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Hi guys, I have created a color gradient in a layer fx (see image) - now I want to copy that gradient somehow or ideally make it a swatch/global gradient. But I don't see how. Thanks in advance, Stefan.

Hi, I'm using artboards in a document that contains all my graphics for our web-site. On the web we use SVG. Hence, I drag & drop some SVG files into AD and export from there. When adding an SVG via drag & drop, it gets added to the artboard as [Embedded document]. Some questions: How can I copy such a thing? When I do it the normal way and I edit the copy, the original gets changed too. Is there a way I can convert the embedded document into a normal group? Any documentation available about embedded documents? How to best edit these etc.?

OK, I'm very aware that maybe most of the designers and users of the awesome Affinity Designer are not into scientific posters, books or documents, but I'm a mathematician and I love the app myself, as much as I understand and use it. :) Hence, I got a small, but important feature request: a plugin/native support which would allow one to use the power of "local" LaTeX typesetting for symbols, fonts and other scientific notations. I am aware I could use the great LaTeXiT + drag & drop, but still, I envision my workflow as follows: When I have a complicated figure to draw, I fire up Affinity Designer and I draw, but for annotations and everything font or math symbol related, I'm not quite covered. I have installed some versions of the native LaTeX fonts (CMU) to use system-wide, but some are missing and still doesn't feel the same. So for symbols, equations etc. I would like to be able to input a LaTeX formula (delimited by the well-known dollar-signs) and Affinity would typeset it locally, using the fonts included in the LaTeX distribution installed on my Mac. What do you think? Honestly, I think that such a feature would be useful for all kinds of technical drawers, although they may use CAD-style apps. But you'll never know when you need a formula on your piece of art, right? :) Moreover, in perspective, I'm sure this would provide immensely useful for the future Publisher app, with inter-operability. Thank you for the support and the awesome apps!

I am working on a repeat pattern utilizing the symbols capability. However, there is an object that is not syncing up properly and no matter what I try, it will not go all the way back or even underneath the symbol that it is crossing over. I am not sure what to do because I've tried sending to the back the initial object on Artboard 1. That did not work. I re-layered the objects so that the selected curve (and its whole group) are underneath the object I want on top, but that does nothing. I have no idea what I am missing or doing incorrectly. Not sure how to fix this. Included is a screen shot of what is happening. I wasn't able to find any FAQ topics that answered or mentioned my question. In the screenshot the object selected is the one I want on top. The vine crossing over it is definitely included in the group that is below that object. I have checked every section, grouping, and layer of each Artboard and every occurrence of that repeating vine. All the other occurrences of that vine are behaving as desired. Not sure what is happening with the top half of the repeat on the right. Hopefully it's an easy fix and that I am simply clueless. Affinity Designer 2, latest update, iPad Pro.

Following the thread seems to show a lot being fixed. So great to see. Looking forward to the final update. The one thing i dont' see mentioned is the Lagging problem and slow down that many are having including my self. Its a huge thread but nothing seems to be said about it. Can someone please shed some light on this speed issue being fixed. As it stands I cannot even use V2 of Designer for work as its to buggy and after a short time VERY slow. Thanks Gary

For whatever reason, you cannot add objects together anymore in the Designer persona using Publisher V2. This is unbelievably frustrating. Might be a bug but it's causing me a lot of time not being able to do this. Windows 10, Publisher 2.0.4 Publisher_wgRlJ1pRVM.mp4

I am just starting to play around with the pencil, pen, and brush and noticed that the lines are smoothing. Do you plan on having a smoothing control for those tools? For drawing, this would be important not to have my lines straighten-out. Also,while going through the help menu I hit the back arrow in the upper left corner and it does not take me back to the page I entered from. Example, after selecting "About lines and shapes," I hit the back arrow and I don't return to were I can select "About lines and Shapes." I return to "Visual References." On the positive note, I love the ability to be able to use vector and raster in the same software. That is an all in one drawing program.

I've tried removing the Ctrl+Y from the wireframe shortcut, and exporting and importing the saved preset, but no matter what I do the little triangle won't go and nothing happens. I can't get Ctrl+Y back as my Redo, very strange as to why they changed a universal command to one that I'll honestly never have any use for. Has anyone had any luck while changing their command back?

I'm trying to do a quick dump of everything I've created in a layer (for drawing out ideas mainly) without having to stop drawing. Just a quick key to "wipe" what I'm working on. I looked in menus to see if there was anything I could use there to create a shortcut. Didn't seen an option. Thanks in advance ❤️

Hi, In Sketch and Photoshop it's possible to make timeline animations. Are there any plans for Affinity? I'm talking about something like this: https://timeline.animaapp.com/ Regards, David

Hi, I have problems with Affinity 2 products not starting and/or freezing on me. Win 10, Lenovo ThinkPad. I mostly use Designer, but once this happens, it usually affects Photo&Publisher as well. I had these problems for MONTHS. - I normally have the most recent updates for Windows 10, for my graphics drivers, Affinity products, etc. This persisted past multiple updates. - Right now, they are current as well. I don't know how to prove it. But from the experience of the past months (and multiple updates), updating Windows, Lenovo drivers, Affinity products, hardly solves anything. - When Designer (Photo/Publisher) freezes on open, there is nothing I can do short of closing everything, rebooting, uninstalling, rebooting, reinstalling, rebooting, praying that some of it will work... - Please understand that I use my computer for work, have SSH terminals open, etc, so rebooting is not always an option. - As a result, Designer is unusable for me most of the time. Honestly, this is my last shot at finding the problem before I ask for my money back (upgraded to V2 hoping it'll help...) and go look elsewhere... Designer.DMP What I do know: - comp specs: Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz 2.80 GHz RAM: 32.0 GB (31.7 GB usable) System type: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor Pen and touch: Pen and touch support with 10 touch points Graphics card: internal, Intel Iris Xe Graphics - there is usually nothing in the %USERPROFILE%\.affinity\Designer\2.0\CrashReports\reports , and right now, there is nothing as well - for this particular case (today's error), I went to Task Manager as Designer was trying to run and created a dump file, see attached - this (today's dump) is a case of Designer freezing on open. The splash screen disappears, UI starts to appear, and that's the end of it: - no, I really cannot reboot right now, it'll compromise my work calculations. Alas, I got so grown to using Designer for illustrating my work... can't use it anymore. - here're the settings: - when I press Ctrl+click to run, it does not open the dialog offering to reset anything. (This can be because I'm running it from the Start Menu.) - I do use DisplayFusion. I had learned to close it before running Designer, just in case... if it had ever helped, at least once, I won't be writing this bug report in such a desperate tone... admittedly, sometimes I try and don't close it, and Designer runs. I don't know why. - I don't know what else to do or what information to provide. Please help. This can't go on. It freezes pretty much every second time I try and open it. And it freezes after at most 24hrs if I just leave it open (so, say, having an illustration to return to is no longer an option). - I had learned to rely on Designer for work to make illustrations (I'm a scientist), create graphical journals, etc. In the last maybe 4 months, I truly felt crippled. Say I'm at a telecon, can I open Designer to do an illustration on the fly? That's a coin toss. I'm back from lunch, is the Designer with a screenshot database of my project still open? A coin toss. A colleague asks to update an illustration I've made in the past. You get it... Upgrading to Ver 2 did not help, so it kind of feels like I've wasted money upgrading. It really can't go on like this. Please please help. Thanks.

Mind the gap! Is this a bug or is there a way to avoid gaps between combine shapes? I was practising with the Shape Builder Tool and separate pieces have a visible gap (in app and exported). Gradient pieces have a different fill. Vertices and gradient are snapped in position. I "could" add a tiny edge to shapes to fill the gap, but that workaround does not work well in all cases.

I'm working on web design a lot and I love Affinity Designer. This week I had to create an icon (favicon to be precise), which I obviously designed in Designer. So far so good, but there seem to be no way of exporting an image as *.ico. Are there any plans for adding support for ico files?

New issue tonight in Designer for iPad: unable to select a colour in pixel persona. Whatever I try, it doesn't work, even after closing and reopening the app. Wonder whats causing this.

I haven't noticed this problem before, but I may simply have failed to notice it. I found it in Designer and Photo Version 2, but it also occurs also in Version 1. When I copy an Affinity Designer or Photo file with vector objects into another larger image, the stroke widths are changed. This is a nuisance if there's only one vector layer, but it's very frustrating when there are a great many layers: a lot of fiddly work back and forth between the original and the target to restore the stroke thicknesses. I'm running on the up-to-date version of Windows 10 I tested this in Version 1 and found it was reducing strokes as follows: image 1 (source): 800x600 px Grey rectangle 10 pt, red circle 5 pt, small rectangles 5 pt & 0.1 pt image 2 (target): 3,000x3,000 px Grey rectangle 2.4 pt, red circle 1.2 pt, small rectangles 1.2 pt & 0 pt (i.e. < 0.1 -- it's still there) Yesterday's 'live' file in V2 reduced 2.8 pt to 0.7 pt. With the test shapes today, V2 is reducing 2.8 pt to 2.1 pt. The reduction seems to be random, but consistent throughout a session.

I work in German language. All numeric inputs (e.g. Transformation panel) require user input with comma "," as decimal separator. If i type a number with dot "." this is interpreted as the german thousands separator. This is according to the german numbering scheme. E.g. this is correct in German: "100,5" will be parsed as 100.5, "100.5" will be parsed as 1005. But if i want to enter a numeric value in the little header popup dialog i have to enter the number with "." as decimal separator. Input according to German numbereing scheme will not be accepted by the input field. 2022-12-11_designer-beta-2.0.3.1670_messwerkzeug.mp4 Same applies to the document settings. If i type the scale with comma "," as decimal separator the input is ignored without error. I have to type a dot "." to have the input accepted.

I'm fairly new to Affinity Designer. Like most people, I come from the Adobe world. Soon after starting with AD I started to miss the free transform tool found in the competitor's software. I found an old thread in which for over five years people were demanding a free transform tool to be included in Designer. Then with the introduction of v2, those demands seemed to have been answered, in form of the Warp Group feature. The Warp Group is a really cool and powerful feature which, on the surface, seems to do the task of the free transform tool. I did notice some unexpected behaviour with it though. The warp tool curves straight lines when it shouldn't. The image below best illustrates my issue with the tool. In the example I'm warping a simple triangle (with straight sides and sharp nodes) with the Quad Warp tool. I'm expecting the warp tool to keep the sides of the triangle straight. Instead it curves them. To me, this is not the expected behaviour, nor is it how the free transform in other software work and I think it should be fixed. With the Perspective Warp the effect isn't as strong, but it can still be seen (image below). For comparison, the image below shows the free transform behaviour in both Photoshop and Illustrator. So I ask: why should Affinity Designer's Warp behaviour be any different? So far I've really enjoyed exploring AD and its features, but little discrepancies like this in the tools are quite frustrating to me.

The year is almost over, so let's share some reusable fireworks items for your possible flyers and new year cards. - Note that those firework assets are always groups of vector elements, thus if you want to recolor some of them you best select the whole individual group. These assets are usable for things like shown in the following examples ... The corresponding fireworks assets file as a zip-archive: fireworks.zip

Recently updated to Affinity Designer 2 and I love it except for one thing. It's very difficult to identify groups now and groups within groups now (which I have a lot of). This was so clear in Affinity Design 1. Could groups not be made bolder making them easier to identify? Have pasted 2 images to show the difference between the two.

Hi, I've just downloaded the Affinity Designer trial, and am quite impressed. However, I am a design student and my school computers have adobe programs. As far as I can tell, I can't find any way of exporting Designer files as Ai files? I can see the option to export as psd, and I've tried to open Ai files using Designer with no problems - but I wanted to check whether there was a way of exporting to Ai that I had missed. Thanks

maybe I'm missing it, but is there an option to open a JPEG, or bitmap image and trace,or convert it to a vector file for further editing? If not there should be one, it would be a great option. even if it had only a few modes like black and white, and 5 color it would make me convince me to convert from adobe illustrator

In Designer 1.10.6, one of my projects, a 3000x3000 square in RGB-8 which I intend to use to make a new logo for myself, suddenly gained this weird grey border around the edges of the frame, as seen in the first attached image, and the line is always exactly 1 pixel thick. In the same project, the background, which is the exact right size, positioned perfectly, and SHOULD have no gaps, needs to be 1 pixel too wide and 1 pixel too tall to actually render no gaps in pixel rendering mode. Strangely, this border I can't interact with started appearing on new project files I opened with Designer 1.10.6, before I relaunched the app. On the particular file this happened to, I discovered that Designer has decided it wants to render objects outside the area that would get exported into an image, as seen in the second attached image. What did I do? Toggling bleed, guides, margins and column guides doesn't do anything on any project file. I don't know what I did. Fortunately the exporting works as it should, but this was very strange.

Not exactly sure how to call this "feature" but I think in Illustrator it was called "Isolation Mode". What I want to be able to do is, for example, enter a group and drag a selection over a few elements without interfering with background elements. Without, obviously, having to lock them previously. Is there something to accomplish this? It seems like a really basic feature and it's essential to my workflow. How do you guys deal with this type of situations?

One thing that I have seen mentioned on facebook groups is the crop tool. Most seem to agree that either 'crop to original ratio' be set as default or the the user be allowed to set the option that fits their workflow best. For me it is original ratio as I rarely use any other setting. Can this be added to the relevant programs?

With the release of Catalina, Apple has included a ton of localized versions of Noto Sans in its system font library. These fonts can’t be removed or disabled. I actually have the complete Noto Sans and Noto Sans Display font families installed, and it’s difficult to quickly find them now. A way to be able to hide fonts would be extremely helpful. For the time being I’ve favorited the Noto Sans families I use but I don’t want to have to add every font to my favorite list just to avoid seeing the system fonts. i see two ways of doing this. The first is adding a hide action next to the existing favorite one and creating a new hidden fonts tab after favorites this allows the user to still select a hidden font for use if they want to. Alternatively, placing the font list in a preference pane, using checkboxes to select fonts you want to hide, and not showing them in the UI at all. In either solution you would be choosing which fonts to hide, not which fonts to show. This way new fonts that are installed would always be immediately available.