dogcow

Thanks! Much appreciated.

hi Sean, good guess. I am indeed using Separated Mode and they do seem to always be small files. Reset Rotation did fix it, thanks! I think I found that trick months ago, but the canvas got messed up again at some point. The attached file is the latest to have this issue. When the star opened upside down I half expected Black Sabbath to start playing. stars-24px.svg

I've been having a strange issue for a while on my Macs with Affinity Designer, v.1.8.3 on both. If I open any vector file (PDF or SVG), the canvas representation of it is flipped vertically. The preview image in the layer window is correct, and the resultant images that are exported are correct, but the display canvas itself is flipped. This obviously makes it hard to work with such documents. I looked for global preferences that I might have changed, but nothing seems to fix this problem. The one thing that does fix it is if I select and copy the contents of the vector document while open, and then do New From Clipboard. Then the orientation is correct. Weird!

I really don't think you've fully read my topic if you think I just want them to ship untested software. My post is a SOS to Serif that they are taking on too much and their release timelines for some products are falling behind what is reasonable to expect based on their history and other apps in the market. Only they know the answer to why this is, but I'm here to express my frustration at it.

I don't use betas to get work done. I agree that work is progressing, but that work is not reaching customers in a final, released state at the same pace it used to. (Unless you're using an iPad) It's a bit odd that you replied to a different user instead of addressing my concerns, but I'll quote this bit. I'm sure you are improving the apps as fast as possible with the people you have, but the problem is you now have 4 things on the stove. Talking about quality is distracting from that main issue: Serif has 4 major products now (6 if you count the Windows versions as separate products). Y'all started other product initiatives like Publisher before your existing products people actually paid for were at a mature state. To me, this is the opposite of quality. Serif, in a macro sense, has chosen quantity instead. As I said, if this is a matter of lack of revenue to hire more people, I think many of us would be willing to pay for updates more often if it means that updates would come at a more reasonable and reliable pace. As it stands now, it's hard to trust Serif in their dedication to and focus on the desktop versions of Photo and Designer.

I bought Affinity Designer (and then Photo) fairly early on. The apps were early days in terms of features and stability, but I was excited by the potential they had to be true Photoshop and Illustrator competitors. Updates were big and arrived often. But then an iPad version was announced being in development and I noticed that progress on the Mac apps was noticeably slowing. Now a Publisher app has been announced, yet we don't even have a bugfix update for Designer 1.6 which came out almost 4 months ago. I know that work is being done on the Mac apps, but it feels like it must be a skeleton crew at this point. From a customer perspective it feels like Serif may have bitten off too much, and the original apps are suffering. If this is a question of needing more revenue coming in, I'd be happy to pay more often for updates because I still believe in the potential of the products. But right now Designer and Photo for the Mac feel more like they're playing 2nd or even 3rd fiddle to the iPad and other Affinity projects. I use Designer mainly for UI design and it feels like there are less and less reasons to stick with it given the competition in that space. And I don't want to have to make that choice.

Problem: Object selections clutter up the history list. An errant selection when you've gone back in history can also blow away all your changes. Solution: Add an option to ignore selections (and deselections) so that they do not appear in the History list and do not change the current state of the History.

Hi, I am trying to automate my filenames for slices because manually renaming slices takes up more time than I'd like. However, I don't see many token variables available for slice names (and only one available for the path). What I want is at least a variable that holds the document name, as I often name my assets [comp]_[slice].png, such as onboarding_photo1.png, where "onboarding" is the name of the document and "photo1" is the name of the slice. edit: title of this post references naming paths, but my question is actually more related to automating filenames for slices. and why isn't this just unified in the UI into one automated field for the path and the filename..?

I'm not sure Affinity Designer needs full animation tools for prototyping -- that is a big feature set, hard to get right, and I feel that it would be getting away from Designer's focus -- but I do think Designer is lagging behind Sketch in terms of UI design workflow, and I fear unless they really target UI design, Sketch is going to be the de facto UI design tool. It kind of already is. And that annoys me, because many of Sketch's UI choices are weird and the app itself feels poorly coded. Not a big fan. I guess there's more of a general question in my head about Designer's focus and its future. Is it a general vector tool? Is that a good idea when many desktop apps are becoming more focused? If it's a general tool like Illustrator, why are Designer and Photo two separate products? When I'm doing UI design, I often don't know which to pick. In fact, I recently built some mobile screens in Photo. The vector tools in Photo are far more competent than the ones in Photoshop. So why not just have a generalized design app that supports both vector and image editing? I get that Photo seems marketed to photo editors with new features like HDR and 360 stitching, but then why does it even have design tools and vector support? I don't see a clear separation of tasks between the two products, except for hardcore editing needs. TL;DR I guess what I'm saying is, maybe it'd be better to have a generalized design editing tool which supports both photo editing and vector illustrations. And then have a separate app that is focused on UI design and other layout needs, which maybe full prototyping tools could be added to.

It is enabled, though I don't actually know what that option does. I turned it off and the zoom behavior is still the same – it does not zoom with the mouse as the central point, but seems to always zoom from the center of the image. Ah wait, I turned on the mouse wheel zoom and it does. I never use that (as I like to scroll through the image), instead using the Command key shortcuts, which don't seem to have the same mouse focus behavior. Regardless, that doesn't solve the window sizing problem.

I often have multiple files open at the same time, so setting the window to full screen is not an option. But even when I only have one file open, the window behavior doesn't work for me. If the canvas zoomed based on mouse position defining the center, maybe that wouldn't be so bad, but it doesn't. The result is a feeling that I have little control or precision. And frankly maybe it's OCD, but seeing extra window area around the image drives me crazy. I just want files to open with the window fitting the image size, I don't want to waste time resizing windows. If the image can't fit on the screen, it should be scaled down, but the window should always fit the image's proportions until I manually resize it. And if I drag the window edges manually, the image area should always stay centered within that window. This is all stuff Photoshop does and it feels right. Affinity's window behaviors feel haphazard and I feel like I'm constantly working against them.

In Photoshop I usually liked to use the preference that the window size would always change to fit the canvas size when zooming. But I can't seem to find a similar preference in either Affinity Photo or Designer. There is Zoom to Fit, but that resizes the canvas, not resizes the window. And even when I zoom in and out, the canvas does not zoom from the center point of the window. It's all a bit frustrating managing the windows when I want to focus on the content, and for something which Adobe nailed years ago. Please just copy their behaviors on window sizing!

So the latest versions of Affinity Photo and Designer added Touch Bar support, which is great, but I have not found the menu command to customize the buttons displayed on the Touch Bar. Does this not actually exist? Every other app I've used so far has had that customization ability. I would also recommend adding more color for easy visual scanning, perhaps based on function. The sea of monochrome icons makes it harder to quickly find what I'm looking for.

Ha, sorry for being confused, now I understand what MEB was saying after Alfred explained it. While not entirely intuitive, the snapping trick does get the job done in an extra step.

Right, it looks like the Shift key will constrict the handles to the y-axis position of the node being modified, but what I was asking for is to move handles away or towards the node with the same offset. For example, currently if I drag the right handle (represented by '(H)') of a node , the other handle will remain. If the node is at the apex of a semi-circle, one side will take on a different shape. (H)------(N)--------------(H) What I'd like is to hold a modifier key while dragging a handle to mimic the same offset for the other handle. This would allow symmetric edits to both curves controlled by a node's handles. (H)--------------(N)--------------(H) Thanks. :) I grew up designing on a classic Mac, and will always have a special affection for the old OS. How things have changed, and yet haven't!

If I have a curve and want to edit a node that has two handles, how can I adjust one and have the other handle mirror that adjustment? For instance, let's say I have a semi-circular curve and I want to move the center node's handle away from the node by 20 points. I want the other handle to move 20 points in the opposite direction so that the curve adjusts equally on both sides. I tried dragging the handle using modifier keys to accomplish this, but nothing seemed to work. Maybe not possible?

Ash has definitely got the Jony Ive furrowed brow look down. ;) The constraints system looks really nice, especially combining that with unified symbol edits. Looks much more pleasant to use than Interface Builder! One feature I'm desperately missing from Illustrator is a scissors/knife tool. Really hope this makes it into 1.5.

I own Affinity Designer, which basically means I don't have to open the piece of junk app called Illustrator anymore, and when I heard about Affinity Photo, I was really excited to think someone finally made a proper competitor to Photoshop. Though I have a fondness for Photoshop after years of use, it has become very buggy and slow, and I'm not too fond of Adobe in general. I have no desire to rent software. So, after some time messing around with the beta, I'd say Affinity Photo is surprisingly robust for something pre-1.0. I'm so used to "the Photoshop way" that some things were not very obvious, and some things I just don't agree with. But overall I'm very impressed at both Affinity Photo's feature set and speed. It seems quite stable, and most features I used produced the results I expected based on the equivalent Photoshop features. Some more specific feedback: • I finally figured out that you can mask with a layer by dragging it onto another. I assume to mask a group of layers, you'd have to create a layer group and drag onto that. I'm not sure I really like that compared with Photoshop -- having masked layers being indented makes things a bit more obvious to see with a quick scan, and easier to adjust the mask layer. • Color palette support seems minimal. I hope 1.0 will have the Pantone palettes? I assume there's probably a license fee for you guys to include those, but they're really needed. • I messed with the gradient tool for 15 minutes and could not figure out how to draw a gradient. Why does it only show one color? How do I set multiple colors and their blend percentages? This tool really needs a UI rethink; it's unintelligible right now. • I prefer how Photoshop shows adjustment layers as attached directly to the parent layer. Affinity Photo shows Effects layers in a separate panel and that creates a layer of indirection and increased cognitive load. In Photoshop I often copy adjustment layers from one layer to another. Can you even do this with Effects? • It's going to take a while to get used to the layer visibility buttons being on the right instead of on the left as they are in Photoshop. It might help to quickly scan if the layer UI was slightly dimmed when their visibility is off. It's also a bit inconsistent that visibility of layers uses a checkbox icon, but channel visibility uses an eye icon. • Having the red 'traffic light' window button close the entire app goes against Apple's OS X human interface guidelines and makes it feel like a Windows/Adobe app. It should only close the current document. And more a more general comment about both apps: No disrespect intended to Affinity's icon designers, but please please please get someone who understands OS X icon design to redo your app icons (I'd suggest IconFactory). They currently look like 1990's Windows business apps, and that's not very fun to look at in the Dock.