gafvert

Just tried out the new beta 1.7.0.14, and when I saw that the app had a new app icon I was sure they'd fix this strange oversight with the lack of document icons, but now it seems that they've just done the same thing again and used a version of the app icon for the documents? Only slightly larger? Come on! How hard can it be to actually make recognizable document icons that aren't just the app icon?

I'd agree that publishing more updates with smaller improvements to show that active development is taking place would be great. Since the software is very much a developing product with many features not yet implemented I would have expected much more frequent updates to reflect this. In fact, I've more than once spent time looking for "check for updates" settings, wondering if I've somehow disabled updates or missed new releases since I'm still on the same version I bought a year ago.

I'm using Affinity Designer 1.6.1 on macOS and this is one of the most important features I'm missing doing UI work: Being able to create an object style (say "Button outline", or "Info panel style") and apply it to all relevant such objects. Then, critically being able to CHANGE the style (adjust the stroke for example) and have all objects with the style applied to them update. Currently it seems I can create and apply styles, but I can't change them which to me removes 80% of the usefulness of having styles. Incidentally, text styles in Affinity Designer work fine and just the way I would expect them as described above, so it's surprising and a little confusing the object styles do not. Perhaps this indicates that similar object styles are on the roadmap (somewhere I can't find?) but the developers just haven't gotten around to it yet?

So I'm guessing this isn't implemented in 1.7 then? The reason I asked was I didn't want to put in a feature suggestion for something that was already implemented, but not yet released on macOS.

Does 1.7 offer dynamic object styles? As it doesn't seem to be available yet on macOS I'm still on 1.6.1 and this is one of the most important features I'm missing doing UI work: Being able to create an object style (say "Button outline") and apply it to all relevant such objects. Then, critically being able to CHANGE the style (adjust the stroke for example) and have all objects with the style applied to them update. Currently it seems I can create and apply styles, but I can't change them which to me removes 80% of the usefulness of having styles. Incidentally, text styles in Designer work fine and just the way I would expect them, so it's surprising the object styles do not.

If you want to do more complex vector halftones you could also take a look at our software Vectoraster. It's designed to work as a companion with copy&paste support into for example Affinity Designer or whatever vector illustration suite you use. I may not be completely unbiased in this, but as indicated by the previous posters above I think it will be very difficult to get the same level of customization and performance with such a specific vector generation effect built into a more general design platform like Affinity Designer (or Illustrator).

I'm posting this again since the old post seems to have been migrated to a locked section and can't be replied to, while the issue has been raised by multiple users (see below) from 2014 and onwards. A simple request: An application as mature as Affinity designer should have proper document icons and have finder/macOS document types set up correctly. Currently Affinity Designer (1.6.1) has three document types, with none of them having document icons: - "Affinity Designer Documents" (.afdesign), these currently use the application icon, which looks very out of place and is a little confusing. Please add a proper document icon for these files. - "Affinity Brushes" (.afbrushes), these have no icons so they get a generic blank system document icon (at least better than the application icon). - "Affinity Openable", (all supported formats, like .svg .jpg .pdf etc), these also have no icons so they get a generic blank system document icon. Also these should get proper names that reflect the actual file type, like "Affinity SVG" etc, as "Openable" isn't really a file type and is a little confusing as it's shown in finder as the file type if you assign for example SVGs to be opened by Affinity. This seems like such a simple thing to fix, and such a basic thing for a document based application I wonder why it hasn't been done already? Is it intentional?

Well, yes. Perhaps a more thorough reorganization of the preferences would be a solution to this specific problem as well. But that I think would be a bigger undertaking, which could delay fixing this more specific problem with scaling behavior. I'm not saying that the current default approach with proportional scaling as default for some objects is bad, but I think it's one of these things that will annoy and put people off when they're migrating from a long time of Illustrator usage. And when there is actually a simple setting to get this to work the way you want it seems a pity it's so difficult to find.

Something that drove me crazy for a long time was that in Affinity some object scale proportionally by default (making them scale proportionally when you hold shift) while other objects are the other way around. I looked for a long time for a way to change this behavior but didn't. I also looked for a way to enable "scale from center" using the option key, but didn't find that either and gave up. Only much later I found that you can scale from the center using command (on mac) and that there is an option to make proportional scaling behavior consistent, in 'Preferences > Tools' and change the "Move Tool Aspect Constrain" setting to "Do not constrain by default". However, this was at least to me quite unclear. So my proposal would be to introduce a new preferences section called "Scaling behavior" with one option regarding the proportional scaling constraint behavior and what modifier key should be used to trigger that, and one setting for the scale from center behavior and what modifier key should be used for that.

A simple request: An application as mature as Affinity designer should have proper document icons and have finder/macOS document types set up correctly. Currently Affinity Designer (1.6.1) has three document types, with none of them having document icons: - "Affinity Designer Documents" (.afdesign), these currently use the application icon, which looks very out of place and is a little confusing. Please add a proper document icon for these files. - "Affinity Brushes" (.afbrushes), these have no icons so they get a generic blank system document icon (at least better than the application icon). - "Affinity Openable", (all supported formats, like .svg .jpg .pdf etc), these also have no icons so they get a generic blank system document icon. Also these should get proper names that reflect the actual file type, like "Affinity SVG" etc, as "Openable" isn't really a file type and is a little confusing as it's shown in finder as the file type if you assign for example SVGs to be opened by Affinity.