Rudolphus

Hi There Everyone, 
    My 1st Official upload. I'm not a Graphic Designer. As a matter of fact, I didn't pick up a graphics hobby until a few years after I retired, but... still hope a few Affinity folks enjoy the work. The Styles file as well as the working layers are in the zip file. 

Carbon Fire Zip.zip

Here are two of my Badge (Label) Assets sets, these assets are plain (silhouettes) + vintage (grouped) vector curve(s) based badges/labels. The two sets do contain various forms of these. NOTE that the assets for the below shown vintage badge set don't include any preapplied text, it's below just shown this with text way in order to give you an idea how they could look with some used/applied text on them!
 


 
The corresponding assets files:
Badge_Assets.afassets  
- Have fun with these free to reuse badges!

It would be very appreciated if we could make rectangular selections throughout a text frame, thus selecting only the characters included inside the rectangle.
In other softwares, it is doable if you add the Alt/Option key pressed when tracing the selection. 
This is notably useful when you edit common text laid out in columns with tabs, instead of in tables (e.g. a document where each line ends with a price or a quantity and you want to give a specific format to this part). 

or:
Glass of milk            200 ml                 1,80 €  
 
This topic originates from this one, created in the V1 feedback section:
where @MikeTO 🤝 exposes another reason it could be helpful. 
 

Apps: All
Platforms: macOS & Windows
In any of the shape tools, picture frame tools and artboard tool you can now cmd+click (macOS) or ctrl+click (Windows) to bring up a dialog to manually specify the size and other properties of the object you want to create. The new object will be created in the position that you clicked, and you have the option in the dialog to change whether that position relates to a specific corner, side or the centre of the shape being created.
For example, here I want to create a circle with 20mm diameter centred at the corner of the square. So I choose the Ellipse tool and then cmd / ctrl + click over the corner of the square. I then get the option to manually enter the size I want the circle to be, set the anchor position to be centre, and hit OK.

Each tool will remember the settings of the last time you created that shape. So in this case the next time I cmd+click with the Ellipse tool it will still be set to 20mm x 20mm anchored to centre.
Some additional notes about this feature:
When the dialog is up you can commit by clicking OK, hitting Return / Enter or clicking anywhere else on the document You can cancel by clicking Cancel or hitting Esc You can click-drag on any of the labels in these dialogs to change the values. So here you could click-drag on the "Width:" label for example. Hover + mouse roll over the values also changes them of course (along with Shift or Alt modifiers to increase / decrease steps made by a factor of 10). If you create a shape by dragging it out on your document, that will also set the W+H for the next time you cmd+click. e.g. if you drag out a rectangle at 100mm x 50mm and want to create another one you can just cmd+click and that size will be preset.

Apps: All
Platforms: macOS and Windows
When in the move tool, as well as other object creation tools such as shapes, picture frames and artboard tool, pressing Return or Enter will now show a new dialog, allowing you to specify a precise distance you want to move your current selection. e.g. below I am moving the apple 100px to the left and 200px down. As you can see that also shows what it means in terms of what angle and distance that relates to. You can alternatively choose to manually specify distance and angle. 

The original position of the object is indicated with a light grey box.

In addition you can chose to duplicate the object to the new position, and also specify how many copies of it you want to make. In the below example I've moved the item 200px at a 45 degree angle and checked the duplicate box, and 5 copies. This results in a total of 6 apples.

 
As you are adjusting any of the values you will get a live preview of your result. You can choose to cancel the operation with the Cancel button (or Esc) or commit with the OK Button (or Return / Enter) or simply by clicking off the dialog.
The dialog will optionally remember it's previous values the next time you bring it up when you have "Previous Settings" checked, meaning you can move multiple objects one by one by the same amount (for example in a case where items are on different spreads / artboards or in other cases where achieving a multiple selection of them to begin with is difficult). A Reset button is also available to quickly zero all the values in the dialogs to start from scratch.

As well as manually typing the values in, you can also change them by click-drag on any of the labels, or using mouse roller when hovering over any of the input boxes.

Rotation

As has been requested during the beta of this feature we have now added the additional option of Rotation. This again makes it easy to rotate an object by a specific amount. It also opens up some useful options when used in combination with duplicate.

e.g. in the example below I have created a ring of 25 evenly spaced squares, by moving the transform origin of the square and choosing a rotation of 14.4 degrees with 24 copies. TIP: you don't need to get your calculator out as all of these fields accept equations. So in this case you could just type "360/25" in the Rotation field to work out 14.4 degrees is the required value.

You can also try playing with a rotation and distance step on duplicates for various effects. e.g. below a couple examples with a line and a star where copies are being stepped by both a distance and rotation:


 

Hello everyone, 
there is one thing that I have to do every time I open a document: go over to the upper right corner and switch the Swatches from "Colors" to "Document". As I mostly do typesetting of simple-coloured documents with two or three colours, I don't really need a huge swatch of every colour that I won't use, but I always need to use those two or three concrete colours that I have already defined. 

My suggestion: could this setting be saved in the document and reopen in its last state, same as the newly opened document always opens on the page where I left off? 
EDIT: One more thing came to mind. Could you also do this for the other toolboxes? Like it opens in Paragraph, as I left it while saving (so far so good), but Bullets and Numbering open again, although I have never used this feature in my books and brochures. I mean, it is definitely important and it has to be there, but does it need to open every time and take up space for other toolboxes that I actually use? 
Also, in the Mac version, there is obviously a hard limit on the Swatch panel size, so it cannot be resized to occupy only one line of colours, it always takes up space for like five lines. On Windows version, it's ok. And I'm talking about all the production as well as beta versions in V2.
Thanks for the consideration, have a nice day!

This could be a new dimension of value, enabling professionals to effortlessly apply intricate procedural setups. Please, consider to introduce this feature too.
Thanks. 

If only, as with the issue with the numpad, we could have modifiers with the tools too.
It would be so much easier to assign user shortcuts.

Is it possible to add this to a keyboard shortcut too (e.g. so I can assign it to N)? So that if you create a new layer with a selection of objects, it moves the selected objects to the new layer and if you don't have a selection, it creates a new layer? I would definitely prefer that over the more simple New Layer command.

Apps: Publisher and Designer
Platforms: All
In the layers panel if you alt-click add new layer when you have a selection, all items in that selection are moved to the new layer created. In other words this behaves similar to grouping, but rather than creating a group it puts your selection into a new layer.
Additionally for desktop versions you will find a new option in the right click menu for "Move Selection to New Layer" which achieves the same thing.
 


This makes it far easier to organise your work into layers, without having to create an empty layer first and drag the items you want into it.

Great addition @Ash! Can you add the standard OPACITY slider (and blend modes would be great too) to the Guides, Columns, and Grids color pickers? It would make them all MUCH more useful and avoid lots of visibility issues when interacting with different backgrounds, as objects behind them can obfuscate their visibility when colors are solid. Thanks for all you do!!!

Do you have any plans to add "Presets" to the Guides manager?  Like there is for Grids.

This is very nice feature and very usefull.
BTW, how you managed to change the guide from solid line to dash-dot in the example?
I'd like to see these improvements to this panel:
To change the color of any H&V guide. To have separate Gutters for Rows and Columns. Possibility to place Column Guides on whole pages or spread, not only inside margins. Angled guides. If Spread Origin is changed then Column Guides should start from the new 0, 0 point.

Apps: All
Platforms: Windows, macOS and iPad
Holding onto any tool shortcut will now just put you in that tool temporarily until you release the shortcut key - at which point you will return to your previous tool. So for example when you are using the pen tool you could hold V to change to move tool to move your curve, and then on release be immediately back in pen tool. Another useful example would be when in Brush Tool, you could hold E to put you in Eraser and release to toggle back to Brush.

Apps: All
Platforms: Windows, macOS and iPad
There is now an option in the guide manager to change the colour of your guides. On desktop you can set this by going to guide manager (View -> Guides... or double click on any guide) and find the colour preference in the bottom left hand side of the dialog. In the example below this being set to red:

On iPad the colour setting is available from the ring towards the top of the guides panel (available from the view drop down menu or again by double tapping on a guide).

Apps: Affinity Publisher
Platforms: All
The ability to insert cross-references from one part of a document to another—for example, "For more information, see page 24"—has been added to Affinity Publisher.
Cross-references are managed on the Cross-References Panel (Window > References > Cross-References).

To insert a cross-reference, create an insertion point in a text object, and then click 'Insert Cross-Reference' (the circled plus symbol) at the lower-right of the panel. Inserting a cross-reference is also available from the right click menu when you are editing text. On the resulting dialog:
- Select the cross-reference's target, which can be an existing anchor, paragraph or index marker.
- Specify the text to be displayed by the cross-reference.
- Optionally, apply formatting and limit the amount of quoted text displayed by any field you've inserted into the display text.

Selecting a target
Use the upper part of the dialog to select a target. Choose the target's type (Anchor, Paragraph, or Index Marker) and then select the required target in the list below.
If too many targets are listed, use the Filter text and Filter style options to limit what's listed based on target text and/or paragraph style.
Specifying what a cross-reference displays
The Text option specifies what your cross-reference will display This can be a simple attribute of the target, such as its page number or quoted text, or you can enter complete phrasing into the box, e.g. "For further information, see 'Deciduous varieties' on page 264".
Click the downward-pointing arrow at the field's upper-left corner to insert an attribute of the target or a commonly used special character.

Using presets
Phrases can be saved as presets for use across all your documents. Presets also ensure your cross-references adhere to a publication's style guides.
Fields in cross-references are automatically hyperlinked to their target when you export to PDF.
Limiting quoted text
Character style and other formatting options in the lower part of the dialog become available when the insertion point is immediately before or after a field, or when a text selection encompasses a field. (If more than one field is selected, the formatting options affect only the first one.)
The Page Number, Above/Below and List/Note Number fields display the corresponding attribute's value in full. All other fields display text that might be lengthy, such as a full paragraph. Use the 'Limit displayed length' option to restrict them to a sensible amount of text.
Quoted text can be limited to a number of words or the first instance of an 'end character', whichever occurs soonest. You can also choose whether to include an ellipsis or encountered end character in your cross-reference.
More about the Cross-References panel
When you insert a cross-reference to a paragraph, Affinity Publisher creates an anchor at the paragraph's start and uses that as the target. You can rename the anchor, if you wish, via the Anchors Panel.
The Source Spread option allows you to narrow the scope of cross-references listed on the panel, e.g. to the current spread or a specific spread.
With the insertion point at a cross-reference or target in document text, options at the foot of the panel allow you to instantly focus the document view on its counterpart.
Finally, changes to a document may result in out-of-date values in cross-references. For example, changing pagination, section names, or paragraph text at a target. The foot of the panel also includes options to update them individually or all at once.
We would love you to try out this new feature. Let us know what you think of it, or if you encounter any bugs or unexpected results.

Exporting to PDF requires changing the ALL SPREADS to ALL PAGES every time. The below the line settings can be saved as a preset but not that. Who always exports PDFs as Spreads? None of the printers I work with will work with that. It is a huge potential for error, having to change it every time I export.

attached.
Test Live Perspective Bottle.afdesign

Kheyyy...
I was wondering how long it would take to make a vector portrait. Answer: a lot.
Introducing my friend Nathalie:

 
... and wireframe preview:

Nice! Thank you @MikeTO!
It really works like this. I have tried Affinity help to find solution, in vain. Luckily, there is this forum full of experienced users.

Er… it's a bit more complex though:
If you have only one page in Publisher, the Photo persona Crop tool will behave as expected from the Photo app. If you have multiple pages, the canvas Crop tool automagically becomes the vector crop tool. Correspondingly, if you open a multipage document in Affinity Photo, its Crop tool will be the vector one.
I suspect this is "by design" although frankly I find it a bit weird.
And it's already in v1 like that.

You are correct, there are some inconsistencies in behaviour here with arrow keys and Magic Mouse. Have to be honest it's unlikely we'll clear all these up for 2.1 release, but will definitely put a mini focus for 2.2 of tidying all these up - will create a dedicated thread for any mouse scroll / arrow key / label click/drag, etc. field adjustment issues to be reported and we'll get them knocked out.

Assuming no last minute issues it will be this week

Hello I just wanted to make a clean thread asking for backward compatible files between v2 and v1 of programs.
I didn't had any reason to need it till now but now I do notice what a big problem it is.
First of all now that the summer time that I have most of my workload I did noticed problems with designer v2 performance and I wished to move back on v1 till it is fixed, but nope. I can't open v2 files, I need to do workarounds with sketchy imports.
Second, I wanted to work on my macbook from home so I tried to get the designer v2 trial there to see what's up, but nope OS not supported so it can only use v1. But I use v2 on workstation and this is another roadblock.
So yeah dear Serif, please we need backward compatibility.
It is understandable that there is tools that are simple not available on v1 but this can be bypassed by automatically converting to curves whatever is not gonna work and display a warning of losing the editability of some objects if the file is saved with the older program version.
Thanks

Hi All,
Another build has just been made available (2.1.0.1790) including a few more fixes. They are listed in the fix list thread here.
Nearly there!
Thanks,
Ash