Search the Community

When the dash pattern for a stroke is clipped (meaning the stroke is too short for the dashes to apply) the pattern is ignored. Steps to reproduce 1. Create a line with the pen tool| 2. Apply a stroke colour and set the stroke to be dashed 3. For the dashes, set increasing sizes, like 1 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 10 | 0 (cap type doesn't matter) 4. Change the length of the line, if the line is too short to display all dashes, only the first two 1 | 1 will be used, rather than clipping off the parts that are too long (e.g. the last 10 should become 5 to make the pattern fit) Video 2023-10-04 09-41-45.mp4 This is on Windows 10.0.19045, Publisher/ Designer 2.2.0.

I would see only advantages in a function, that would allow me to swap the position of 2 objects. They don't even need to be the same dimensions. They don't even need to be the same type (image, group, font...). For a flyer I am arranging lots of objects. In my case images, that all have the same size. And I have to arrange them in a grid layout. Now I really "waste" a massive amount of time by moving them into the correct positions. Checking how the images look, if I swap 2 images - e.g. one pic from 5th row/2nd column to 1st row/ 6th column and the other pcitures vice versa. It would genius, to just select two objects and hit a command key and they will be swapped. It would save soo much time instead of dragging and hoping that snapping works fine. And that Publisher orientates on the adjacents objects correctly. Be For me: the fastes way (because of using shortcuts) is: cmd+c object1 - I wanna move from A-to-B cmd+v and move the duplicate of object1 to B - it's correct position (above object2), then cmd+x the duplicate, to see object2 again select and move object2 to the position of the old object1 cmd+v to get get the duplicate of object1 and do the same cmd+x, delete,cmd+v stuff for getting rid of the old object1 and having object 2 only I miss this option since years, when I started working with Affinity Designer. Thanks in advance!!! Schubi

I've come up with a workflow that seems to work for me. I spend my mornings sketching abstract shapes. I draw them the old-school way with pencil and paper. I cut out the “good” ones and keep them in a folder for inspiration. I then take a digital picture of the one I want to work with and place it into Designer. After recreating the shape I start to see what I can come up with. I've posted the original sketch and the final product. I never know where these drawings are going to go, but that's what I like… the journey, and hopefully a decent destination.

Hey! I hope it reaches someone from Serif. My point is that for a lot of us who exclusively use the Affinity Suite, there are such small things that when you need them, they seem like a pain in the ass. Today's example is the option to hyperlink text in Affinity Designer. It bothers specially since I've found other people asking for it even in 2016! So that'd be my request... That we do not end 2020 without the option to be able to hyperlink text in AD. Thanks.

Hey community, I'm having issues getting files to stay linked in Affinity Publisher on my iPadOS, using Dropbox. When I link an Affinity Designer file on Dropbox with the Linked Services feature enabled and set up, the files don't stay linked at all. Plus, I'm unable to select other artboards within that particular Affinity Designer file. To provide more context: I was able to succesfully link other file types on Dropbox. iCloud isn't an option for me in this scenario, and I haven't explored it. I have tested the recent 2.2 update, no difference in behaviour, files are immediately marked as missing in the resource tab. This issue hasn't surfaced on either MacOS or Windows. There, linking works fine, and I can also select different artboards after I linked an Affinity Designer file on Dropbox. A speculation I have is that maybe when linking a file within Affinity Publisher on iPadOS, it loads the file just for placement and then deletes it right post-placement, causing the link to break. Given this, has anyone encountered something similar or can offer advice on what might be the culprit? It completely breaks my workflow over different devices. Many thanks for any guidance! Dennis

I'm trying to look for an angled/tilted brush for hand writing with my pen tablet. I know it sounds extremely simple – it's one of the default brushes on Adobe Illustrator – but I can't seem to find it on Affinity Designer. Everything is rounded... Some taper off a the ends. But none are actually angled. Please help!

Below is my list of written tutorials I have done over the years. The first few were done using early versions of Affinity programs but they should still be ok. Some menus may have changed or tools look different but the basics are the same. Also most are for Affinity Photo, but some could be done in Designer. Plus the "Beginners Look at Affinity Photo" ones will pretty much be the same in Affinity Designer and Publisher as all 3 programs have same basic functions. PhotoPlus and Affinity Photo – make a fake Starry Sky background https://www.dropbox.com/s/3la5z4amc11wcgx/starry-Sky-PhotoPlus_and_Affinity_Photo.pdf?dl=0 Affinity Photo – Silk Embroidery Effect https://www.dropbox.com/s/9h4mpso7i77z1oq/Affinity%20Photo%20-%20Silk%20Embroidery%20Effect.pdf?dl=0 Affinity Photo – Silk Embroidery Effect V2 https://www.dropbox.com/s/6usbza25vidgmck/Embroidery%20Tutorial%20v2.pdf?dl=0 Affinity Photo – Vintage Cabinet Frames https://www.dropbox.com/s/bj2dsmwmy0juazk/cabinet-frames.pdf?dl=0 Affinity Photo – Fake Evening Sky with Rain and Lightening https://www.dropbox.com/s/mlcdnducotitp1d/Fake_Evening_-_Lightning_-_Rain_-_Affinity_Photo.pdf?dl=0 Affinity Photo - Art Projects Shows 2 ways to make a blank canvas on an easel have what might be a painted image on it, from a photograph. https://www.dropbox.com/s/8fx18c77t2dnulb/Art-Projects-sept2018.pdf?dl=0 Infrared V2 – Affinity Photo 3 ways to make fake Infrared images I Needed a project to use in the Affinity Publisher beta, so I thought I’d update an old Serif PhotoPlus tutorial to an Affinity Photo tutorial. It basically shows 3 methods to get Infrared style images. https://www.dropbox.com/s/0c0mgqfrbrdv4q5/Affinity%20Tutorial%20-%20Infrared-v2.pdf?dl=0 Affinity Photo – Convert German Video – Film Strip Image in 3 parts pt 1 https://www.dropbox.com/s/iewleyt95a8qhdk/Photo_Film_Strip_-_German_Tutorial_pt1.pdf?dl=0 pt 2 https://www.dropbox.com/s/2j35gkvxr9emcq6/Photo_Film_Strip_-_German_Tutorial_pt2.pdf?dl=0 pt 3 https://www.dropbox.com/s/6yvxubgne0kqct4/Photo_Film_Strip_-_German_Tutorial_pt3.pdf?dl=0 Affinity Photo – False Water and Reflection https://www.dropbox.com/s/4sm0qqikvp0hs0a/affinity-photo-false_water_and_reflection.pdf?dl=0 Affinity Photo – Chinese Painting Styles in 2 parts pt 1 https://www.dropbox.com/s/uvqn9hf9mo2xwbr/Chinese_Painting_-Pt_01-_affinity-photo.pdf?dl=0 pt 2 https://www.dropbox.com/s/6ovc317ncjjosd0/Chinese_Painting_-Pt_02-_affinity-photo.pdf?dl=0 Affinity Photo – Beginners Look at Layer Masks https://www.dropbox.com/s/c0lsf9e7kdymdyd/A-Photo-%20Beginners%20Look%20At%20Layer%20Masks.pdf?dl=0 Activ8 issue 1 – Better Cloning https://www.dropbox.com/s/a1d283mn7icltzc/ACTIV8-issue1-BetterCloning.pdf?dl=0 Activ8 issue 2 – Spheres https://www.dropbox.com/s/igufcf3unu4z84b/ACTIV8-issue2-spheres.pdf?dl=0 Activ8 issue 3 – Affinity Photo - Select Tree - Replace Sky – 2 ways https://www.dropbox.com/s/lx0ko7f2xjqsg3r/ACTIV8-issue3-replacesky.pdf?dl=0 Activ8 issue 4 – Tri-Fold Image https://www.dropbox.com/s/1iyp59mr3bzjlri/ACTIV8-issue4-TriFold-image.pdf?dl=0 Activ8 issue 5 – Emboss With Lighting https://www.dropbox.com/s/t5r6tiz3c7k7o1s/ACTIV8-issue5-emboss-with-light.pdf?dl=0 Activ8 issue 6 – 3D Text https://www.dropbox.com/s/gif1x6xrtfrp2z8/ACTIV8-issue6-Three-D-Text.pdf?dl=0 Activ8 issue 7 -Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher – A look at Styles This written tutorial, mainly aimed at beginners of any of the Affinity Software made for PC and Mac. It may work the same on iPad version but I don’t own one so can’t confirm that it will. It looks at what Styles are, how to make some Gradient Styles and some Styles made from images. Then how to Export and Import your newly made Styles. After that I do a basic overview of a couple of video tutorials I have made in the past. Using the Mirror Filter and the Equation filter to make new images, to then make Styles from. Lastly, another overview of a recent video tutorial, which looks at using the Vector Crop Tool in Affinity Designer to grab sections of an image to then make Styles from. The end of this PDF tutorial has interactive links to all the video tutorials and links to the downloads of all the Styles I have made in these video and written tutorials. https://www.dropbox.com/s/82szaatnflaw8fk/ACTIV8-issue7-Styles.pdf?dl=0 Activ8 issue 8 – Affinity Photo – Make Sketch Image With Just The Channel Mixer A while ago I made an Affinity Photo video tutorial about making a sketch image just using the Channel Mixer adjustment. I thought I’d up-date it slightly in this written tutorial, which can be done in Affinity Photo, Designer or Publisher. https://www.dropbox.com/s/6etmt3am6ljprwn/ACTIV8-issue7-ChannelMixer-Sketch.pdf?dl=0 Activ8 issue 8a – Affinity Software – 4 Creative yet simple ways to use Blend Modes This is a written tutorial update of a video tutorial I did in Feb 2018. They are fairly basic edits and will work best with an image that has a white background. So, I will use one I got from Pixabay, as are the other images used. Links to the video and image are in the written tutorial. The video was done in Affinity Photo but this will be done in Affinity Designer but I see no reason why it can’t also be done in Publisher. https://www.dropbox.com/s/sluebvjl86nuk8e/ACTIV8-issue8-Four-Uses-for-Blend-Modes.pdf?dl=0 Activ8 issue 9 – A Beginners Look At Affinity Photo part 1 Looking at opening images and saving your edits. Plus, file formats also a look at the Layers Panel and Colour selection Although tutorial is for Affinity Photo all will work pretty much the same in Affinity Designer And Publisher https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ztaxn4siom7evd/ACTIV8-issue9-Beginners%20Look%20at%20Affinity%20Photo%20pt01.pdf?dl=0 Activ8 issue 10 – A Beginners Look At Affinity Photo part 2 Looking at opening and setting up a new document other than an image. The Brush Tool and changing the Brush Tips. Then looking at the different types of Pixel and Vector layers you can make. Layer Masks and their use. Plus, a quick look at Text and Shape layers and the Glyph Browser. As with part 1, most (if not all) of the information in this tutorial will work just as well in Affinity Designer and Publisher as all 3 programs are so similar. https://www.dropbox.com/s/kourodnfojwq26l/ACTIV8-issue10-Beginners%20Look%20at%20Affinity%20Photo-pt02.pdf?dl=0

TL-DR: Textured Intensity Brushed act weird when using repeating patterns. There are work arounds. Do not create a source that is less wide than high, since it does not repeat. Mind the ratio beween width and height, because a lot of ratios cause deformation of the image used. Ratios that hardly show deformation are 1; 2,1; 3,1; 4,1; 5,1. Add black space above and under your pattern to get to a ‘safe’ ratio. I like working with custom made brushes. I love the Textured Intensity Brushes in Affinity Designer. Playing around with it I observed some unexpected behavior when using the Body: Repeat option. This setting is on the Brush panel that opens when you double click a Vector Brush in the Brushes Studio in the Vector Persona. I’ve seen a few other posts about problems with repeating patterns, mostly in the Questions section of the forum, so that’s why I put this here. But this is also a bug report. Now for the unexpected behavior. 1. Refusing to repeat If your source image's width is smaller than its height (e.g. W:120px; H:200px) the repeat fails, the pattern will be stretched, no matter what. From what I read in From what I read in https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/62767-vector-brush-stretching-despite-choosing-repeat/ this problem has not yet been addressed. I tried working around it by repeating the pattern in the source image twice or more to make it wider that high. It works, but it brought to light other unexpected behavior (I’m fond of that term!). 2. Offset values don’t behave as expected Expected: when there’s no head or tail to the brush, offset values remain the default values as set by Affinity Designer on creation of the new brush. That is 0px for the Head Offset and the width of the source image for the Tail Offset. Observed: the repeated part has seams, like an extra column of pixels is added in between the occurrences of the pattern. I’ve marked the seam with a red circle. I’d expect it to look like what is shown in the green square. Work around: to have a pattern repeat pixel perfect, set the Head Offset to 1px and the Tail Offset to width-1pt (if the source image is 180px wide, set the Tail Offset to 179px). Trade off is that there is now an extra column of pixels at the start of the line, see where the yellow arrow points at. A better work around for sources with a relatively small width: have 3 repetitions in the source and define the first repetition as head and the last one as tail. So if the source image is 240px wide, set Head Offset to 80px and the Tail Offset to 160px. Now the numbers make sense. 3. Elements of the pattern get squished The first work around from problem 2 lead to experimenting with the ideal number of repetitions in the source image. I spend many lonely nights creating tests sets of patterns, counting repetitions on grids and creating spread sheets filled with the height width ratios of patterns. That sounds dramatic, but I was actually immensely enjoying myself. I like a good puzzle. I’m not the only one who noticed something was off. @LionelD started this thread: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/98456-textured-intensity-brushes-on-ad-ipad/. But it’s not about deformation to fit a curve. Of course you’d have deformation on a curve. But there’s also deformation of the pattern on a straight line. I observed that the amount of deformation varies with the ratio between width and height. Of course with a repeating body you’d always have to squish the repeating part a bit to fit it on a line that is not exactly a round number of times the length of the repeating part. But when a line is long enough, one might expect it to even out a bit. Well, it does not. I made test lines of 7200px and brush sources from 80px to 800px wide, incrementing in steps of 80px. The source format fits 90, 45, 30, 22,5, 18, 15, 12,86, 11,25, 10 and 9 times when applied to the line using the source file’s height as the Brush Width. Those are nice round numbers in 7 out of 10, but it does not help. It’s not the line length, it’s the width height ratio. By the way, the deformation and the refusal to repeat from problem 1 already reveals itself in the picture of the brush in the Brushes Studio. Now a ratio of 1 (same width and height) gives hardly any deformation: W:240px; H240px works and W: 427px; H:427px also works great. Another ratio that seems to work is W:800px; H:150px (ratio is 5,33). Other ratios I tried are off. They are off in varying degrees. Sometimes they are very off, 1,6 is a very bad one, as is 2,0. Next step was to observe what happens when the ratio is increased in small steps. I created a test source image of W:200px; H:200px and then 10 more, increasing the width in steps of 20px. So that is a series of ratios: 1,0; 1,1; 1,2 ... all the way to 2,0. I created 11 brushes. The 1,0 was looking very good. 1,1 a bit less and with each step the image got more squished. Actually, the sources all were squished into the same amount of space. Now there’s a pattern! The pattern of the W:400px; H:200px (ratio 2) brush got squished into a box of half its width! I had already tested ratios larger than 2, and at some point in the higher numbers found ratio’s that also looked pretty good, like 5,33. Another series 2,1; 2,2; 2,3 ... 3,0. Remember: 2,0 was squished to half its width. But 2,1 looks great! And from 2,2 it is getting worse and worse ... 3,0 looks the worst. Another series 3,1; 3,2; 3,3 ... 4,0. Now 3,1 looks great again! And 3,2 looks less great and ... well, it gets worse and worse going to 4,0. But 4,0 is less deformed than 3,0 and 3,0 has less deformation than 2,0. Conclusion: ratio 1 looks good, round numbers >1 go bad and a width just over the round number looks good. Next question: how much over the round number would work? Let’s see what happens if I create a pattern with a ratio 5,01, W: 1001px; H:200px. Hmmmm, interesting ... it’s a bit squished. Not very much, but notably. 5,1 is doing perfect, 5,0 is as much off as one would expect it to be off. So there seems to be a sweet spot near 0,1 past the whole number. By now I pretty sure what causes this problem. There’s a rounding error somewhere in the creation of the repetition. I’m not sure where exactly this happens, since I’m not familiar with the way this was programmed, but I know a rounding error when I see one (I’ve always wanted to say that!). Trust me, I’m a coder. I know how to err. For me I’m a near as I can get to creating patterns that look good in a Texture Intensity Brush. I’d advise the people at Serif to take a good hard look into the math used to create repetitions. I’ve added a brush file and a project file to this post. The work around This is how to create a repeating pattern with hardly any deformation: create something beautiful jot down width and height and calculate the ratio (width / height: e.g. 540/200=2,7) now find the previous value that fits to #,1 (so if your ratio is 2,7, go to 2,1) divide width by found value and you have a new, slightly higher height for the background (540/2,1=257) create a black rectangle (W:540; H:257) and put it behind the pattern, align the horizontal centers of the image and background select the background, export the selection with background to a png use the png to create the new brush set your offsets and such and set the Body value to Repeat When you look closely, you’ll quite often see that even the ‘good’ ratios (1; 2,1; 3,1; 4,1; 5,1 ...) deform a little bit. Just a few percent, but still ... But that’s normal. They have to fit a round number of times on the line. Now, there’s loose ends to this long story, for instance what happens in the ranges 2,0..2,1; 3,0..3,1 and so on? And why does sometimes the repetition on the screen shift on changing zoom levels? I spend some free time on this puzzle, over a period of weeks. Every week when I had diner with a friend of mine I updated her on my findings. She offered suggestions and we grumbled about the funny quirks of the applications we’re using. So now, if you ever see two middle aged, greying ladies talking over a meal: this is what we’re gossiping about. I use a MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2018, macOS) and Affinity Designer 1.7.3 test patterns repeating TIB.afbrushes test patterns repeating TIB.afdesign

I am a new Affinity Designer user, attempting to create seamless repeat patterns with the following technique: https://affinityspotlight.com/article/how-to-achieve-perfect-repeat-patterns-every-time-in-affinity-designer/ I keep running into the pictured layering issue. In this example, the purple lines denote the nine symbols. The guide symbol is in the center. In the first image, the white ellipse I've pointed to should be on top of the blue rectangle. This can be solved by shifting the blue rectangles down, as seen in the second image, but this voids the ability to see what the repeating pattern will look like. It's not a big problem with a simple design like this, but it is problematic with more complex designs. I'm wondering if there is a way to avoid this issue, or at least a better fix.

An abstract creation of a west African man depicting their arts & culture. Created using Affinity Designer.

Hi, I thought I'd share this image, not because it's anything particularly special (it'll never fly!), but mainly to demonstrate a potential use for the Warp mesh tool when applied to a group of parallel lines. By adding nodes and moving them around the warp group, some interesting effects can be achived. In other design apps a blend tool might be used to do this, but using 'Power duplicate' and 'Mesh warp', maybe goes someway towards help make simple 'blend' like effects easier. Obviously this is no substitute for a proper blend tool. (thanks!) 🙂

I was going to simplify it but changed my mind. Have only finished the bottom left and top right of those windows. Still quite a few books window to redraw too. Who knew that bookshops had so many books! Back to using AD v1 as it's just nicer in a number of ways and as my requirements are simple it's no loss.

Since updating to 2.1, whenever I create a new artboard in a linked (non-embedded) file, all linked items in my working file are broken with Designer: Instead of showing the linked artboard, I have the linked file preview for each linked item in my artboard file. (the linked file has multiple artboards). Appears each time I reopen the working file, not during the edit process. So the "working" solution for me is to open the document in Photo, manually update the linked file with the resource manager, save it and open it with Designer in order to get the correct rendering of each linked element. Looks like a bug with the Designer Resource Manager as it should update automatically if there are any changes.

VECTOBIFY WERE DOING WEEKLY CHALLENGES THROUGHOUT OCTOBER AS NOT EVERYONE HAS TIME FOR A DAILY CHALLENGE YOUR ENTREES WILL BE FEATURED ON MY LIVESTREAM AND ON MY WEBSITE AND IF YOU WIN WILL HAVE YOUR OWN SEPARATE WINNERS PAGE GOOD LUCK CANT WAIT TO SEE YOUR ENTREES

Here is a design to mean however and here is a design to mean because The design to mean however is inspired by the first letter of the Latin word Tamen and then the idea that the word 'however' is used after stating something then either going back a bit in the opposite direction or going in another direction. For experimental use from an OpenType font, the code %881 is suggested. The design to mean because is inspired by the word 'because' being used after stating something so as to state clarification of the first thing that was stated, so I have used an equals sign followed by a second, linked, yet subsidiary, equals sign. For experimental use from an OpenType font, the code %882 is suggested. William

There has been discussion of a problem, but what follows seems more appropriate for Share Your Work, so a new thread, but with a courtesy link to the original thread. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/136552-bleed-area-issue-with-designer-bug-or-feature I am producing artwork to make what are notionally photo greetings cards, but I am making jpg files of the correct size at 300dots per inch CMYK colours and using those instead of photographs to produce one-off greetings cards, then uploading to the company's website and in due course receiving a card by post. https://www.papier.com/ https://www.papier.com/photos/photo-cards I have used https://www.papier.com/customise/landscape-photo-313 and https://www.papier.com/portrait-photo-315 I have found that the best way to do this is to work in pixels at 2171 by 1571 pixels, which is 7 inches by 5 inches with a 3 mm bleed area on each edge. The two that I have produced thus far were produced using PagePlus X7 as I was used to it, but they were basically simple images on a white background. This was because I was used to using PagePlus X7. I am now starting to learn how to use Affinity Designer, I am a beginner, The following is a png of a copy of a part of the new design, produced today. I have it in mind that this will be centred in a portrait format card, then using Affinity Designer to add colours at each side and into the bleed areas, with the intention that the finished card will have colour right to the edges. The image is of some language-independent glyphs, some used more than once, so as to produce a poem, with each glyph representing a whole sentence. I produced the designs as abstract designs, but if one knows the meaning of a glyph one can read the poem in any language that you know. I am wondering if readers who like a puzzle might like to try to work out the meaning of the poem. The designs are abstract but there are some clues. William These stars are so that if readers post their attempts or other comments, then the puzzle can still be new for new readers. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

My first foray into a photo like vector illustration! All Designer apart from the watercolour of the Kudu which I actually painted back in 2016 with ArtRage (it's good to recycle!).

I see that all Alignment options are greyed out in version 1.8.1. In this case i'm trying to align the text to the margin.

I don't know if the creator of the video already reported the bug or is going to report it soon, but I saw it and did the test, and yes, the selection marquee does not work as it should in AD2.2 (nor in AF 2.2 or AP 2.2). Thanks!

New work - Our Lady of Brighthelmstone. This was my recent submission for a call to artists put out by a new gallery opening in the city of Brighton & Hove - sadly rejected. The theme was metamorphosis, so I painted the city morphed into a fabulous drag queen, in the style of an Uber-kitsch religious painting (taking “Our Lady of Guadeloupe” as my main inspiration - Brighthelmstone is the old name for the city of Brighton). There are a total of 33 visual “easter eggs” contained within the picture, some architectural, some cultural. If any of you are familiar with the place, have fun spotting them! (Created on Affinity Designer 2 for iPad)

It would be beneficial / useful if a node could be moved (slide) along the path of a curve. This feature is available on Adobe Illustrator and I have used it often. I really miss this feature in Affinity Design (iPad). Thanks for your consideration of adding this feature.

New Asset pack created in and for Affinity Designer (also work in Publisher and Photo), and in time for Halloween!!! https://gseawardart.etsy.com/listing/1572297003 gseawardart.etsy.com

Hey guys, I'm not an expert. I just started using the software about 3-5 days ago. I'm looking for any tips on my logos. I'm starting a new small business, so I want to get some shirts done. please help. Thank you.

Bored. Bored, bored, bored . . . Inspiration! Do what all artists do when there's nothing to draw: a selfie! Result!! SIGH What am I going to do now . . . ?

Hello, I performed the 2.2 update this afternoon, and since then, Designer and Publisher no longer launches correctly. Either they close unexpectedly or I face an activation window where I can't log in ("Please try again in a moment"). I have already tried to run it as administrator, without success... I saw that other users were having the exact same problem, but without a solution yet... Does anyone have a solution to suggest? Thanks !