glyph

If you double click on the image in the asset pane and then move the mouse over to the picture frame, your mouse changes to a 'drop picture' cursor and you can place the asset in the picture frame. I discovered this by accident after reading this thread and almost giving up.

When working in the Layers panel, I would love to be able to use the keyboard for certain operations like
 
moving up and down in the layer tree with arrow key selecting layers by typing their names renaming a layer by hitting F2 moving layers up and down by hitting Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down (or Alt, maybe in combination with Shift) selecting layers by holding down the Shift key and using the arrow keys afterwards  
There might be more useful appliances for keyboard shortcuts.

I echo @carl123’s sentiments, great stuff and deeply appreciated!
I'm happy because Clip Studio Paint did something similar, generous opportunities like these are certainly welcome during this time.
I hope Affinity Publisher for the iPad comes soon, can’t wait to complete the set on mobile.

I'm a 3D artist and all the other tools and software I use are easier to work with and make more sense with the HSV/HSB algorithm.
It doesn't have to be the default, but having the option is absolutely necessary IMO.

I would love to see an HSB color picker in affinity. Doing color shifts when designing around a single hue is a bit more user friendly in HSB than HSL. Is anyone else wanting this? If not, how do you generally do color palette designing using HSL? Doing a search in the forums didn't bring anything up.

Although the range of picker types you have is quite wonderful, I'm used to working with HSB/V (Brightness or Value) instead of HSL (for lightness.) It's a common way of specifying colors especially in the land of video. HSL is a similar user experience, but there are a lot of times where it just makes sense to think of 100% brightness (which, to get the same RGB value, somehow works out to 50% lightness.)
 
(And as you probably know, Adobe Photoshop's picker has HSB, not HSL.)
 
This website does a great job of dynamically showing the difference:
 
http://colorizer.org
 
Would you consider adding this option to Designer/Photo/Photo for iPad? Thanks.

Hello,

If you guys could add these contrast ratio feature in Affinity, it would be a really great tool. Here are some links that checks the contrast of background and foreground color.
https://coolors.co/contrast-checker/112a46-acc8e5
https://colourcontrast.cc/
https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/


I also attached a video explaining the feature request.


Regards,
Hossein
Affinity-Feature-Request.mp4

First of all, it's not my satisfaction, @William Overington. I started in this job in June last year and I'm still learning a lot about accessible documents. It's a complicated subject, but very interesting as well.
I'm pleased to hear you want to get this right.
 
As an author you can certainly do things. Some of which doesn't depend on the tags that are needed to make the PDF available to screenreaders and other tools for people with disabilities.
On this website at W3 you'll find techniques to make PDF's accessible. There are 23 pages about PDF, the link takes you to the first of them. https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/pdf_notes.html
Accessibility is also about the use of color, contrast of color, meaningful text, the title of the document (which you will see in the tab of the PDF reader), the right language, the use of headings in the right order (h1, h2, h3), reading order, and so on. If done right it'll help all your readers and it'll give all of them a better experience.
 

I've posted something in another thread (Tagged PDF support for accessibility in Feedback for Affinity Publisher) about this accessibility in PDF. Here is a copy of that text. I hope it helps you understand what this is about.
 
"I totally agree with others on this subject. It's part of my job to check accessibility of PDFs. And most of them aren't accessible.
But according to the law all content on a government (related) website in my country (part of the EU) and many other countries should be accessible. So that includes all PDFs on that website. Of course there is an exception for old documents. But new PDFs just have to be properly tagged so a screenreader is able to use it and read it to a blind person. And when that's the case, then it is usually also accessible to other tools used to help people to read or understand digital content.
Within a bit more than a year the process of making all content on all websites in the EU will start and in June 2025 all company websites have to be accessible except the ones from very small companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Accessibility_Act
If Affinity doesn't solve this problem it will be impossible for designers to use this software as their products can not be published on websites anymore. We would be left with Adobe products just because they do have tags in PDFs, not because they are very good at it, they are not.
I love all Affinity software, but I have to use other software to create accessible PDFs, like Adobe Acrobat, MS Word, Axes4 (Word Plugin and PDF QuickFix). I want to use Affinity!!
Affinity team, please add tagging to creating PDFs!
And please have a look at other things like a contrast checker, a checker of the the headings, and so on.
Here you'll find some info:
https://www.pdfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/TaggedPDFBestPracticeGuideSyntax.pdf
https://www.pdfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/MatterhornProtocol_1-02.pdf
https://www.axes4.com/resources.html
https://www.access-for-all.ch/en/pdf-accessibility-checker.html
https://www.access-for-all.ch/en/pdf-accessibility-checker/vip-pdf-reader.html"

I echo @carl123’s sentiments, great stuff and deeply appreciated!
I'm happy because Clip Studio Paint did something similar, generous opportunities like these are certainly welcome during this time.
I hope Affinity Publisher for the iPad comes soon, can’t wait to complete the set on mobile.

I don't usually comment but all I can say is Amazing! and big Thank you! Affinity People for your continued support...It is obvious that a lot of people are struggling with current events!...
These offers do not apply to me...which does not concern me in the slightest...The applications are a bargain at full price!...but it's not about the price....It is about what you can achieve... I am just relieved that I had the incentive to engage with this software in the first instance...into my fifth year now...with over 200 drawings and 1000's of brushes and assets!... none of which would have been completed without these apps! 

I cannot believe that there would be any negative response... to offering software that is innovative, evolved so rapidly at a discount...

Hi All,
When much of the world went into lockdown last year we put a few things in place to try to offer some support to the creative community. In the big scheme of things they were fairly small gestures I guess, but we were quite overwhelmed by the positive feedback we received about it.
In particular the 90-day trial of all our apps provided a big help for people who may have lost access to their normal tools through their work or university, and offering a deep 50% discount on our apps was also greatly appreciated.
We reverted back to our normal trial length and pricing as those initial restrictions eased and the situation felt like it was improving. However here in the UK we are back in full national lockdown and in many countries restrictions are tight and livelihoods continue being severely affected as we deal with the second wave of this virus. For that reason, we have decided to re-introduce both our 90-day trial and 50% discount on all our apps and digital content (unfortunately the relatively small margins we have on workbooks means we cannot offer the discount on those). We have also reset the 90-day trial so anyone who took advantage of it before can do so again.
The thoughts of all of us at Serif remain with everyone affected by this crisis and we wish you all the best.
Ash

Someone in your marketing department needs a promotion
 
Please keep sending me emails like this. 50% off everything in the Affinity store is a great way to reward your customers. Especially so, during the pandemic.

I was waiting for the actual 1.9 beta to come out before posting this, but since it doesn't look like it's coming any time soon, I might as well post it in advance. Even if work in the UI has already started, I still think it's relevant to post this. If for nothing else then to make sure you avoid doing the global colours editor UI in the same disastrous way Adobe did with Illustrator for the iPad released today.
To avoid the above you must understand one thing, the whole point of global colours is to finely tune the colours of our illustrations, in real time. This means you must see the colours change within the illustration as you tweak the swatch. As such you must do your best to avoid obscuring parts of the canvas, no full screen editors please.
Another point with these mockups is to create them reusing as much of the existing UI as possible, so the amount of work needed to create this is reduced. This is a critical feature that has been missing for way too long, let's not delay it any further by requesting unique UI elements just for it.
With that out of the way, let's get started.
 
1. The first step in editing global colours is to actually have some.
For that you need to have a way to add them to the colour palette. A simple 'add global colour' entry on the existing flyout menu will do. The swatch will be further tweakable down the line, so this is enough or now.

 
2. Now that global colour swatches exist, you must be able to apply them.
For that you'll need an indicator showing the swatch is applied, a simple blue circle around the swatch will do. This is the same colour as used in many other controls throughout the app. On the next point I'll show these swatches as a grid instead of a list.

 
3. We must be able to apply global swatches to things beyond simple shapes.
Right now we're not able to apply any swatches, even regular ones, to things like layer effects. For global colours to be maximally effective this must change, we need a UI to select and apply swatches to things other than shapes. Here I'm showing how this would look when applying a global colour to a colour overlay layer effect.

 
4. Now that global colours are applied, we need to edit them.
This is where I ran into a possible UI inconsistency issue. What makes sense to me would be to long press a swatch, choose 'Edit' from a popup, and be taken to a panel for that effect like shown in point 5. The thing is, I don't think there's any instance where a popup menu like this takes us to a subpanel? And like I said at the start, if I want to minimize UI changes in order to deliver this as fast as possible...

... so if the above is an issue, then another solution can be used. Instead of long pressing the swatch, we could instead head to the Colours panel and have it behave in a way similar to the desktop version. That is showing a tint slider with a button linking to the colour editor.

 
5. Time to tweak the actual colour values
Independent of the design option chosen above, you'll end up on this panel to edit your global colour. You'll be able to tap the swatch name to change it, and more importantly change the colour values while you keep the canvas in sight at all time. Once you're done you can simple back out into other panels or tap away to close it.

 
Add... that's it. I'm open to take any feedback, and I'm sure the developers would like that too. However, remember that we must reuse as much of the UI as possible, so this critical feature can be delivered as soon as possible.
Thanks!

I was initially a bit underwhelmed with Photo betas Pattern fill tool as I prefer to use vectors for this kind of thing, but just had a thought today about using Publishers Data Merge layout tool to create vector patterns and it turns out to work really well, at least for my usage - I'm not really up to the job at making tutorials, but thought I'd make a few screen captures in order to share the technique - it really does seem powerful and doesn't seem to slow down the way the old step and repeat symbols technique does
First here's an earlier post from today where I first began messing around with the technique - this covers the basics of how to set up a repeating pattern
And heres the technique put into practice on one of my old cartoon illustration jobs - hope someone can make use of it
Pattern_test.mov

I would very much prefer to being able to use any kind of vector objects for pattern creation in addition to pixels. Actually this works already pretty well with the Data Merge Layout Tool in APub (in case you didn't notice this 😉 ).
d.

Yes, that would be useful. I think being able to nest any type of object would be useful for non-destructive creation. Please do it

Wanted to add my vote for this feature and wishing for a palette export as well. This, together with the Global Colors feature, would really be useful to have on the iPad. 

Wanted to add my vote for this feature and wishing for a palette export as well. This, together with the Global Colors feature, would really be useful to have on the iPad. 

Yes, I thought about the same thing. That could be in the hamburguer menu.
That part is on the second combo list as "Is not". Just to follow the usual and stablished way of working under the SQL Logic.
Very well deserved words of gratitude.
Best regards!

Your detailed suggestions is wonderful, @Mithferion! I really like the idea of adding filters as needed, to keep the Select Panel uncluttered.
To add, I would like to suggest a feature to save and load selections so that we can readily choose objects based on previously set selections.
Aside from AND and OR, adding a NOT filter would be great too.
Thanks to the Affinity staff for the “Select Same” feature! I can't wait to use this on the iPad! 😊

Well @dominik and every body watching, these are the first mockups I came up with. The main purpose is to think about all of the possibilities of how good can this feature be.
This would be the main and basic view of the Panel. Bottom part can be for some of the very specific search conditions that some mentioned The first Filters could appear after selecting and object, to ease the use
A bit of an explanation:
The first combo list could be populated with the Columns that are on the Table that appears on my previous posts The second combo list would contain the operators, according to the previous combo list option selected The third combo list is for the attributes. In this example, the color is shown as in many parts of the program, but in the following screenshots you can see what the other options could contain Plus icon to add a filter X icon to delete a filter R is explaine below The AND that appears could be changed for an OR when clicked This is an example of what the first and second combo list could contain:

What if there are no objects and we want to put filters from scratch? This could be the "empty" panel view, and the plus symbol could be there to add a new Filter:
The next thing, how could we replace the content. Well, I propose the "R" button on the right part of the Filter. If activated, it could look like this The "Select / Replace" button could do only the Select or the Replace operation, according to the R button being activated or not
Now, remember I mentioned values? This is how it could look like, with the Replace option activated:
And this is how a very populated Panel would look like. Notice that the Filters have the Columns (with a few corrections) of the Table that appears in my previous posts:  
Lastly, the hamburguer menu could be to Select all Filters and Save the Filters, to have them as Presets for future selections. I hope you excuse the lack of further detail, and that I couldn't do a longer explanation, but I hope this gives you a good idea of what I am proposing, for the benefit of all.
Best regards!

Hey there,
Congratulations on the release of designer iOS it’s awesome!
just wondering whether it would be possible to include an option to auto-close pencil strokes, rather than drawing a shape and then having to close the Shape manually, it would be a real time-saver.
cheers
dave

hi there,

I'd like to share my experience with the Pencil tool, and I think this is related to a bug topic,

first, I notice nice improvement when you convert shapes to curves. Very awesome, thanks to the team efforts 😊

But when I need to use Pencil tool. it still doesn't work as I'd like to use.
eg. trying to close the curves, they doesn't happen so well.

then I need to always activate the sculpt mode.
however doesn't work easily (as you can see on the video).

eg. When you draw a shape, the beginning and the end of each shape drawn, adds more points, making the curve not optimised, taken even more time to fix it.

as I use affinity everyday, I come only when I see a tool that I use all the time would need to have a bit more of attention. 

for now I suggest to my students and followers to use the pen tool,
easy to close the shape and very well optimised.


SUGGESTIONS (for this topic)
Pencil tool (quick draw mode) it draws the shape (example shown at the end of the video)

Clear Shape Option (Reduces the amount of nodes created, making the shape clear to adjust)

add Keyboard Shortcuts for the Close the Curve and shortcuts to the ToolBar buttons, would be awesome as well.

Please take in consideration this topic for the next upcoming improvements
2020-04-18 12-46-14.mp4
Jhon


 

Please just make it automatically close the curve. If Use Fill is checked, it should close the curve. Why would I ever want to draw a filled shape without it being closed?