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I started off writing this as a question because I couldn't work it out, but a few times I accidentally got it to work although I couldn't work out how I had done it. (Affinity Designer Desktop v1.8.5, Windows 10). After much fiddling around I have worked out how to make it repeatable. (Admins: please feel free to move this to a better place in the forum if there is one). This is useful if you use a tablet and want to draw vector brush strokes in a mask in pressure mode, see the effect as you draw them and be able to edit them afterwards. Here is the explanation - there are three important steps which are not obvious but omitting them will leave you without editable vectors in the mask: Select the layer or group you want to add the mask to. I'll call this layer A. Click the Layer Mask button to add a pixel mask (even though we are in Designer Persona). This serves no actual purpose except that if it doesn't exist, this method doesn't work. Draw a vector brush or pen stroke (this creates its own layer above layer A). Create a group with this single curve (or more if you want to); the point is, it must be a group. Lets call this M (for mask) Make sure the group is open (i.e. click the triangle so that it points down and you can see the vector curve(s) in the group). Drag the Group M into the mask position of layer A. The vectors in group M are now a mask and the curves are individually visible and editable. A black 100% density stoke reveals anything below Layer A. Select the vector brush (or pen or pencil) tool and click on a curve in group M (select a curve in the group, not the group itself) in the layers window. No points in that vector curve should be selected because this will just extend that curve, unless that is what you want to do. Draw a new vector curve and it will be added to the curves in group M; i.e new brush strokes add vector masks in real-time. You can delete the pixel mask layer created in step 2. I have tried to record a video of the process (the context menu for the layers window doesn't show up in the recording but the actions were creating a group and later, deleting some of the vectors). Affinity Designer 2020-12-02 11-43-09.mp4 Note: if you don't create the pixel mask (step 2), group the brush stroke (step 4) or have the mask group open (step 5) when you drag it to the mask position (in step 6), you get the vector curves as a mask but you can't edit the individual curves or add any others. You can only do that if you drag the mask back out so that they become an editable group again and then re-drag to the mask position.

I've been experiencing three issues related to the layers panel and layer selection ever since I updated to Big Sur. Firstly, when I have multiple layers selected and go to hide them all (by either clicking the checkmark or menu option), the last/bottom layer in layers panel will appear to be deselected even though it actually isn't and can still be manipulated along with the other layers that still appear selected. The second one is harder to describe and I haven't figured out what causes it yet (I think it might happen when quickly selecting between different layers in the layers panel, but don't quote me on that), but on multiple occasions I've had the current layer I'm working on appear to deselect itself (but like with the bug mentioned above, isn't and can still be manipulated). That layer, or any other layer, then can't be (re)selected, often thinking I want to change the layer name when I'm just trying to select it. It's like I'm soft locked out of the layers panel entirely. It isn't until I click an empty part on the canvas, to essentially to deselect everything and have nothing selected, am I able to work in the layers panel again. Lastly, when moving layers around in the panel, often times the layer I have selected won't move to its new location in the panel but the layer above or below it that isn't selected will be moved instead. It feels to me that I experience this more when I'm scrolling quickly through the layers while dragging a layer to its new spot in the panel and when I try to move a free layer into an group that's already been formed. Hopefully that all makes sense.

Hi, y'all... I just purchased a vector image for my project. It looks like this (see pic bellow) if I open it on Affinity Designer. How can I edit the pic? I just need to make it smaller or bigger, and modify it for my project. I am very thankful for any hints.

About a month ago I launched a website for my games, and I want to share it with y'all. All of the layout elements were created in Affinity Designer, as well as the logo. https://mnemonicrpg.com/setting.html Things I'm proud of here that I created with Affinity Designer: The woodgrain background of the site, which is the exact same asset as the top menu bar, with some clever filters applied The book cover in the table of contents The parchment texture for the page's main content The logo It's gonna look different between mobile and desktop, but everything but the table of contents should be visible on both. Lemme know what you think!

Download - Business Card Design Template (Affinity Designer) Template: Download

Whenever I go to open up an Affinity document which another colleague has created, unfortunately all of the fonts do not automatically load in. To resolve this we have had to manually select the font for each section of text on every Artboard (please see attachment). This has become quite time confusing in order to do for each document now and I was wondering whether this was a bug or there's an easier way to resolve this perhaps? Any help would be much appreciated. Just to note, each of the fonts we use have already been installed, and we work on Macbooks. Thank you in advance, Kind Regards, Chris.

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Hey guys......so I was working on my new course...and got the the lesson on making brushes.....sooooo I had to amek some brushes. I made a set of fog/ smoke brushes in raster and a set of silky smooth stroke brushes for your vector applications. I have learned so much from the people on the site....I wanted to give back, so here ya go . I am working on new blog post and some new art using them....so I will keep you in the loop Feedback on them is always appreciated, I love making these sorts of tools Jeremy , www.7thseasonstudios.com Stroke brushes -7th season studios .afbrushes Smoke and fog brushes -7th season studios.afbrushes

Exploration of watercolour brushes

Just playing around with something different. I just watched Rio2 and fell in love with Gabi so I thought I could do that and if I printed and framed it, this picture would make a nice present for the granddaughter. Going to leave it for a few days then see if I can add more detail.

Hi all, I´m working on a laser engraving design.. obviously and its fun! But I have a big problem.. It´s basically two layers now, one "outline" and one background" First I made the outline design with all the shadowing and expanded the strokes and used "add" to add them all together as one curve. Then I made the background All outside the outline but I made it a little bigger so I could have curves to fit exactly to the outline wnen using the subtract button. But when I use subtract it creates insane lots of unnessesary nodes (See screenshots) Is there any settings or reason why it makes so many nodes? It would take forever to try to clean up all this, as the laser engraver will go a little mental with all these nodes. I´m using a Mac Catalina 10.15.6 and Affinity Designer 1.8.6 Any help or tips would be very welcome 🙂

Just exploring the tools... goal was to evoke a feeling of foreboding....

I am experiencing a bug with the latest Affinity Designer version (1.8.5.703) : When exporting to a PDF file, the different layers are not exported as they should ... Once the PDF file is opened in Adobe Reader (and Adobe Illustrator) the layers preview pane does not show any layers. The bug is repeated as many times on Windows 10 version and this on two different computers. I specify that the bug occurs by using the menu> file> export ... as well as by using persona export ... This is particularly annoying when exporting PDF files with CutContour and cutting printing ... I hope you will solve the problem without difficulties and wish you good luck ... receive my full consideration. Guillaume

Hey has anyone noticed any problems using text in AD? It is very slow for me. If I use a text frame, after less than a paragraph it starts to slow down -- I type in text and it takes a moment or two to show up on the screen. It gets slower as I integrate more text. Slightly worse with artistic text. I've tried changing the render settings (paths only, pixel, etc.) but no difference. I don't have many fonts installed, it's a fairly new OS install (Win 10) and I've only installed a few additional fonts. This is not much text (I realize more text belongs in Publisher) basically a few paragraphs that might appear on any flyer or poster. Strange: I have a dual-screen setup -- when I use the second screen for the dockers (I would like to have this setup) the problem is even worse. Any ideas are much appreciated!

I'm a recent convert to Affinity but I seem to have a problem with Affinity Designer on Windows. Assuming I have a new document and the first watercolour brush is set to a width of 100px, size variance 81%, opacity variance 100%. Select the first water colour brush and select the Vector Brush tool. (Context menu bar shows 100px width). Change the width in the context menu bar to 10 px. Paint a line (which appears at 10px wide, as expected). Type 'A' to select the node tool. The nodes in the curve are selected and the context bar correctly shows 10px: Click on the brush preview to the right of the fill and stroke to get the brush properties Click the properties button The brush properties dialog opens (called Brush - Document Defaults) with a brush width of 100px, size and opacity variance of 0% so it doesn't match either the selected stroke OR the document defaults! Start to change the Size Variance slider and the line in the document immediately jumps back to 100 px wide. So how do you change the properties (e.g size variance) of a brush stroke after drawing it without setting the other properties it back to other values? I assume that double clicking on the brush in the brush palette is supposed to edit the document defaults for that brush and that selecting the properties via the context menu bar should edit the properties for the selected brush stroke(s)?? Or am I doing something wrong? Thanks.

I have a MacBook Pro late 2011 edition running Mac OS high Sierra . I recently purchased affinity designer after owning the iPad version for years . Right from the first time the app crashes and won’t open !!! I have attached the crash report . Please help ! text.txt

I'm finished my Holiday cards in Affinity Designer and I'm very happy. I think we all need a little magic these days.🎄🎁✨ See Below

I needed a book spine that I could change the colour on. I normally find doing everything with blend modes is a bit of a pain, the colours often end up not quite being what you wanted, but it worked well enough for what I need.

Please add the ability to add pure vector based vector brushes based on vector objects for texture instead of PNGs. For now we can only add pixel based vector brushes. Being able to add pure vector brushes based on vector objects would allow us to create vector based textures and designs, which would be much easier to handle for any kind of (print) production. For example I tried to separate the colours to a spot colour PDF for screen print from this awesome work by Pierre Kleinhouse made for the Affinity Work from home series https://youtu.be/lL6gc8Oi2uw .afdesign file on DropBox: https://affin.co/LD2020PierreKleinhouse It was sort of a nightmare. I couldn't find a way to create a vector based spray texture within the Affinity Suite like in the second screen shot with the chimney. Expand stroke, working with spot colours, working with boolean operations ... a lot would be easier.

How do I access alternate characters in an Opentype font? in Publisher. or any of these tools. i know there is old thread about Designer but no luck such way.

Hello, I was wondering if within Affinity Designer is there a "Free transform tool" to allow perspective distort with shapes, this is something that can be done within illustrator where you can take two points and can move them together or further apart with equal distance like the example below. You can kinda do this with the "Corner" tool set to straight but this is set to only one angle when perspective distort can change the angle. Thank you for your time and I hope you have a great day.

Hello! I'm trying to install a macro for Affinity designer. But I can't fint "Library" under VIEW > STUDIO. Where is it? (I recently updated to 1.8.6) Thanks!

I am certainly thankful to have the Affinity suite, not having to deal with Adobe anymore. But there is still much to do for Affinity, in order to get to the same level of usability. A big problem is, that the Affinity team has obviously not much experience with vector path handling. There are so many things that do not work userfriendly, are too complicated or still missing. Adding to an existing path, one has to use the points tool, activate a point, change to the vector drawing tool, again hit on that point and if lucky, then the next clicks set new points adding to that path. Instead of activating a path and hit an end point directly with the vector tool. Done. There are endless many tasks that only work if you first set things exactly right. Then on top of that there is the overall behaviour confusing users. One example here: You have a path active, go in with the vector tool and want to ad points - the path reacts to the tool exactly like it should when the intentioned action would work. It is only later, when suddenly the once active path is deactivated that one realizes, the new points do not add to it. (See video example). Or drawing two separate lines and later join them (not possible by merging tool, as it is only lines, not areas) - I still did not find out how (what I achieved always connects the end points the wrong way), because every time I prefer to redo the whole path in once instead of searching around for the certainly complicated solution I can not remember the next time - like with so many things in Designer. ScreenRecorderProject1.mp4

I’ve noticed quite a few multiple feature request 'wish list' posting recently on the Affinity forums. I've an idea the posts might be born out of three areas of frustration (beyond people not reading the forum rules): Difficulty searching the forum to find the most relevant post. For example, 'knife tool' finds numerous posts, (12 forum pages worth!). Features/tools can be described in different ways. For example, 'cut tool', 'knife tool', 'scissors tool' etc. Essential/basic features have been missing or broken now for a long time. For example, true vector brushes, warp tool and faulty Boolean Divide operation.* I really thought Serif/Affinity were on the right track when they started off publishing a roadmap showing their future plans. At least it shared their thinking and priorities helping to manage users expectations. Of course with three main products and Windows, Mac and iPad variants, life is more complicated now. I'm not quite sure what the answer to all this is, ie to ensure Serif benefit and gain useful insight from any feedback and we (forum members) feel our voices have not fallen on deaf ears. I do feel this needs to be addressed as it's only going to get worse. There are already over 15,000 posts in the current Affinity Designer Feedback forum and even more (31,000) in the older feedback forum. At the end of the day I believe Affinity forum users need a quick and simple way to check that 'their' missing/broken tool or feature request has already been requested/reported and importantly has been properly considered and acknowledged by Serif staff. Thanks *(I recently managed to get over 900,000 objects dividing just 42 shapes. Although small credit to Affinity Designer, despite wasting a lot of time, it didn't crash, although it did take an equally long time to undo!) 😐

With Designer 1.8.6 on macOS 10.14.6, when I open an SVG file and then try to export it as PDF, the application completely crashes. Steps to reproduce: - open attached SVG file - go to File / Export - select the "PDF" tab in the export dialog - the application crashes I have verified the SVG and found it to be a valid SVG file. I have some other SVG images (generated from the same source) where the same behavior can be observed. eILCD example - LDPE injection moulding parts model.svg