PJD

well @zimmt that worked perfectly, thanks very much!!! when i restarted it didn't crash when i selected the epson.... that is, until i selected 'last used settings' lol, but i suspect that was expected.. so i restarted and printed it by selecting the options i wanted manually and it worked fine. so i went ahead and unticked the reset presets box (so i could use the last used settings) and it all seems to work fine so i'm able to print directly from AD and i think it's all good now, so thanks very much for that! If anything changes in the meantime i'll let you know in this thread. thanks. phill

thanks @SPaceBar it's uploading to the dropbox link now. cheers. side note, will someone let me know if/when it's working.. or do i just need to try it the next time AD is updated? thanks.

Thanks @SPaceBar, just done that now

Thanks for the reply. Do i just select all the text in the report and save it to a text file and add here? Is that safe? i mean, is there anything in there that's going to affect my privacy? @SPaceBar Cheers. Phill

Hi there. I have an Epson Ecotank L1800 with the latest drivers and when i open the print dialog for any file, as soon as I select the L1800 designer (and photo) just crashes and closes. I've submitted the crash reports to Apple and waiting to hear back from the supplier of the printer. In the meantime, I'm exporting to a tiff and printing from Preview, but if anyone knows how to get this fixed that would be great. I can use the printer from all other applications on the iMac Pro, its only Affinity products are affected. It's the same if i try to print any file, even a blank document. Affinity Designer 1.8.4 Mac OS Catalina 10.15.7 Connected via USB Epson Ecotank L1800 Driver version 9.19 updated via the Apple updater from the Epson website Thanks.

thanks very much for the responses.. as above, converting to curves and breaking did the trick.. believe it or not, i had got as far as converting to curves and tried joining at the red nodes.. didn't occur to me to break it haha.. this is a great solution for me for now, though it's a little more manual than i'd like over the longer term.. how can i check if this is already in the feature request list? i couldn't find any other posts relating to this issue and feel it would be a nice option to be able to keep the text as text and a textured stroke closing without have to lose that editability would be cool no?

Hi there. I'm trying to make the stroke around my text a brush stroke. In this example i have the letter O. This is the original stroke: Now, when i apply a brush stroke and pick something from the chalks and pastels brush set.. i get this: And for most letters i choose, i always get the gap between what (i think) is the start and end of the stroke. Whatever option i click in the stroke pane, or the brush settings.. i can't for the life of me get the stroke to close.. i always get these gaps. I have to do this quite a lot, so i'd prefer a dynamic solution to work if possible, rather than having to convert stroke to curves and adjusting manually if possible.. i would think what i'm trying to achieve should be simple and possible.. but i need a little help here on this one. Many thanks in advance for your help. Phill (affinity designer 1.7.3 on mac os)

@MEB thanks, that works well too. might there be a future release that addresses the inability to invert selection using the artboard as the boundary without having to create the rectangle behind? @h_d yes the fill rather than the stroke was the reason i was getting stuck. very good to know this for future stuff.

can you try on my file? affinity mask eg for upload.afdesign

@h_d i dont think i do, they are just on an artboard: or have i misunderstood something?

@carl123 that's it! needs to be a fill rather than a stroke.. genius! thank you. @owenr your trick also worked, i use divide and then deleted the outer bits i don't want and am left with the filled in bits that were transparent. Thanks guys. that will do me for now. Yours and everyone's excellent help is VERY much appreciated. I love this software (although I still have an illustrator licence as there are still features that haven't made it to designer yet, image trace and smart vector objects being my big ones) but really support the idea of affinity stuff. i prefer working in affinity than adobe as it's way quicker and there are some amazing extra things that adobe stuff cant do. And it's a much cleaner interface.. the price is silly cheap too but i expect that will creep up over time, which is fair i think.. just pelase no subscription. i am excited to see how it develops over the years and cant wait for the iPad app of designer. What Adobe Draw is missing is a vector pen tool so if the designer app has a vector sketch (pencil and brush) tools and a vector drawing pen AND the seamless switching between it and the desktop versions it will be BLISS! Cheers, and enjoy the rest of your Sunday. Phil

@owenr i think you might have answered another issue i had. why the invert selection didn't seem to do anything, or had strange results. i assumed it would take the artboard as the perimeter of the inverted selection, but creating the box is a doh! moment for me.. thanks for giving me the nudge i needed there. yes, clearly i have a much more complex shape i am working on so need the 'vector mask inversion toggle' you speak of. sounds perfect. hadn't realised it wasn't there.. that explains my problem. i'll try your divide (and conquer) solution on my complex shape and see if that gets me closer to what i want. Which is basically the transparent bits of my vector being opaque and vice versa.

@firstdefence thanks for your post too, but i'm struggling with the most basic shapes and functions here.. as you will see from my video. is it possible i have a wrong setting somewhere?

@h_d i tried that, and it didn't work. see video and result image when i did what you said: cheers. phil affinity subtract eg for upload.mov

Hi Everyone. It seems it's not just me that struggles to understand masks & clipping. I've tried all sorts with this simple one and i just can't get it to do what I want. See image below. I have two vector layers on artboard A, the red bit (B) and the black bit (C). All I want is to create D by dropping one layer over the other and masking it, but however i try it just won't do it. Both layers are vector curves. I'm sure B needs to mask C somehow so only D is visible, but i need to get B to function as a mask. Can someone please put me out of my misery? Thanks massively in advance. Phil p.s. I also added a screenshot of the four possible variations that i can get...