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I spent most of the day working with spare channels today. Something that's always been a little bit cumbersome in a layer based app. Since you do live previews of the R,G,B,A channels this also slows it down noticeably when I'm going into the Channels tab (that's why I leave it tucked in behind the Layers panel). A dedicated Spare Channels panel would be great (tiled view, list view) to quickly swipe the pen over, right click and load a selection, or save a selection when right clicking on an empty part of the panel. A bit like the Styles or Swatches panel. Normal clicking and dragging would allow moving the layers around to organise them for easier findability. It's really a workflow enhancement to have the luxury of seeing these separately with bigger previews while leaving the regular Channels panel alone.

It would be great if Option + Click in any of the Affinity UI's little collapsable triangle would open or close (depending on current status) ALL the of the panel's other collapsable triangles (at the same hierarchy level when applicable). For example, in the Assets and Layers panels it would be great to have this functionality to quickly view the entire hierarchy or categories instead of scrolling and scrolling. Thanks for your consideration and all you do.

Using the color picker / eyedropper, I have to a) select it, b) drag&drop over the target color, and c) double click to apply it to a shape. REALLY ? Is that supposed to be better UX than click it, click the target color and have it set the shape color as (just about any) other graphical software works that features a function like this? Really, this is my day-one on affinity designer and though I see lots of good stuff, this is totally breaking my workflow. I cannot understand what benefit this method has other than 'lets not copy the competition'. I am hoping there is a magic preference setting that makes it work "normally", anyone?

I have a couple of points to raise regarding the rectangular marquee tool. 1. There either isn't or I cant find a display showing the marquee's dimensions; 2. There either isn't or I can't find a way of constraining the marquee's dimensions to a fixed aspect ratio; 3. There either isn't or I can't find a way of setting the marquee's dimensions to a fixed pixel size.

Hi, Maybe it's dealt with, but I found that pulling down the font selector to set a font for an asset on the left of the screen is unhelpful in that it covers the very object you're trying to change. This removes some visual feedback and requires making sure the object is not on the left hand side before pulling down the font menu. I'm not quite sure it's fixable without a lot of effort, though, as you need to move either the object or move or shorten the font menu so it doesn't cover the text field you're trying to set. It's not exactly a major issue, more itch-level annoying :) Cheers!

Hi guys. This had me confused for a longer while and I think could be named better. In the snapping options, AD currently has "Snap to shape key points" and "Snap to object geometry". I was looking for an option to snap to nodes, which I think is the most common use case. I thought it would be under "Snap to shape key points", since I wasn't sure what you call a point/node/vertex/key point/control point in AD lingo (I mean, every program seems to have its own naming). I was very confused to see that it resulted in snapping to curves or their extensions; this is exactly what I thought the second option does (geometry). Turns out "key points" are actually extended guides from any objects (which in my document translates to "random lines at crazy angles appearing everywhere"), and "object geometry" means curves and nodes with preference given to nodes. May I suggest renaming it like so: Snap to object geometry > Snap to nodes, edges and intesections Snap to shape key points > Snap to points of importance and extended edges or whatever this is actually supposed to do, I'm not super clear on this despite reading help and trying to use it in my document. Or maybe the snapping options need to be broken down a little further? Cheers

In Affinity Photo, show document info such as resolution, dpi, bitdepth, etc. somewhere that can be seen at all times, no matter what tool you have active. Maybe the info could be shown in the bottom bar?

I find the UI in Affinity needs work. For instance, when pull up the "Soft Proof" dialogue and can flip through previews of the various settings, but I have to click each one, instead of being able to up and down arrow through them. That's very time-consuming and unnecessary. The same thing applies to the crop tool in Photo, where you can see a preview of the cut, but you cannot fine-tune adjust it's placement with the keyboard. I would like to be able to "nudge" the box where I need to.

Using the app's icon as the icon for every document is very confusing. Since it is so easy to implement, please have proper CFBundleTypeIconFiles.

I will put two related topics here. 1. Both the area of function buttons along the top of the screen and the area of function buttons at the left side of the screen are called "the toolbar". It would avoid confusion if they had different names (perhaps one should be called "the toolbox"). 2. With regard to the left-side "toolbar": It is nice to be able to control whether its repertoire of buttons is presented in a single column or in two (or even more) columns. If I have quite a few buttons in my left-side toolbar, and decide that I should go for a two column arrangement (perhaps because I am running out of vertical space and plan to add more buttons), and make the selection for a two-column arrangement, the buttons are repositioned in a "row-first" way. That is, if "hand" was at the top, with "arrow" just beneath it, now "hand" will be at the top of the leftmost column and "arrow" at the top of the rightmost column. My own preference would be that in this case, the rearrangement would be "column first". In my example, "hand" would be at the top of the leftmost column and "arrow" just beneath it. My rationale for that is this. If I have several buttons of the same category (perhaps the different shapes of selection marquees), and they were vertically consecutive in the original "single column" arrangement, then when I go to a two-column arrangement I still expect them to be vertically consecutive. But others may prefer to think that still all the buttons should run essentially "top down" in their original sequence, just zigging and zagging between the two columns (the current arrangement in AP) My preference may perhaps come from the fact that in several of my graphic apps, I can make multiple toolbars, and I typically make them each vertical and single column, and adjacent, so when I have two columns that is actually two single-column toolbars. And of course all "related" buttons are in a certain toolbar, so they are in the same column. And perhaps most other AP users will not have such a preference. Doug

I'm working in a Sketch shop and have to supply sketch files as deliverables - or at least for archive purposes. Copy/Paste from AD appears true visually so that's great. problem is that my careful organisation and labelling of elements in AD is lost. Given that Affinity is making a big play for UI use in 1.5, I think tidying up this part of the realworld workflow that many of us in this area have to deal with, is essential. Sketch has such a grip on this area, we need to be able to deliver editable files that are organized ande make sense to Sketch users. Obviously it's impractical to relabel everything on export, then do it again (once would be beyond practical) on the next export. Hoping this isn't a big ask - given the structure is there already - its just the labelling that's getting lost (I think)

I am new to Affinity and am having problems changing the font in Preferences for the User Interface. Could you please tell me how to make the user interface fonts and or icons larger on a MacBook Pro.

Ok sorry for writing here again but I'll just leave this here in the hope someone could find this useful. First, Thanks Guys for taking the time to port Photo to Windows, it's most appreciated, more than you may think. Second, I'll try and list some of the bugs/feedback I think are usefull for a user that's looking at photo as a replacement for Photoshop, not as a cataloguing device. The following points are not about bugs only, but also features desired for a more efficient workflow -As I stated before: no color selection tool with respective range control, I know there is selection for green/blue/ad red but it does not even come close to what a more advance user might want -No detailed luminosity mask/selection tool, Mandatory in my opinion, resterize to mask and selecti midtone/shadow/highlight are not viable alternatives for detailed work, nor are the options in the gear windows in every adjustement layer. -no color picker when opening the HSL A.L. ? really? it really pulls you way from your work. -No quick way to adjust brush flow and opacity. clicking on buttons is not the way to do it, it's a workflow killer, the old Alt+Rightclick Drag method is a Godsend for speed and reliability all in one gesture. -The image displayied seems to refresh and flickers and reconstruct its preview every time some changes are done or you zoom in and out. (I'd assume this is a graphic bug and will be solved in future releases of beta) -I didn't find a way to merge into a panorama the images opened in my editor, itseems you have to open them from the explorer provided, how abut I have all my needed images stack on layers and in the dialogue box I click 'use opened images' -No reliable way to align layers (sorry it's just that), creating a stack doesnt seem to work reliably. -Some plug-in that worked perfectly before nw don't seems to work (the nik collection) -overall the UI seems crowded on a 1080p screen, maybe ui scaling would be a good idea, and I know that windows scaling is os dipendet and OSX is app dependent. More or less these are my main concerns for now, and I repeat FOR NOW. I'd really like to switch to photo for my external editing needs but some of the features are really distracting and annoying, I don't necesserely want this to be photoshop, but undoubtebly there are some things PS does much more fluidly (in a workflow sense) and in a more detailed way. Please don't take this as a review or a negative experience, I do sincerely appreciate the work and effort that's going on for allowing us windows user to have photo at our disposal, but I feel even more involved in giving you guys feedback because you seem to listen much more than any other company. P.S. please please please guys make that luminosity mask panel happen please

For large images, especially in 32-Bit mode you have to constantly wait for the entire screen to be processed at the zoom level you're at. That kinda ruins the moment quite often. Attached is how Nuke solves that. A 'region of interest' widget that you draw over the portion you want to work on and only that gets processed. The rest of the image is just a buffer dump. A good option would be to have a way to clear the outside area to a constant colour fill when moving outside the previous buffer or clear it in general.

Kerning and tracking are the most common tasks in typography, yet we have to deal with tiny archaic interfaces in pretty much all apps out there. You already have a rotation tool that's good for getting the values into the ballpark fast and edit details later. Kerning and tracking don't have anything like that. What I'm suggesting is head-up display options added to the regular tools. I made a mockup (attached) of the art text tool to better illustrate that idea. Ideally the regular tools would have a small button (a blue '+' maybe) that lets you add that specific controller to the HUD of the related tool(s). Everybody has different needs and this would speed up workflows without having things present that the user may not need.

After working with AD to export stuff for a mobile app, I came to the conclusion this would be a must. It's really difficult to navigate between lots of different things and not be able to organize them, and so it would be cool to have: 1. Layer/Export item color coding (like ps) 2. Export item grouping, to keep things tidy. setting a "Path" variable on this could be cool because it would allow for all items in this group to be exported in the path specified in the variable, without having to resort to "funky naming" like "mainfolder/subfolder"

Working on a redesign of an app in my company, and I wanted to experiment with Affinity Designer. Having had worked with both Sketch, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, Affinity was the right amount of "strange" I needed. Right between Ps and Ai, with bits of Sketch, it's exactly what I need. I got accustomed to the snapping, and it's a joy to do UI design with it. Especially with Artboards. Very very easy. I'm a bit miffed with the occasional crashes from various sources, but those are going to be history once the beta goes MP and gets released. I've also tested Flinto, Pixate and Principle in parallell with Affinity Designer, and I settled on Principle. Flinto is simply too primitive and has issues with element positioning. Quite the odd UX they got. not a fan. Pixate is a bit complicated and just doesn't cut it in terms of more complicated stuff. Having said that, Principle is still not the best, lacking timelined animation & interaction. What I wanted to see was something along the lines of After Effects Timeline animation but for individual elements, adjustable timeline lenght, etc. I would've wanted to be able to stopwatch parameters of properties and be able to change them (create keyframes in the process). Alas, no. The principle phone client is really primitive. No wireless sharing, you have to be connected. Eugh ! Unfortunately I cannot give more info about the project, nor can I post more screens, because I'd then be in deep trouble. Cheers.

Hello One of Adobe's consistent behaviours has been to hid bloatware in places impossible to remember. One of AD's features has been a cleaner interface, even if I'm still looking for some Illustrator features and wonder if they're hidden or just not present... :) So this is a request to try and build a consistent interface. Going to your example video of scaling features, I understand why the corners should be in the top ribbon, that's an essential features. The scaling of strokes is more hidden, and the scaling of effects is three levels of interface deep... From a UI perspective, there's nothing that should prevent you having the 'scale w object' tick box directly on the panel. Actually the cog wheel adds very little and may well be dispensed with altogether! Thanks

I am excited to share with you the official announcement of my new Affinity Designer course on Lynda.com. It been out for a couple of weeks now and just getting around to sharing with those of you who might of missed it. Much of the course was based on the features found in Affinity 1.4, but I think their a good amount of tips and techniques in this short 1hr and 18 minute course. I made this course for the designer/developer who need to get up to speed on UX/UI specific tools and features fast. Anyway, check it out and again thank you all for your continued interest and support! CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE COURSE Course Description Learn how to incorporate Affinity Designer's features into your own design process. Here Ronnie McBride shows how to set up your preferences, use artboards, create custom color themes in the Swatches panel, apply styles and gradients, and create wire-frames, mock-ups, UI assets, and hero graphics—all with Affinity Designer's versatile tool set. Once you find out what you can do with Affinity Designer, you may never go back to expensive design software again. Topics include:Setting up your preferences and interface Creating new documents Using artboards Creating a wire-frame or mock-up Creating UI assets Exporting for prototyping ` Check out my other titles in my signature below.

Still no informations, videos, pictures of the Touch Bar in action with Affinity? ;-)

I used to use Graphic (formally iDraw.) I liked how it used large icons for people like myself who have retina displays that make traditional UIs seem small. This option should be added under view > customize tools so that I can change the size and which tools to display at the same time.

Hi - I just started using Affinity Photo a couple of days ago. Thanks for making a great program and getting me out of the clutches of Adobe. Looking forward to 1.5 and batch editing/renaming. I noticed that in the tutorial videos, the tool icons have color accents. How do I switch this feature on? Thanks!

Hello, Some actions could be placed as a button / handle on the top left / right side of the art board itself, as : 1- zooming ( click and drag, zooming centred on a selected shape ) 2- fit to screen ( if there is one ) the artboard itself if no shape is selected, or the shape itself if selected 3- isolating ( if there is one ) a selected shape from its surrounding context = make invisible all except the selected shape Thank you

Hello. I very excited to work with Affinity Designer. It's awesome. But I would like to point out some shortcomings in GUI and workflow. First of all, my eyes becomes tired after some time working with AD. I found a problem. It is a Layers palette. There're too many visual noise. Why need to keep checkboxes on each layer bar? Maybe it's enough to put only checkmark without box? Or reverse it: visible layers hasn't any marks and invisible has a small icon (strikethrough eye). Then why need to keep triangle inside circle? It looks like "Play" button from audio player, not like expand/collapse icon. I like how it looks in Sketch (triangle) or even better in Photoshop (sign >). No need to keep circle, I guess. It only adds a noise. Then I don't like to see small layer previews at left side. It's redundant in many cases. It may be helpful only when a layer is a small and simple (like icon or logo). I always turn off layer thumbnails in Photoshop. And it is very nice in Sketch. So maybe will be good idea to add optional things in Settings panel? Now, when I click on a small gear icon on right side of top, I see incomprehensible Blend Options, while I expect to see Layers palette settings like in Photoshop. Where I can turn off thumbnails. So, removing thumbs, circles and checkmarks will make Layers palette more useful, clear and understandable. Also I have an issue with Esc key. It is very good idea to go up in the layers structure like in Sketch: I select an object, press Esc and now I have selected the parent group. Again Esc - and level up etc. But now Esc just deselects the object. It is not right paradigm, it's outdated. I like Sketch's workflow. It's very simple and useful. Please make like it, don't look what Adobe's doing. Thanks. p.s. Sorry for ugly English.

The Symbols panel opens at a tiny size and I cannot enlarge it.