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Borrowed from days of yore: "Roses are red, Violets are blue . . ." and now with days of more: Gradients are handy And Merging is too!

I've just completed a large project ready for printing; my first using Affinity Designer. While working, I made a series of notes as I came across things I couldn't do, or which behaved in a manner I didn't expect. I'm happy to post feature requests, but I thought I'd ask here first in case some of these things have been disregarded, or perhaps there's a way I don't know of to do what I'm trying to do. THINGS I WANT TO BE ABLE TO DO IN AFFINITY DESIGNER: ☐Hover pen tool over anchor point (which becomes visible at that point) at end of unjoined line without first selecting the path, and click to activate it and continue drawing. ☐Join two open paths by clicking on each in turn with the pen tool, rather than having to select two paths and choose the Join command. ☐Eye dropper - copy styles to selected object or text, as well as colours and gradients. ☐Continuous export in Export Persona: it's always greyed out; why? This would be a really useful feature if I could use it. ☐Insert in front/behind/inside: keyboard shortcuts please ☐Stroke presets to click on; also up / down arrow to change stroke by preset increments. Is there a keyboard shortcut to change the point size up/down by single rather than double increments? ☐Use the direct selection tool to select a segment of a path, and copy just that segment. When I try this with the node tool, the whole shape is selected rather than just the part I wanted. I'd rather not have to drag a marquee around the part I'm trying to select; just choosing a couple of anchor points should do the trick in my opinion. ☐Command+Shift+{ is supposed to be the shortcut for range left text. Half the time it performs an operation called Move Nodes to Bottom - what even is that, and why does it get in the way of range left text? ☐Default leading is the same as the font size - needs to be defined as a percentage, eg. 120% of font size. This is really important! I really hope this is just a hidden option that I haven't yet been able to find. ☐Document setup box should close when Return (or another key, like esc) is pressed. It’s super annoying having to pick up the mouse each time to close the dialogue box. ☐Have a padlock as part of each layer to simplify locking and unlocking layers. I’m aware I can select the padlock at the top of the layers panel, and that I can CTRL click to lock - but as I’m doing this so often, one more movement of the mouse or an extra click really does feel cumbersome and not fluid at all.

This is with Affinity Designer 2.2.1.2075 on Windows 10. It seems to happen with Layers specifically. Triggering creation within the root Artboard doesn't cause the same garbled screen updating behavior when a Pixel Layer is created using Assistant. Steps: 1. Start document with Artboard 2. Switch to Pixel Persona 3. Create a Layer 4. Start drawing inside Layer forcing creation of a Pixel Layer using Assistant. 5. Reap: 23.10.22_11-36-18-AM_NV12_1920x1080.mp4 test-document.afdesign

I did a fun illustration today. The original design is by the artist Laurel Burch...I love her work. I used a small JPG I downloaded as a template. Most of it was done in AD, but I did use some raster brushes in the Photo Persona, so it's not 100% vector. I also added some texture with a Lighting Filter and a Bump Map, created in Blender, which gives it a bit more variation and personality. Hope you like the final result.

Greetings All, Happy Valentine's Day! This was created with Affinity Designer using 3D, inner and outer shadow effects and various brushes. Roxanne

I want to create some symmetric flourish swirls but I’m struggling with the symmetry part. For example with this shape: I can kinda drag the handles to be as close as possible but it’s not quite there. I tried to convert the object to a symbol, mirror it and then adjust it but this is also not making things easier. What’s the best approach here? How do I know that a handle on one side is as long and the same angle as the handle on the opposite side?

EDITED to make clear file 1 and file 2 remained open the whole time, at the same time. Still think the problem is with the "embedding" logic. EDIT 2: now I understand the resource manager correctly, I can clear that description up... Designer 2 version available as of today, 2.3.1 methinks, MacOS 13.latest Ventura intel 2019 MacBook Pro 16inch 1. Open ai file download from domestika.org design course 2. Save to native file .afdesign we shall call this file 1. 3. drop in .psd files 4. make some art boards around all the assets (those already in the file, and those dropped in as PSD's) SIDE NOTE on STEP 4: (weirdly the objects within the ai file didn't appear to have an artboard at first opening in designer, a black bg in designer around all the files, but then dropping in new psds, they were only visible in the overlapping area with the including objects, invisible if dragged off the overlapping area of the original objects. So I had to make an artboard around them, then the document bg became gray (I later changed this since I didn't like that) but then I noticed in layers panel, there was only 1 artboard, the one I had created.... weird to me that there was an invisible "implicit" artboard from the original ai conversion/import? Let me know if this is supposed to happen? I have LOTS of ai files to deal with (as I'm sure we all do, sigh)... not just this project. 5. make a new design file, we shall call file 2, with several artboards 6. copy (command-c) one of the mb? embedded psd's in file 1 (resource manager lists the path of original file), but, "make linked file" is not available.! 7. paste into file 2. 8. click away until I am using pixel persona tools on the pasted in embedded file in file 2.... unfortunately, all changes I make there ALSO affect the embedded psd object in file 1. 9. confused I open resource manager in file 2 now. it shows the path of the same original psd object/file supposedly "embedded" in file 1.... Again, I cannot "make linked file", its grayed/ghosted/not available. But resource manager already considers it embedded in the file list, just as in file 1... on the other hand, since designer thinks it's correctly embedded, I cannot MAKE it actually embedded. So files can neither be properly embedded, nor linked in these two files. I played with another new afdesign file, dropped a jpeg in there, and it's fine, it says embedded, but the "make linked file" IS AVAILABLE. In the meantime, I will simply drop a new copy of the file from finder... but that sucks... b/c I Did some work already on a half dozen such objects in file 1.... which now is not copyable without "linked" editing behavior... I've done my best to be clear here. Hopefully this can be explained, or if not, squashed like a bug! Thanks for giving adobe a run! Things like this sorta suck though... sad face...

I frequently use my iPad with the folio case which props it at a slight angle. Interestingly Affinity Photo AND Affinity Designer seem to be reacting to this angle when trying to place photos. The whole interface flickers strangely and taps aren't always registered. The video demonstrates it in Affinity Photo but the behavior is also the same in Designer. Previous to 2.0 I noticed other features in Affinity Designer such as keyboard visibility that were delicately affected by the slight angle. I haven't determined if these are still issues but I haven't seen any other iPad app that has had issues with this angle. You'll notice the flickering only occurs while the iPad is at the slight angle, but not when it is upright. This is an 11in iPad Pro M1 running iPadOS 16.2 (a). I have noticed this in previous versions of the OS IMG_5679.MOV

In a recent discussion, within the forum, about Affinity Designer vs Illustrator, I was asked what I’m able to achieve using AD that I wasn’t able to do using AI. This has nothing to do with what each app is capable of it’s purely the way I’ve gelled with AD. I personally always found AI frustrating and usually ended up exporting my line work to AP and finishing off illustrations in that. I’ve never been a fan of using raster art with its many restrictions. So when I discovered AD and found I was able to do all my illustrating in the one app I was overjoyed. So anyway, now that I’ve bored everyone silly, here’s an example of my AD work with an additional enlarged section. Please excuse the watermarks and lack of the entire image. This is still a work in progress, one page, of about 30, from a book I’m doing. So I don’t want to give everything away and I’m somewhat concerned about all this AI art indexing, or theft as I prefer to call it. This is 100% vector. No brushes or raster elements used.

At the moment, the appearance panel does not work very well for groups. I think it would be useful to be able to give a hierarchy for strokes and fills for the whole group. For example, the ability to display strokes for all objects on one hierarchy level, instead of one above the other.

I saw the following web page https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/tv/a-beautiful-paean-to-doing-things-at-your-own-pace/ar-AA1loCzT I like the picture. How in Affinity Designer would a person best approach trying to produce effects like those in that picture please? In particular the leaves of the tree in the left foreground, yet also the clouds. William

I think it would be useful to have a tool in the Designer to offset an open path. At the moment I don't see such a possibility. There are workarounds e.g. using Contour Tool and splitting the path, or adding extra Strokes in the Appearance panel. I am not sure if a separate tool is needed for this. Maybe it would be possible to extend the functionality of the Contour Tool by adding an option to offset the path when it is open, instead of making a buffer around it.

Got a new set up! Thanks for checking it out! Click the picture…

The process to export appears to be working, but the files never appear in Drive. Searching the forums and google brings up a few instances of similar problems, but no good answers. Need to export to Drive without any extra steps, like transferring from iCloud. Saving and the workaround for retrieving saved Drive files as described in https://www.vernier.com/til/15164 works. iOS 17.2 on iPad Air Screen recording of export process attached Can anyone help with a solution? Thanks! RPReplay_Final1707432051.mp4

OMG, after using Affinity Designer for years there's still new things to discover. I don't know when this was introduced, but being able to select two vertices/points and scale the edge/line with a mousewheel on the text fields is just incredible! Things like this is really what makes Affinity great! Love it! Thanks Serif for really putting the effort into creating intuitive interfaces that are fun to work with! amazing-stuff.mp4

Hello! I had this problem at least twice now, and want to report it. When using the brush repeatedly, while having pen pressure on, affinity designer freezes and crashes, after a few quick brush strokes. I tried it without the pen pressure and it works fine without it, i think. Only setting I have changes i that I disabled Windows Ink inside of Affinity Designer and on my tablet. I don't have any issues with pen pressure on Affinity Photo, so I personally think the vector brush tool in Affinity Designer with pressure sensitivity ON is just bugged. Hope you can reproduce this problem and fix it. Thanks for your time and patience! Extra Specs, just for good measure: GPU: RX Vega 56 CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 CPU Graphics Tablet: Huion Inspiroy 950P. RAM: 16 GB of something. affinitybrushbug.mp4

The description for the Continuous option says “if the content within the slices are modified.” The verb needs to agree with “content”, not “slices”, so the text should read “if the content within the slices is modified.” https://affinity.help/designer2/English.lproj/index.html?page=pages/ExportPersona/slicesPanel.html&title=Slices panel (Export Persona only)

Hi folks! I wanted to report a bug I encountered yesterday and found my fix for. Upon launching any of the three programs, they would get stuck with just the splash screen saying "Initializing..." until the following message appeared: Naturally, this was confusing, as all Affinity programs were working just fine the day before when I'd updated them, and I've never touched my firewall settings! My setup and required details: Computer Specs OS: Windows 11 Home, version 22H2, OS Build 22621.3007 Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-9300H CPU @ 2.40GHz RAM: 16.0 GB System type: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor Using all three programs, Photo, Designer, and Publisher Using the latest release versions (2.3.1) Yes, I reproduced it, and found the issue + workaround (see below) What I tried (without success): Restarting my PC Uninstalling and re-installing all Affinity Products Once with the MSIX installer and "app" Once with the EXE installer and "programs" Adjusting and opening up my Firewall settings Today (as I post this) I have found the issue: Hidden Folders! Many programs on my PC have created folders on my PC at C:\Users\[my username] that start with a dot; as I understand it, these are common with cross-platform programs and normally get hidden by Mac OSX and Linux machines, but not necessarily by Windows, and they were starting to clutter my User directory, so I marked them and the contents inside as hidden. Shortly after, my problem above began. As soon as I un-hid the folder C:\Users\[my username]\.affinity, lo and behold, the programs started right up, and when I hid the folder again, the issue returned. My other PC running a different AMD setup with Windows 11 had the exact same issue when I hid and unhid the .affinity folder. Possible cause in the program: According to a Stack Overflow page I found while looking up how to hide the folders in the first place (as well as another page with further details linked from there), it appears that if a Windows program calls CreateFile with the CREATE_ALWAYS flag but no definition for FILE_ATTRIBUTE_HIDDEN, operations will fail on hidden files. While I can't speak to what the Affinity programs are doing while initializing, I imagine the issue could be this, or something similar. I hope this is helpful for others who have a similar problem, and for Affinity developers to hopefully fix the issue when it's possible to do so.

I could have called this Many hands (and feet) make light work. We're all getting browned off with Artificial Intelligence stealing copyright works. I thought it was time I made a stand and made my own AI image. In this case, it probably means Astonishing Inaccuracies.

I have found that when using the Affinity Designer Pencil Tool on a Windows system on a laptop computer that using Mousekeys on an external keyboard to press down and effectively hold down the trackpad by software rather than hold it down physically makes drawing with the Pencil Tool much better. It means that I can lift my finger from the trackpad without ending the curve that is being drawn by the Pencil Tool. Is this already widely known about or is it a new idea? William

Just for fun ... ... and in case someone want's to give it a try ... ... although the solution should be pretty obvious here!

I opened my file in Illustrator and as you can see on image 1, only 8 colors. When I create a new palette from document in Affinity I get a bunch of useless colors however, as you can see on image 2. Nothing is rasterized. no images in any layer, no adjustments. Only vector shapes.

Hi, I'd like to write this suggestion for the upcoming features for Affinity Designer. What I miss for since I started in Affinity in 2018, is the ability to Paint and use the Vector Brushes as Real vector, Or, a tool to Paint in Vector (Like Blob Brush from Illustrator) without the need to draw a shape with the pencil / pen tool. as an Example, I'm making many illustrations that need a flat painting style, and if we could make Paint in Vector and also Erase like we do in Raster, it would be awesome.

🇬🇧 Hello, I was looking for the most official sources possible from Apple regarding macOS interface elements for designing or modifying interfaces. Very complicated, unless you have Sketch installed on your Mac... Here is a series of Affinity Designer files, all vector. Here, the first file concerning the Application icons. I would gradually complete the elements that I could find and then use Affinity Designer. Good reception... 🇫🇷 Bonjour, je cherchais les sources les plus officielles possibles provenant d'Apple concernant les éléments d'interface de macOS pour concevoir ou modifier des interfaces. Très compliqué, sauf à avoir Sketch installé sur son mac... Voici une série de fichiers Affinity Designer, tout vectoriel. Ici, le premier fichier concernant les icônes des Applications. Je complèterais au fur et à mesure des éléments que je pourrais trouver et ensuite reprendre sous Affinity Designer. Bonne réception... Template Icon App.afdesign Migrated Global Colors.afdesign