fdelaneau

Sometimes it would be really useful to be able to mask everything in the layers studio but the layers from the artboard you are currently working on. What do you think ?

@frankstallone it is clearly not listed, @MattP just told us about it on this thread. PS. Another perfect Sketch plugin that would help us a lot is Paddy, like its name suggest it allows to set-up padding to an element and allows it to resize depending on the elements it contains. Sweet !

@Fixx I doubt that Affinity uses mipmaps. It seems to me that they resample the embedded images on display. They might cache the computed versions but I don’t think that they store it in the file. The best exemple I can think of is the way Affinity Designer shrinks PSD files with smart-objects. Since AD doesn’t support smart objects (yet) you only get the flattened images at the document resolution. This means that a 500 Mo PSD file with lot of embedded images can be reduced to a 20 Mo Affinity Designer file. Now, this is obviously not an ideal solution for a web or an app design since you won't be able to export elements at 2x or 3x resolution anymore, but if you are doing print design and the original file is at 300 dpi you would get the smallest usable file for your archives. What do you think ? PS. I know that nowadays storage capacity isn't as critical as before and that SSD capacity is rapidly increasing while the prices are dropping but never forget that there are still places where internet sucks and smaller files can make a difference. And anyway it is always better to cleanup your files

Hi, I would love to see an option to optimise Affinity Designer’s files. What I have in mind is a way, once you have finished your composition to reduce the image size to match their use. You would need a few options to reduce the file without losing actual useful data. Depending on what you need you can define that the file images need to be downsized to 1x or 2x, that the images should be cropped to their visible portion or left to their full size, etc. I think this would be really helpful to avoid archiving huge files when you have a mostly vector file but with a few cropped images.

I must concur, SVG for web file size are rather large and I think that there is room for improvement. I found out that Affinity Designer uses Path almost everywhere even when there is a native SVG alternative. Here is an exemple to illustrate my point : a rectangle with rounded borders (single radius). <!-- Affinity --> <path d="M257.5,63.022c0,-11.038 -8.962,-19.999 -20,-19.999l-175,0c-11.038,0 -20,8.961 -20,19.999l0,175.001c0,11.038 8.962,20 20,20l175,0c11.038,0 20,-8.962 20,-20l0,-175.001Z"/> <!-- Native SVG --> <rect x="43" y="43" width="215" height="215" rx="20" ry="20"/> I know that you are out of luck if the rectangle has not a single radius : then you need to use a path. But even if you only tacle this it would yield a serious optimisation for images using rounded rectangles.

@adib It seems it is still not available. @MEB Could you present the case to Ben please ? Now that the iPhone X is here and that even the notch features super-ellipses it would be really handy.

Affinity Designer already has custom shapes, developing the algorithm for a custom superelljpse shape shouldn’t be to complex. About the Sketch plugin compatibility, I don't think this can ever be the case. The Affinity team would need to develop a full library featuring all scriptable Sketch functionalities.

Don't get me wrong, including prototyping in Affinity Designer would be really nice (exit Flinto) but I’m more interested in the two options from the Craft plugin that are Data and Duplicate. Data allows you to quickly fill your mockup with actual content, Duplicate is the easiest way to create lists and grids that I ever encountered. With both combined you can create a complex element, fill it with content then duplicate it and get a perfect grid with different content filled in automatically. Even if I love Affinity Designer and I use symbols a lot, getting the same result takes time and feels like a huge step back. PS. I’m fine with having a separate app for prototyping as long as the files are correctly synced between them. Even with personas solving the UI part, adding more and more stuff might bloat the application.

@Dave Harris You are right of course. Breaking the compatibility with an update that would request users to buy the upgrades for their other apps wouldn’t be a nice experience. Who in their right mind would do such a thing ?...oh, hi Adobe !

@Bri-Toon Like R C-R, I never noticed such a behavior. It feels more like a bug to me then something intentional.

I don’t know… I might be too used to the shareware price model where you pay for major releases and "minor" updates are free. For me it still seems like the norm and subscriptions are a few exceptions. Anyway, I can’t wait to send them my money in exchange for Affinity Publisher

@Dave Harris That is a good news indeed. I completely understand why you Launched the Windows versions quickly but the trade-off is a few more constraints. PS. I wonder if you plan to exploit Apple Core ML or if you don’t even try since it would be Mac only feature ? PPS. I think we can assume that everyone here knows that the upgrades are free and we are all so so grateful for that. Thanks !

Has can be expected, the file format will evolve, I’m not too much worried by that... as Long as the older files can still be opened. By the way, I’m still amazed at how much more efficient the file format is compared to PSD.

Yes but that means that appart from the button itself, most of the code that runs the behaviour must be implemented in all 3 apps. I didn’t thought of that initially and this feels like something that might potentially cramp an app development as each app team need to wait for the others to implement their new feature before they can release it to the public.

Random thought : Since all Affinity apps share the same file format, Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo needs to be able to handle linked text blocks. Otherwise, you won't be able to resize a linked text block. At that point what are the features that would make Affinity Publisher different from AD ? Pages and spreads for sure… but what else ? Note that the features problem is the same, since you need to be able to edit the file in AD or AP so both need to support pages and spreads.

The more we wait the more our expectations are building. Be wary

About saving the changes, I would love that when editing the embedded document, hitting cmd + S would save the source file. Right now I feel really insecure when I need to work more then a few minutes on the embedded document and having to switch to the source file and save breaks the workflow (worse, my reflex is to hit cmd + S but it does nothing). It would be nice to be able to import the embedded document in one clic ! It would directly import all layers from the embedded file and apply the size, skew, and other effects that have beed applied to the file. I also would like to see a way to export and embedded file directly as an affinity designer file (see dedicated post).

Hi, I am wondering if there is a way to export an embedded file as a native Affinity file ? I know this can seem like an unusual need but it can occur more times then I'd thought. For now I create a new document with the same dimensions and copy paste the elements from the embedded document in it. It works but that’s not really pretty. The only other way I found is to export the file as a PSD then convert it back to AD but this seems a good way to loose some features and creates inaccuracies. Did I miss something or should it be added to the features requests ?

I just found out that this might be a lot easier than supporting PSD files, they opened their file format to allow automation : https://medium.com/sketch-app-sources/sketch-43-is-coming-to-town-with-a-new-game-an-open-file-format-ae62e7e7c223

If you could retro-engineer this it would be really great ! PS. I was about to open Apple iOS Sketch files to import some element in AD but discovered that Sketch also went the subscription way and the files are not compatible with my older version :( I would strongly advise you to contact Apple’s team and suggest that they add AD iOS templates to their ressources. I know you already have iOS 10 assets in the app but it would help if those where official and seing Affinity Designer next to Photoshop, Sketch and Adobe XD would definitely get you new users and further establish you as a solid alternative.

@Leigh I’m found that part, I was looking for a way to add custom variables to the Path and the field is shown but seems disabled and even so there is no way to retrieve the artboard name. You mentioned that the variables are limited to the document witch is fine by me, but in my tests the variable was limited to the export you are editing and doesn’t show in others ? It doesn’t seems right and I can't find any use for this implementation except perhaps for some export scripts that I’m not aware of.

@Leigh Could you explain how you can create custom variables ? I didn’t find anything helpful in the interface or in the documentation Ideally, I would like to automatically add the artboard name in the path. PS: Adding in the path variables list the artboard name seems to me like a good idea as I’m sure I’m not the only one with such needs.

Hi, It would be nice that if you open a document that has a document palette this palette would be selected by default. I know it is trivial but it is an extra step that feels really unnecessary.

Hi, I know you have a lot on your plate but improving SVG export is a major issue for me as a UI designers. As a quick comparison, yesterday I exported a file in different formats then run ImageOptim : PNG 87 kb -> 70 kb PNG @2x 238 kb -> 186 kb SVG 91 kb -> 90 kb The SVG is lighter than the @2x and seems to be the obvious choice but I still needed a smaller file. After checking the SVG code I discovered that paths where used instead of rounded rectangles, dashed strokes where also converted to paths and so on. The rounded rectangle seemed also quite messy and have a lot of data where there should be only 8 declarations (4 lines and 4 arcs). After cleaning and editing the file I ended up with only 7 kb and there are still a complex path from AD that I could redo. Now I know that not everything I did could be automatically done (I used symbols and masks) but even so they are a lot that could be improved and it seems you have all of the data needed to create a clean SVG file.

Hi, I have high hopes for Affinity Publisher. There is still a thing that are really hard to do with Indesign that is easily achieved with HTML and CSS, inline styled blocks. I would love to be able to select one or more paragraphs and apply a block style to them. Currently you can’t do that in Indesign without creating a separate block that will not flow with the rest of the text. Last time I had a page to layout with multiple blocks after trying to do it in Indesign I opted to use HTML and CSS and then convert it to PDF using PrinceXML.