Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.9.0.5)

[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

- Fixed sporadic crash with Pencil Tool (yay!) and hopefully generally improved product stability
- Fix for artefacts occasionally noticed in the noise pattern while editing objects with noise on a linear fill
- Fix for occasional disabling of some buttons
- Added registration page to the app - allows users to login and auto-install brushes (so far)
 

Changes Since 1.9.0

- 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.
- 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

[vonBusing]

2 hours ago, markw said:

Curious, why dose the App Registration think I’m using a 2010 Macbook Pro when it’s actually from 2017?
The same thing happens with the Publisher beta too.

My hardware detection was accurate in both applications. Maybe an article number mismatch/duplicate for your model in the Serif lookup database?

[catlover]

- Added registration page to the app - allows users to login and auto-install brushes (so far)
 

 I unintentially  "signed up" for this feature.
Is there any way to cancel this ?

I don't want auto-installs on my system, sorry.

C.L.

[walt.farrell]

42 minutes ago, catlover said:

- Added registration page to the app - allows users to login and auto-install brushes (so far)
 

 I unintentially  "signed up" for this feature.
Is there any way to cancel this ?

I don't want auto-installs on my system, sorry.

C.L.

You should see an icon on the Toolbar showing that you're signed in. Click it and sign out.

[markw]

@catlover You can deselect Auto Installs at the bottom of the window. Although for me at the moment no auto install is actually working. I still have to manually start the download!

I already had the “test” brush pack installed before this beta and was able to manually delete it from the Studio Brush panel before playing with this new account panel.
I note now though that the ‘test” brush pack once installed via the account panel can’t be manually deleted from the Studio Brush panel using the sub menu found there. Is this intentional behaviour?

[DanG]

Hi @markw,

Quote

I note now though that the ‘test” brush pack once installed via the account panel can’t be manually deleted from the Studio Brush panel using the sub menu found there. Is this intentional behaviour?

This actually is possible. From the panel's submenu, press "Uninstall Pack..." This will open the My Account dialog. Within this dialog you can then press the green tick next to the brush pack to uninstall it.

[markw]

Thank’s for the clarification there DanG🙂
Could you perhaps also clarify what the ‘Always install available content’ tick box is supposed to do?
To me it would suggest that if ticked, on launching an Affinity app that is connected to the internet, it will automatically check for any missing brush packs and re-download and install them, with no user interaction required? At the moment this is not happening with the test pack for me.

[DanG]

Yes, of course I can 🙂

It will check for, and automatically download and install, any content which is newly available to your account. The key word there is "newly" - i.e. content which has been added to your account but not yet installed within the app. It won't automatically install content which has previously been installed. This is intentional as if you had chosen to uninstall a piece of content, it would probably be annoying if it was then automatically reinstalled next time a sync was done!

Further to this, the checkbox will also take the size limit dropdown into account. For example if you have the dropdown set to "Up to 1MB" and then add a content pack to your account which is larger than this, it will not be automatically downloaded even if the "Always install available content" checkbox is checked. It can still be manually downloaded though by pressing on the cloud symbol.

Obviously right at this moment this functionality can't be tested, simply because there is only one pack currently on the system so the logic described above doesn't have a chance to come into effect. However as more content is made available to be added to your account and downloaded, you should start seeing the above behaviour.

[markw]

3 minutes ago, DanG said:

if you had chosen to uninstall a piece of content, it would probably be annoying if it was then automatically reinstalled next time a sync was done!

That was my fear! Once again thank you for a clear explanation😎

[catlover]

Thanks all for your replies.

Looked at my account in the Affinity Store, looked through Prefs in the Application (Designer,Mac)

However, I've not been able to find the Auto Install button / feature so that I can cancel it.

Would someone please walk me through it ?

Thanks.

[markw]

Hi @catlover,
The window we’er all playing with is the new ‘App Registration’ window.
It automatically launched for me when I first opened the new beta.
If you want to find it again once it’s been closed, on Macs it’s in the Menubar. Click; Affinity Designer Beta > My Account…

[catlover]

Hi, Mark.

Thanks. All done & dusted now.

C.L.