Alfred

Thanks for the heads-up. I've just grabbed the second last free spot, so anyone else who wants to join in had better be quick about it!

I see that you replied while I was editing my post to add: I don't think the Affinity team can do any more about this than your "new kids on the block". :)

LOL. No, I don't have to re-read the thread, and I'm not just trying to increase my post count! I was actually being a bit mischievous. The image I attached was one of three that I obtained by separating out the R, G and B channels in this image from Pixabay; that one is from the blue channel, so there was nothing but blue in it, but (as you will see from the explanation now offered by 'mac_heibu') there's no way the "new kids on the block" could have told you that.

What NFG actually said was "In Inkscape, if you select the green triangle and move it down one level, it moves below the black rectangle immediately. In AD it first moves down past all the rainbow circles." The implication is that in Inkscape it moves to the expected stacking position in a single step, whereas in AD a series of steps is required to get it there. It would have been clearer if "past all the rainbow circles" had been worded as "past each of the rainbow circles, one at a time", but it would also have helped enormously if the green triangle had been at the top of the stack in the example file! I completely agree with all of the above.

Thanks for the clarification. It hadn't occurred to me that you were thinking in terms of a closed path: I thought you meant that a path drawn inside (i.e. constrained by) the edge of a shape should remove a chunk at that edge when you reverse its direction. What you've described is similar to the way some glyphs are constructed in a font. For example, an 'O' is typically two ellipses, where the smaller one has its direction reversed so that it cuts a hole in the larger one. In such cases, however, you have two objects instead of just one.

What's your best guess about the colouring of the attached image before I desaturated it?

Thanks, JimmyJack: I think that's the key. What I reported in my previous post is based on what I observed when someone raised this 'even gaps' issue in another thread. The behaviour in the latest build (1.5.0.8 on Windows) seems to be as you describe.

Maybe it's just the sheltered life I've led, but I don't associate 'reverse path' or 'reverse curve' with the removal of a chunk of another object. Since AD doesn't yet have a Knife Tool, if I wanted to remove a chunk of an unclosed curve I would simply add nodes at the appropriate places, break the curve at those nodes and delete the unwanted section. If you want to use a unclosed curve to cut away a chunk of a closed curve, you can simply close it and then subtract it from the other shape.

That's exactly what NFG is saying. Thanks for confirming that the behaviour on OS X or macOS is the same as on Windows. There was a lot of confusion and consternation when Serif introduced 'optical ordering' to DrawPlus in one of the later versions. The argument in favour is that you can move the green triangle from the top of the stack to just below the black with a single command, instead of having to move it one step at a time or drag it wa-a-y down the stack in the Layers panel: if you really want to move it just below the first (red) circle, it's easy to drag it there. The best way to please everyone, of course, is to have an option for specifying how 'Back One' and 'Forward One' should behave.

It doesn't seem to be possible to set a fixed gap size between multiple selected objects. With a row of identical rectangles, distributing them evenly will make the gaps the same, but if some of the rectangles are tall and the others are wide then the gaps will be different.

Today (July 29) is the last day to upgrade to Windows 10 for free, but you have to be on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 to do it. You can't upgrade directly from Windows 8.0.

The bottom line is: can you identify the colours in their clothing, and can you say whether the foliage in the background is green or brown? I can't.

+1

I'm on Windows, so I don't have Affinity Photo yet, but I usually do this kind of thing by loading a saved image with the desired adjustment layers applied, and then simply swapping the old background layer for a new one containing a different photo.

Just a bit! B) As an anti-spam measure, attachments are disabled for the first few posts. :(

Like Petar, I'm on Windows and I don't have Affinity Photo yet, but the usual way to remove a solid background in an image editor is to select it with the Magic Wand Tool and then either simply delete it or invert the selection so that you can copy the rest of the image for pasting elsewhere. If you want to make overlapping rectangular selections, try the Shift key as an 'add to selection' modifier and the Alt/Option key for 'subtract from selection'.

Is that likely to change in the foreseeable future, Dave? I recall JBig2 compression being mentioned a few times during the PagePlus years, but (as far as I'm aware) support for it was never actually added.

What's the matter, PixelPest? Haven't you ever heard of "the four corners of the globe"? :P

I confess, Ravi: I'm "the same Alfred"! I knew that 'Ravi/ravells' was you, hence my reference to map-making. ;) AD doesn't yet have an equivalent to the Flood Tool that we finally got in the last ever version of DP, so it seems that 'Divide' (a nice command which is sadly missing from DP) is the way to go. It depends where you drop. If you have two overlapping objects and you drag the bottom one up on the Layers panel, dropping it when you see a long horizontal blue rectangle will cause it to be clipped to the upper object. Dropping it on the thumbnail of the upper object (when you'll see a short vertical blue rectangle) will cause the upper object to be cropped to the shape that you dropped on it. And, of course, if you drag up far enough you'll just change the stacking order.

That seems to be the case in Affinity Designer, but it doesn't need to be! Suppose you've drawn a map with lakes on one layer and rivers on another: if we had a 'Merge Layers' command we could easily combine the contents of those two layers to create a 'Lakes & Rivers' layer, but as things stand we have to move all the objects from one layer to the other and then delete the empty layer.

On the View menu, choose 'View Mode' and turn off 'Clip to Canvas' (or use the keyboard shortcut `\`).

You can obviously select multiple objects on the Layers tab and drag them to another layer, but I can't find a 'Merge Layers' command as such.

I understand about the 1.x point releases, Andy. What I meant is that AD 1.x should ideally be able to open files saved from 2.x, albeit with a warning, in much the same way as DrawPlus X6 can open files saved from DPX8.

I think Johnny wants to be able to use a brush instead of discrete shapes, but without the head of the brush getting distorted when the stroke follows a curve. I don't believe this is possible, but I'd be delighted to be proved wrong!

Thanks, Miguel. I see what you mean now!