Free Transform, Perspective & Warp Tools

[Boldlinedesign]

@itsrck @Ayamba Asong I'm in the same boat as you both are. Things like text warp are vital to my ability to use Designer professionally. I'm not sure why integral tools like text warp have been neglected for so many years. They have not mentioned when they will get to it but I know I speak for many, that if we continue to request it over and over, eventually we will be heard. Until Affinity catches up, there is a great app called Vectorstyler that now is in beta for both mac and pc. It is almost ready for final release but the betas are full functional. They offer everything that Affinity is still lacking including text warp. Where Affinity has a polished, efficient and smooth user interface, Vectorstyler is a little complex and not as intuitive. Where Affinity is lacking important tools, Vectorstyler shines.
The developers are extremely responsive to suggestions and ideas. I've made suggestions and seen them implemented in a matter of days
I still rely heavily on my copy of Illustrator cs6 to get me through but I've slowly been transitioning over to Designer the last few years and with the unexplained lack of tools, I've moved some focus over to Vectorstyler to fill the gaps. I can see myself using Affinity and VS to fully replace Adobe going forward.

 

[Xzenor]

On 1/4/2021 at 1:01 PM, Ayamba Asong said:

Warp tool really needed. I have to use affinity photo to create a Warp text using a really tedious process then continue in Designer.  Make it happen this 2021. Thanks. 

Just to be sure and to maybe make thing easier.. you know you can make text follow a path, right? So you can make it follow a curve for example, or a shape. Warping goes a lot further than just making it follow a path, I know but if you didn't know this yet then maybe it solves, or lessens the issue you have.

[ONEBYSTUDIO]

2021 +1   

[RosomakPL]

+1 🙂

I really need these features

[Artwo]

We need this 🔥

[Phojoegraphy]

I saw the 1.9 update and immediately ran to the forum to see if they added any of this... Lots of really nice features added across all apps,  but this has become a ridiculously huge glaring omission. 😐

[Xzenor]

@MEB You seem to have a lot of inside information (and knowledge in general) about Affinity/Serif software. Is this purely for Affinity Photo or can you say 'something' about this particular missing feature for Affinity Designer?

Like if they're even aware of this 11 pages long topic full of complaining users..🙄

[Phojoegraphy]

6 minutes ago, Xzenor said:

@MEB You seem to have a lot of inside information (and knowledge in general) about Affinity/Serif software. Is this purely for Affinity Photo or can you say 'something' about this particular missing feature for Affinity Designer?

Like if they're even aware of this 11 pages long topic full of complaining users..🙄

@MEB is a moderator of this forum. Not sure if on dev team, but is very knowledgeable & helpful. I would guess at least employee as he does actively manage the brand here and I believe on Twitter as well.

[v_kyr]

That's overall something probably the AD Developers can tell best here, since I think there might be a bunch of not directly obvious under the hood needed dependencies then involved here, for plain vector based distortions. Like Win/Mac cross-platform portability routines for the needed distortion algorithms, possible needed hardware acceleration prerequiries, OS backward compatibility implementations etc.

For example, I've seen some other third party vector tools which offer vector distortions, but most of these rely in their implementation on graphics libraries where one needs pretty actual hardware and OS versions. Meaning they often don't work for older OS systems. So there might be some dependencies involved here.

[Phojoegraphy]

Vector Styler (VS) is in free beta for Mac and Win right now and has an insane amount of warping tools. I still prefer Affinity Designer (AD) for it's overall speed, easy to find assets, tools, UI, etc. But Affinity really need to take a look at how VS is implementing warps and distortions and take some "inspiration" from them. For workflow purposes, you can copy and paste between the two applications. (Note: sometimes font selection doesn't get carried over. Haven't found a rhyme or reason why, so it's best to send curves.) The thing to note is that VS can warp and distort groups as well as text and objects. VS keeps the text editable after it's warped or distorted, however it's converted to curves when copied to AD. I'll see if I can get a video uploaded.

[Phojoegraphy]

The video wouldn't upload to forum, so I tossed it up on YouTube.

 

[Seweryn]

Hi,

Simply: "Liquify for designer" :-).
I think this would be great to have.

Regards,

Seweryn.

[Xzenor]

21 hours ago, Seweryn said:

Hi,

Simply: "Liquify for designer" :-).
I think this would be great to have.

Regards,

Seweryn.

No, that's just for pixel layers. Warping is something entirely different

[Fixx]

Well, liquify is kind of warping. I think mostly the difference is the tools you manipulate the warp.

Of course, warping is technically fundamentally different operation for pixels and vectors, but appearance may be similar.

[PaRunk]

I am also missing these functions for deforming vectors and I would be really happy if these are soon available in Designer.

[chessboard]

On 1/11/2021 at 7:02 AM, Cynops said:

2021 +1   

You mean 2022? 😉

[Jowday]

9 minutes ago, chessboard said:

You mean 2022? 😉

Hoho.

In 2022 you will still make +1 posts in this thread. 

[pyxelles]

On 2/5/2021 at 6:46 PM, Phojoegraphy said:

The video wouldn't upload to forum, so I tossed it up on YouTube.

 

wow this looks amazing, will check it out. Thanks!

[adamgcharles]

Lack of Free Transform, Perspective & Warp Tools (and auto trace) is keeping me wedded to my old version of Illustrator CS6. I first purchased AD in 2015 and am rather suprised that these features are still absent after 5 years. I'd like to be able to replace Illustrator with AD, but as it is now I can't. Free transform was available Illustrator v.8 - 20 years ago. Please make it happen for Designer in 2021.   

[wtrmlnjuc]

Still waiting on a Vector Warp tool. They exist in raster for Photo but I wonder what's taking priority over it? Not having any sort of intended features list is frustrating. 

[Duskstalker]

banged my head against the desk to 10 minutes because i couldnt find the transform tools to do it - turns out, they dont exist.

 

cmon serif - this has been missing since 2017. please implement it.

i need this to make advertisement previews on buildings in publisher with the print files placed on top of a photo. i mean i could use a different program, but i really want to do it in publisher because it would be a great workflow. dont wanna switch back to adobe 😕

[Oval]

13 hours ago, Duskstalker said:

this has been missing since 2017

(strictly speaking since 2014)

[Xzenor]

1 hour ago, Oval said:

(strictly speaking since 2014)

Why 2014?

[Oval]

4 hours ago, Xzenor said:

Why 2014?

Because free transform, perspective and warp tools are missing since the launch of AD.

[loukash]

6 hours ago, Xzenor said:

Why 2014?

Well, I bought ADe on October 8, 2014, a week after its release, looking forward to completely replace CS5 for good very, very soon.
As of March 2021, that still didn't happen.

On 2/17/2021 at 7:56 PM, adamgcharles said:

Free transform was available Illustrator v.8 - 20 years ago.

And in Freehand 9, 21 years ago. Just a few weeks ago I've launched it for the first time in years on my still working PowerMac G4, running in Classic mode in Panther, only to be surprised how many nifty tools I forgot about it had.

Freehand 9, I do miss you!
(I don't miss your crappy PDF export though.)