Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.9.0.3)

[MattP]

Status: Beta

Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes

Requirements: Purchased Affinity Designer

Mac App Store: Not submitted

Download: Download

 

Auto-update: Not available

 

Hello,

If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry.

This beta is significantly different from the 1.8.x version available for purchase - we strongly recommend that you do not use this beta for real work as data could be lost and the files you save are not guaranteed to open in previous / future versions of Affinity Designer.

Thanks again for your continued support!

Many thanks!

Matt

 

Changes this time

- Fix for Select Same and Select Object when they encounter text objects
- Enable image placement options in Designer (you can now choose Linked or Embedded) and also Resource Manager (from the View menu)
- Added option for Designer to be able to show/hide overflow text - particularly useful for text on a path
- Application icon updated to fit the 'Big Sur' visual style, also document icons updated. Misc other Big Sur fixes.
- Fix for terrible rendering problems - particularly affected cropped items with layer effects applied
- Added ability to rotate canvas if you have a scroll wheel mouse (or two-finger vertical drag on your touchpad) if you hold down Command. This will rotate around the mouse cursor location. Holding down Shift in addition to Command while scrolling will rotate around the centre of the view.

Changes Since 1.9.0

- Contour tool.
- Select Same / Select Object functionality. I'm happy to consider requests for extra options, so if you have a favourite, just say...
- Improved performance with large documents. I will aim to improve this further over time.
- Added a new “Divide” blend mode.
- Allowed snapping to the bounds of the pixel selection.

 

To be notified about all future Mac beta updates, please follow this beta notification thread 
To be notified when this update comes out of beta and is fully released to all Affinity Designer customers, please follow this release notification thread

[lenogre]

I can't launch this AD release.

I can see the splash screen and after that AD quits.

Mac OS 10.12.6

[MattP]

1 hour ago, lenogre said:

I can't launch this AD release.

I can see the splash screen and after that AD quits.

Mac OS 10.12.6

hmm, that sounds very odd.. I’ll take a look!  sorry about that

[Matthias]

Thanks for the new image placement options.

[retrograde]

Thanks Matt!

Liking the new resource manager! Works great.

[abn5x]

Thanks Matt!

Is it me or the DL speed is very slow?

[retrograde]

3 minutes ago, abn5x said:

Thanks Matt!

Is it me or the DL speed is very slow?

Worked fine for me.

[A_B_C]

The Resource Manager with linked resources is a very welcome addition, Matt! Awesome work with the 1.9 series so far! 😀

[retrograde]

1 hour ago, A_B_C said:

The Resource Manager with linked resources is a very welcome addition, Matt! Awesome work with the 1.9 series so far! 😀

I concur!

[Cuando]

8 hours ago, lenogre said:

can't launch this AD release.

I can see the splash screen and after that AD quits.

Mac OS 10.12.6

Same problem

 

[thomaso]

8 hours ago, lenogre said:

I can't launch this AD release.

I can see the splash screen and after that AD quits.

Same here in macOS 10.14.6., reboot doesn't help.

Affinity Designer Beta_2020-10-13-023011_mbp2.crash

[ronnyb]

Awesome update Matt! Image placement options and Resource Manager are fantastic additions to the workflow!!!

@MattP I think it would be beneficial to be able to rotate the screen in fixed increments, 15° is good. This way it's easy to return to level without having to move hands off the keyboard or to jump to the menubar and "Reset canvas" to verify strokes, then have to rotate canvas again, and level the canvas to verify strokes over and over....

Thanks for all you do 🙏

12 hours ago, MattP said:

- Added ability to rotate canvas if you have a scroll wheel mouse (or two-finger vertical drag on your touchpad) if you hold down Command. This will rotate around the mouse cursor location. Holding down Shift in addition to Command while scrolling will rotate around the centre of the view.

 

[retrograde]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

Same here in macOS 10.14.6., reboot doesn't help.

Affinity Designer Beta_2020-10-13-023011_mbp2.crash 80.6 kB · 0 downloads

Works for me on OS X 10.14.6 Mojave

[retrograde]

I was wondering if there was a trick for the scroll wheel rotating feature as mine kept zooming in and out until I realized you need to turn off the "Use mouse wheel to zoom" in the tool prefs.

[MattP]

3 hours ago, retrograde said:

I was wondering if there was a trick for the scroll wheel rotating feature as mine kept zooming in and out until I realized you need to turn off the "Use mouse wheel to zoom" in the tool prefs.

Ah! Oops, they will certainly interact in a weird way!...

[postmadesign]

I see some weird bugs with the layers panel and vector brushes (reported) but it's nice to see the resource manager in Designer.

Perhaps you could consider adding the font manager from publisher too, as it just makes sense for a design program. Finding and replacing fonts can be tricky in more complicated documents in Designer.

I like the new canvas rotation. I use it with an Intuos 5 with touch, and it works well by just pressing CMD and scrolling with two fingers up or down. Certainly much better than trying to rotate with two fingers using gestures on the Intuos, which never properly works.

[ChristiduToit]

Ah, this is super awesome. The (easy) canvas rotation feature is definitely going to be a game changer, been waiting for that for a long time!
I really like that you've implemented it into the scroll wheel of the mouse. 
It might be nice to also tie it to the zoom tool, so that if you have the zoom tool selected and click and drag while holding CMD it also rotates - that way users using tablets can quickly and freely rotate on-screen using their pens instead of having to switch to the mouse first. Almost like the brush modifier shortcut (ctrl+opt+click and drag for brush size), but for canvas rotation.

[postmadesign]

1 minute ago, ChristiduToit said:

Ah, this is super awesome. The (easy) canvas rotation feature is definitely going to be a game changer, been waiting for that for a long time!
I really like that you've implemented it into the scroll wheel of the mouse. 
It might be nice to also tie it to the zoom tool, so that if you have the zoom tool selected and click and drag while holding CMD it also rotates - that way users using tablets can quickly and freely rotate on-screen using their pens instead of having to switch to the mouse first. Almost like the brush modifier shortcut (ctrl+opt+click and drag for brush size), but for canvas rotation.

Yeah, that would be great, other programs SPACE to pan with and SPACE+SHIFT to rotate with the pen on the tablet.

[MattP]

Makes sense

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, ronnyb said:

I think it would be beneficial to be able to rotate the screen in fixed increments, 15° is good. This way it's easy to return to level without having to move hands off the keyboard or to jump to the menubar and "Reset canvas" to verify strokes, then have to rotate canvas again, and level the canvas to verify strokes over and over....

You already have that, don't you, before the new changes?

Or is the Mac implementation different from Windows? We have View > Rotate Left and View > Rotate Right that can have keyboard shortcuts defined, and they operate in 15 degree increments.

 

[Old Bruce]

40 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Or is the Mac implementation different from Windows?

It is the same on Mac.

[Sean P]

22 hours ago, lenogre said:

I can't launch this AD release.

I can see the splash screen and after that AD quits.

Mac OS 10.12.6

Hi Lenogre,

Can you take a look in your Console and attach a series of those logs from around the minute you try starting the application up please? It will help development get an idea for what the issue you're suffering might be.

[lenogre]

Unfortunately I've uninstalled this beta.

[Dazmondo77]

On 10/12/2020 at 4:35 PM, lenogre said:

I can't launch this AD release.

I can see the splash screen and after that AD quits.

Same here, although it fired up the first time but wouldn't allow me to drag layers around in the layers panel, so quit, restarted, and now splash screen then quit:

 

 

"Crashed Thread:        0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

 

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)

Exception Codes:       KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000038

Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

 

Termination Signal:    Segmentation fault: 11

Termination Reason:    Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0xb

Terminating Process:   exc handler [50865]

 

VM Regions Near 0x38:"

 

Designer 1.9.0.3 Crash log.rtf

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, lenogre said:

Unfortunately I've uninstalled this beta.

In case specifically OS v.10.12.6 is interesting to the developers:
You still can find the crash log files in your user library folder, even after uninstalling the app (unless you deleted the log manually).

~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Affinity Designer Beta_2020-10-12-... .crash