Dazmondo77

My goto apps are Intaglio Vectorize (FREE) and Image Vectorizer, although I think both are Mac only - the benefits of Vectorize is the ability to reduce the amount of nodes and once copy pasted into Affinity, you get a unified vector - with Image Vectorizer (small fee from MAS) there's lots of options for halftone screens and whatnot but once copy pasted into Affinity you'll need to group in order to colour up the result. Heres a quick vector recreation of your mandela from Vectorize put together as two layers, a solid black layer and a 70% black layer which used the minimum slider in Vectorize to isolate the grey Mandella_vector.afpub

Does that mean it will capture from other apps - as most of my workarounds involve VectorStyler, ImageVectorizer, Illustrator CS5, ? FFFFFAAAAAHHHHHH! - although what few vector tools we have, I love ----- how frustrating ----- Right I'm off up the yard to hit myself repeatedly in the right eyelid with a lump of lead pipe ------- AAAGAGGGAGGAGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Further to Williams solution, if you want to retain the black lines, just group and duplicate the original line layer, and proceed with the method, then move the original line layer to the front of the layer stack

Publisher seems to be the star, with regards to receiving dev time. Very well done for what the devs have achieved so far My main needs for publisher are double + page spreads, printable & PDF-able Slug area, easier spot colour handling/export, separation preview (including spots, overprint, knockout) & macros Designer is really desperate for love - Select same is the biggest addition in years - ACE - still a lot of work to be done - even though I have a 'top moan' about missing basics, I still remain optimistic. Photo - really need puppet warp or just some improvements to Deform to allow for isolating say limbs and construct joint nodes that are rotatable. I'd love to see all receive the expanded ability to Isolate groups (alt - click layer) and be able to work exclusively on anything within that group - then click outside the group to exit isolation

Shortcuts still not working in beta1.9.0.857

Further to the last screen recording, thought I'd do another detailing symbols placed inside a data merge layout to simulate vector patterns - for me, it's loads more powerful than the new pattern in photo as I like to work with vectors (although I've not used the very latest beta yet) it also works with photos and brushes Screen_Grab_2020-11-26_at_09_06_41.mov

Canada dry

Jowday - reading your posts and comments gives me mixed feelings, especially when I've made a smarmy comment on a post that I later feel guilty about, usually posted after working on a job where I've had to use an awkward workaround, that would have been a taken for granted, piece of piss to pull off, 25 years go in Freehand 8. I'm guessing you must care where it's all heading deep down or you wouldn't be as active on the forum. sometimes I post a comment that's fuelled by frustration, then one of your posts land and it's like 😬🤣😮, admittedly, I do go off on a top moan from time to time but I do genuinely enjoy using all three apps professionally, it's just the brick walls that spoil my enjoyment as I've spent the past 6 years (very very (in-)patiently) waiting for A few more of the tools I need - that will nearly always get the job done Just a simplify path option would suffice - which is another basic I've been moaning about since the birth of the forum

The problem is there's loads of similar posts based on this same topic - I kind of like having new Affinity pro users creating a fresh post rather than adding to one of the many - keeps our dreams and screams alive - as it still states on the Designer web page "just all the tools you need, implemented how you always dreamed. Affinity Designer is a stripped back, pro-end workhorse that will always get your job done." not sure wether that's a little white slight exaggeration or a massive big fat lie (depends what I'm working on) - probably best do a search for all the things listed in the bullet points separately - = Six years of workarounds?!?!?!?

The great thing about affinity is how you can use any shape or pic as a mask plus it's dead easy to reposition if you want to rejig your composition rather than just rely on a standard layer mask Screen_Grab_2020-11-24_at_13_36_33.mov Screen_Grab_2020-11-24_at_13_44_08.mov

Convert you pagemaker files to PDF and open - Pub is great at opening and reusing old documents via PDF

I like the way it currently works, as putting it at the side would be too much and a little hard to flag when you use colour to identify items and groups - the way it currently works makes it obvious to differentiate layers and groups which is great for us thicko's

Did a search for this which didn't turn anything up - Delete Column and Row shortcuts don't currently work 1.9.0.829 but going through the menu does

I think as it stands, the layers in Vectorstyler are really annoying, as there doesn't seem to be an easy way to place items to a specific place in the layer stack, unless this is a bug, as all the copy and paste options seem to disregard the current layer you have selected and only paste to the top or bottom of the entire stack, At least that was my findings, so dragging through the layer stack seemed to be the only way to do it - So frustrating to look back five years or so to when the road map was put up and it looked as though we might be approaching a finished basic toolset within a two or three years, but six years on from release we seem to be discussing Vectorstyler as a solution to plug gaps, which when finally released, will have a complete tool set - I don't want to use Vectorstyler, I want to use Designer but what choice de we have?

Phew nearly ran the 1.8.6 update just now but just read this and cancelled - Cheer's Dannyg9 looks like you saved me possible grief - I nearly updated a few days ago in the middle of finishing an album cover that had a deadline for Wednesday morning 18th - boy am I glad I turned off auto update on MAS - there seems to be a lot of this going on, although I had it a week or so ago where I saved a copy of a publisher 1.8.4 job to desktop which had the same corruption issue, I just brushed it off as I had already saved to a work storage drive and was able to open and Finnish the job without issue Dannyg9 have you tried opening a copy in beta 1.9+ ?

Fingers crossed it's sorted mate - I remember I was having similar problems a fair while ago, I think as far back as InDesign CS3 with a document with a few / / * in the file name - did a bit of research, got rid of the characters and problem solved - I think it may be be an OS wide problem from what I remember but some files seem to be fine - 🤞

Well said great leader - homage.... homage

Dannyg9 have you tried removing: # - ++/ characters from your file name? - worth a try

No1 on my wishlist for 2014 was and still is 6 years on vector distortion/warping - Really rally made up that we now have 'SELECT SAME' which was my No2 from 2014 - image trace was number three if I remember right but there are plenty of standalone solutions that have this covered 'Image Vectorizer and Vectorize' are my goto - also a preference to have tick boxes ticked for strokes and FX - for 2021 it's still vector distortion/warping - plenty of other niggles but vector distortion/warping would be ACE

Forgot to include Grab

I got a bit too exited when seeing this, but after testing, now realise it was just a suggestion - Also when is the bug gonna be fixed with mesh warp, where you click on a control point and it disappears leaving infinite spinning beachball - it seems to happen every other time I use it - just last week it happened three times in a row so I thought I'd make a bug post with a screen capture detailing the issue, but just sods law, I couldn't reproduce the issue - but just opened photo beta 1.9.0.203 just now made a shape and mesh warped and it happened straight away

In designers early days, ALT-clicking showed potential for a future 'Affinitized' isolation mode - it was just so frustrating that as soon as you tried to edit the isolated group it went back to full preview - Still hold hope for this as it seems a far more seamless approach than illustrators where you can accidentally trigger isolation. In Designer Alt-click a layer or group to isolate then click on any layer outside the isolated group for full preview seems to me like far more natural approach, although maybe the layers panel should reflect the isolation by ghosting layers outside the isolated group

No big deal Jon P - just draws the eye a little 👍

Sorry David P I posted the wrong link at the beginning of my post about the technique - here is the link that features a couple of screen captures which explain how to setup the data merge cells and the work around for drawing overlaps: I realised in the above links I have guides switched off which makes it a little harder to illustrate the technique, so I've just done another grab Screen_Grab_2020-11-16_at_14_30_24.mov

Thats great news Walt - I've not installed the most recent beta, although I did notice with the previous 1.9 beta that bleed guides show on Artboards but there's still no visible bleed for the artboards contents - are you saying this is now fixed?