Search the Community

Hello, my name is Chris (15 yrs ) I'm a web designer. I spend all of my day and most of my nights in a design tool. One day I hope I'll have the honors of being Drafted on Dribbble so I can (seriously) share my works with the design community and get better projects. The design I'll being presenting to you is my portfolio site, I originally started in Photoshop with this but I ended up deleting most of what I did because I wasn't pleased with it and I ended up redoing it in AD. If you'd like the full size version Click Here

Hey Affinity Designer developers, a few bugs I found so far: The User Interface bugs when I hit the full screen button and doesn't show the Layer bar and menu anymore. Workaround: After minimizing the window everything looks fine. I clicked on a Group with Text curves inside that have FX. When I hit the fx Button, there is none of the FX possibilities marked, but with the Text curve activated hitting the fx bar the Gaussian blur is activated. The bug doesn't occur when i activate one Text curve and hit the fx button of another Text curve. Thank you very much for making this project bigger and bigger, even for Windows users. :) Kind regards, MonsieurMey

I’m so excited to finally be playing with the Windows version! Well done, and thank you. Some observations, queries, and suggestions based on my first experiences: I have my Windows taskbar set to auto-hide, and it’s not accessible when I’m in AD. I can press the Windows key to bring it up, but it would be nice to be able to move the cursor down to the bottom of the screen to access it, like I can from most apps. It would be nice to be able to tab between input fields, in dialogues and in palettes in the studio. I like to use keyboard shortcuts as much as possible, but it feels slow and clunky to have to manually click in each field to enter a new CMYK colour, for example, instead of tabbing between them. Esc doesn’t work across dialogues as I would expect it to. For example, if I bring up the preferences, I have to click “Close” to make it go away. Likewise for layer effects. Again this interrupts my keyboard shortcut flow. Also with layer effects, it would also be nice to have a single Cancel option. Sometimes I like to fiddle and play with effects to see how they look, but then decide to cancel. As far as I can tell, I need to remove each effect I’ve added. Perhaps this is just a different approach that I will grow to like once I’m used to it. Are there ways to create presets for new documents, PDF export, etc? That would be very useful for me. What about viewing colour separations? It’s essential for my work. I’ve found working with text to be extremely buggy. AD has crashed more than ten times on me just doing basic text operations like changing fonts, font size, leading, escaping the text frame, etc. I will create another thread as soon as I can pin it down and be a bit more specific about the steps that lead to crashes, but for now it seems like there are a lot of issues with text, and many things have triggered the crashes. Also, relating to text: Ctrl + Shift + > makes the text bigger, as I am used to in InDesign and Illustrator, but only one step for each press. It would be nice to be able to press and hold it to scale a large amount quickly. Or is there another way to do this? No warning for overset text? Is it possible to flow text between frames? Filler text isn’t selectable, except as a whole block. It would be useful to be able to edit it directly, as if I had typed it. A few times certain characters wouldn’t appear when I typed them, but others would. An invisible space would appear, so I could continue typing afterwards, and clear the missing character, but still not type it. This seemed inconsistent and irregular, but was consistent for certain characters within a frame in a session. It was usually followed by a crash. If “Check Spelling While Typing” is checked, everything I type is marked with the red squiggly line. When I restart AD after a crash it usually (but not always) says that it has been restarted after a serious error, and asks if I would like to send the error report. I always choose Yes, but then don’t see anything else about it. Does it send in the background, or should it be obvious that it is sending? Any other suggested best practices for error reporting, or tracking steps that cause crashes? Obviously it’s helpful if we can list steps to recreate a crash, but anything else? Any way to automatically track and save a history? Aside from the above problems I’m excited. It seems fast and has lots of useful features that I look forward to exploring more thoroughly. I look forward to a time when it’s stable and I can really start relying on it in my day-to-day workflow. Thanks for all your hard work, and the chance to give it a spin for free!

Note: I've recreated this bug a couple of times to confirm that it is visually broken Description: Preferences>User Interface> The UI color editing sliders work normally except the first two (Background grey level and Artboard Background grey level) only after the IU Gamma slider is used. Functionally they still change the background of the intended ui elements, however, the slider tip stops moving. Recreate it: Use the UI Gamma slider and then try changing the values of the upper two. Hope this helps.

Hi, I’d like to use Affinity Designer for designing user interfaces, but, you know, it’s so tricky to design interfaces without this feature. Can someone help me? All the best, Vladislav

Hi, maybe it has been asked bevor but it worries me much often. Some values (e.g. color sliders) can be changed by arrow keys, some (e.g. font size) don't. Why doesn't this work everywhere in the app

Hey guys, More UI work. Let me know what you think. https://www.behance.net/gallery/37180653/Android-Weather-App Cheers, Vlad

Please make Distribute options easier to find in Affinity Photo. They aren't on the ribbon, they apparently aren't in the Arrange or Alignment menus--why not?--and it takes some clicking around to finally find them hidden in the pop-up you get when you click on the Arrange icon. It blows my mind that the Arrange icon offers functionality not available (or at least, I can't find it) in the menu system! How about adding a Distribute icon to appear along side the Arrange icons in the ribbon?

Hi I am currently evaluating AD for purchase as a vector based drawing tool. Is there a way to get a larger tool icon and font size in Affinity Designer? I already have the "large" font in the prefernce pane on UI, which isnt very large. This font is barely acceptable. The icons as well for all the tools are a tad too small. I use two 4k Dell monitors in their native resolution on a Mac Book Pro. The UI is just too small to be really workable. For a graphics based product, I think a little scaling of the UI should not be too challenging and thus am struggling to believe there is not already some way to alter this ... ? 4K and even now 5K monitors are becoming common place. Thanks and regards,

Maybe a side effect of what I was used to before AD (let's call it Anno Designer -AD- :P), but I greatly appreciate the automatic selection of "Export Selection" mode (as opposed to "Export whole document") in packages such as Pixelmator or OmniGraffle when you choose Export with something highlighted, and I miss it in AD. Is there a way I can achieve that in AD? At the moment, everything is driven from the document size but if you're experimenting you just set up a large canvas and try out ideas, and to then have to hammer everything back into a specific document size is quite an enterprise - ironically losing the whole benefit of vectorisation to pixel related issues. So far, the only way way I have found to exercise some control is by using an Export Persona Slice, but here too, you must start with first mapping the elements you want to export into one group, as the slice creation tool will otherwise create a slice for each component. Maybe a modifier to the "Create Slice" button would help. If you could alt-click or shift-click to create one SINGLE slice of all the selected layers instead of a herd of individual slices of each selected layer it would already be a big step forward. Anything I missed?

Update Dropdown What I did was think about components and what parts belong to what. And for this model to be clear from the UI / UX perspective, it means that the other colour options should be separated into their own panels due to their unique attributes. In my experience, I would recommend removing the colour wheel--it adds no functionality that the sliders can't provide and adds a level of complexity to maintain in the long run. I can't keep working for free, so, this is it from me. ----- Previous -----

I was excited to learn about the new program Affinity Photo. But then I saw some screenshots. Just to let you know (whom it concerns) - I will never buy another program with a black UI. I bought pixelmator, but I can't use it. It's too hard on my eyes.

Hi, I often have problems to read the histogram with overlapping curves. Its hard to see which channel is responsible for the white curves. I think Apple Photos is doing it better as it always shows the curve outlines in the channel color.

Hi guys, Latest project made entirely in affinity. Except the gif animation. https://www.behance.net/gallery/33966100/FoodJunky-Application-Design-Concept Cheers, Vlad

I tried finding this question posted but couldn't seem to find exactly what I was looking for. I'm trying to modify a Mobile UI Mockup that I did in another application, I want to place it on top of a screen on a phone at an angle which involves screwing the imported image in Affinity Designer. I know you can get this effect using 'convert to curves' with a vector shape but I can't seem to find anything equivalent for imported JPEG or PNG images. I included pictures in a couple of links, as an example of what I'm trying to accomplish, in case I'm not being very clear. Any help with this would be very much appreciated! I'm sure I saw this being done in Affinity Photo but can't figure it out in Designer unfortunately. http://designshack.net/wp-content/uploads/iphone-mockup-psds-24.jpg http://visionwidget.com/images/2016/0123/Isometric_Perspective_MockUp.jpg Thanks very much!

Hello At this moment, the input fields in the Affinity programs behave in a way that is not native to OSX. I don't know if this is a deliberate choice, but I feel like it would be nice if they behaved consistent with other OSX apps. I also noticed that not every input field behaves the same in Affinity. An example in the Transform palette: - When hovering over an input field, the cursor should transform to the text-selection icon. - Clicking in an input field yields the expected behaviour; you can start typing where you pointed the cursor. This works perfect. - When using the tab key to jump from field to field, I expect the content of that field to be selected so I can immediately start typing thus replacing the previous content. But right now, if I start typing, my typing replaces the quantity while the units (i.e. px or mm) stay put. I get that you designed the input field this way because in most situations, the designer wants to adjust the size in the same unit. But when this is not the case, a few extra actions are required to clear the input field. Often I want to use the expressions in those fields like "sh" or "sw/2" (which are terrific by the way!). So if I jump to the height input field and type "sh" and press enter, nothing happens because it keeps the px unit and thus the expression is incorrect. In my opinion, this wouldn't be a problem if the whole content of the input field was selected on tab-jumping to it; if I just wanted to change 200 px to 400 px I could type "200", and Affinity would automatically append "px" (as it does now), but if I wanted to use expressions, I wouldn't be hindered by the sticky unit. I'm looking forward to hear your opinion! Bauke

For me one of the greatest UI updates from Photoshop lately has been the layers filters. Being able to search layers by name or to show only the text layers has been a great time saver for me since it has been introduced in Photoshop. Having something similar in Affinity Designer would help a lot. By the way, I would love to see 2 other options related to the layers panel : Always show the selected layer (removes the need to constantly use find in layers panel) ; Only show the current art-board (in case of multiple art-boards, only the layers of the current art-board are visible).

Some of the UI elements which are not visible either require a lengthy mouse press-and-hold to be revealed, like secondary tools, or use UI devices which use lengthy animations to reveal the element (eg, snapping options). These while cute quickly become annoying when working under pressure on time critical projects. It would be great if there was a way to toggle UI animations off or enable fast UI mode. In particular, right click on tools with secondary options should reveal the menu (or whatever UI device needs to be displayed) instantly.

Compare the below images from Export PNG "More" dialog: aliased text (when option unchecked) antialiased (when option is checked)

I have been using Affinity Designer for all my design-related tasks since may 2015. So here is just a current piece i'm working on - its a newsletter for government. But i also love to use AD for illustration and digital drawing and painting. Just because it is totally cool :)

Dearest Affinity Team, been using and loving Affinity so thanks heaps for that. One thing I feel could be improved is the way the colour palate states are displayed. When I work with swatches of colours, it would be great if, when selecting a colour, the colour palate always showed the last used state. For example, if I have used the swatches palate for selecting a colour, the next time I select a colour, the swatches palate is the one that is displayed. Or if I have selected a colour using the HSL colour picker, then the next time I select a colour, the HSL colour picker displays. Currently, I seem to be having to choose the swatches palate every time I choose a colour for a line or fill because the colour palate seems to default to one of the colour pickers. The eye dropper works well, but I think you could save people time by activating the colour upon selecting the colour. So rather than selecting a colour with the eye dropper and then activating it, selecting the colour also activates the colour. That's the convention for eye dropper UX. Thanks for everything, Dallas

I really dislike the new layer arrows. I find them incredibly ugly and distracting. Please go back to the previous style. It wasn’t broken and didn’t need fixing.

Really excited about Global colors! Just a few notes: 1. The new Color Picker which pops up when selecting Add Global Color from the palette's hamburger menu is oddly sized, too wide. Also the color well is a rectangle while everywhere else in the UI it's circular. 2. The color of the noise slider doesn't match the selected color: 3. Also, the type on my non-retina mbp is blurry in the button labeled Edit Global Color, which appears under the new Tint slider in the Color palette.

The padlock icon is ambiguous, - in default unlocked state it, it could be locked. LOCKED it gets a background. Now that I look at ai and ps, the're not much better - they toggle between nothing (hiding the function) and a lock. This may seem trivial but I'm constantly am confused as to the state of my layers / elements. Best I think would be: unlocked: Dimmed 'open shank padlock' icon locked: solid 'locked shank padlock' icon Thoughts anyone?

Here’s a little but important one, in my opinion: If you click an input field in the UI it should highlight the entire current value that’s there so that you can type immediately to overwrite it. Currently, if you click into an input field, it just sets the cursor in the respective position and you have to either do another double click or even a triple click (depending on the value present) to highlight it, or do more or less complicated keyboard actions to delete the value. This annoys the hell out of me. I want to click once and type a new value.