Phojoegraphy

Please don't allow changes to hidden layers. Too often I've found myself painting on a hidden layer and not realizing it. Photoshop gives you a warning if you try and do so and makes you reveal the layer before any changes or marks are made. I would very much like to see this behavior replicated in Photo. 
Thanks for your consideration.

Please don't allow changes to hidden layers. Too often I've found myself painting on a hidden layer and not realizing it. Photoshop gives you a warning if you try and do so and makes you reveal the layer before any changes or marks are made. I would very much like to see this behavior replicated in Photo. 
Thanks for your consideration.

In regards to the Corel Draw talk:
If you're on a Mac, just get Vector Styler from the app store to hold you over until Affinity supports it. You can literally copy and paste the curve/group/layer between the two applications, so no need to save out a file and reopen it. 

In regards to the Corel Draw talk:
If you're on a Mac, just get Vector Styler from the app store to hold you over until Affinity supports it. You can literally copy and paste the curve/group/layer between the two applications, so no need to save out a file and reopen it. 

+1
I love affinity products, I love the UI, speed, reliability, non destructive workflows and integration of the 3 apps.

But it needs some features which are pretty basic. It’s not a matter of wether you can do something that looks good on Designer as is. The main question here is can you rely on Designer as your only graphic design tooI in 2021. I think this is a clear NO from any professional designer.
I want affinity apps to catch up with the basic functionality that is available in other apps not because they are cheap, but because I love working with them. If the problem is mainly that Serif needs to hire more developers and that requires an extra investment, given that these basic feature requests date back to 2014 I think they should do whatever it takes to make it happen even if that means increasing the price or paying for an update otherwise the future of these apps beyond the amateur market is unclear.

+∞ to this.  It's such a drag not to have this because Designer does some things nothing else can do.  The lack of this feature is a dagger right through its heart.

I've had a hard time adjusting the brush to act in a natural way for drawing. I've compared with mainly photoshop and sketchbook pro and posted numerous reports about this. There are a few issues like jagged lines on low zoom levels and general inconsistent behaviour of hardness and size. Things you only notice when drawing or writing by hand on a tablet or Cintiq.
Now I think I found what causes the latter! I was able to isolate what is going on by setting the shape to a narrow ellipse and the stroke to large spacing. Look what the preview shows. There are 2 things going on here:
1 Inconsistent size toward the beginning/ending of the stroke, causing a sort of 'arrow head' effect
2 The increase of the amount of dots towards the ending is too steep. Meaning the spacing between the dots in the end is near zero and in the middle pretty large. Some decay in spacing is useful since the relative spacing between dots should stay the same. But it seems that AP does not take the dot size into account and at certain settings the decay is much to steep, causing too many dots to overlap. I noticed that in photoshop and sketchbook pro this decay is far less and generally in better balance with the shape size. This presumably results in their smoother line behaviour. One result of this steep decay in AP is that soft lines are much harder in the endings than in the middle and pressure sensitivity feels a bit 'off'.
All in all this explains the strange behaviour I was experiencing. This arrowhead effect is nearly invisible in the preview when the shapes are rounder, but in practice I always notice the inconsistent line behaviour because of this. 
Affinity photo:

A drawn line to show it's not just the preview:

 
photoshop:

sketchbook

 
lastly look at this soft line and how hard it gets near the endings. The steep decrease of dot spacing is what causes this. 

 
In all examples these are the dynamics settings:

In my opinion two things need to change:
1 The arrow head behaviour is just off and needs to be fixed.
2 The spacing between the dots needs to be rebalanced in order to have a consistent line behaviour throughout different settings of spacing, dynamics, hardness etc. Generally speaking the dot SPACING needs to be in balance with the dot SIZE and SHAPE. E.g. the thinner part of a pressure sensitive line should be equally soft as the broader part of the line. Also when pressure sensitivity is set to linear, the line thickness change should also be linear. This is currently not the case and my guess is the inconsistent dot spacing causes this. 
I hope this helps refine the brush behaviour for AP!
 

As zayca explained, it's a tool which basically allows you a shortcut way for several boolean cuts.
But I disagree, that that's a "must have" for professionals. Vector warping functions have been around for decades in most vector apps since their first version and professionals were able to save a lot of time as this is a feature which is still in use (admittedly less than some years ago, tho). Reproducing the result manually is demanding time and skills.
But the shape-builder is relatively new—IIRC it was introduced in Illustrator CS5 in 2010ish—and in contrast to a vector-warp (preferably non-destructive!) it's something which isn't saving that much time in comparison to applying boolean functions.
The shape-builder is more a tool for convenience and actually more helpful for enthusiastic amateurs rather than professional designers. That's why Adobe introduced it as a "new and fresh" feature that late into their suite and not decades ago along with i. e. warping. That's not a matter of complexity to program such tool. 
There simply wasn't much demand for it, but it sounded good in advertising as a fresh new feature back then for the next version of the CS. And yes, it is more convenient than fiddling with boolean functions, if you don't know how to work with latter. But it's far from being an essential function of a vector app.

The point is that some of these tools exist in-part already in Photo. Also they existed in past legacy Serif apps. No excuse for the missing tools - especially warping. 

The point is that some of these tools exist in-part already in Photo. Also they existed in past legacy Serif apps. No excuse for the missing tools - especially warping. 

Sitting silent isn't how one gets changes made. Adobe has everyone over a barrel which is why a lot of people are looking for alternatives. If it bores you, why are you in the  thread?

Relative is relative, I know. But Serif was founded in 1987 which is ancient times for software developing business.

The video wouldn't upload to forum, so I tossed it up on YouTube.
 

Here's one more recent.. Same answer.

wow this looks amazing, will check it out. Thanks!

Vector Styler (VS) is in free beta for Mac and Win right now and has an insane amount of warping tools. I still prefer Affinity Designer (AD) for it's overall speed, easy to find assets, tools, UI, etc. But Affinity really need to take a look at how VS is implementing warps and distortions and take some "inspiration" from them. For workflow purposes, you can copy and paste between the two applications. (Note: sometimes font selection doesn't get carried over. Haven't found a rhyme or reason why, so it's best to send curves.) The thing to note is that VS can warp and distort groups as well as text and objects. VS keeps the text editable after it's warped or distorted, however it's converted to curves when copied to AD. I'll see if I can get a video uploaded.

Hi,
Simply: "Liquify for designer" :-).
I think this would be great to have.
Regards,
Seweryn.

Vector Styler (VS) is in free beta for Mac and Win right now and has an insane amount of warping tools. I still prefer Affinity Designer (AD) for it's overall speed, easy to find assets, tools, UI, etc. But Affinity really need to take a look at how VS is implementing warps and distortions and take some "inspiration" from them. For workflow purposes, you can copy and paste between the two applications. (Note: sometimes font selection doesn't get carried over. Haven't found a rhyme or reason why, so it's best to send curves.) The thing to note is that VS can warp and distort groups as well as text and objects. VS keeps the text editable after it's warped or distorted, however it's converted to curves when copied to AD. I'll see if I can get a video uploaded.

I saw the 1.9 update and immediately ran to the forum to see if they added any of this... Lots of really nice features added across all apps,  but this has become a ridiculously huge glaring omission. 😐

Hi budaloco,

When reporting issues to us it is always best to create a post for each individual issue. This allows us to better handle and respond to each particular issue - discussing many different issues in a single thread can get very confusing. If you could also include any steps, files or screenshots relating to those and how to reproduce that is always helpful!
We're aware of this issue - it seems to be the Colour Picker Tool and a couple icons on the Colour Panel that are affected. Switching Personas does seem to fix the size of the Colour Picker Tool so that is probably the randomness you're seeing.
Again we have this issue logged!
What version of macOS are you using? Are you able to get a screen recording that demonstrates this issue?
Do you have a document that you can reproduce this in that you could attach at all please? Again a screen recording showing the lag you're experiencing would be helpful.
This is a known issue that is with development.
 
What mouse model are you using and where abouts in the application are you seeing this? Unfortunately I only have access to a regular wheel mouse.
Are you able to get a screen recording of this along with attaching any required files we could use to reproduce it please? 

I saw the 1.9 update and immediately ran to the forum to see if they added any of this... Lots of really nice features added across all apps,  but this has become a ridiculously huge glaring omission. 😐

Single most frustrating problem in Affinity Designer, which doesn't happen on the iPad, but still does on the Mac, is that when I use a raster brush and do something as minor as change its size (a very common thing to do) the brush is deselected on the Brushes panel so I lose track as to which one I'm using.
When will this be fixed??!!

I saw the 1.9 update and immediately ran to the forum to see if they added any of this... Lots of really nice features added across all apps,  but this has become a ridiculously huge glaring omission. 😐

@itsrck @Ayamba Asong I'm in the same boat as you both are. Things like text warp are vital to my ability to use Designer professionally. I'm not sure why integral tools like text warp have been neglected for so many years. They have not mentioned when they will get to it but I know I speak for many, that if we continue to request it over and over, eventually we will be heard. Until Affinity catches up, there is a great app called Vectorstyler that now is in beta for both mac and pc. It is almost ready for final release but the betas are full functional. They offer everything that Affinity is still lacking including text warp. Where Affinity has a polished, efficient and smooth user interface, Vectorstyler is a little complex and not as intuitive. Where Affinity is lacking important tools, Vectorstyler shines.
The developers are extremely responsive to suggestions and ideas. I've made suggestions and seen them implemented in a matter of days
I still rely heavily on my copy of Illustrator cs6 to get me through but I've slowly been transitioning over to Designer the last few years and with the unexplained lack of tools, I've moved some focus over to Vectorstyler to fill the gaps. I can see myself using Affinity and VS to fully replace Adobe going forward.
 

The Affinity suite is the second graphics suite Serif made. The other one was windows only, became bloated and wasn't ready for modern hardware, so they started from scratch.
The predecessor of Affinity Designer was DrawPlus and among its features were Envelope and Perspective tools.
So no, they're not sticking to what they know. They've done it before so they know damn well how that stuff works but some decisions were made to not implement it for some reason.