TonyO
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Posts posted by TonyO
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I frankly hate illustrator, if I was forced to switch from affinity to a different design app, I’d go back to Corel Draw, it’s far far superior to illustrator. Hell, the design tools in Inkscape are better than illustrator.
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This has been on my silent wishlist for Designer for ages, finally getting around to requesting it.
Illustrator has a set of color adjustment tools similar to the kind you'd find in the adjustments of Photoshop, typical things like color balance, convert to RBG/CMYK, black and white, etc. These adjustments are destructive and change the set color values of fills, outlines, and gradient points on vector objects.I use this alot when doing slight warming or cooling adjustments to my vector illustrations before posting to adobe stock. Affinity Photo has color adjustment tools, but they create non-destructive adjustments layers, which are stripped away when exporting to SVG or EPS for stock use.
It would be super convenient to have really simple color adjustment tools in Designer to edit vector color values.
My wishlist for color adjustments would include:
- Simple RGB/CMYK balance sliders
- Whitepoint/Temperature adjustment (to cool down or warm up colors overall)
- Black and White conversion with color sliders (so you could make yellows into lighter grays, reds into darker grays, etc.)
- Convert to RGB/CMYK (to quick remove mixed color values that may be present from pasting between files)
- Saturation slider
- Convert to Tone (pick a color tone to change all selected objects to the same color value while maintaining light/dark tone variations)A bit of a niche use case, but i feel like it would be useful to alot of designers to have permanent color adjustment as an option. It's hard to adjust vector colors in Designer on complicated images in a way that keeps them compatible with stock imagery creation.
- Bit Disappointed, debraspicher and ronnyb
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I've spent some time reading the posts on this thread, and I simply can't agree with the majority of posts that are only worried about a change in pricing structure.
Tools cost money, I use Designer on iPad as my main illustration app and my side hustle is quite lucrative. I'm willing and able to pay to help along development of a tool that i use this much. I work to get paid, and so do developers.
What has me spooked about this acquisition the potential loss of the community that has contributed to the shape of the suite as it is today. I've been on these forums for a decade at this point, many of my own suggestions have been implemented as features into the apps as well as many bugs and not-so-good changes to the apps being fixed, the Affinity suite has grown WITH us.
Giant companies like Adobe simply do not listen to user input. Their user forums are full of bots or "employees" who simply copy paste answers from the website. Problems are never solved, bugs persist for months if they ever get fixed at all.Canva isn't publicly traded, so I'm not scared of the age old killer of good companies (investors), but I'm definitely afraid of these forums becoming empty hallways where the input of your loyalest of fans falls on deaf ears. Large corporations often lose touch of what made them great at the start.
Change is fine, but please don't outgrow us.
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I'm mixed on this. Canva was a surprising partner announcement, it's not the professional partner i would expect Affinity to connect with. I wouldn't associate Canva with professional software. BUT if it's simply Canva wanting to put it's name on professional software and dumping tons of money at the Affinity team with the hopes that Ash and the crew will still stay true to their values, that might be a good thing. I would love to see a few more advanced, hard to code tools come to the suite such as vector tracing and AI upscaling.
As for the subtle hints that future versions wouldn't follow the old buy once forever philosophy, honestly i wouldn't mind paying for an Affinity subscription if it was fairly priced, this software has helped me make a whole side business of selling stock illustrations, and I've always thought it was a little under priced for the power it offers.
I got my fingers crossed, but I'm keeping realistic expectations.- Alfred, jmwellborn and Bryce
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14 hours ago, Bit Arts said:
When you perform a total reinstallation of an app on your M2 iPad, it could result in downloading and installing the entire universal app package.
I'm running a 2018 A12 Bionic iPad pro (currently holding out for the M3 since it's getting close to the 18 month refresh).
I'm not worried about an extra gig or so on the app package, I'm way more concerned with huge amounts of old cache data collecting somewhere where it cant be deleted, mostly because my older iPad only has 64gb of storage, 22gb of junk files pretty much fills all of my remaining space.I'm not a programmer, but my hypothesis is (because i run an older ipad that is struggling to keep up with more modern software) that the app is hard closing/force crashing in the background to conserve memory when apps are switched, since AFD uses alot of memory. I think this is happening because if i don't exit my current doc to auto save it before app switching, if AFD closes in the BG and i have an open doc, the changes since last auto save will be lost. I'm guessing that cache files aren't being auto cleared as they would if the app closed down properly. This is probably more of an Apple/User-should-upgrade-old-crappy-hardware problem, but it's still concerning since alot of people are still rocking slightly older hardware. Obviously i have no clue what I'm talking about because I'm not a programmer, but the hypothesis sounds good to me anyway.
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All of those settings combined cannot possibly amount to that much junk data though.
I don't install brushes, I don't use styles, and I don't have any imported asset files. I design for iStock/Adobe Stock etc. The files are required to be vector only, no effects, basically the equivalent of EPS-8.0 from 2003. So my files are 99% vector with the only raster based elements I use being temporary background files to trace vectors from. My history states are set to 128, and i never turned them up. My workflow is what you would call "extremely light".So as a test... I saved all 4 of my currently open docs to the icloud files app with the "save history turned on". Then uninstalled and reinstalled Affinity Designer. Re-opened all 4 docs and checked that all 128 states of history were intact on all 4 files, which they were.
So basically, a couple settings aside, I am now back to the EXACT state of my previous workflow, all histories intact, and all data I need currently open and in the live docs. My 25 or so installed fonts were even still there.This is my new "documents and data" size:
So i basically had 22.9GB of data that was completely unnecessary hoarded in the background. Some of that may have been previously held histories for projects I've opened and closed in the past, but why would that be building up in the background if it's inaccessible and un-restorable?
Photoshop has a nice function for this, which basically empties it's entire cache folder of anything that's not currently in use, if Designer is not clearing out data as it should, then a function would be great for dorks like me who can't justify shelling our for new equipment, haha.
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Hiya! Wondering if it would be possible to add a button into the settings (possibly under the 'reset' section) that could clear out cached files or any other random junk data that affinity seems to collect into it's inaccessible data area.
I'm running an older ipad with 64gb of storage, and currently Designer is taking up almost 23GB of "documents and data" while only having 4 docs open (which on dropbox are under 100mb total size between all of them, all of them being mostly vector with very little raster data).
This problem is the bane of iPad owners, every app seems to hoard storage for mysterious reasons, haha!
Thanks!!!
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5 hours ago, Hangman said:
Is there a need for both the show and hide icons, would one togglable icon not suffice in the same way it does for Password Protection in the PDF Export settings to either show or hide the password? This would make it much easier to determine the state of any Query especially as currently there is no visual feedback in the States Panel to indicate when a Query is shown or hidden (other than looking at the canvas itself)...
Perhaps white icons in dark mode and dark grey in light move for consistency and simple ease of viewing...
A definite need, again as mentioned earlier in the thread, to be able to rename Queries...
I totally agree with this, this should totally be a toggle, and the eyeball should likely be changed out to a DOT, similar to the layer pallet to keep consistency. The separate visible, non visible buttons felt super fumbly since i'm so used to toggling a single icon to activate or deactivate any function in affinity apps.
- thedivclass and Hangman
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2 hours ago, Ash said:
Interesting - though we do have some requests logged as to whether a double click on any node could delete the node.
Haha, I’m sure one of those requests was mine 🤣
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Inkscape does this OK, but Corel Draw does this phenomenally. Affinity could definitely benefit from looking at/taking inspiration from Inkscape's source code on the Git for the reshape function. This would also benefit from being the default delete behavior.
But, in defense of affinity's current implementation, even IS and CD can't reshape a set of straight lines in a curved line on node delete.
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This gesture is awesome! It feels fast!
Any time i can avoid needing to click on the toolbar to keep editing is a win for productivity.But I agree with Mike above, when dealing with an object that has a really thin outline (or no outline) and no fill, it is a bit cumbersome to activate this gesture.
Perhaps making the "transform origin" double clickable while the selection tool is enabled, and making the source node (the red one with the node direction line) double clickable while the node tool was selected, that could allow you to activate this gesture even if both fill and outline were both transparent.
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Idea for quick color selection in Designer.
Add an option to the pencil options for a "quick color" on double tap.
The way this would function is:
1. Select and Object
2. Double tap pencil
3. Pencil will temporarily switch to the color picker, you can tap a color or drag the loupe to change the color of the selected object.
4. Once the color is selected, the previous tool (selection or node tool for example) will be automatically be re-selected so you can keep working without having to re-select the tool you were using.
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Honestly, i don't know if i would even be using Affinity today if Corel had their crap together 15 years ago when i made the switch over to Mac. For a while i was using Corel in a windows virtual machine since Illustrator's drawing tools are just so bad, i could never make that switch. When the original Beta of Designer came out, and i used Serif's implementation of the Node tool for the first time, I was hooked from day one and haven't touched Corel since. A couple years ago Corel came out with a Mac version, and still had their old-school super high pricing structure and all of the UI customization was left out, and the code base felt "converted" from windows (kinda clunky and laggy, if you know how those types of apps run), even a Corel die-hard like myself had to say "sorry Corel, too little too late."
- Boldlinedesign and AndyQ
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Older versions of Corel Draw back in the mid 2000's had a crazy customizable interface, you could pretty much drag any function anywhere and dock tools to any part of the interface you want. Not sure how newer versions handle that. That was my daily driver before Designer came along.
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I'm running an old 2018 ipad pro, and I've noticed that when i switch between too many apps, the iPad's memory will fill up and start force-closing minimized apps in the order they were opened, which is kind of the iOS way of doing things. This probably isn't much of a problem on newer M1 and above models, but on my old one, i had to get into the habit of exiting the Designer drawing space back to the list of files before switching around apps so my file would for sure save... If i didnt, there was a chance ADF would close out and not save any changes made since the last save. I blame iOS's multitasking and my cheapness when it comes to upgrading. When you got old janky equipment, you gotta solve some janky problems, haha.
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Yikes! I know nothing about development, but i definitely know it's complicated! Thanks for the insight!
I know anything you guys come up with will be stellar!
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Congrats on V2.3! Working like a charm and I LOVE the new spiral tool!
Can I bump this UI fix for possible inclusion in V2.4? Thanks so much for all you guys do!
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I was mulling over this issue a bit and wanted to bump this thread in hopes of a fix in 2.3... but bumping without a suggestion of a fix felt lazy, haha, so here's my idea!
What if (like the floating modifier dot that activates ALT, CNTRL, SHIFT, etc.), there was also an optional floating color well for fill and stroke, that could act the way the pre-2.1 left toolbar eye dropper used to work (with a quick drag out color loupe for picking color on the currently selected object, WITHOUT switching tools.)
I don't want to be a bother, or that needy guy who is always asking for stuff (hahaha, I mean, i already am that, but squeaky wheel gets the oil right?)... but of all the features that have changed since i started using ADF daily on iPad in 2018, the loss of the quick drag out loupe from the from the eyedropper on the left tool bar as of version 2.1 has been devastating, i still cant fix my muscle memory on that one, it was just too convenient of a gesture.
Thanks for considering! You guys are always receptive, and it is extremely appreciated!!
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I'm seeing this issue on a 2018 ipad pro 12.9 (first generation with the new design, no home button). Just to add a model to the list.
- Bit Disappointed and Dan C
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Can i bump this UI fix request for V2.3? It's proving to be a productivity killer even after a few months of re-building muscle memory. It's just so much easier to be able to drag the color picker from the left menu than pick colors any other way.
Thanks so much for everything you guys do, I haven't illustrated on a computer or paper since 2018 haha!And Congrats on the 2.2 drop, it's performing great so far!
On 5/19/2023 at 8:47 AM, TonyO said:@DWright I found an additional bit to this bug, it appears that the function to drag out the color picker is still there, layered below the pop out menu function. If you activate the popout menu, then retap and hold the original icon while the menu is active, you can still fly out the gesture for color picking. This appears to be an unintentional double function. I made a video.
It would be ideal to drop the pop out menu, choose COLOR or STYLE from the context menu, and restore the drag out functionality OR separate these into 2 tools on the bar so the basic color picker will still allow for the flyout.
Thanks again for looking into this!
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I think this was referring to changes to the color picker tool itself and not the color/style picker pop-out interfering with the drag out color picker. Hoping this is the case, but it doesn’t sound like it.
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Oh cool! Where did you read that? I didn’t see any notes on 2.3 yet.
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I think the feel of the Select All function is a bit odd from a fundamental standpoint. There is very few instances on a multi-artboard project where you would want to select every object, on every artboard, and every object on the pasteboard all at the same time. It seems like the default CMD-A function is overkill.
Selecting inside of a layer specifically feels too far drilled down, and Ash said in the original post, "Edit inside layers" button already toggles this.
I think the real way to fix the idea of "Select All" would be to make the CMD-A key command by default select all objects on the currently selected artboard you are currently working within. It seems like expected behavior since each artboard (unlike illustrator) is like it's own encapsulated layer set within a confined canvas.
This leaves out all objects on the pasteboard though. What if the pasteboard had the equivalent of an artboard on the layers pallet, so you would have a list like "artboard 1, artboard 2, Pasteboard" that way when you click out of an artboard, select all would grab all objects NOT in an artboard. On a non-artboard project, there could be a canvas and a pasteboard layer to start.
Maybe I'm getting too far into the weeds now, but i feel like Select-All just feels like it's taking the idea literally when there are more nuanced ways of approaching it.- Ezbaze and austinprince
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Just now, Red Sands said:
I would like that kind of double click on a node to be configurable - I would prefer toggle node type but fully understand why some would like delete. I could easily live with only delete as well.
No designer would ever complain about more options! I also like the idea of being able to choose the double click on node function. I just hate to see a perfectly good gesture wasted, because the double click is going unused as of now, haha.
Designer: Feature Request - Destructive Color Editing
in Feedback for the Affinity V2 Suite of Products
Posted
When it comes to the desktop apps, I'm way less concerned with the design of the application versus how it's tools are setup for use. Illustrator has the most confusing and unintuitive selection, node editing and bezier tools of any vector editing application I've ever touched. The white arrow tool is a mess compared to the almost standardized dedicated node editing tool shared by Affinity, Inkscape and Corel. Illustrator needed a dedicated isolation mode on double click added a decade or so back because their selection tools were just that bad, a band-aid they've never bothered to take off (and it's frankly starting to smell). Corel draw's interface could look like windows 95, but the app will still be way more productive to work in than Illustrator.
As for Affinity's ipad app... I use the iPad version of Designer just as much, if not more than the desktop version... but for completely different use cases. I'll use the desktop version for layout and design work since mouse and keyboard input just make more sense for graphic design, but for my illustration work and cartooning, nothing can beat the interface setup and the apple pencil functionality. I'll do full illustrations on iPad and never touch the desktop app a single time when working. After you get used to the placement of the functions on ipad and which icons mean what, it really is a fast and efficient setup, but i agree, there is definitely a learning curve since the menus use an icon-centric layout, some memorization is required for sure.