jmwellborn

Using Designer 2.3, have had a complete crash while scrolling Pixabay. When asked whether I wanted to recover the file, found a completely empty screen. Just an update.

@MikeTO This is what I have been hoping for! Your manual has been absolutely terrific, but the text styles stuff has been my bugaboo since Publisher first arrived. Not that the Text Styles panel isn’t useful. Just “how in the world does it work?” As is the case with everything about Affinity, there is such a plethora of wonderful options that one can get lost in the forest when searching for a tree. Being one of those fossils who learn most quickly from reading vs watching, the Help sections have been consistently underwhelming. I am so thankful for your elegant PDF manual. In one instance, I found the solution for a problem in a matter of seconds on one of your pages for which I had searched again and again, in vain, in Publisher Help and on the forums. Can’t wait to delve into this newest iteration! Thank you so much for the massive amount of work and effort you have expended to help us all. And Merry Christmas!

@loukash even better news - maybe this new hire can do something about the depressing design of the tools in V2.

Welcome to the Forums @TD HANSON! There are also many excellent tutorials in the LEARN AND SHARE section of these forums. Some recent ones posted by @TrentL are, I think, especially helpful, because they explain each issue in detail, with plenty of examples. If you will fire up your MAC and watch them, I think you will find that your creative juices will start to flow again. The official Affinity tutorials are also superb. With those, I have found that hitting the pause button and writing some notes, before resuming the tutorial, sometimes helps, because some of them are pretty speedy. Finally, just post away here in the Forums when you would like help learning all of the wonderful things Affinity can do. There are many exceptionally talented and knowledgeable people who are available to help. I couldn’t have made it to first base without them! (Not sure which base I am on at this point, I might add, but I am having a lot of fun every single day.) Most of all, I hope that as you and your MAC learn the software, you will find that the hours and days once again fly by in a new and special way! Best wishes!

@GarryP what do you mean, made up? I use a greeble wrachet every single day to get started!😬

@Fnwolf Welcome to the Forums! That is one scary fellow, and very much alive!

@Angela M It is not as sophisticated as some methods, but in case you would like to try this, I made an Asset several years ago that provides options for creating snow at different intensities. You just need to import it into your Assets Panel, then open an image, go to Assets, and double click on the Asset. This will allow you to drag the Snow Group across your image with the image placement icon, rather than having a huge representation covering your entire screen. In the Layers Panel you will see that the asset is a new pixel layer "Snow Group." It can be opened to make adjustments on any of 5 layers in the group. For slightly stronger snowflakes, finish by running the Subtle Sharpening Macro (I believe that should be in your Default category in your Library panel). You can add more snow anywhere you want by copying and pasting any of the five snow layers from the Snow Group on the top of the image. If you want to remove snow from part of the image you can click on each pixel layer and use the Eraser Brush. Here is a very quick sample, using a Pixabay stock image. generic snow.afassets

"From goulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties And things that go bump in the night Good Lord, deliver us!"

@j3rry Eeeeeeek! love it!!!!!!

Trying out the Photo Beta 2.3.1: plugins are working, assets look wonderful on dark or light background (depending), and nothing seems to crash. This time I have tried using some watercolour brushes, then one sky overlay from the lovely JR Skies 2 assets pack (thank you, @James Ritson) plus levels and curves adjustments, then off to a pastel plugin, then back for another sky overlay reversed vertically, then a tone map. And then some rather clumsy cloning, to create a bit more bank, rather than a spit of land floating in some upside down sky. All after first selecting — below — from the print, downloaded courtesy of the British Library (public domain).

The issue is still present in the new Publisher Beta 2.3.1. I hesitate to mention it in that part of the Forums.

For what it is worth, in the toolbar, my initial download of AD 2.3.1 included the Spiral tool twice. One on its own and one with the little arrow. The vector fill tool and the eyedropper were nowhere to be seen. I deleted one of the spiral icons, added some more tools that I wanted and closed the panel, and tried to create a new document. AD crashed and would not open again. CTRL + click on the dock to open worked. My changes were there.

What is the difference between Auto and Light? I use the Light UI. When I switch the background for an Asset category to Dark and then back to either Light or Auto they have the same results. Also, is there any possibility that we could have a slider, giving us the ability to choose our own level of dark or light?

I also get the crash.

One selection later, with the output as a mask, then the color picker to match the background colour in the image for a rectangle under the image layer, then a white balance adjustment to get rid of almost all of that colour, then a levels adjustment to create a more defined image, then three pixel layers with varying opacity levels to provide some colour with some watercolour brushes, then a merge visible. Then off to a pastel plugin. Then back to Photo for another levels adjustment. Then a vibrance adjustment. The result: Morpeth Castle, "a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Grade I listed building at Morpeth, Northumberland, England ... restored by the Landmark Trust and is now available as a holiday rental home." My source comes from the British Library, digitised image from page 82 of "The Local Historian's Table Book of remarkable occurrences, historical facts, traditions, legendary and descriptive ballads, connected with the Counties of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland, and Durham.,," which is in the Public Domain.