Wild Dingo

Hi Dan C, Thank you for replying. I had to give up the project to address other project needs over the holiday and finally had time to come back to this conversation to consider input from everyone. YES, I also agree that the file structure and the ridiculous amount of nodes on each object is a big issue and it's not my design (I would never design something with that many nodes), however as I first tried to eliminate some of the things that could be the problem, (such as redundant or unnecssary pixel layers) it would just completely stop or crash AD all together. I'm going to give rasterizing the pixel layers and see if that helps but I don't have faith. I'm not much of an original designer, especially in project mode, sometimes I just want to leverage other clip art out there, so it's a little disappointing that either the clip art is too hard to work with or the way it's coming into AD makes it impossible to work with. AD on it's own and doing my own work is perfect. This is the first time I've ever had any issues with AD. And I love Publisher as well. This problem happened with other art files and clip art downloaded from freepik too... it's not just this file. I'm just curious: concerning the silly number of nodes, is this something that a designer actually DID or is it a file interpretation from what was designed (in what I would assume would be Adobe Illustrator) and then interpreted with a ton more nodes in AD? Please understand, I don't know how files are read between programs, that is, if they get changed (like the # of nodes or how the curves are interpreted) from one program (like Adobe Illustrator) to another (like Affinity Designer).

My HP Desktop uses both an Intel R HD Graphics 530 card on drive 1 and an AMD Radeon R9 A375. i assume this is because it's a dual drive. My PC is about 3 years old, an HP Envy Desktop with Intel Core Processor. This is so annoying. I don't know why this is happening. Windows has been updated in August with the last major update. I wonder if that has anything to do with this new issue.

Thanks R C-R, the reason for the differences in the files is because I tried my best to lighten the file by deleting what I didn't need, like the text. I also tried ungrouping and deleting but that process is unbearably slow and doesn't open in the 12-15 sec you get. I've tried other graphics from freepik and it's the same story. I tried doing a save as affinity file instead of an eps but that doesn't really help. I must be missing something.

Thank you for your reply. Here is the link: https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/hand-drawn-christmas-background_5765086.htm#query=christmas&position=0

Hello, I'm trying to use some downloaded vector art from freepik, but Affinity Designer is very slow or even non-responsive to work with the files. Making one edit can sometimes just stop the program altogether. I've tried rebooting several times. The vector files are large, but not unbearably so, about 16, 000-64,000 kb in size. I'm running a Windows 10 dual processor, 64 bit OS, 16 MB RAM. The first drive is solid-state SD, with over 20 GB free space. I use this drive solely for my software/programs. The second drive is a regular data drive with over 1 TB in free space. I attached a file here to see if it's unbearably large to work with or if I'm missing something in my PC set up. I tried defragging my system as well (it didn't need it, it was already optimized and running smoothly.) I don't have this problem working with my own artwork which ranges from 23,000 kb to 172,000 kb, just artwork that I downloaded from freepik. I don't run any other programs while working with any large files like this. I just run a browser and Affinity Designer. Can anyone help me understand why it's so unbearably slow or non-responsive? Thank you. I'm getting too old and tech is getting too complex for me to figure out on my own. Thank you for any help! 3003725.eps

A year later, and this is still relevant. I just produced a piece of art with 87,000 layers, pixel and text. (Ok, not 87, 000 but you get the idea). And i had to resize and was struggling understanding how to do it with text (so i wouldn't have to resize each text element individually after pixel and vector layers scaled). I had no idea that right handle was for including text in the re-scale! What a time saver. Thanks Affinity! Solved my issue in 2 seconds.

Yup, I have the grass vector brushes. I will take a look at Monster Club! thanks!

Thanks! I think these may work on human eyebrows.

Hey Toltec, thanks for the info! I appreciate it. Right now, the only reason I'm not moving to Affinity Photo is because I'm just focusing on my design skills right now. For the moment I put photography on a back burner (I know, blasphemer!) and just process my stuff in Lightroom. I haven't been truly using PS for a long time, just recently broke it out to see if I needed it (experimented with the features etc.). I've been an Adobe user since the 1990's working in PS, Illustrator, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, InDesign, and even Quark (yes I'm that old). I hadn't worked in either illustrator or PS for years (10+ years unwanted, unexpected sabbatical), so when I came back to those programs, well, things were very different from how I remembered. Yes everything is similar, I don't disagree. It's more about the UI and the ease of use. Like the move tool for example, it's tricky in PS if you're working on tiny shapes made in vector then have a transparent background. I swear I had to zoom in 10,000% (ok, I exaggerate) just to get the move tool to click the actual pixel and pick up the item. That's what I mean. And though I haven't really tried Photo, from Designer, I am guessing that UI experience will be more pleasant. It was just so nice to come back to the work market and find a sweet, clean design and possible photo solution for my work needs. This info is helpful and I have no doubt I'll switch later! Thanks!

Thanks for these thoughts! They're helping already. That was the first hurdle, i needed to rasterize the image so I can use the selection tool and delete. I overlooked having converting my image to raster layer. Thanks for that! I never really did photo stacking in macro, though I know how to do it. I'm a handheld gal. I breakout the tripod 2x year. But I won't lie and say Affinity Photo does not look attractive to me. I absolutely abhor working in PS and avoid it whenever I can. I don't know what it is, but it's not fun working PS. It's fun working in Affinity Designer. And yes, I understand they are different tools. I think it's just the seemless way Affinity Designer works, and the UI is so nice compared to Adobe products. Plus faster too!

Hello, I am a hobby macro photographer, but by trade I'm a writer dabbling in graphic design. I've done hundreds of brochures, flyers, packaging, marketing materials but nothing that connotes original art. So this is a big step for me. I took one of the Affinity Designer courses and it really made a huge impact on my confidence to do design work, but I'm stuck at start already! I want to use this photo (or something similar to it from my set of macro shots) as a hero image for a web site and make it a composite image of the photo plus vector art and text. I want to keep the butterfly and tongue, but draw in the purple sage, or it can even be simple flowers. I'm really just experimenting right now and my color palette will be more muted than the vibrancy in the shots. But I'm curious if I need to do any of the pixel work I need to do on the photos in a photo program like Affinity Photo or Photoshop. The selection tool for example, seems to work nicely at selecting around the butterfly but it doesn't delete the pixels on the image, I have to erase it inside the selection. I started playing with it in Affinity Designer to see how much photo work I can do (like deleting pixels) but I'm still unsure how much I can work on a photo in Affinity Designer to achieve a mixture of vector and raster art. As a newbie, I would love some ideas on how to approach this project. For example: vector flowers, I"m assuming should be done in multiple layers around the tongue and other parts of the butterfly, but sit accordingly above or below the photo in layer panel. I do have a tagline that will go on this as well and these images are not full 16:9, they're from an old export, so they will resize and i'll have lots of blank space for text. Any input on how to approach to get me started, I would appreciate!

I know exactly your frustration. I was there a few months ago. I didn't "need" all those other features like you do, so it's a bit easier for me to make the leap. But I was really panicking to find a solution myself after coming back to work and realizing that Fireworks is gone and I had no visual design tool for web or multimedia. I tried one other visual tool before Affinity and thankfully I didn't buy it. It was a decent tool, but very old, a little hard to use, not intuitive at all, the UI was hidious and very outdated and designing in it was clunky at best. So yah, I was in a heap of pain for a while and I know your frustration. Oy. yup, I noticed Lightroom slowing my PC too. I don't run it when other programs are open, other than browser or mail. Good luck with your tough decision!

I do understand the desire for more precision in a design tool, but having been a long-time user of Adobe products for both my business and client business, I am happy to be rid of them. Honestly, I think Adobe's market is corporate due to price point, but also due to the complexity of their products. I can't tell you how many PC's i went through early in my career because of Adobe products crashing the heck out of them. They are quite bloated and I personally have experienced that it takes much bigger computer power than a computer used for average home-based business. I use the term average because the majority of people needing quick design tools likely only use a smaller percentage of the software's power so their PCs may be a lot less powerful and not suited to bloated software. I found the more I used a lot of Adobe products, the harder it was on my PC. My husband loves to joke about how many PC's I burn through, but this last one has been fantastic since not using Adobe. Still, I do use Lightroom (hobby photographer), but it will be a cold day in heck before I go back to illustrator. I plan on exploring Affinity photo a little later to see if it will rival Photoshop, which I think it will be in similar vein to Designer, missing some less important features. I also think Serif was correct to make it more lightweight for the first few rounds anyway for this niche market of home based designers. Plus, it really does look like Adobe is become more geared to interactive, multi-media, gaming and video anyway. I have to wonder how long they can keep serving so many markets. Then again, they've been around since the dawn of design by computer. Whatever you decide, best to you!

I found your request interesting because I had the same thought today for font/text alignment. I was so used to having the ability to align the text to baseline or bottom if I wanted within the sized text boundary box. Nodes on a path makes sense too. I can't speak to the distribute as I haven't used it much.

Thank you for this! How did you do this? Did you place one at a time in an AD open doc then save them to the asset panel, then exported as an Affinity Design file?