tim1724

Apps: All
Platforms: macOS, Windows and iPad
 
We have now added a spiral tool which is available from the shape tools flyout. This is something we have had many requests for, but also varying requests as to the type of result wanted. For that reason we have tried to make this as flexible as possible, both offering different types of spiral and variables to adjust.
When you create a spiral you will see from the context toolbar the different options available. Here are some examples of what you can create with the tool:
Spiral Type: Linear

Spiral Type: Decaying

Spiral Type: Semi-Circular
This type replicates the way many people have been creating a spiral in Affinity - effectively by joining decreasing semi circular arcs together.  With this type we also offer a counter Semi-circular option which returns the spiral back on itself:

Spiral Type: Fibonacci

Spiral Type: Plotted

 
 

Yes please!
 
I've run into this exact problem. Right now Affinity Designer can export with pixel dimensions (when "set viewBox" is unchecked) or with height="100%" width="100%" (when "set viewBox" is enabled). I'd like to have a third option, to set the height and width using the actual dimensions of the artboard, in either mm or inches. (Ideally one could choose the unit in the SVG export options, but just using the document units would also be acceptable.)
 
Otherwise one has to play the "guess what dpi setting the software on the other end uses" game, which is never fun. (And even worse is when you need to open your SVG in multiple programs, which all assume different default dpi settings.)

It seems that the tool has two rules:
if a path is closed, offset either outward or inward otherwise the path is open, so offset both outward and inward The first Fill option, "Auto closed", results in the behaviour described above.
The second Fill option, "Force open", results in a closed path being considered as unjoined at end/start and then the open path rule is followed
The third Fill option, "Force closed", results in an open path being considered as having a linear segment joining end to start (as happens in Affinity Boolean operations) and then the closed path rule is followed.

Status: Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Designer
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download: Download
 
Auto-update: Not available
 
Hello,
If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry.
This beta is significantly different from the 1.8.x version available for purchase - we strongly recommend that you do not use this beta for real work as data could be lost and the files you save are not guaranteed to open in previous / future versions of Affinity Designer.
Thanks again for your continued support!
Many thanks!
Matt
 
Changes this time
- Fix for Select Same and Select Object when they encounter text objects
- Enable image placement options in Designer (you can now choose Linked or Embedded) and also Resource Manager (from the View menu)
- Added option for Designer to be able to show/hide overflow text - particularly useful for text on a path
- Application icon updated to fit the 'Big Sur' visual style, also document icons updated. Misc other Big Sur fixes.
- Fix for terrible rendering problems - particularly affected cropped items with layer effects applied
- Added ability to rotate canvas if you have a scroll wheel mouse (or two-finger vertical drag on your touchpad) if you hold down Command. This will rotate around the mouse cursor location. Holding down Shift in addition to Command while scrolling will rotate around the centre of the view.
Changes Since 1.9.0
- Contour tool.
- Select Same / Select Object functionality. I'm happy to consider requests for extra options, so if you have a favourite, just say...
- Improved performance with large documents. I will aim to improve this further over time.
- Added a new “Divide” blend mode.
- Allowed snapping to the bounds of the pixel selection.
 
To be notified about all future Mac beta updates, please follow this beta notification thread 
To be notified when this update comes out of beta and is fully released to all Affinity Designer customers, please follow this release notification thread

Hi antonkudin,

Thanks for the updates - it is definitely a Separated Mode issue. I've reproduced it here on Catalina.
I'll get this logged, thanks again!

Hi Robert Petras

I have passed your comments on to development and this is something they're already aware off! 

Thanks for letting us know.

Hi Affinity Team,
I was so excited to see Affinity products on Apple's WWDC 2020 Platforms State of the Union screens multiple times. Congratulations to the Team!
1. PROBLEM
At 14:05 we can see how Affinity Photo works seamlessly on macOS 11, however in reality the Toolbar doesn't work at all. 
We can not use any Toolbar's items and we need to use the shortcuts or the quick help to jump from one Persona to another.
I know, I know... it's early macOS Beta with a totally new Toolbar functionalities.
2. QUESTION
Yet I would like to know when Affinity start the new Beta period for those folks who are brave enough to test and use Affinity products on macOS 11 Beta system on a daily basis.
I would be glad if I could sign up to this opening Beta program because I desperately need to access to the Toolbar. Please, let me know how it is possible. Thank you!
Looking forward to your respond and thanks again!
Best regards,
Robert
App Developer and UI/UX Designer
3. UPDATE
When I put Affinity in Full screen, suddenly all of the toolbar items work again. Hurray!

Status: Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Designer
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download: Download
Auto-update: Not available.
 
Hello,
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the first beta of Affinity Designer 1.8 for macOS.
Affinity Designer 1.8 is a significant change to the currently shipping 1.7 version. Files edited in this version will not be backwards-compatible with the shipping 1.7 version. As such, we would not recommend using this 1.8 version for critical or production work at this stage. It is inevitable that there were will be a number of issues with 1.8 but we hope these will be minor and aim to resolve any issues very quickly, so please use it and explore the improvements, but also do keep in mind that you may find snags and we would appreciate your help with finding and reporting these to us.
If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry.
With all that said, we hope that you will enjoy the new capabilities introduced in this release and we look forward to any and all feedback you give to us.
Many thanks!
Matt
 
Fixes
Overhauled the “File -> New” dialog - user templates are now supported Implemented unified toolbar for appropriately modern macOS versions Improved the results of Expand Stroke Improved the reliability of Boolean Geometry operations Fixed issues with grids which appeared to jump while zooming and had issues with gutters Improved dragging objects between artboards (takes into account "Edit All Layers" toggle) Improved geometric add to allow a single shape so we can unite shapes to remove overlapping areas Improved SVG export to not simplify structure, as some people require the original structure Fixed Styles to show styles that would normally be invisible Fixed selection of artboards and / or contents Fixed EPS import sporadically failing to load objects Fixed PDF export so embedding colour profile always converts image colour spaces to match the profile Fixed crash when loading some corrupt JPEGs (valid image data, but corrupt following data) Improved embedded document bounding boxes Fixed deletion of brushes / styles / etc to actually remove the raster data (to reduce file size) Fixed PSD export to include checks for empty rasterised layers Fixed PSD export of hidden layers Fixed angle cursors when the view has been rotated Fixed Layer Effects not handling changes to document DPI when the dialog is open (using Points as a unit would continue to use the old DPI) Fixed crash on vector export for specific arrangement of composites and clips Added Remove Columns button on the context toolbar for Designer and Photo for text frames with columns for documents created in Publisher Improved memory use with branching undo history and with replacing image nodes Updated PANTONE Solid and Bridge Palettes Fixed Create Palette from CMYK images results in RGB colours Improved performance of operations with large selections and improved performance of making selections of large numbers of objects Fixed selection problems with multiple objects of varying line weights Improved PDF import support for DeviceN bitmaps based on LAB colour space Improved PDF export of clashes between bitmaps with/without k-only Fixed PDF export "Rasterise nothing" allowing through bitmaps with alpha channels Fixed crash importing PSD files containing embedded colour profiles with unicode characters in their name Improved performance of PDF import with groups containing more than 5,000 children Fixed OpenType that could fail to apply 'liga' near end of line Fixed Text Justification to split ligatures correctly Improved PDF import matching of unknown fonts  
To be notified about all future Mac beta updates, please follow this beta notification thread 
To be notified when this update comes out of beta and is fully released to all Affinity Designer customers, please follow this release notification thread

I just ran across a workaround for messy expand stroke output. (first video attached)
The amount of superfluous extra nodes is affected by miter limit settings.
(regardless of joining, the miter limit affects all 3 - rounded, bevel and miter alike)
The higher the miter limit the fewer junk nodes, the lower the limit the more you get.
 
This isn't a fix for what I'm dubbing the "sawtooth overlap bug" (second video attached), that is the major problem I'm running into with nodes. When a large stroke overlaps itself it renders a sawtooth that vectorizes that way and looks very strange.  This sawtooth is unaffected by any of the stroke settings, it just happens in tight corners with large strokes.
 

Miter Limit and Junk Nodes.mov Sawtooth_Bug.mov

When defining a stroke width, Affinity Designer (and Publisher) currently converts decimals more than one place to tenths.  
It is important to have the ability to specify decimals in the stroke width of a line up to four decimal places so that the software can be used to define vector cut lines in laser engraving software.  
Case in point - the users manual for Trotec Job Control states that for vector lines to cut with a laser, you must set them at a width of "0.001 mm or 0.00005 inches" (see attached screenshot).  
You currently cannot do that with Affinity Designer/Publisher, if you type in a width of "0.0036pt" (equal to 0.00005 inches) as the stroke width, the software will convert 0.0036 to zero.  Actually anything less than 0.1 will get rounded down to zero.  
This is important functionality if we were to completely replace Illustrator & InDesign.  
Thanks.  

Status: Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Designer
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download: Here
Hello,
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the beta of Affinity Designer 1.7 for macOS.
Designer 1.7 is a significant change to the currently shipping 1.6 version. Files edited in this version will not be backwards-compatible with the shipping 1.6 version. As such, we would not recommend using this 1.7 version for critical or production work at this stage. It is inevitable that there were will be a number of issues with 1.7 but we hope these will be minor and aim to resolve any issues very quickly, so please use it and explore the new features, but also do keep in mind that you may find snags and we would appreciate your help with finding and reporting these to us.
If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry.
It’s also worth noting that we aren’t done yet - we are still working through reported bugs from previous releases and hope to fix as many as possible before the final release of 1.7.
With all that said, we hope that you will enjoy the new capabilities introduced in this initial release and we look forward to any and all feedback you give to us.
Many thanks,
Matt
 
Affinity Designer 1.7 - Changes since last Beta release
- Fix for crash in Export dialog when only one Artboard is present
- Fix for occasional crash when using Construction points
- Improved Freehand import slightly - failing to read all of a file shouldn't force it to produce a 'failed to load' response, instead we just load the bits that we *could* read
- Improvements to HSL adjustment
- PDF import and export improvements
- Fix for very poorly named Styles (oops)
- Sub-brush editing improvements
- New splash screen and Persona icons
 

Affinity Designer 1.7 - Changes Since Last 1.6 Release
 
Tools
- We've overhauled most of the core tools, adding subtle new features to make you more productive:
   - Node tool has a new 'Transform Mode' which provides a containing box for the selected nodes and allows for more freeform editing of the nodes.
   - Node and Pen tools have an utterly amazing Construction mode which gives easy access to common construction features to help you build complicated shapes or intersections accurately and easily, giving you simple access to parallels, right angles, reflected and mirrored angles, in addition to circular construction snaps and all construction intersections. This really needs a video to show how to use it - but it's awesome.
   - Pen tool now has a 'rubber band' mode and also a mode to allow future curves to be added to the current object's curves (for example, the character 'a' is constructed of two curves in a single 'curve object' and this mode makes that construction simpler).
   - Node tool can now auto-snap nodes if you drag a node from one curve over the top of a node from another (selected) curve and pause, it will offer to snap to the same geometry as the node you're hovering over (ie,  modify the on and off-curve nodes to match). This is really useful for trying to reconstruct areas of one curve from another curve.
   - Node tool now allows for lasso selection of nodes by holding the Alt/Option key and dragging a selection lasso.
   - Pencil tool now offers a 'sculpt' mode that allows for extending or manipulating curves in a more natural way. More to come in this area soon.
   - Many tools now allow for 'Alignment widgets' which you can toggle the visibility of in the context toolbar. When enabled you can visually adjust the alignment or even, for example, 'align to centre, snapped to the left edge of this object' by simply click/dragging.
   - Fill tool correctly allows editing of skewed fill handles and newly-created skewed fills draw much nicer now.
   - Ruler origin can be edited by simply dragging the area where the rulers intersect each other - it can even be snapped onto objects in the document.
   - Guides can be edited in most tools by simply dragging a guide in the ruler area.
   - Grid setup is now more interactive: origin can be dragged, axis scale adjusted and angle adjusted on-document, complete with snapping to objects and angles in the document to help you reconstruct useful grids from finished artworks or sketches.
   - By enabling 'Edit in Plane' on the new Isometric Studio, tools can edit objects and appear to make those edits along the currently active plane - extremely useful for artists who enjoy working with any axonometric projections.
   - You can now drag the rotation centre point (when enabled on the context toolbar) while holding Ctrl and it will translate the object - this is actually very useful for positioning and snapping objects relative to others.
   - Shapes tools now have presets so you can create your own favourite shape setups and more easily use them again.
   - There are just far too many subtle tool changes to mention here, but hopefully you'll find the tools much improved 
 
General
- New brushes, styles and assets are now shipped with the product.
- Visible bleed (accessed from the View menu) so you can more easily design into the bleed area - a common feature request.
- “Alternate futures” for document history have been added. Traditionally, if you roll back the undo history then do something else all your changes after that point are lost. Designer will now display a small branch icon in the history tab when you do this. Pressing that button will cycle between all the different “futures” after that history entry - meaning you will never lose work you have done.
- New 'Isometric' Studio makes it easy to setup and work with various axonometric projections within the application.
- HEIF images can now be loaded directly into Designer. If they contain a depth map, this will also be loaded as a second layer. Because depth maps are typically lower resolution than the main image, optional “smart” upsampling will be performed.
- Designer now supports custom document presets - a popular feature request.
- A new blend mode - Linear Burn - has been added.
- New “Move inside / outside” commands have been added - useful for quickly clipping/unclipping.
- New "Merge curves/Separate curves" commands.
- Grids now have an editable number of angle subdivisions.
- The Hard Mix blend mode has been improved.
- Numerous text improvements have been made - including new features such as bullets and numbering.
- Significant PDF import / export improvements and fixes.
 
Brushes
- Designer 1.7 introduces a new “sub-brush” mechanism, developed in conjunction with Paolo Limoncelli (DAUB® Brushes). This exciting feature allows any brush to have a list of other brushes attached which will draw at the same time. Each sub-brush has a fully separate and customisable set of dynamics. You can control when the sub-brushes are drawn and how they blend with the main brush.
- Symmetry (up to 32-way) is now supported - including on-canvas controls and optional mirroring.
- Wet edges and accumulation are now available on colour brushes and brushes with HSL variance.
- Brushes with multiple nozzle textures have always chosen the nozzle at random. In 1.7, the nozzle choice has a dynamic controller and ramp for greater control.
- All pixel brush tools now support left and right arrow keys for rotation - a common feature request.

Adjustments
- The HSL adjustment layer has been rewritten. It now supports custom hue ranges, a new algorithm, new UI and picker controls.
- The Levels adjustment layer now supports output levels - a common feature request.
- The White Balance adjustment layer has been rewritten.
- The Selective Colour adjustment layer has been rewritten.
- PSD import / export of adjustments has been improved.
- The Vibrance adjustment layer has been rewritten.
- The Recolour adjustment layer has gained a lightness slider.

 
Misc
- Numerous other bug fixes - too many to list!

Sorry I don't see how this could be any simpler to be honest. If there is an option that says "Force pixel alignment" I expect the program to force alignment to whole pixels, period.
For types of work where you want fractured pixels you would disable "force pixel alignment".
Anything but 50.5.
Otherwise you'd have to rename the option to "Try aligning to pixels if it's convenient". In that case please add another option "Mercilessly force pixel alignment" for web designers.
Cheers

A lot of times I'll use Fusion 360 to design something because of it's use of constraints and precise measurements and then export a sketch as a dxf. Would be nice to import a dxf file into AD and modify it further.

Thanks for your reaction @MEB. I saw the viewBox-setting and that unticking the viewbox-checkbox indeed sets the width and height to exact dimensions, but viewbox and width/height attributes are two different things. Viewbox is meant to set the window which defines which part of the image will be shown on the viewport/output, while width/height (basically the viewPORT) set the dimensions of the output. One has nothing to do with the other.
 
For example for animations I control the viewbox to pan, tilt and zoom (or even stretch) the image with Javascript, while the width/height of the output stay the same.
 
What's happening right now is that the output of the image always gets renderered to 100% of the window size when viewBox is ticked and if the viewBox is unticked there is indeed a fixed image size, but there suddenly is no viewbox anymore. That's not right.
 
To illustrate this a little more I just created an illustration. (Don't look at the awful design, it's just to get the point accross).
Here you can see the SVG with all its graphical elements, in this case 2 circles. The viewbox defines the region of the svg it would show on the output. 
On the bottom right you see the viewPORT, which is defined in the SVG output by 'width' and 'height' attributes.
It's important to know that the width and height of the output(viewPORT) doesn't have to be the same as the width and height of the viewBOX. And that's important, because of this:
- sizing the viewPORT (so the bottom right rectangle in the illustration) will change the size of the output
- sizing the viewBOX (so the top left rectangle in the illustration) will change the visible area-position and scaling of the image.
  If the viewBOX is set smaller the image gets scaled up (zoomed in), if the viewBOX is set larger the image gets scaled down (zoomed out), while the viewPORT remains the same and keeps the same output-size
 
Hopefully this helps to get my point accross. Both attributes are very important attributes to have in the SVG-output and can't be left out for responsive and interactive use on websites.
Right now we have to enter these values in a text editor for all SVGs and each and every time again after a change in designer. That's not a very efficient workflow. Especially because Designer has all data it needs, it only needs to output in the export.

SVG doesn’t currently have any support for non-centered strokes, but that is not the problem of Affinity or Illustrator (or Inkscape, or whatever else), it’s a problem of the file format which is specified by an independent entity. So, if you have strokes that aren’t centered, every program has to make a decision on how to handle this when exporting as SVG: either keep the object type/attribute at the expense of slightly changing the look or keep the look and convert the objects/attributes to universally supported ones.
But to make a point with a different argument: you can’t even reliably interchange AI files between different versions of Illustrator, i. e. AI files from newer versions of Illustrator will not open properly in older versions. So I would say it’s a little unfair to expect that from a completely different program.

And, to end the discussion, I'll just say that 1.7 will let you snap curve handles to grid, geometry, anything you want... it will be an option, to allow snapping handles to happen the same as snapping nodes, so it can be turned on for those that require the feature.
This will be separate to the constraining features I demoed earlier showing constraining of handles directions and snapping lengths.  the two features will live together, but you can use one or both.
 

It's not uncommon to want to replicate the angles and lengths of curve handles across multiple nodes. But snapping curve handles to the grid is a crude way of accomplishing that.
Ben will probably implement it as a local snapping option. I'm one of those who think this is actually quite useful for some types of projects.
When you prepare glyphs for a font development application like FontLab in Affinity Designer, the option of snapping handles to the grid is necessary. Theoretically, certain font formats will allow fractional coordinates for nodes and handles, but for reasons of compatibility, applications like FontLab will round coordinates to integers on font export by default. In order to achieve maximum control over the glyph contours you can expect in your font file, it certainly makes sense to work in integer space at least from a certain point in your design process on. And then you must have the option of snapping handles to the grid. I know, there may be much more illustrators than type designers out there, but personally, I would not consider glyph design an edge case for a vector drawing application. 

I have found a workaround, of sorts: 
1. Set up the document units to pixels, and use pixel measurements in place of millimetres, e.g. if desired size is 100mm, make object 100px. 
2. Export the document using the export option in the file menu, select 'SVG (for web)'. Click 'More' for extra options. 
3.  Deselect 'Set viewBox'  and select 'Add line breaks'.  Export the file. 
4. Open the SVG file in a text/code editor and locate this line: 
<svg width="100px" height="100px" version="1.1" 5. Change the 'px' units to 'mm'. Save the document. 
6. Open the modified document in your desired software. 
This works with the software I have tested it with. 

Ok - I've added this capability.  Was a bit more involved than I thought...  I've done it so that Space redrag will move just the node for the edited handle, even if there are multiple nodes selected. This gives a subtly different but useful editing capability to just moving the node.  It will allow you to move an isolated node, and allow for snapping to the other selected nodes.
There was also a lot to think about to ensure that all the stuff I've previewed before continues to work correctly, and updates after the node position is changed.
 
Anyway, enjoy the video:

CurveHandlesRedrag.mov

Well. Yeah. That's about as useful as a cup of decaf.
Seriously, this isn't a new technology for drawing software. Even the Open Source Inkscape features a cube tool whose result can be set and reset at any perspective, and subsequent 3D boxes adhere to the same vanishing point as the first in the document. Which is hardly thrilling until you notice that they make a good template for text and other shapes.
Bucket list? Please? Please?

Actually, "Balance Ragged Lines" is not supposed to be used on body text. Balancing and hyphenation are taken care of by the paragraph composer – by default that's Adobe's excellent "Multi-Line Composer", which already takes the effect of hyphenation and composition decisions over the entire paragraph into account, not just the current line. So you don't need to activate any other options to get nice and balanced body text.
 
"Balance Ragged Lines" is intended to be used with small centered blocks of text like pull quotes, multi-line headlines and so on. For instance, you can apply it to your subhead paragraph style so that those two lines of text are always evenly divided between the two lines and you don't have to manually add forced returns for everything to look balanced.
 
If you apply "Balance Ragged Lines" to regular body text however, it will actually usually make the result significantly worse, and it is sure to drive anybody mad who has to do copy fitting with your body copy style.
 
If you look at your example, the only thing that has really improved on the right is that InDesign has balanced all lines so that the last line of the paragraph is filled completely, making tradeoffs in all other lines in order to meet that goal. Also keep in mind that placeholder copy won't always give you the best impression of these things since the hyphenation is not representative when using pseudo-latin.
 
EDIT: There is an article on InDesign Secrets that goes into detail.

I have a little more refinement.  I figured, if you are going to use the polygon mode, you ought to be able to edit the polygon you are placing to fine tune the selection.
 
So, will be able to click to delete a point, drag an existing point to reposition it, and drag mid-line to insert a point.  You will finalise the selection by hitting Return, or closing the path by clicking on the root point, or dragging the end point onto the root point.
 
LassoNodeSelection2.mov
 
I'm thinking about also making the polygon mode Undo/Redo aware - so you can undo and redo changes to the selection polygon until you commit it.

Yes - you have to have the layer/object selected first, then the unselected handles become visible - you can then select the handles using one of the three selection methods.  It was already like this for the Node tool curve node selection. Until the curves object is selected (in the Layers tab or on the page) you can't see the curve nodes.
 
You can also select multiple Curve objects, and select nodes across any of them.  Curve nodes selection effectively works as a sub-selection for a selected Curves object.

And, for anyone who wanted Lasso node selection...
 
LassoNodeSelection.mov
 
To use it, in the Node tool with a curve layer selected, you just hold Alt and either click to start polygon mode or drag to start free hand mode.
 

When drawing elements to be cut on a laser cutter, setting up a document in mm is very helpful. Unfortunately, the common interchange file format for this kind of device is SVG. While the file format supports measurements in defined units, Designer converts to pixels during the export, which means that after import, the dimensions have to be recalculated.
Therefore, it would be great to have the option to preserve the units from the document during export, such that a 50x150mm rectangle is exported just as such.