" is customer speak for "vector" as customers nowadays are much less knowledgeable than 20 years ago when even customers knew what "camera ready" art meant. So vector tracing is critical. Another example. A friend of mine is a tradition artist. She brings her black and white sketches with all of their pencil marks and smears and wants them to be prepared for print, and colorized. I scan it in. Do a few seconds of adjustments in Photoshop. Then bring it into Illustrator and vector trace it. Now I have art that is ready to to be colorized. This is very, very quick work because of the tracing. Depending on the art and the print shop, I could also have just colorized it in Photoshop but as I said, some shops see Photoshop and instantly refuse because by now, they don't have that expertise in house. There are some people who actually think that art MUST be vectorized in order to be printed. Anyway, I vectorize her art, and colorize it and do it all in a very efficient way thanks to not just Photoshop, but also Illustrator's superb vector tracing. Another example. I have another friend who creates art traditionally, but he draws on transparent film, and treats the film like layers! Each film will be a different color when finished. He adds registration marks, scans it into Photoshop, cleans up a little, then over to Illustrator to vector trace. Then, each film/layer simply gets colored and now he has color separated art ready for print. None of those examples are about artistry. All of them are about accuracy and utility.

It's ok. Just trust that there's more going on than what you know.