AndyQ

I've just finished a job in Indesign CC doing tabular price-list/ordering forms to PDF and in the process have discovered a massive pile of bugs in Adobe's implementation. Indesign has a "tab order" panel for setting the tab order of all fields/controls, but it doesn't work in certain instances - for example if you have fields in table cells (and tables seem the perfect way to set up a spreadsheet like product inventory/order form). Tab orders also get screwed up if a table flows over multiple pages and that flow is changed - it's fine when you first create a table, but if you delete a row or change the page breaks then any fields that move from one page to another completely disappear from the tab-order list. I could go on with a huge list of Indesign bugs, but basically what I'm saying is that Adobe have put f-all effort and testing into forms support for Indesign, so Affinity could almost make a case for Publisher as a PDF forms creation tool if they put some work into it. For the price of Publisher it would be something big companies could easily afford to implement en-masse. My basic recipe for required functionality would be: 1) a toolbox of form field objects that can be placed anywhere in the layout, encapsulated in table cells or within nested frames, anywhere any other object can be placed 2) be able to set all the properties for that field/control that acrobat supports, including naming fields. Perhaps an "auto name" function would be handy too, that looks at the reading order of fields/controls and assigns numeric prefixes that would match that order (e.g. button_001, field_001). This would be handy if a large table of fields was edited, with rows deleted, for regenerating a numeric list of fields 3) be able to set the tab order for all controls on a page/document in a single, expandable easy-to-use list 4) allow styling of field controls to an extend supported by PDF, with embedding of fonts used in fields 5) allow multi-selection of fields for applying properties changes or application of styles to them simultaneously (not possible in Indesign!). I'm sure there would be a lot more that could be done, but those are the main things that have cropped up whilst I was working on a "real" project.

ideally you should be able to set either % or values for a corner radius, then have a checkbox in the context toolbar for either scaling corners with the shape or keeping the radius fixed. e.g. If it's set to "scale with object" and you have a radius of 4mm on a corner and scale the object 50% then the corner radius will become 2mm. Also, if selecting a node with the node edit tool, the radius of that node should be reported and editable in the context toolbar - it's a pain having to switch to the "corner tool" just to see the values or edit them. I'm presuming Adobe has some sort of copyright on their Illustrator method of setting corner curvatures otherwise you'd just copy that, as it's a much better and more intuitive system. Having parametric corner radius settings is super-helpful, so I'm glad it's there, but you need to be able to optionally scale the corners with the object.

This checkbox appears for the rounded rectangle object but I'm not seeing it for the corner radius tool, either during transform or if editing with the corner-radius tool. Is it not possible to specify corner radius in units then have it scale with the object? e.g. corner radius 1mm on an object scaled 50% should result in the corner radius becoming 0.5mm.... if this isn't possible Affinity peeps, could you please make it so?

It becomes even more of a problem if you used both applications daily, or if Illustrator is your main application. Designer's similarity to Illustrator is why I'm moving towards it and away from CorelDraw. CTRL-Enter is really bothering me. If it did nothing that would be OK - the fact that it does something highly undesirable (in my context) is the problem. In choosing a short cut for "convert to curves" surely some other key combo would be preferable - something meaningful e.g. CTRL-C ("curves") or "CTRL-O" (outlines)....anything really. Any shortcut using the "enter/return" key should be reserved for operations logically linked to the termination of an operation, a submission or a return to a previous state. It's OK to say the shortcuts are customisable but if you use dozens of applications on multiple machines, or you are implementing an application for a team of employees, it's considerably easier to stick with defaults (and less pain for support staff!). As people have mentioned in this thread, you can end up not realising you've converted text to curves until way-too-late.

Affinity have a good opportunity here, as Indesign does a shit job of creating PDF forms - it lets you add fields and controls but only in a very basic sense. You can set the font for a text field but you have to do it on a per-field basis - so if you have an order form with a list of 100 products in a table with fields for order qty you have to individually set the font and font size for each of those 100 fields - not only can't you apply any kind of "style" to them but you can't even set the default font that it assigns. On the topic of order forms and other such data-intensive tables, adding support for PDF scripting in the authoring environment would be killer. For example, an order form table would list products and prices, with user-fillable fields for the quanity they want to order. It would be sweet to be able to multiply that quality by the price data and show subtotals, then add those up for the total order amount. This can be done in the PDF itself but that's an awful approach - having to export a file then edit the exported version. To do this in the authoring package would be hugely more efficient and would make Publisher a must-have for PDF form publishing. Take advantage of Adobe's poor efforts in this area!

I do a lot of whining about UI issues, but this item is a critical one for me - being able to set up documents, especially raster documents, using dots-per-centimetre settings rather than dots-per-inch. These figures can't be translated easily - there's no perfect dpcm value equivalent to 300 dpi (300 / 2.54 = 118.110236220474...). My need for this is a bit arcane, but in essence it means I can work on metric-based document sizes but define a useful pixel-based grid subdivision. Primarily I use this when doing presentation slides and templates, to set up metric documents that match grids in both my pixel-based backgrounds a PowerPoint grid system (based on divisions per cm), but I have a lot of other uses for it. METRIC is a GOOD THING. It's the way of the future - thank you French Revolution! P.S. if even pig-headed Americans like Adobe can manage to provide this, European Affinity surely can match them...

Fantasticle

Renaming swatches is a pain too - selecting from menus then renaming in a modal box. Let's just double-click the name text and have it auto-selected for typing in a new name.

To smooth a node that's a corner point you need to click with the "right-mouse" held at the same time. With a pen this is pretty awkward, and that's assuming you've got a barrel button you can assign to right click duties. Since this is a super-common operation couldn't we have a key modifier instead? CTRL+ALT converts a node to a sharp point, couldn't it just be used as a context-sensitive toggle? i.e. CTRL+ALT converts sharp points to smooth and converts smooth points to sharp, like AI/Photoshops "convert node" tool? Even with a mouse pressing two buttons at once seems awkward, and I had to pull a mouse out of a dusty drawer to test that...

That's the thingywatsit I'm talking about. I can't help myself - I just want to grab that colour and drag it to the colour swatches....it's an unbearable compulsion and seems so obviously natural and efficient. I guess anywhere there's a colour it should be "draggable" to the swatches really. Must faster than going through a frenzy of clicking and selecting

Agree with workspace layouts, don't know about symbols, but selection in Affinity is much superior to illustrator, which has always given me the shirts with it's single approach and difficulty. I also don't see what the problem with layers is - they seem pretty similar to me in many respects - create a layer, fill it with objects, move 'em to different layers if you want to get organised etc. I'm new to Affinity too - only testing the waters and probably waiting for a few updates before I'd use it for work, but have been working with computer graphics and vector apps since the mid 80's so I've been through a few (including command-line graphics programs!...pre "un-do"). I've settled down to Corel/Illustrator and would ideally like some combination of features from Affinity/Corel/AI. Despite a couple of decades working in AI every day I still hate it with a vengeance. With a few UI improvements and some key features copied from the other apps I think I'd be happy with Designer as my daily workhorse (although at the moment it crashes more often an inexplicably than any other app I use, and that's a lot of programs to compare to)

Reboot fixed it. Go figure...I guess I should reboot more than once every couple of months...

Huh? I was talking about exporting text as vector graphics, not as editable text (although obviously that'd be nice too). I'm exporting PSD, and if I convert text to curves it will output as vector. I'm saying that this should be an export option, to automatically convert the text to graphics "on the fly" (AKA temporarily). That's not unusual for an export filter. Also, the other point was being able to define the output size for the PSD raster portions.

When exporting PSD there seems to be no way to define the output size, unlike other raster formats (TIF, JPEG, PNG etc.). THe output seems to depend on the document size and dpi setting. Why can't it be independent of the page settings as per the other bitmap out formats? Am I missing something? Also, I note that unless you choose to rasterise, vector objects will be exported as vector, which is very nice thank you. However text seems to be rasterised. Why not export text as a vector object, or allow that option on export? I can convert my text to outlines and save as another file for export purposes, but that'a s lot of phaffing when the export filter should be able to perform a temporary "convert to outlines"

Opening the desktop center (sic) didn't help me - I've never had any pressure response in Designer with variable width stroke (Win 7 Pro, Intuos CTH490) . Wacom drivers are fickle things however,.

Amen brother, these are raster brushes following a vector path, and pretty low-res ones at that. They definitely should be called "raster brushes" (or bitmap for you young people). You'd have thought this would have been on the "to-do" list before they even started programming these apps....I mean what are the branding agencies gonna do with their logo designs without Illustrators crazy "hand drawn" vector brush strokes? They won't even look at AD.

A minor gripe: to reduce visual clutter/confusion there is an option for monochromatic icons in the settings, however most of the Affinity icons are rather usefully designed with two colours, grey and blue, where the blue regions are often used to make the meaning clear - directing focus to the key part of the icon (e.g. the stroke centre lines compared to the stroke widths, or "front/back" ordering, boolean operations/alignment lines etc.). That's dandy - I find it easier to tell what's going on with the colour icons, BUT - the tool box itself is a multi-colour confusion of crazy hues. I'd like to see the ability to switch just the toolbox to mono, or to have the icons redesigned in the two-colour approach to tone down the confusion and distraction (and, basically, fugliness). Cheers!

I know you can't "select unused" swatch colours and delete them, but how do you select multiple swatches for deletion? Deleting a swatch is already a pain as it's a two step process, with a confirmation dialogue, because "it's not an un-doable operation". Why isn't it an un-doable operation? Also, from a UI standpoint, I found how to add a swatch by right-clicking an object and using the flyout menu. That's great but I would never have thought of it without the manual - I was was looking for some way to add a swatch from the currently selected colour (the thingywatsit in the un-dockable toolbox that shows the currently selected stroke and fill colours). At least put a right-click menu on those to add swatches methinks.

I don't see any problem with the layers/sublayers system, except the logic of all the grouping/clipping/masking stuff doesn't click with my brain as yet.

The auto-expand/collapse behaviour of the various subsections in the Tone Map panel is annoying the bejesus out of me. I'm trying to study my image and toggle an effect on/off to see if I like the changes or not, but i can't just leave my cursor in one spot and click as when I disable or enable a function - e.g. curve, white balance, enhance etc. - the positioning of the whole panel changes. I keep having to look at the panel and move the cursor, when I should be looking at the image. I would MUCH PREFER if these sections were created as sub-panels with their own MANUAL collapse/expand buttons, or some other way be implemented so the positioning of interface elements can be fixed. Also, just because I turn curves "off" doesn't mean I don't want to look at the curves setup (or change it) and toggling on/off is kinda critical to view the effect on your work. Whilst I'm on this topic - why can't all of these functions just be parametric operations that can be applied in a stack so that they're non-destructive?

It's fast and easy once you know it's there, I use that a LOT. Every second adds up - if it still behaves like a checkbox otherwise, there's no reason not to make it a "super checkbox".

In some UI areas, such as editing curves, it'd be much faster to have buttons to switch rapidly between editing selections - e.g. master/red/blue/green channels for curve editing - one click switching instead of click-move-highlight-click. Also, for curve editing in particular, it'd be nice to be able to resize the interface for more precise control. Interfaces with sliders can scale the length if you widen the panel, but the curve editor stays a fixed size - so how about letting us resize this panel vertically so the square edit area can get bigger? While your at it - curve editing would be nice with some detailed vector curve editing, like bezier handles and cusps, with right-click menus to change point types and delete points as per your normal vector shape editing.

I left out some pretty important information about this query; it's not just a matter of copying a single layer or single object, it more often than not would be copying a group of objects or multiple layers. Thankfully "copy and paste" within Photo does preserve the layers, and will also preserve a layer that has a mask, effects and adjustments within it. That's workable enough, although not quite as quick and clean as the PS solution. Certainly AP could go one better than PS and allow you to target multiple open documents which would be nice. I've not looked into Macros or scripting support on AP so I'm still an ignorant learner, I'm still using CC for everything and am just testing the Affinity apps whenever I get some spare time. Cheers all.

The discussion on this is at . One of the support peeps said: "This is a known issue (already logged) that only happens when the pixel layer is located on the bottom of the layers stack. If you place any other object below it (or move it up in the layer stack) it will not happen."

I mentioned in the original post that the problem with isolation mode is that everything else becomes invisible, whereas I need full display for positional reference. It's also a two step process, whereas I'm looking for a modal switch as I'd want to work this way almost all of the time. I'd use Photshop's "auto-select" mode every blue moon - it's handy sometimes but mostly I don't want to be selecting layers when image editing. This is probably because of the type of work I'm doing, things like UI mockups and presentation slides where I have many hundreds of layers and lots of things are TINY, so trying to pick them up and move them results in accidentally selecting stuff near them. I'm sure if you're doing some photo editing with maybe a few big layers and some type overlays it's not a problem.