Maciek Blaźniak

Hi,
I agree with you that these features are needed, and in the case of Affinity Publisher even crucial. Trying to convince you that this is not software for professionals and your requests are not needed is just wrong. I go through this every time I write a post on this forum. 
I'm a professional and Affinity Suite is my only graphic software at the moment. I draw in it, I design, I make books and I see no reason to pay for Adobe CC. Maybe apart from Adobe Font and Adobe Acrobat, which has all the missing features you're asking for. This is my temporary (I hope) workaround.

Hi,
It's 2020 and there is still no no built-in spatter effect in affinity. Here's how I deal with it with help of live displacement map filter from APhoto. Just open the attached file (spatter_1.0.afdesign) in Designer or Photo and move the only layer to your project. Works quite well live, when active all the time while creating the illustration. However, it may not work for people who do not have an Affinity Photo license (I didn't check it).

Hi,
It's 2020 and there is still no no built-in spatter effect in affinity. Here's how I deal with it with help of live displacement map filter from APhoto. Just open the attached file (spatter_1.0.afdesign) in Designer or Photo and move the only layer to your project. Works quite well live, when active all the time while creating the illustration. However, it may not work for people who do not have an Affinity Photo license (I didn't check it).

I purchased Designer and Photo years ago but I just couldn't replace Illustrator & Photoshop because of a few missing features that are just workflow basics. I've moved to the Windows platform and just downloaded new trial versions of them to give them another chance, and these problems persist. Most of them relate to features that prevent the user from making critical, unprofessional mistakes like inconsistent color use across multiple documents. If you are deigning a flyer, a business card and a name badge, you can't have variations between them. These are a few [very] minor omissions that I am missing that risks me making amateurish mistakes:
- Global swatches don't carry to another document when copy-n-pasting a logo from one document to another (same as in Publisher)
- Swatches not carrying over to the new document also means that overprint setting are lost because overprint is defined in the swatch, not in the object.
- I can't tell what color mode I'm working in. If my mode is RGB for a flyer, I need something to shout out at me, or at least give me a clue that my print job is going to be disaster. A simple RGB/CMYK icon would suffice. Even Photo displays its color mode in the document's header, but Designer [where it's more important] doesn't.
- The colour picker only picks up RGB/CMYK values, not a global swatch. Even if I've pasted a logo into a new document and it's displaying a global color, the eyedropper doesn't read it as a global color so I can't even reliably copy colors from my source logo. 
- To duplicate an object by dragging it, I have to press the Alt key before I select the object, not during the drag. Most of the time, I need to be certain I have selected the correct object before I duplicate it, however, now I have to duplicate something and then find out if I selected correctly. I don't know how many times I have moved items I want to duplicate and duplicated items I didn't want to duplicate because of this. An application is not fast to work in if I'm constantly undoing my actions.
- Changing the colors of margins & guides. If I design a blue brochure, my margins and guides disappear. I need to make them red or yellow or anything. I don't expect to be able to mix my own colors, but a dozen pre-mixed swatches to choose from would solve this problem. (apart from working in wireframe mode)
- Connecting the selected transform corner in the transform palette to the free transform with the move tool. It's very strange that I can select a corner in the transform palette, but then I always rotate around the center. I have to manually type rotation values in degrees to get the rotation around a corner. Why the disconnect? This disconnect is similar to the disconnect I experience between the swatches, color mixer and eye dropper.
- Previewing at export. Even in Photo, I can't see the effect of the level of JPEG compression being applied to my exported files (neither in Designer nor Photo). I have to export a file half a dozen times until I hit upon that sweet spot of small file size to barely noticable quality loss. Even the open source GIMP does this with a live preview at export. I can do awesome professional work, and then break it all with a poor export... and not even realise it.
- Proofing colors. I really need to be able to see how my colors will separate before I save my PDF. If I've accidentally worked in RGB, this will reveal my mistake as I go to repro. Overprinting and knockout will also be a disaster if not picked up in time. (Who here hasn't experienced the dreaded white text set to overprint and wondered where all your text went?). This feature alone forces me to keep a professional, licensed copy of Adobe Acrobat around to preview color separations. In my final repro file, I have to know if my spot colors are still spots and if I'm printing fine black text as 100% black, or a full color breakdown that will turn my single color print job into a full color one. Previewing the separations (or channels in your photo editor) points out my potential errors.
- Overprinting settings. The previous point leads straight into this one. Why is over printing set in the swatch and not the object? If I want some small paragraph text to over print, but large display text to knockout, I have to make 2 identical black swatches to do this. Why can't I specify this on an object-by-object basis? I guess "Multiply" does the same thing and works as a work-around, but you're targeting print designers, and use the term overprint yourselves so why the strange and risky implementation.
- Snapping to "round" values. When manually selecting a color in CMYK, we are inevitably creating a color using round number values from a color chart. It's slow and frustrating trying to select exactly 50% in a slider as it hops from 49 to 51 and back again while we search for that perfect pixel placement. How about snapping to increments of 5% by holding down the shift key? Your snapping features are awesomely powerful, but only in the document. Why not extend this into the sliders and the rest of the application? (Admittedly, I don't know any other application that does this, but it makes sense and would be welcome.)
 
Basic features that are even in open source software seem to be missing. We waited for years to get arrow heads. You claimed it was because you wanted to get it awesome, but they are no more powerful/different to anything else out there on the market. I suspect we only got them when Publisher was released. Did we have to wait for a whole new app to be leased to get arrow heads? Now we sit with other missing basic, common features like:
- Blend/Interpolate
- Stroke drawing tools like a grid tool and a straight line tool. These are enormous time savers.
- Tabs. (I understand you want to protect Publisher by keeping high end text features like hyphenation, drop-caps and text wrap out of Designer, but this feels like a very basic feature compared to your range of kerning, alignment and Opentype features already here from day one)
 
I understand that everyone's needs are different and you can't satisfy everyone, but you are targeting print designers as well and illustrators and web designers, and  these are all features every professional expects and is surprising that they're not here. You give us features that most professionals just leave on the defaults because few of us even understand them (like color profiles and LUTs), but then drop the ball by not pasting a global swatch from one document to another.
It's confusing and just doesn't make me feel confident in the files I send to print.
Please can you look at these issues before adding new features. I understand that new features are needed to sell products, but a lot of us early adopters are just wondering where the small tweaks and refinements are.
It seems that your development team needs to consult with an old school designer or printer to get these fundamentals right. It feels like you've only got young designers who have grown up with an RGB workflow and have never had to bang out 6 flyers in an afternoon and send them to print with the job being rejected.
 
 

Hi,
I agree with you that these features are needed, and in the case of Affinity Publisher even crucial. Trying to convince you that this is not software for professionals and your requests are not needed is just wrong. I go through this every time I write a post on this forum. 
I'm a professional and Affinity Suite is my only graphic software at the moment. I draw in it, I design, I make books and I see no reason to pay for Adobe CC. Maybe apart from Adobe Font and Adobe Acrobat, which has all the missing features you're asking for. This is my temporary (I hope) workaround.

Hi,
I agree with you that these features are needed, and in the case of Affinity Publisher even crucial. Trying to convince you that this is not software for professionals and your requests are not needed is just wrong. I go through this every time I write a post on this forum. 
I'm a professional and Affinity Suite is my only graphic software at the moment. I draw in it, I design, I make books and I see no reason to pay for Adobe CC. Maybe apart from Adobe Font and Adobe Acrobat, which has all the missing features you're asking for. This is my temporary (I hope) workaround.

What happend to that need?
Currently Affinity lacks complete colormanagement / softproof functionality.
Missing is:
1) Preserve RGB / CMYK numbers → this is needed to simulate how an RGB file will look like on a non-colormanaged RGB printer (like often in a photo lab) or how a CMYK file which will not be converted to another colour space will look in a specific CMYK space.
BTW, this option is also needed when you want to print out a (ICC color) calibration target from the Affinity application itself.
2 a) Option "Simulate Paper color" → this determines the rendering intent from the (converted) file to the monitor colour space regarding the white point:
"Simulate Paper = On" → absolute colorimetric conversion from the file to the monitor color space
                             = Off → relative colorimetric conversion from the file to the monitor color space
2b) "Simulate Black Ink" → determines if Black point compensation from the file to the monitor colour space is used or not
"Simulate Black Ink = On" → Blackpoint Compensation from File to Monitor Colour Space turned off
"Simulate Black Ink = Off" → Blackpoint Compensation from File to Monitor Color Space turned on
Affinity offers now a softproof and conversion of a file to another color space. But it lacks to control how the files are rendered to the monitor colour space!
The default rendering intent in Photoshop to the Monitor profile (color space) is: Relative colorimetric with blackpoint compensation and can be influenced like described here, which of course is a vital feature!
3) A preview for "Assign Profile" is also missing currently
4) A keyboard shortcut to toggle the softproof on / off can also be very handy and is missing now 😞
5) In Publisher I do not see an option to enable the softproof function for the complete document, but only for each page!? If that's not possible (which it seems) -- this is an additional need.
6) Exporting images: Currently there is lacking
6a) Choose rendering intent for the conversion
6b) Preview for this conversion (in the export dialog)
7) In "better" color managed programs one can also choose which CMM is used for the conversion -- which is now also lacking.
See here for the colour management options from Adobe: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/proofing-colors.html
The Affinity programs are great in many ways, but I am very much surprised that in 2020 those functions are not standard in a software which claims / tries to aim at the professional user. All professionals, who know and care about predictable color, and know how to use color management to achieve that, will not use Affinity products till those features are implemented. I did not remember exactly in which Photoshop version this was introduced, but it was a loooooong time ago. I think the current color management features already were introduced around 2000 with Photoshop 5.5 if memory serves me right....
 

I crave for a scaling tool! The one with four options: ☑️ scale corners, ☑️ scale strokes, ☑️ scale effects, ☑️ scale font sizes.
My temporary pain in the ass workaround is to paste an object into a separate file and embed it into a working document. Don't make me do this.
Please,
Maciek

I crave for a scaling tool! The one with four options: ☑️ scale corners, ☑️ scale strokes, ☑️ scale effects, ☑️ scale font sizes.
My temporary pain in the ass workaround is to paste an object into a separate file and embed it into a working document. Don't make me do this.
Please,
Maciek

I'm glad my hack was useful  I'll just add that the attached version gives the best results (imho) with 300dpi illustrations. While working with smaller resolutions it may require some tweaks.

Hi,
It's 2020 and there is still no no built-in spatter effect in affinity. Here's how I deal with it with help of live displacement map filter from APhoto. Just open the attached file (spatter_1.0.afdesign) in Designer or Photo and move the only layer to your project. Works quite well live, when active all the time while creating the illustration. However, it may not work for people who do not have an Affinity Photo license (I didn't check it).

Hi, I don't know if the problem has been reported before and if it affected earlier versions. Explanatory graphic below:

 

Thanks! Sent.

I don't know if the problem was ever discussed on the forum, I didn't find a similar topic.
After deforming a shape with a transform box, brushes in "vector persona" mode are rendered incorrectly.
See attachment for three examples:
1. draw an oval and define a brush -> everything ok.
2. draw a circle, define a brush and deform to an oval with a transform box -> distorted brush 
3. draw a circle, define a brush, deform to an oval using the "transform box", select the "scale with object" option -> almost ok but still not correct.
The problem does not occur when we manually move nodes to distort the object.

I will move this to feature requests.