postmadesign

Yes, i would love to participate, as i do in other betas of affinity.

I agree on this

replacing swatches with other swatches would be a very useful feature, and I have requested this before. Deleting a global color should always bring up a dialog to ask me to replace the color of the affected objects IMO.

This is because objects don't neccesarily have a color attribute which is a swatch. You can go to the color picker and change an object to any color you want, but this would not create a swatch or alter a swatch. This is different from indesign, where the color of an object can only be done by picking, creating or altering a swatch. A color in a document would always have an associated swatch. Perhaps this could be a preference, but as @fde101 described, this could have unforeseen consequences, in a case where a swatch with the same name already exists.

In some cases I agree, and Publishers method is more complex for sure. However I like the distinction between global swatches and regular ones, and both have their specific strengths. Indesigns swatches are always global colors, which might not always be the best option. In Publisher, objects can have their color changed without them becoming a swatch, this is not possible in Indesign. Were Publisher to have this swatch management, I guess it would cause problems opening the file with the other Affinity apps?

I did not know about this function in indesign, sound interesting! And you use indesign to create the maps as well? It sounds more like a job for illustrator or Designer? Actually I could imagine creating the maps in Designer, each as a separate artboard. You would have all the swatches in one place, and could use symbols which would also be convenient for maps I imagine. Assets can also be embedded with a document, so even if you would open it on a different machine, they would still be there (I am not sure if symbols do the same, as I don't normally use them)

One thing I really like and use a lot in Designer on the iPad is the 3 buttons at the bottom left to deselect, turn snapping on or off and to delete an object. Could you add these to Photo? Is there any specific reason they should/could not be there?

Just curious, what program does this? I don't know of this option in Illustrator or Indesign? If you would create many maps with the same basic elements, with slight variations for each, would it be so difficult to create a base palette and import it? You could also create a base file with all the elements and colors that are shared between maps, including assets and colors. Then save this document and use it as a template for all maps. Much as @fde101 described. I am not sure why the method you described would be much more efficient.

Yes I do know this, but in some situations I have not saved a palette for it, so I would have to open the document first, export it and import into the new document. It can easily be done, but the other way is just slightly more convenient.

You can create a set of swatches in a document, including global colors, and export this set. If you create a new document, you can then import these as a document palette. The global colors are preserved. If you import it as application or system palette, the global color becomes a regular swatch.

I have found a weird thing with setting default palettes for a color space. I created a set of colors, saved as application palette, then set it as default for CMYK. Now when I create a new CMYK document this palette it actually includes this palette as a document palette... I can still select the application palette I created too, but this makes little sense to me. Also, you can create as many document palettes as you want, which makes it rather confusing too. Shouldn't there just be one palette per document? One handy feature Indesign has, which I have used several times, is the ability to import the swatches from another document. I would like to see this ability in publisher too.

I had an issue when dragging a layer mask from a layer: the ghost image of the layer stays on the screen, and remains there even after switching tools, personas and even apps. It only disappears after quitting the app and reopening. See screenshot

These might seem like small improvements, but they improve my workflow enormously! Thanks so much for adding them!

Should this not be [326] ?

I have the problem that when I want to switch the eraser to a different brush, and this brush has a preference set for the tool with which it is used (pixel tool or brush tool for instance), clicking said brush will reset the tool to this setting. I can not erase with these brushes, except when I set tip sharing for all tools in the preferences. Though I can see some use for the preferred setting for a brush, as it may not work as intended in another, but current behaviour is rather frustrating. I hope this can be changed or improved somehow?

I ran into a gesture conflict when I have the artistic text tool selected. I tried to access the iOS dock by swiping up, but in the process it creates a new artistic text cursor, which is of course unwanted. I tried the option "touch for gestures only" but this has no effect. I can still drag a text field with my finger with this option selected. Is this intentional? It seems unlogical to me.

Overall I really like the new, more minimal interface, but one thing that bothers me a bit is the lack of contrast of the icons on the right side bar. This makes it harder to find the feature I want, and slows me down in the process. making these higher contrast would help I think.

I have noticed this too, it is a bit distracting

You are right. I was doing test with a personal file to check the differences in the settings. I cannot find any consistency in the color conversion, sometimes it is still RGB, sometimes DeviceCMYK, I never get it to become a profile like you see above. This has me completely confused...

You are indeed correct, and so is your printer. There are problems which I did not notice at first. Though the ink manager shows no RGB data, the transparency blending data is still in RGB, not CMYK. Only when I convert it to x-1 as described above these transparency issues are resolved. However when checking the images these are in a generic CMYK profile, not the profile I chose... This is a pretty nasty problem in some situations I think and I hope this can be addressed!

That is strange, as I checked and compared the files created with various setting with the output preview and ink manager in Acrobat: the conversion with specified color profile does not contain any RGB data, whereas the other do. I am not an absolute prepress master, but to me this indicates the images are correctly converted. It would be interesting to see you file to be able to compare it.

I think I found what causes this problem. When I output as PDF for Print and leave the color setting on "as document" and profile on "as document" the images are indeed RGB when I check these in Acrobat. When I set it to CMYK but leave the profile to "as document" the images are not converted even though they should be, which is a bug, I would say. But when I define both the color setting as CMYK but choose a specific profile from the list (it does not seem to matter which one) they are correctly converted. It is a small workaround, and they do need to fix this, but at least it works!

it seems the minimal OS version for the Betas is 10.9 as per this thread. The information is a bit difficult to comprehend though, why should the Appstore version work on 10.7 but the Affinity store version from 10.9?

To me, global colors are very useful, as i create layouts where specific elements have specific colors. Global colors make it easy to change the color of each of these elements in one go. Of course this should be document based, as otherwise it would change the colors of another document with the same layout. I agree that having 3 types of palettes is slightly confusing though, so perhaps the idea of having document swatches within a regular palette might be worth investigating, as it would prevent me switching between the different types. Or perhaps it would be possible to add a standard document palette when creating a document, instead of creating it from scratch.

Global colors can only be added to document palettes, I believe