Dazmondo77

Here's the way I'd do it: Screen Grab 1.mov

This has been requested by users since designers release in 2014 See attached just a few of the requests

" + raster applications --- 20 years ago the Industry standard toolset was Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Freehand and QuarkXpress - although a massive fan of Studiolink in Affinity, I still need to be able to create and complete vector work that was achievable 20+ years ago in Macromedia Freehand - so I'm totally on board with helping others struggling to fill the void, by recommending a powerhouse solution.

Exactly! - we may never get a lot of these "missing" features that a lot of us have been waffling on about for the past 8 years. I'm now not that bothered if these things are added or not, as VectorStyler is now part of my workflow, which is a vector powerhouse that improves weekly, and compliments Affinity brilliantly, you could do what you want detailed above on a super complex vector graphic, copy pasted from Affinity and back, in a few seconds - save yourself grief = Affinity + VectorStyler

It's a shame that the majority of marketing spiel is way off the mark:- "Affinity Designer is setting the new industry standard in the world of design." and "Serious business - No bloat, no gimmicks, 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." surely anyone reading this with a background in vector work would expect a complete toolset from a "pro-end workhorse" that has "all the tools you need", as I did back in 2014 - I think if version 2 can't live up-to the above spiel it should be amended to be more truthful of designers capabilities, really it should have been taken down years ago, I'm not saying it's currently not capable of producing pro work, I feel I've been able to produce my best work with Affinity, but only via using other software, in the first 4 or 5 years that was Illustrator cs5 and now Vectorstyler

Vectorstyler

My whole workflow has adapted to VectorStyler making the Affinity Trinity a Quadrinity - once you dig deep into the VS you realise you have almost every vector tool at your disposal, enabling you to just get stuff done + the VS roadmap shows it's pushing ahead into the future + the developer will answer personally on the VS forum and is open to suggested improvements, which in some cases, are implemented into the next commercial build which is usually weekly, and believe that this "Quadrinity" has enabled me to produce my best work, and for me the Adobe subscription model was a blessing, and embracing Designer nearly 8 years ago enabled me to move on from Illufrustrator, although Designer came with the frustrations of not having a 'taken for granted' toolset, and maybe will never be able to compete toe to toe with Illustrator whereas VS for me already goes beyond in many areas, and in a few years time will be a powerhouse, even though a simplified customisable, interface is planned in the roadmap, for me, it makes sense to put in the effort to tap into some 'under the hood' power now, as it's potentially a true alternative to Illufrustrator for pro's - hopefully, Designer 2 will be a shining light for some frustrated illustrator uses who have labeled V1 a toy, and for me, I'lI never give up Designer for basic vector stuff (via Game changing StudioLink) but can see VS only getting stronger and makes a great copy paste companion.

I'd recommend extending your Affinity toolkit with VectorStyler which is perfect for all manor of blends, warps, vector pattern fills, Vector brushes etc... just stuff that Designer doesn't have that Illustrator has, some even via Astute illustrator plugins. Theres a bit of a learning curve but it compliments Affinity brilliantly and enables you to blast through stuff you just can't do with Designers limited vector toolset - see vid: Screen Grab 2022-08-06 at 12.03.24 pm.mov

I'm guessing the subscription model blurb was just included to cement the overwhelming majority in support for the perpetual license model, I for one would have never strayed from Adobe if they'd have not kicked my teeth down the back of my throat, which turned out to be a blessing in finding Affinity - I get where nickbatz is coming from, as it was a bit alarming seeing it on the survey pages.

The easiest option would be to have a text to paths option when opening a PDF Printing reliable output to postscript devices is a pretty basic requirement, I really hope this improves, I know one guy who works in a print department said that a few people have mentioned Affinity but after trialing, and trying to send to his RIP he came to the conclusion that it was just a toy, which is a bit harsh.

I do quite a bit of stuff destined for screen printed T-shirts and have a few goto tools that I rely on for vector halftones: VectorRaster Image Vectorizer and VectorStyler. I always start and finish a job in Pub, my current fav way of creating shape and vignette halftones is to do these in VectorStyler and paste into Pub, all vector see --- For me VectorStyler is an essential companion app for the Affinity suite that covers all the stuff that Designer currently cannot do (vector distortions, True vector brushes, vector pattern fills, blends etc.) demo vids: Screen Grab 2022-07-24 at 3.13.17 pm.mov Screen Grab 2022-07-24 at 3.25.36 pm.mov

I totally get it R C-R. I do quite a bit of t-shirt stuff designed for screen print, and seven months ago (approx) tried to use VectorStylers fairly recent addition 'repeater' function to create halftones and ended up giving up after F'ing and blinding at my screen after an hour or so of trying to get a grasp on it, and just ended up carrying on using my tried and tested combination of Clip Studio Paint, VectorRaster and Image Vectorizer for vector halftones. - but last Saturday had an urgent screen print T-shirt design to knock up and decided to use some of the VS true vector brushes I created, and create a few more, to compete the job. after successfully completing the job I decided to create more presets that would help me knock out these sort of jobs really quickly, so decided to have another play with Repeater and once I got my head around it, it turned out to be a really great tool for my halftone screen print workflow and have now created my own set of presets that will enable me to create total vector artwork fairly easily - I always start off and finish a job in Pubisher but I'm gradually finding VS to be more useful the more I commit to learning it.

I find VectorStyler to be better than anything else I've tried - even more options than Macromedia Freehand - you just need to dig in to learn it Copy pastes Pattern fills straight into Affinity as vectors you can be sorted in a few seconds ---- I use VS as an mega-toolkit to get stuff done that can't yet be done in Affinity Screen Grab 2022-07-21 at 3.49.57 pm.mov

Do you mean like Illustrators stroke width tool - If so I usually have VectorStyler running alongside Designer to cover a lot of designers missing stuff - and VectorStylers stroke width tool works the same as Illustrators, but with much more controlled features, allowing for far more precision than Designers current method - hopefully we'll get something similar in Designer in the future?

Boldlinedesign here's a Vid to demonstrate the T-shirt vector fold distortions you asked about, copy pasting back n' forth between Pub and VS - I now have it setup as as my goto template for mocking up my T-shirt designs - I had to create the folded T-shirt myself by taking bits from a bunch of different T-shirt pix and trying to combine them to get the folds looking more like what I originally had in mind, so I don't really want to share it as I've already used it on album artwork - with this method, I can knock up an half decent mock-up in a few clicks, as all you have to do is place the t-shirt design inside the VS group with the live Mesh distortion FX and then paste the whole group back into Pub with the vector distortion applied - works for me anyway - hope you find it useful? 1397609091_Tshirtvectorfolds.mov

Yes Speed - not a total pleasure to use and you really need to dig in to discover a lot of features, but for me, Vector distortions, true Vector brushes, Vector pattern fills, gradient mesh, simplify path and the ability to print CMYK proofs to postscript devices are taken for granted necessities that I got used to using years ago starting with Freehand 8 - I'm just glad I now have a tool that's part of my workflow, which enables me to get jobs out, without too much discomfort -- saying that, I'm an Affinity fanboy (former Adobe fanboy) that eagerly awaits these features in a future version of Designer

Here ya go boss - hope it makes sense - just copy and paste between APub (designer persona) and VS. As you'll see from the video, complex vector work slows down a bit in VectorStyler but works great - and retains all your colours and spots between apps - really hope we get something similar in Affinity in the future --- Hope this helps Screen Grab 2022-07-08 at 3.23.02 pm.mov

Theres more of a learning curve to VS and layers work slightly different to Affinity - you'll just need to experiment and have a play around with all the tools. Here's the VS sphere template thing that I made - not very straight forward to create from scratch but I could show you via a screen grab vid if you want? Sphere map.vstyler

Hopefully, Vector distortions will be added at some point, which will make this sort of thing a breeze, and I do quite a lot of vector distortions in my stuff, and my recommendation for a workaround is an app called VectorStyler, which makes a decent companion app to Affinity and covers just about everything that's currently missing from Designer when comparing to Illustrator, so this sort of thing is just a copy and paste away, I have saved distortions for a few things including a ball (see screen grab vid) one of my favourites that I've used quite a bit is a T-shirt with folds and wrinkles where I have a VS distortion mesh that I can just paste in a vector T-shirt design and it distorts to the folds and as it's none destructive it adapts to the wrinkles in the shirt as you move it around - really look forward to getting this sort of ability in Designer but I'm just glad I have this sort of thing covered - if you're on PC Inkscape can also do what you're aiming for (so I gather) Screen Grab 2022-07-07 at 10.23.00 am.mov

I've ran into the same problem - just thought I'd share my workflow which details how I now deal with this sort of thing - It's fairly simple and, as recommended above, it used blend ranges, which you can copy to clipboard and bulk paste (paste style: ⇧⌘V) to all your pix, easiest way I've found is to make a large pub page or designer artboard and drag all you tiffs onto the page and select all and paste style which applies the blend range to all. I then make a filled vector shape over the chosen pic then add a gaussian blur to the vector (from FX) then duplicate the selected Tiff, then group the duplicate with both the original and the vector path then go to blend range on the duplicate and reset then drag the vector path to the right of the duplicate to create a fully tweak-able mask, you can then copy the vector masks to all you pix, then tweak away - another thing I've found useful is to create a white vector background so you can change the colour to see how tweaks are going better. See vid which probably gives a better idea of the description: Screen Grab 2022-06-28 at 8.55.41 am.mov

Great stuff - thanks for sharing👍

Although not ideal - I've used this workaround in the past (making sure I've saved the original) Be so much easier to adopt the InDesign way of doing things - or something similar Screen Grab 2022-06-17 at 9.25.03 am.mov

Heres a vid grab of the opacity workaround - your service provider will need to support PDF/X-4 to output Screen Grab 2022-06-10 at 9.19.47 am.mov

Just noticed on my earlier post that the tint in the star works but simplifies?! - but I can still apply tints to spot images?!? see vid grab - This really needs sorting Screen Grab 2022-06-10 at 8.42.54 am.mov

So for a star similar to yours, don't touch your mid-points and all should be fine