Jowday

I need the Context toolbar to float like a panel just as much as the studios. Windows 10 Pro.

It's not all that important but I would love if I could hide or enable studios by fx right clicking a studio tab and selecting from there. Doing the same through the menu system several times in a row several times a day is a little annoying.

One amazingly effective command in Photoshop and Photo is Edit -> Fade (PS) or Layer -> Fade (AP). Whatever effect or brush you just applied can be reduced. Sometimes you overdid fx the colors or contrast. Sometimes you made a little error. You fade it to fx 70% and it looks correct. You can also fade and change blend mode. Much better and effective than undoing and re-applying. When working with the paint brush tool and pixel brushes in the Pixel Persona it happens very often that I miss this fade feature. It is very hard to predict the result. Same feature in Affinity Photo:

This week I tried to make a simple 20 page publication I made for years in PagePlus. In recent years I made it InDesign instead. I couldn't resist re-creating it in Publisher - layout wise it is very simple and beautiful with... 10 to 15 pages of text. IMMEDIATELY I needed a story editor for error checking and corrections. We have studiolink for fast editing of pixel images that needs to be adjusted We have studiolink for fast editing of vector illustrations that needs to be adjusted We have only clumsy in page editing of text and try that in huge publications (books) - text editing is slooow I am not struggling with old habbits - the story editor is for fast and focused changes, changes to paragraph styling and for finding and correcting incorrect styling. Focused editing of the text, just like what the studiolink feature offers for graphics. You also have access to all the placed text before it is shown in its entirety. Today you only have access to text that is actually displayed in linked text boxes. Text is overflowing, but how much is there left? Simultaneously Publisher started to behave strangely. I think because of a bug, but it was like there was three copies of the text in the linked frames. The TOC repeated itself three times and I had to insert pages and linked text frames to see what was going on. Publisher is no faster or no different than PagePlus and InDesign. You need specialized tools to work with content. Internal or external. WYSIWYG editing still doesn't replace those tools. And certainly not when you need to change lots of content fast end efficiently close to a deadline. Not making changes to what the author sent you - but to the structure, styles, structure and tons of other layout issues. My experience with Publisher 1.7 was a classic 1.0 experience. Plenty of tools implemented but unstable and very v1 like. There is no way I would trade in PagePlus x6, - x9 or InDesign for this version. And never without a lean text editor. So, in short, a text persona with a story editor would do wonders.

Not directly like you described no, I don't think so. But there is a pipette in every colour dialog though, but you still have to open the Text frame studio of course.

Enable the TEXT FRAME studio (Studio -> text Frame) and select fill from there:

We do not disagree at all. And who would be offended by what? I am not sure I follow you. With lost I mean impossible or hard to find deep down on page 346 in a year old post. If you are searching for expand curve and posts are about expand stroke, users will probably not find it what they are looking for. At this point in time I do think though that a supplementing FAQ Wiki would help and offer a indexed approach and articles that could be linked to from posts in the forum. Without intelligent search engines like Google .... and... and... Google.. tons of knowledge never resurfaces again.

I suggested these resampling labels some months ago: Nearest Neighbor(hard edges) Bilinear (reduction) Bicubic (enlargement) Lanczos 3 (high quality) Lanczos 3 (highest quality) You are probably already using Bilinear (default in Photo) so well ... The default in Photoshop is automatic and it will often select bicubic sharper which delivers quite impressive and pleasing results: Example image (crop) resized in Photo with bilinear: Photo bicubic: Photoshop bilinear: And finally what you were used to : Photoshop CC 2020 automatic (but clearly bicubic smarter) It is obvious that Photoshop does resize with sharper results and that bicubic sharper is a one shop stop resize method for probably must use cases. So... you are in Affinity Photo, not Photoshop. You have to apply sharpening manually after resizing.

If that does not work... Is it not possible to launch the program from a terminal window in OS X ... without too much hassle? Photo could return a meaningful error message in the terminal.

I understand your request very well. It is quite obvious that the forum groups are somewhat confusing for some. Feedback for individual programs - questions for all fx. I see questions everywhere, but in the feedback for Designer fx, I know it is all about Designer. 'Affinity Support & Questions' evolved into a strange 'catch all' bucket. So I understand your suggestion. It would require users to tag their posts, though and ... well hm. I just think Affinity Support & Questions became more of a bucket than Serif anticipated. Or we did. Perhaps another forum structure in the future is desirable. Something else that would be cool now several individuals seems to practically live in this forum could be a FAQ Wiki maintained by users. Tips, tricks, workarounds (yikes), suggested workflows etc. Instead of the many redundant posts in here. And while every posts about problems with expand strokes evolves into a heated debate, the Wiki could answer the question cleanly and without sighs. In general a forum like this suffers from the Blade Runner effect... "all those posts will be lost... in time... like... tears in the rain".

Use cases are many

https://store.serif.com/en-gb/help/ The help should be clarified; OS X and iOS counts as different platforms too. So I could rewrite the above to "If you wish to use Serif Software on both OS X and iOS platforms, you must purchase a license for each." But, you are lucky;

Thank you for the update - the issue has indeed been resolved in Affinity Designer BETA 1.8.0.514 for Windows.

I never said that. So why the absurd black and white derailed discussion / examples. It is like being back in high school. One thing is for sure - I do not recognize your silly examples from my own work life. ~30 years and in a handful of big or even huge international companies. Currently I have thousands of colleagues in a very professional setup and we make estimates all the time. We are charged based on estimates all the time from left and right. We are picking offers based on estimates all the time. Funding is an issue that comes and goes. Time is always against us, as well as against companies or individuals we pick or have to reject. And we are certainly not "mechanics" - but creatives. But it doesn't matter. Developers or creatives - both have to come up with a great idea, structured approach and effective execution all completed in as few ours as possible. And we do. That is how we got the job. That is what makes us professionals. Experience, skills and method. But this Game of Estimates is not exactly sellers market. So if the software itself made the time factor slightly less problematic... some customers out there would win time and money. Serif would benefit too. But you apologists are more concerned about the discourse in a forum and about "complainers" and what not. So I totally agree with Mike about time, workarounds and passion. And I too will leave this thread alone now. In fact it is ready to be locked.

If you are fortunate enough to have more than enough work then part of the proces is to fit a job in between others. This depends on tools that does not involve time consuming work arounds. And a slow tool will result in lost opportunities. How we charge costumers is another discussion entirely. A slow manual workflow is simply a no go in my situation. And costly.

You never made an estimate? Time never was a factor? 20 or 30 hours did not matter?

Good news indeed but what I meant was that the current build of 1.8 is hardly a real beta. Yet. Perhaps released this early to bring some joy to high precision tablet users like you, which is good. Probably not released as a minor update because of 1.8 code dependencies.

Serif is markering Affinity Designer as "professional graphic design software for desktop and ipad" and it would be fair to expect people with professional needs and a professional workflow to expect something real and concrete from that sentence. Many workarounds are for amateurs and hobbyists and for struggling through temporary incidents here and now. You bill clients for time used more than anything. How much you can deliver depends on how easy and fast you can archive certain effects. This is not exactly groundbreaking news, so I expect the majority in here are hobbyists and users with simple use cases. An effective workflow is key and pointless redundant work is costly and not creative in any way. Designer improves my workflow? I would have to disagree. Designer is not quite there yet. It is a pleasure to work with when doing hobby stuff but the second you (or a client) pour real ambitions into your work it is all about manual work, workarounds and not much support from fx perspective distortion. That alone effectively rules out re-use of some complex layers/groups elsewhere in a drawing. BOOM! Business case falls to the ground, dead. Misplaced over simplistic, silly girlfriend analogies better suited for a much younger audience doesn't change that or the world. The Affinity Suite is no longer a new product or technology and the honeymoon is over. More is expected and with good right. Let costumers air their concerns, criticism and needs in here without the constant whining from loyal users. Affinity is a commercial supposedly professional suite of programs with a company run forum for feedback from customers. Let costumers talk and let Serif answer professionally. In fact the waves of emotional answers from hobbyists in here will probably not convince any professional potential customer that the vivid marketing statements are true. ANYWAY - the current build of 1.8 is just the first build of the new 1.8 code branch surprisingly early. There is nothing new and shining in it yet. It may be a good time for a service release with stabilizing bug fixes, optimizations and fx the long awaited improved expand stroke. But it will be a(nother) momentum killer for Designer if more advanced professional features are scheduled for 2.0 and then available in perhaps 3 years from now. Or longer. Designer is more than suitable for a segment of creatives - users of the wonderful brushes and textures from Frankentoon, DAUB and Stuart. Has been for years. Other segments are still waiting for small or bigger features for their use cases though. Plenty of evidence for that in this very forum. I don't think you are doing Serif any kind of favor telling these customers or potential customers that they don't need features they damn well know they need. Alternatives are out there.

Pioneering performance Superpower your layouts with the latest and greatest publishing technology. The refreshing lack of unnecessary or obsolete features in Affinity Publisher means it runs like the sweetest dream, even on the most content-heavy documents. https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/publisher/#top

Exactly. A lightweight XML version of Postscript.

I agree with you @Larryh Affinity Designer does indeed lack a range of advanced to semi-advanced tools requested in here for years. It is a little surprising when you compare it to feature rich Photo fx. Designer is fine for many types of simple vector illustrations but the moment you advance into more complex scenarios any business case is quickly ruined by time consuming work arounds and manual work. I am not sure hobbyists or fan**** (!) understand this. DrawPlus never impressed in the vector department either (over a decade at least) so I am a little concerned about the future of Designer.

Another feature request for global layers. It is sorely missed.

Didn't work for me either.