Import issues on Styles and Brushes

[RVCrone]

I have recently downloaded some resources from  Affinity Resources, namely a set of brushes (the Fog and Smoke Starter Pack) and a set of Styles (Dream-Metals-Styles). I went to my styles panel and clicked "Import". I found my download location (Downloads folder) but Designer could not recognize the UNzipped Affinity files. I can see them with no problems when using Windows Explorer, but neither of the packages are visible from the Import panel  in Affinity Designer or Affinity Photo. Very frustrating to have these delicious new styles and brushes to use but not be able to get to them!!  I followed the instructions in the Help feature - step by step - but Affinity just doesn't see them. Any help would be appreciated!!

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, RVCrone said:

I went to my styles panel and clicked "Import". I found my download location (Downloads folder) but Designer could not recognize the UNzipped Affinity files. I can see them with no problems when using Windows Explorer, but neither of the packages are visible from the Import panel  in Affinity Designer or Affinity Photo.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Just to confirm: when Windows asked you what to do, you said to Save the file (rather than Open with Explorer). You then manually unzipped the file you downloaded, so that when you look at the Downloads directory using File Explorer you now see a file whose name displays as "something.afstyles", rather than (or perhaps in addition to one named) "something.zip"?

[RVCrone]

Hi Walt,

Yes, that is correct, I saved the zip files to my downloads folder. Then I unzipped them and I can plainly see "7SS- Smoke and Fog Starter pack.afbrushes"  and "Dream Metals Styles.afdesign".  At first I thought it it might be because I had the file extensions set to "hidden" in Windows explorer - so I made sure to set my file extensions to "visible" - and that seemed to work on the brushes, however, it did not help on the Dream Metals styles.  When I try to import them from the Styles panel - they do not show up.  See attached screen shot.

[R C-R]

In the first post of https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/3686-dream-styles/ there is this link: https://dscape-llc.com/affinity

When I click on it I am taken to a page with 5 styles & 3 gradients. Each of them has a 'download' link below the image showing the contents of the item. When I click on the link below the Dream Metals Styles image (third from the left), the dream-metals.zip downloads. Double-clicking on that to unzip it results in a 15 KB file named Dream Metals.afstyles, not Dream Metals.afdesign.

This file imports without problems into Designer, Photo, or Publisher.

 

[walt.farrell]

I see the same as R C-R.

[Wosven]

Another tip for Windows users: when you download files from OSX (Mac) users, you'll have "garbage" files to delete and usable ones.

For example, if you find in a ZIP file some folder named "__MACOSX", you can delete it, it's data for the OS X finder, not usefull on Windows.

Same for each file beginning by "._" (a dot, an underscore, and the name of the usefull file). Those are usually text files containing metadata for the OS X finder, related to the usefull file with the same name, not begining by "._". They weight around 1KB, and can be deleted.

Be carefull to select the real file that weight more.
In your screenshot, you can delete ._Dream Metal Styles.afdesign and use Dream Metal Styles.afdesign file.

Now, as said by @R C-R, you need an .afstyles file to import styles, or you can use the demonstration file (.afdesign) to select each object and save them as Styles in the Styles panel.

[RVCrone]

Thanks everyone for your responses. I actually found a "work around" while poking around - by double clicking on the .afdesign file in Win Explorer, it opened up in Designer and displayed all the styles as a collection. From there I was able to select each individual style and "Add New Style From Selection" in the Styles panel - a bit tedious and time consuming but - hey, I'm able to use them and edit them now and it works so. . . . I may have to revisit this if I have other issues later but for now, I'm up and running  🙄
 

[Anticosti]

Updated: Fixed. Stupid me.

Greetings,

On macOS Mojave 10.14.6
I am also having difficulties importing these .afdesign files in Designer:
Fineliner Broken Lines.afdesign
Fineliner Lines.afdesign
Fineliner Scribble Lines.afdesign
Fineliner Scribble.afdesign
Fineliner Slanted hatch.afdesign
Fineliner Stipple 1.afdesign
Fineliner Stipple 2.afdesign
Fineliner Vertical hatch.afdesign
Fineliner Wave.afdesign
Fineliner Zig Zag.afdesign

Can anyone confirm?
Thanks in advance.

Edited February 2, 2021 by Anticosti
Stupid me. Fixed.