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I have been working on graphic novels, which has had me regularly hopping from one persona to another, and using a constant input mix of touch screen, surface pen, mouse and touchpad (version 1.7.2 of Photo, Design, Publisher, on Microsoft Surface Laptop with latest W10). Here are some input issues that I have encountered. - Sometimes Publisher just stops taking drags. Can choose layers, objects or menu items, but can not resize, draw lines or move anything that involves a mouse drag. Restarting the program sometimes helps, sometimes I need to restart the computer. - Sometimes when I use a menu item such as the opacity slider, the program takes no further inputs before I click the slider away, as if the slider was a popup window with priority. - Sometimes I can not select a specific object or menu item with a specific input device. I have found no consistency with this, bus basically I try to click on something and it won't register the input, so I try my options of mouse and touch inputs until I find the one that was somehow required. This feels like a hardware issue for all I know, but has not happened in other programs. - Pasting an image from clipboard creates the layer with the intended image, but I can find no trace of the image on the work area. I resolve this by saving the image and placing it from the file. - Placing an image sometimes doesn't give a preview as I drag the mouse to shape the area, and often resizes or even rotates the image. I found no way to help this but readjusting the image. - Not a bug but there is no touch scroll for the Pages view, this has me regularly selecting and throwing pages about with my thumb. Thanks for the otherwise great programs!

Hello, I am wondering if there is any way to pan the canvas with my finger. I have a Microsoft Surface Pro 4, which has a touch screen. I also use Phase One Capture One and Clip Studio Paint. Within both of these applications you can pan the canvas with your finger without needing to change tools. This is a quick and natural gesture, it does not matter what tool is selected and does not require any modification key presses, nor does it require I remove my pen away from its hover state. For clarification, the finger is for panning and the pen or mouse is used for brushing. Does Affinity Photo for Windows 10 offer this feature as I've explained? Is this a feature being looked into for inclusion? Thanks.

First of all – photo doesn't remember tools settings, as pressure control is always off on startup and you need to turn it on every time you open Photo. Second – it seems Photo has a really hard time with pen pressure, especially when dealing with very light strokes. The line width doesn't change smoothly between values as it is expected to work. I think image explains it better than thousand words: Both pictures were drawn with my XP Pen Artist 12". On both the Brush size is set to 10px. Both brushes have hardness set to 100% with brush size controlled by pen pressure and nothing more (no flow dynamics etc.) yet on Photoshop brush strokes are much smoother and natural looking. I tried to compensate it with accumulation and hardness dynamic, but nothing seems to help. What's the point of having so detailed dynamic options if in the end you can't even have a smooth looking brush? I think this feature still needs a lot of work.

On Adobe Illustrator, clicking end point of another path will attache new path to the another path. How do I do that on Affinity Designer?

Pen Pressure Opacity Settings for (1.7 Update): Affinity Photo/Designer - Pen Opacity Pressure Settings (As of the 1.7 Update): you do not need to adjust Flow or set Flow to "Pressure," to affect Pen Opacity Pressure. - All you need to do (via the Context Menu with the Brush selected) is: 1. select "MORE" 2. choose "Dynamics" 3. adjust the "ACCUMULATION" slider to 100% and select "Pressure" from the drop down. 4. Make sure the "Force Size button" is OFF, via the Context Menu; unless you want your brush pressure to affect both size and opacity at the same time, (which isn't uncommon when used with painting &/or blending). Note: you can also set the size to None via the drop-down menu for size in under More/Dynamics. Note: you may have to do this if you're using custom created brushes, such as some brushes made from Daub. Affinity Photo/Designer - Advanced Pen Opacity Brush Settings & downloaded/purchased Custom Brushes: 5. Advanced Pen Opacity Pressure: under (Brush/Context Menu/More Button/ Dynamics Tab/ACCUMULATION - Set to 100% & Drop Down to "Pressure)" you can also change the "Curve". The best curve to use is the same one for "size." The Curve button is to the "Right" of the Drop-Down menu in the Brush/More/Dynamics tab. Select a curve and try different curve alignments or create your own. The best one or rather for normal one you would expect (as in Adobe PS) is the curve alignment all the way to the Right (which again, is the same Curve used for Pen Size Pressure). 6. Download/Purchased Brushes and Opacity (very important especially for Designer): a lot of brushes already have multiple settings created from those downloaded, purchased or inherently part of Designer. However, older brushes not made specifically for the 1.7 Affinity update may need some adjusting. Flow and Accumulation are the two biggest sliders you must pay attention to if a brush does not behave correctly as it may have in previous additions of Affinity. Example: Daub | Essentials Brush Pack. Some brushes will need tweaking. I suggest coping the brush from the original and adjusting those there in (and Flow), as needed. That way you can save them and back them up as well! Hope this helps – Johnny K PS. Sorry for being so "obvious in my descriptions. I want to be clear with those whom never used Affinity before &/or those coming from Adobe. As I mentioned, Affinity really need to get with the program of adding a "FORCE OPACITY BUTTON" to the context menu as they did for Size and list "OPACITY" in the Brush/Context Menu/More Button/Dynamics with all controls, menus and curve alignments as they do for other brush properties. Kinda ridiculous this hasn't been addressed yet! * I will also try and get photos with # descriptions posted here in asap, if it is requested. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While I'm writing a small book... Dear Affinity, Affinity needs to have a "OPACITY preset, under Brush Dynamics" with the brushes customary controls; Example: Typical settings under Dynamics such as: % Slider / Type (None, Random, "Pressure," ect), for both Photo & Designer. If Accumulation is Opacity (though it acts like opacity, it shouldn't be), then change the name, it's confusing. Pen Size and Pen Opacity are the most commonly used setting and not just for pen strokes! Also... a Pen: "Force to Opacity - Button," as there is now for Brush Pen Size is greatly need also. Perhaps you might want both settings on also; as this is "again," commonly used and it shouldn't be a headache to figure out. Again, Opacity & Size (pen, pen pressure, or mouse), are the two most commonly used brush features/settings needed for brush strokes and much, much more! Right now, is the best time to beat Adobe but, the jumping through hoops, having to write a book in the forums, for one of the most needed settings of a Pen Pressure "Opacity"effect is reDONKulous and kinda annoying! Severely Ridiculous; common guys & girls! BTW... Don't mistake me. I love what you are doing with Affinity, overall. That said, it would be lovely if the new Publisher "Studiolink feature," worked in 3 programs. Designer needs the Channels Palette ... just as Photo needs more brush painting abilities' that are in Designer! Couldn't a channels palette be brought in Designer via the Studiolink feature or simply put in Designer's Pixel Persona. This is another commonly used design feature, missing from your core designer program, (no pun intended)! How & why is there no channels palette in Designer? And if for some reason Designer can't support channels, then Photo needs a serious revamp, so it can Paint more effectively like Photoshop (which to be honest, wouldn't hurt doing so regardless). Photo feels like a after thought compared to Designer, with the exception of missing key elements, already mentioned. With all sincerity - J

The new rubber band mode for pen tool is pretty neat. Draws your path in real time so you can see it before you drop a new point. Helps streamline the process a bit. Great Feature!

There is still no Pen Mode option anywhere in this application, this makes drawing and illustrating on Surface Pros, Wacom Cintiq, etc very annoying as you'll leave unwanted marks when you lay the hand on the screen. For anyone wondering, Pen Mode is an option that disables touch drawing. All I ask is a simple if statement: Fingers are touching the canvas, are they zooming/scrolling? If yes, do the scroll/zoom, if no do nothing. That's it, no further logic needed. Can we do this one thing? It would help massively all illustrators out there. Thanks!

I discovered today some problems in the RC2 version with the wacom tablet when in try to choose menu items. Some times its working or not. selection is then not possible and have to use the mouse. But brushes, clonetool are working after slected with mouse in the personas

Hey Guys, for the life of me I can’t produce a dotted line. I select pen, I select dash icon in stroke studio, I set the phase, dash and gap and draw a line. I only ever get a solid line. I can then click on the line and try and adjust. I can see the values, but the line remains solid! One of those things that should be so easy. If it’s not a bug either I’m a fool or some other setting so where interferes. I’ve uploaded the whole doc. You will see the diagonal blue line in question. Really frustrating me! Untitled.afdesign

Dear Affinity-Team! I'm very impressed by the iPad version of your apps. Sadly I do "only" own a Microsoft Surface (Tablet). You can run Affinity Photo and Designer on it but sometimes it is a big pain in the ass to be not able to take full advantage of the power your programs offer. Especially without a cover and a mouse only equipped with the Surface Pen, it is difficult to get buttons right. For that reason, it would be just awesome to have a surface version with all those fantastic features and as intuitive as the iPad version. I hope to hear positive news soon. All the best from Germany. Stefan

It would be great if when using the Selection > Refine… tool, the eraser on the wacom pen would swap the selection brush from Foreground to Background mode. Thanks for all you do!

Same issue as in Affinity Designer, copy/pasting it here as it's also relevant to this application, perhaps even more for some people who prefer a fully raster workflow. There is still no Pen Mode option anywhere in this application, this makes drawing and illustrating on Surface Pros, Wacom Cintiq, etc very annoying as you'll leave unwanted marks as we lay our hand on the screen. For anyone wondering, Pen Mode is an option that disables touch drawing. All I ask is a simple if statement: Fingers are touching the canvas, are they zooming/scrolling? If yes, do the scroll/zoom, if no do nothing. That's it, no further logic needed. Can we do this one thing? It would help massively all illustrators out there. Thanks!

Update: I went to Microsoft and tried it. You can use the vector brush tool with the surface pen in the same “drawing” motion that you can use on the iPad. I’ve been debating purchasing an iPad Pro vs. a Surface Pro 6...I was messing around with the app on the iPad Pro at the apple store and one thing I liked a lot is you can use the Apple Pencil to essentially “draw” your vectors through the vector brush tool. Is there the ability to do this on Microsoft surface pro with the surface pen with the pc version of affinity designer? Or is it only for the iPad app? Thanks!

It has been pointed out numerous times since this was released for Windows 10.... they have not added use of the button on the pen. It makes using the device as often intended (in tablet) impossible for many features like clone. I'm glad they could make sure to have this working for the iPad Pro, but a year later we are still begging for this to be fixed. This is embarrassing.

I don't exactly know how to formulate my question, so I hope it has not been answered already. The problem I face is in regards to the pen tool. I've drawn a clef using the pen tool by creating a s hape (not a line, because it was easier to modify the thickness of the stroke). But now the points where the shape overlaps, are rendered transparent, with no fill. Obviously not what I want. Is there a way to fix this? I've attached two screenshots, one with outline mode and one normal with the node tool and the shape selected. Thanks for your help

Hi, I have one button on my Bamboo pen assigned as right click. Right Click on the picture area works ok and I get the rightclick menu. However right-click on the layers panel does not work. Non of the layers brings the right mouse menu. Nothing happens. Same for the Tools. Right click does not work, I have to use the little triangle to get to the tools selection. I do not know if there are other area's where the Bamboo richtclick does not function. I test with the mouse it works. I use this Bamboo for all work on the PC as mouse replacement. I have: W7, 64 bit at latest level, i7-2600, 16Gb Memory. Latest Wacom driver for the product. Affinity Phote version: 1.5.0.42 Beta

Hi I Have a question about inheriting settings in pen tool, when Im work with it and choose colour width and finish shape, the next one Im must start again from zero settings, Im tired with it, in other apps last settings pass on to the next new line. Is this possible in AD nad AP? Im working on Win10 with latest release of AD and AP.

I've noticed during my usage of Designer that, even when snapping is enabled, the pixel snapping doesn't work in the pen and node tools (it does a bit in the former, however it gets completely disregarded when aligning to a shape). Most of the stuff I create ends up being exported as a PNG file, and half-pixels (or the like) usually don't look good in the image at all. To combat this, I need to manually set the values of each node in the Transform panel after creating the shape - a slow and annoying process. I understand part of this is to make it so people can easily make complex shapes and align to edges and stuff, however a simple option to force pixel snapping for everything would be super useful. Thanks

I use a Microsoft Surface tablet, therefore I use a pen for my drawings. I keep accidentally tapping the screen with my fingers and drawing dots all over my canvas while I'm not using my pen, and I was wondering if there was any way to disable this?

Hey, I recently started the trial to see if I would like this program and so far I have, however, one thing that I noticed that will really bother me is that with the surface pen (the one with the top and side button) I can't press the right button and use the pencil's color picker. Is there a way to remap that or is there a tablet mode I can use to make it work better in the tablet mode on my surface book (Like photoshop's feature to use all the hotkeys on the left)? Thank you guys in advance, if one of those features are in there, I will most definitely get the program

Summary: Designer treats finger-touch and pen-down as the same thing. It would be so much better if touch events (including single finger) were used to pan the canvas, rather than "click", if a pen is being used. Details: Just got Designer, and I love it already! However, using this on a MS Surface, the application has an annoying inability to distinguish between pen and touch input. From other drawing apps, I've become used to a very natural paradigm where the pen acts as the selected tool, and touch input is used solely to move the canvas (or in some cases, to select). Probably the best, free, example to illustrate the former case is Plumbago: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/plumbago-a-microsoft-garage-project/9nblggh5gk42 Once you start doing the "draw, move, draw, move" action it's very hard to go back to something else. Unfortunately, Designer treats both finger-taps and pen contact as "mouse down" event, which is really annoying when trying to draw something large on a zoomed-in view. For example: I'd normally pen-down, drag the control-points out, pen down again for the second point, then pan the canvas along with my finger, then pen down for the third point, and so on. However, doing this on Designer results in a spurious point being added when I try to drag the canvas. I know that two-finger-drag will move the canvas, but it's not as natural a gesture (and it sometimes zooms rather than drags). So, my feature request is this: allow a separate tool function to be assigned to screen-touch events when a pen is in use. By default, that could be the "Hand" tool, to move the canvas, although I can see a use-case for object selection being the "touch" function. The simplest implementation, though would be to use touch events only for canvas panning automatically as soon a pen is detected. This may need to be controlled with a manual "off-switch" to revert to the current behaviour, but I don't think many users would want to draw with the fingers of their non-dominant hand when they've a pen in the dominant one.

I just bought a Macbook Pro 15 inch with trackpad. I would really like to use the big pad with a pen well designing with affinity photo and affinity designer. Inklet software with a Pogo pen would be perfect! Does Affinity support that technology? Mahalos in Advance Steve

Hi Guys, I was wondering (I've been searching) how to join 2 lines together that have "middle" nodes. Say I've got a straight line with points A,B and C and another with 2 endpoints D and E. How do i go about joining the middle node (b) with the endpoint of the other line to make one unified "T" Piece? When i have tried selecting the correct nodes and "Join Curves" it connects the 2 lines end points and not the middle nose as I wish. Cheers http://puu.sh/tJHUr/11fb4c20ea.png (so connecting the bottom line node to the top lines middle)

Working with the pen tool, I've noticed that there is no way to snap the bezier handles to 45° and 90° angles once the node has been placed. Normally, this would be done by holding down the shift key while moving the bezier handle. In Affinity designer, this locks the handle to the angle it was last placed at. My suggestion would be to keep the current behavior, but add an alternate keyboard shortcut that will lock the bezier handles to 45° and 90° (and possibly other) angles. Could be CMD + DRAG, CMD + SHIFT + DRAG, etc.. Thanks!

I am running Affinity Designer on a Surface Pro (2017). The pen on this device supports pressure and tilt, and Windows 10 comes with a built in sketch application that allows the use of a pencil brush where drawing vertically on the surface produces solid lines and tilting the pen down produces grainy strokes that simulate shading with a real pencil. I am wondering if Affinity Designer supports sketching in this manner. I'd love to be able to sketch on a layer, then switch to another layer and continue sketching. I've found evidence that v1.6 supports the Surface Pen, but no specifics about if tilt is included. I've also found a tutorial that talks about tilt on a Waicom pen, though I'm not sure if this is a compromise or the way that Affinity Designer is meant to support the feature I'm after. Can anyone confirm if Affinity Designer supports sketching like this with the latest Surface Pro and pen, and perhaps point me to a tutorial if there is one?