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Having a dedicated pressure tool similar to Paint Tool SAI's would be a blessing. Currently, it's a bit frustrating to apply the appropriate amount of pressure to the correct areas using the existing graph system. Not to mention that I have to reset the pressure for every curve I make. Having a tool that allows you to adjust pressure at points along your curves would definitely be a huge step forward when designing at such detailed levels.

Hello, I have a situation where I have ~650 layers, all well named that I need to search through quickly to hide/show for different permutations of an image. Is there a way I can either sort the layers alphabetically to find them more easily or search for them. Thanks.

This is one of the first search results on google for this topic even though the thread is archived. I just posted a similar feature request for V2:

Please check the State Window, there you will find options to search for layers by name, color, style etc.

Hi, I've spent the last week learning Affinity Designer, including looking things up using the "Affinity Designer Help" option from the "Help" menu. Or trying to... : Conclusion: This is the most limited and ridiculous search function I've ever run across. It allmost always returns "no results" for words that are, in fact, included in the help, and are important as well. At first I couldn't figure out what was the problem, but after some hits I finally undertand that this 'search' function only searches... a) The TITLE lines of the Affinity Designer help section, and also requires b) EXACT phrase in that title. So you have to know, exactly, the different words that Affinity Designer staff used to TITLE the section that holds your target word. A new user will never know this. In fact, almost anyone would never know this. Example: I want to find out more about the Boolean functions that join, divide shapes. I put "Boolean" in the search Help line. I get "No results". See attached search. Does this mean "Boolean" doesn't appear in the help. No, it's in the "Joining Objects" section. See attached "Joining Objects" search for that. "Boolean" in fact appears in the first sentence. But not in the title, so search didn't find it. I double-checked with "Subtract", which you can see is a subsection of the "Joining Objects" section. But it's not the title, so we get "No results" for "Subtract" too. (see attached). Finally, wondering how absurd this really is, I tried "Join Objects". Surely you'll let me find that? No, it has to be "Joining Objects" or nothing! See attached. Is there perhaps some way to get this 'Help' to search the content? If not, I ask that you change it so it does. As it stands it's worse than useless. L&R Mac High Sierra (10.13.6), AD 1.10.5

Hi there, trying to resurrect this post. I Also would like this, I think a quick feature of autoallign the alredy open layers without the need to open the stacking engine and search for the files would be a improvement. I think I saw more people talking about this. I work with real state photos a lot and my workflow will be a lot easier and faster with this, I usually process arround 150 or 300 pictures per day so every second counts. I usualy do this: Work on Capture One the raws -> Send the pictures (if needed, for example with a flambient) to Affinity Photo on TIFF. This creates a bunch of tabs, one per image sended to Affinity -> Open Stack and add the files (First I search for them on Finder or directly paste the files route, once this is done Affinity remembers the last route used and this step is not alredy needed on this job) -> select the files I want to allign and open them -> select Rotate and escalate option and apply (the memory of the tool would be awsome in here too so select this every single time not will be needed) -> The stacking engine creates a new tab with the layers alligned in a group, I select and copy the layers needed and paste them in the tab of one of the original TIFFs -> Delete the original TIFF layer (Usually the bottom one) and the editing work begins. Once this is done I save everithing over the original TIFF (Most of the times with the layers just in case I need to reopen this photo) so I can open the TIFF in Capture One like it was the original image. So yeah. I think allign the open layers with a button would be nice. Or maybe even a "open as layers on Affinity Photo" plugin for Capture One, but this is another discussion. Thanks and I very sorry for my poor translation.

Just to give my +1 to this topic: I have just encountered the problem specifically with Bahnschrift (which is a Windows standard font, by the way!) that was chosen for a project, and I can easily use that in multiple applications, including MS Office, Paint.Net, Inkscape, etc. But I can not use it in Affinity Designer 2, because whatever I chose from the font menu, I always only get the standard cut, and can't select any of the other variants. Now, I understand that this font has certain features that are not supported in Affinity – like that you can adjust parameters like weight very flexibly, ideally with a slider control. That's a great "nice to have", but in most cases, a more simplified approach would already be a big step forward to the situation that we have now. I see that Designer seems to recognize that there are multiple default variations available from the fonts list - and it shows them, but without the proper name, and selecting any of these always sets only the default font variant. In other words: it is completely broken and not usable in the way it is now. To me it seems as if Serif is not implementing a simple solution because they hope to deliver a perfect one at some point in the future - but this is not moving forward since many years, so maybe a simple, imperfect solution that could be rolled out in a reasonable time would probably be a better one. As for me, I am now using Inkscape to insert this font into drawings, and then I convert all text to paths. And that is not actually a good workflow 😞 Edit: Sorry, I just noticed that this is the v1 forum, and there is already a new discussion on this topic in the v2 forum. Apparently I can't delete my post, so I just leave this here...

When using the Node Tool, the bottom information line lists "Click+RightMouse to smooth node," but it feels needlessly difficult to accomplish. The user must either click+rightclick perfectly simultaneously, or rightclick and hold then left click. Unfortunately, rightclicking first (which would be easier) brings up the rightclick menu, which blocks then blocks the cursor from targeting the intended node. Meanwhile, attempting to click at the same time is finicky; if the user clicks either mousebutton even slightly before the other, it doesn't work. Either of two changes could improve usability here: setting the rightclick menu to appear on button release rather than on click, or allowing the combination leftclick and hold + rightclick to do it. I hope that made sense. I've been up all night and I'm kind of punchy.

This is another archived thread at the top of google results. Here's my new post about this in the V2 feedback forum:

It’s totally possible I’m missing something here, but if I export a PDF from Designer and open the PDF in Illustrator it does not retain the layers. If I do the opposite and export a PDF from Illustrator and open it in Designer, it does retain the layers. I’m not even sure this is an issue with Designer and not Illustrator. If it IS something on the Designer side, I’d love to see this implemented moving forward, as the place I go to for printing requires PDF with specific layers but they use Illustrator so my Designer-created PDFs aren’t acceptable.

The Affinity Designer Help search is abysmal. I am simply trying to find out how to find where the "panel preferences menu" is and open it. Attached are the "results" for this, both with and without quotes. Neither one answers anything. No reference to the actual panel or menu or where it is or how to open it. You need to fix your search so less experienced users can actually find answers. The answers you give assume that the person searching already knows the answer! Unfortunately, this is the case with many programs like yours. You can't just answer a simple question.

It would be super nice to add a search functionality so users can find the layer by layer name. This would also encourage users to keep up nice layer organization.

For illustrators and those with dozens of levels per document: I think it would be awesome (aka it would save heaps of worktime) if we could search through levels by the name WE gave them.

Is there a way to alphabetize your artboards? See, I'm trying to get into print on demand, so what I've done is I've created several artboards for each product dimension in one document. My issue is I created all these artboards at random. Theyre not alphabetized. The app organizes my artboards based on when they were created. So when it comes time to export an artboard its really hard to find that artboard when you have so many. So I have to look through this long list of artboards when I hit export. For example, I want to export the artboard called Backpack. I wish there was a way to alphabetize artboards in the layers panel and the export menu section. That way it would help me search for the letter B for Backpack and I dont have to go through this list of artboards to find it. I've attached 2 photos of all the artboards I've created. 1 photo shows the layers panel. I wish I could hit a button that would alphabetize my artboards in my layers panel. The 2nd photo shows the "Area" section in the export window. I wish my artboards were alphabetize in the "Area" list so I can go to the letter B and export the Backpack artboard. It would help find things easily.

Is there a way to alphabetize your artboards? See, I'm trying to get into print on demand, so what I've done is I've created several artboards for each product dimension in one document. My issue is I created all these artboards at random. Theyre not alphabetized. The app organizes my artboards in the order they were created. So when it comes time to export an artboard its really hard to find that artboard when you have so many. I have to go through a list of artboards. Ill find it eventually but it would be easier if the artboards were alphabetize so I can look for the letter of the artboard I want to export. For example, I want to export the artboard called Backpack. I wish there was a way to alphabetize artboards in the layers panel and the export area menu section. That way it would help me search for the letter "B" for Backpack, and I dont have to go through this list of artboards to find it. I've attached 3 photos this this post. The first photo shows the layers panel. I wish I could hit a button that would alphabetize my artboards in my layers panel. The 2nd photo shows the "Area" section in the export menu. Look at how all my artboards are not alphabetized and they're just in chaos. I wish my artboards were alphabetize in the "Area" list so I can go to the letter "B" and export the Backpack artboard I need. The 3rd photo is the swatch studio settings. The swatch studio settings actually has a setting where you can "sort" you colors alphabetical or by color. I need a "sort" setting for layers and for the "Area" in the export menu. I dont know how it would be designed. I dont know how it would look but I need a way to alphabetize my layers/artboards. It would help find things easily. For now, I'll just look through this chaos list of artboards.

Depending on your hardware, it can be more than a huge difficulty! On a Windows laptop that I used to use regularly, the ‘mouse’ buttons are below the opposite ends of a single piece of plastic (so it’s like a seesaw) which means that it’s physically impossible to press both buttons at the same time.

Maybe you guys need to hire a professional graphic designer.

Hi, I use a lot of artboards in one afDesign file. When I have to change things, I miss the possibility to search for a text. Regards, Aldert

Thanks for catching this. I entered this thread from a Duck Duck Go search and never noticed I was in an archived forum. I did post a new request (referring back to this one) in the Affinity 2 forums as you already know because you posted there also. See

I would agree with you that this could be a good workaround. But why should we use a workaround when from the beginning and in the help document we are told that we can create our own Presets (that are added at the end of the original list of New (documents)? And there is even a box where you can indicate if you may create artboards from them. The problem is that when you already created a new document from your own preset and want to add a new artboard, it only duplicates the original one, and all the options to resize your new artboard are grayed out and the only way to resize it is by dragging. At least, that is how it is working in my case now. The new artboard does not show any of the characteristics saved in the preset (margins, bleed, etc.), not even those of the 1st artboard that generated the document. If the Help document says you can create artboards from your own presets and you cannot, then it is a bug. Not something we wish it would be... If I start a document as a Print doc, then why those options are not included in the Doc Size menu and others for different devices are? It makes no sense to me. This is not something to be added as a new resource, but something to be reviewed.

It has not (yet) been added to V2 but if you want to add your support for that, try the Feedback & Suggestions forum. Leaving a "+1" here in the Questions forum won't do much good since the developers as a rule do not follow topics here since that would take time better spent on actual product development.

Atm I'm done cleaning up a file but it took soooo damn long. It would be easier to have a search/filter module for layers and colors Plus renaming a group element with prefix (LS Farn) and a numberrange (201 - 221) would be helpful.

Can I have Search In Keyboard Shortcut Setting Please. Thanks

Hi, This might have already been suggested but I could not find it. Currently if you name-search an asset using the asset search field, it will yield results from the currently selected category, searching within all the subcategory drop downs. It would be very handy to have the search work across ALL the categories. I have 17 categories each with numerous subcategories of assets, and if I type in "Folder" to the search bar I would like to see all the results across all the asset categories. Otherwise I have to repeat the search 17 times. Thanks!