AndyQ

Adobe Illustrator provides the ideal sample for switching visibility and locking, with two columns where you can switch these parameters for each layer. Even more useful and important is that you can swipe down through this column and rapidly invert the settings (e.g. lock a bunch of layers). This is stuff I use all the time... time is money. Having shortcuts shouldn't be an excuse for not optimising the visual UI. I've said this many times, but you can't assume a user is solely dedicated to your app and is going to learn all the shortcuts and nitty gritty details - the UI has to make access to features visible and efficient; my use of Designer would be less than 1% of my app time, and I would use over a dozen different graphics programs and utilities (many of which use the same shortcut keys to do wildly different things). The Affinity layers palette involved a lot of "pointer moving" (won't say "mouse moves" since I use a Wacom) - selecting a layer then going all the way up to lock it, or all the way down to make a new layer. I know there are shortcuts for these things, but if I've not used the app for a few months I have to look them up again. Why not have a clickable row for "locking" since the space is already reserved for showing the lock icon anyway? why not have all the layer-related controls at the top of the palette in two rows, rather than putting the a bunch down the bottom (although I do see a reason to keep the "trash can" deletion button a little further away from anything else). Cheers.

I can see logical reasoning for it to be in "paragraph", but it's definitely impractical for daily use. That would be like filing "toilet paper" in the "stationery cupboard" because it's paper, rather than keeping it in the bathroom. As with many such decisions, Affinity need only look at some other apps for guidance (or even a box of metal type, where you will also find your leading bars next to your letters...)

I'd love to switch but every time I try and do something in Affinity I end up tearing my hair out. I could write a few pages with reasons why. I'm sticking with it and hoping one day I can use the apps for my professional work. The suite of apps is fantastic value and I want to support software that is perpetual-licence and a company that doesn't treat customers like s**t, but the reliability, UI and feature set is still a way off being usable for me. Regardless of what I think about the apps, I have a commercial need to provide files in various Adobe formats, and at the very least I need better export functionality to do so. For the few commercial jobs I've done in Designer (mostly logos) I have to stuff around fixing and reconstructing things in Illustrator afterwards. That's not too problematic with simple logos but I wouldn't want to do anything more complex.

Many Thanks! - I found it was exactly the same process on my system. I just "closed" the "Brother Control Centre 4" software from the system tray and the installation worked after that (installing Designer 1.9.2 on Win 7 Pro). The "restart" option probably wouldn't help in this case as this app is set to automatically load on boot-up, not that I tested it. It's probably worth closing any auto-start utilities before installation.

A parametric arc is useful, as opposed to some method that results in a standard curve - I have a use for it right now, where I want to be able to adjust the start and end points but use a stroke on an unfilled arc. I'll be changing the start/end angles frequently. The code for the "pie" object can do the job - although I'm guessing it ends up with some doubled-up geometry - you can set the "hole radius" to 100% then set start/end angles to create a parametric, unfilled arc. I imagine peeps won't find this obvious, so the code could be repurposed to a specific arc tool.

I don't have the pixel snapping enabled, just snap to grid and guides. The artboard can't be snapping to anything else. It certainly looks as though it's snapping to the visible grid intersections when I create the artboard. I'm currently finishing off the job after a work-around (just making a load of separate documents and adjusting the document sizes) but I'd like to see if anyone else can reproduce this - i.e. setup a document with a coarse grid to make it easy, add an object that snaps to grid points, create an artboard by snapping to grid intersections around that object and see if the the object moves "off grid" in the resultant artboard (you need a few decimal places displayed to be sure). I'll get back to some more testing myself when I get a chance, to see if there's something I've overlooked. Cheers!

They should definitely rename them and make it obvious to the user that they're not vector, it's very misleading. I don't see the use for them at all; I think they should be removed from the application entirely or perhaps only be employed in Photo where you might expect raster painting on an editable path. The least they should do is develop some simple calligraphic-style vector brushes; those things have been in vector apps for decades. Obviously it would be nice to have Illustrator-style brushes too, although this isn't a big deal for me..

I've just come across this today, with exported EPS files opening in Illustrator at the "last Illustrator document size" rather than the EPS size. Those same EPS files will rasterise in Photoshop at their exported aspect ratio, and at their correct size if the dpi setting for import is set to match. They also "place" at their correct size in InDesign. Since there's no "AI export" that only leaves PDF as an option for interchange, but that has it's own issues. There must be some sort of setting that can be written to an EPS that will prompt illustrator to open it as a document at the intended size - that sizing information is already in the file. Illustrator's own EPS files can be opened at their original size so this must be data that can be included in the EPS filetype.

I don't know if this is related, but I'm getting precision errors when making an artboard from an existing document. I have an A4 document with a bunch of logos on it. These are all drawn to a millimetre grid, so vertices snap to the grid, object centre points/pivot points snap to the grid etc. I then want to isolate a single logo on it's own artboard so I draw an artboard with snapping enabled, carefully making sure it is exactly placed on the grid. The resultant artboard is the expected width/height dimensions, and inherits the millimetre grid system, but the objects contained within are not aligned to that grid, having shifted in position by a fraction of a millimetre. I would have thought this could not occur unless the origin of the artboard has shifted from it's initial placement. I'm currently getting around this by moving everything to illustrator and separating the logos onto artboards there, but would like to be able to do it in Affinity.

+1. Converting inch-marks to quotation marks automatically is a massive timesaver, and something even cheesy word processors and presentation apps will do for you.

Hi folks. I'm finding that when I export my Designer graphics to JPEG, the colour values are different from those reported in the application. I've made up some test rectangles and assigning a mix of Pantone, CMYK and RGB colours and have exported to both CMYK and RGB JPEG images, with and without embedded colours profiles. The resultant images thus far have always resulted in slight changes to those colour values. The translations from one colour model to another (e.g. Pantone->CMYK, Pantone->RGB etc.) also differ from the translations Designer suggests in the interface (i.e. the values listed when you choose "slider view" and switch to alternative colour models - which are the value translations I would presume the application would use upon export). I've loaded the exported images into both Photoshop and Affinity Photo to measure the resultant values and they both concur with the results. In some cases the value changes are minor (e.g. RGB 0, 200, 100 becomes 0, 200, 101) but in other cases they're more dramatic (especially when Designer translates Pantones to RGB or CMYK) off topic: Also why-why-why hide the colour mode export under the "More" button on the export dialog? This is not some arcane option, it's something you need to see every time you export, even if you're not going to change it. Just add a drop-down box PLEASE Mr Serif!

I can certainly do multiple marquee selections on a single layer, so I don't know why that's not working for you; and as stated, can do so across layers as long as there are at least two objects already selected that are on different layers. I'm almost certain that this issue has only cropped up with the latest 1.9 release - the habit of making additive marquee selections is so ingrained I would have noticed immediately if it wasn't possible; I can't imagine working without being able to add to an existing selection by this method. I'm just trying to ascertain whether this is a software bug or whether there's a) something wrong with my system/installation b) there's some other functional switch that I'm unaware of that might affect this behaviour. For the later point, I am aware of the "edit all layers" mode so it's not related to that.

I've edited the original post to specify Designer, vector objects, layers as per your description. As mentioned, the "edit all layers" switch being "ON" doesn't help. It's looking to me like a bug rather than a mistake, because you can select objects from different layers if you simply SHIFT-CLICK multiple objects across layers. What really makes it seem like a bug is that if you have just two objects selected from two different layers, then you can SHIFT-MARQUEE-SELECT anything you want, from any layers (including layers that weren't any any way part of the original selection set). So the only thing that's not working is the sole use of additive marquee-selections. Once you've used marquee to select objects that are only in one layer, you can't use shift-marquee to select objects in another layer (unless a cross-layer selection of some sort already exists). You can use a from-scratch marquee selection to select across layers in the first place. Sorry this is so hard to explain! To test yourself: make 2 layers, add some rectangles to each (in different parts of the page), use a marquee selection to select all or some of the rectangles on one layer, then try using shift-marquee-select to select all/some of the rectangles on the other layer. For me, that operation fails - the second marquee selects nothing.

Doh! Yes - exactly that, I forgot I was in a general forum thread! It's just vector object selection.

Affinity Designer - vector object marquee selections across layers I hadn't noticed this before tonight, but I'm unable to use a series of marquee selections to add to my selection set (by using SHIFT) if subsequent groups are on different layers. The weird thing is that I can add objects from any layer to my selection set if I use simple SHIFT-Click additions (i.e. SHIFT-Clicking objects adds them to the selection set, regardless of what layer they're on, SHIFT-click-drag-release only adds objects to the selection set if they're on the same layer). The other super weird thing is - if I use SHIFT-Click to select two objects from different layers, then i can add to that selection set by using SHIFT-marquee-selects on whatever I want. Am I missing a setting somewhere or is this a bug? (I've tried this with the "Edit all layers" toggle both on and off)