Friksel

Thisone is just a shout out to Serif. After yet another different project I'm working on, and working in 1.7 now, there are so many big and little details that are so well thought through in Affinity Designer. Of cource some things can be better or added and there are always wishes, but working on a daily basis professionally with (in my case now mainly) Designer is just such a nice experience. Everytime I find new pretty little details in the UI making our design life so much more fun! Conflicting keyboard shortcuts?? Like today I found out that when you enter two conflicting keyboard shortcuts in the keyboard shortcut preferences, Affinity is so clever it's not holding you from using two the same shortcut keys for different tools; Affinity than just interpret that keyboard shortcut as a toggle to toggle between both tools with that keystroke!! That's just absolutely briljant!! No more looking for a still empty shortcut or swapping other shortcuts around, just add the same keystroke and use it with a toggle! Very quick to setup and zero frustration! Just a smile on my face and telling to all my colleagues what great software this is! I like it! Multiple paths in your undo? How convinient the new history panel is! Not only is it great to slide through your history with such speed, but that we now can use branches (like in software programming versioning systems) is just briljant! It's just so much fun to use and everything works so fast and reliable! The crop tool uses snapping too! Yes! Even when using the crop tool to crop, in my case in the project I'm working on, raster images in Designer, we can use snapping while cropping!! That's nice!! The such intelligent snapping When you realise snapping let you snap everything to the positions of the last objects you had selected.. damn... that is such a great way to quickly snap to whatever you like to snap to with a minimal amount of thinking. You just select two objects you would like to align your object (or wathever) with... and it just works!! That's just fantastic and very reliable! No more wondering why help-lines don't show up or snapping doesn't work... just select objects and you just let Designer know you want to align/snap to those objects! Such a great idea! There's way more to tell, like the easy switching between the pen tool, the node tool... the great performance of the software on even large files with fast zooming and zooming in so much, the incredible isometric tool that is wonderful, the clean dark interface making me love looking at it and feel at home with, whereever I am, and so much more... but than I could go on forever here... Just wanted to shout out to Serif and say thanks!! Yes we have a lot of whishes and not everything is perfect nor the way we would like to see some things (which makes sense since it's still young software and it's already impressive how such a small team manages to accomplished so much already with such passion and enthousiasm, obviously working very hard, even taking the time to be online on the forum and all... (also in weekends even!!). And there are moments I could realise that a little bit more. But just to let Serif know I think this software is just so much fun to use and I really enjoy all those little details you guys clearly put so much effort in being perfect for us users! Thanks a lot guys! Really appreciated!!

Nice! That's a pretty handy shortcut I definitely gonna use a lot! Thanks for this @Pšenda!

I like to work with a list of swatches and give all colors/swatches my own name. But with long lists it takes a long time to rename all swatches the way the interface is build now (look at video below). What we have to do rightnow for all items in the swatches list, each time to rename: Rightclick a swatch Move the mouse to the right where a menu popped up on a different location, move to the 'Rename Global Color' (or normal color) menu-item and click Move the mouse to the input dialog which is on yet another completely different screenlocation so we have to move the mouse all over to the left We need to click the inputfield first and select the text in it to overwrite it Type the new name Click on OK or press enter-key to confirm This is a pretty inefficient workflow when renaming a full list of swatches (or styles), it takes way too many steps and we have to move the mouse all the time and switch between keyboard and mouse. What I would like to do instead: Two clicks on the swatch so the swatch-textlabel changes into an input field in which the current name show and is already selected to overwrite Enter the new name Press enter or tab to confirm So no more mouse moves from right and than completely to the left, just two clicks on the same location and the rest typing in and confirming with the keyboard. Not sure why Serif has chosen a completely different (and much more inefficient) UX approach for the swatches and styles panels compared to renaming the layers in the layers panel. I don't understand, because the layers-panel has such a nice and proven fast workflow to rename items which most people understand intuitively and already use in other software too. So please make renaming swatches and styles the same as renaming in the layers panel! That would speed up the workflow so much and makes the repetitive task of renaming items so much more efficient. Thanks! Compare this (renaming swatches and styles how it is now)...: renaming-swatches-takes-a-long-time.mp4 To this... (renaming layers, like how swatches and styles could have the same UX): renaming-layers.mp4

It's great we have arrows now and I use them a lot already. So thanks a lot for that!! This makes our lives so much more fun! When creating a new object, this new object gets the same styling as currently set. So all new objects get the arrows and stroke settings applied when created. While creating a new object, especially when just used a stroke with arrows, I am missing a single button to reset the stroke to a factory preset, like a line of 1 px, stroke disabled, but most importantly: no arrows selected (and set back to 100%). A reset stroke would be nice to use after using strokes with arrowheads to reset the stroke to the (in my opinion) most used strokes, which are just lines without arrows.

Ctrl-A doesn't work in the corner-tool to select all nodes. Ctrl-A does work in the node tool and on some on other places in the software. Ctrl-A here to select all nodes would speed up the proces a lot, 'cause than we don't need to zoom out when working in high detail, just to select all nodes.

When working on a big layout I use copy on an object with Effects applied to it and than paste FX on the target objects to make sure all my objects get the exact same outer shadow. But it's not working as expected: when pasting the Effects on an object with a different size, the values of the Effects (at least with Outer Shadow) are different!! It looks like Designer does some sort of proportionally scaling to the surface of the object we paste the Fx unto, but that's not consistent and unwanted anyway. I don't know what Designer does with the values, but it's not pasting the FX the way se set them up and copied. This way paste FX is pretty useless, because we want to have the exact same effects on all our objects. At least with effects like Shadow, Glow etc. Now we still have to adjust all FX-values by hand, so copying and pasting didn't make much sense. I've been looking for a way to paste with absolute values (like checkboxes, preferences, a different menu item for it), but could't find it anywhere. Especially because we set the Outer Shadow value in pixels and not in percentages, we might expect the FX get copied with absolute values too. So I call this a bug. (Unfortunately rightnow I have to walk through all of my (around 100) objects in the file one by one to set the right Outer Shadow values... 'cause I just found out it isn't using the same shadow everywhere now... damn ) Hope this can be fixed soon, because copying and pasting FX is a pretty nice workflow that really speeds up the workflow and the way it is build now is just unusable!! Thanks in advance! fx-copies-values-relative-instead-of-absolute.mp4

Haha, are we on the same forum? That quoting is a very well known bug here, also mentioned by other people. It happens especially if you're moving quotes in your post. They are pretty stuborn to move and sometime they prevent you from adding new lines before them and such things. They are pretty inflexibel to say the least......... and funny... cause while I'm typing this suddenly I am not allowed to enter a 'new line' (line feed) here. And that's definitely a problem of this forum. I really like the looks and functionalities on this forum, but the supplier should really come up with some bugfixing here and there. [edit] Yes. If I post my message and re-edit it again, I am allowed to enter line feeds again. Weird. To the copy and pasting of names: I wrote that I always write a name manually after the @ , so that should work, but it doesn't show the name in the list and neither does it show the blue highlight to communicate the name is understood as a forum member in some cases. And only than I copy and paste the forum members name after a @ , which also doesn't get recognised. And to make the forum trigger the recognision I do one backspace to delete the last character of the pasted name and retype it again, to hopefully trigger the system to find it. But it never works. Once a name is not recognised, whatever I do, it doesn't seem to get recognised with whatever I try.

I've had it several times lost months now. Normally after typing @ we get a list of people matching the characters we type after the @ , but sometimes the name just doesn't show up, even if you copy the name directly from the profile (and made sure it's plain text first). I understand quoting works as a way to tag, but quoting is pretty buggy on this forum and messes up the message field for some odd reason so I try to avoid it if I don't want to quote.

Hi, Some people can't be addressed from inside messages on the forum by using @, even people with no weird characters in their names. Why is that? And how to address those people with an @ ? Thanks in advance!

Designer only let us add a new style when fill- or border-color has changed. But that's not right, because we should also be able to add a new styles when we changed other style-properties, like the border width, style (solid, dashed...), arrowheads (types, sizes...) and so on, because those properties got saved in styles too. See video: designer-wont-add-new-style.mp4

I understand @Mr Lucky, I was just reacting to @Pšenda here. I'm no Mac user, so I don't know, but from what I read from you I think I totally agree with you and would find it frustrating too if some of the interface was suddenly white, while I put Affinity on dark. Especially when working at night. Hope for you guys it's solved soon!

Are they building an new floor on top for the Publisher crew?

In Windows the print dialog is dark, because you're in Affinity and put Affinity in dark mode. But when the properties windows isn't generated by Affinity, but by your printer manufacturar, it's the driver on Windows providing that window. So if Windows is set to light, like it is normally, than the properties window is light. That's just the way it works on Windows. Nothing Serif can do about that AFAIK.

Hi @DelineatoR, do you realise you just put your private login data here for everyone on the forum to see (AND HOPEFULLY NOT USE)? I'd say that's not the most clever thing to do. I would advise you to take these posts offline and continue via some email, private message or something else private to talk to Serif to solve your problem.

When using the croptool, which I really like btw, there's only one small handle on each side. At the moment I'm using this crop tool a lot at work to crop rastergraphics of screenshots. For that I start zoomed out and work my way to higher detail by zooming in. During this proces I find myself looking for the crop handles a lot because often they are not on screen when zoomed in, so I need to grab-move the 'canvas' to search for the crop-handle. This handle is very small and in fact just a line, so it's easy to miss during this drag-move. Also while dragging, the edge and the handle aren't visible, these are only visible if we stop dragging, so everytime we need to drag a little and then stop just to see if the handle is already in view. I often have to zoom out again, just to find the crop-handle and zoom in again, but it takes a lot of extra steps and it's not a very efficient workflow. (see video) I understand the way it is build now is the same as for sizing and moving artboards with the artboardtool and also works like this in other tools. But for those we mostly work with vectors, so we don't need to fine-tune in high zoom values most of the time and could easily use the snapping options to snap, for example, the artboard to an object. But when we want to crop a rastergraphic snapping isn't possible, so we need to zoom in to finetune the crop and need to move the edges manually. It would be great if we could just click and drag the whole edge!! That way, whereever we are on the graphic and whatever zoom level, we would never have to search for that small crop-handle, we could stay at the zoom level we are in, we don't need to grab-move the 'canvas' and we could work a lot faster and keep focussing on the task of cropping. [edit] the forum is acting strange, couldn't upload the video at first and now obviously added twice the video here, which seem to be impossible to delete by us from this WYSIWYG editor?? crop-tool-handles.mp4 crop-tool-handles.mp4

Is this version for production use (which also uses the current 1.7 production version settings and overwrites the software during install) or another beta that needs testing first?

I think it's fascinating people once moved to Linux with the knowledge there's not much support for it and a lot of software don't have Linux versions so just don't run on it. So you knew you had to compromise in the first place and all along, but it was your choice. To later start complaining at a company like Affinity just because they as a company decided not to support Linux (which is just their right to do so, it's their product)? I think it's great Affinity already supports two different OSes and even tablet versions: Mac and Windows. If there would not be support for Windows I would be very sad, but would accept the fact I had to look for different software instead or maybe even think about moving to Mac. I have the same with the ipad versions, I'd like to have some software on Android, but they decided to go on Mac. Makes sense to me. Yes, I could complain, but why should I? They decided that way, so I could ask once, but if they made up their minds not to support Android, I just have to accept that and leave it or buy an ipad instead.

video-editing/color correction/video-effects For video editing: Take a look at Davinci Resolve. They have a free version which is pretty awesome, including video editing/exporting, color correcting, audiomixing under that video and effects. And it has a pretty great dual monitor support too and is darkmode and has a great GUI. So there is also a complete video effects system on board, but you could also download it seperately (for free) under the name Fusion. audio editing If you like to edit stereo audiofiles (so no multitrack), just look at Soundforge Studio (the entry version), it's only 60 euros and is an expert in sound editing on single files and has great keyboard shortcuts if you like to work fast. It's around for a long time now, used to be by Sonic Foundry, than taken over by Sony and now it's by Magix (uh.. that name.. ahum, but still Soundforge is Soundforge ). Or Steinberg Wavelab, just to name two. Or if you don't like to pay anything for it: Audacity is free. I am personally no fan of their interface and the install isn't always that great and I'm missing some features, but for free software it does a lot as an audio (no multi-track) editor.

Wow, the history slider was already briljant and so much fun to use in comparisson to the old-fashioned undos in other software, but the new “Alternate futures” is making it even greater. Nice addition! Thanks for that!

Thanks for reminding me, but I didn't feel that way. I bumped it because it would be great to see the buttons there and without a reaction we never know what Affinity deverlopers think of it and we don't know if we are waiting for something or they decided something we don't know. So it would help to get a reaction instead of spending energy in helping with features without any clue on if they are being picked up, passed without seeing or marked as uninteresting or whatever. This is the thing with doing these things with a forum instead of a issue-administration-system unfortunately. We never know if somebody even reads it, but it takes our energie everytime we post something. And we help Affinity with it too. Now everybody is posting all kinds of things and there are a lot of double posts, because as time passes by, old threads (with still valid feature requests and issues of people waiting and hoping they will make it to a future version still there) move to older pages in the forum and other people post the same feature requests and bugs later. It would be nice if there was some issue-tracking system instead so we could find for existing issues and don't post doubles and than we could also see it if somebody of the staff watched our post. Now we are just blindly trying to help them and ourselves without having a clue if somebody even read it. To me writing these posts take a lot of my time and I post them to make the product better for Serif, other users and myself/company (like a lot of other people here), so I would appreciate some kind of signal a post has been read and if it's being picked up, but on some pile or marked as uninterested or something. This way you ask for double posts (keeping everybody busy) and bumpings of threads and Serif has more threads to read, that otherwise (without doubles) would be a lot less I think.

Yeah, but if he changes it you don't see this in his profile anymore, which is great:

Thanks for your reaction @GabrielM That's fine, but how can we set the curve order while breaking the curve with multiselecting the nodes we'd like to break? I tried both directions during selection, but the selection doesn't remember the first and second node you select during a marquee-selection and that makes sense, because nowhere in Windows I know of the order of a marquee selection is remembered. I don't like to single select each node and press 'break curve' on each node, because I already know I want to break a segment from a path and this situation (wanting to break a segment instead of just one node) I have a lot. What's the reason the layer order depends on the direction in which you break a curve? When would you like to have the cut-out segment on the layer under the current one instead of above? Why wouldn't we always want the same layer order after breaking a curve to make behaviour consistant? To me as a user that's confusing. I'm curious

Thanks. You're right, that's faster!

Buy an Affinity Photo manual and use it.

John, it's nice you are trying to help me and agree, but I posted this in 'Bugs under Windows' and mentioned the exact Designer-versions I tested this in, including the latest RC2 beta, so I'd say all info is already there for the Affinity developers to read.