Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.9.0.7)


Recommended Posts

  • Staff

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

 

Apologies for the fact that we've got another beta after such a short time... The package feature and registration tweaks were important changes and thought we ought to get them into testing as soon as possible.

 

Changes this time

- Added 'Save as package' feature for easy delivery of a complete project
- Improvements to application registration and content syncing
 

Changes in 1.9.0.6

- Fix for pixel layers inside symbols occasionally acting incorrectly (painting may not apply to all symbol instances, items may transform oddly, for example)
- Added Studio Presets with, hopefully, complete functionality :)
- Tabbing between fields in the New Document dialog should no longer crash! (sigh)
 

Changes Since 1.9.0

- 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)
- 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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting to see the "Save as Package" function appear in Designer. I would normally associate such a feature with Publisher, but I suppose it also makes some sense for it to be included with Designer, as the entire suite of Affinity apps are virtually unified.

Should we expect this function to roll out in updates to Publisher and Photo?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Staff
4 minutes ago, Mark Oehlschlager said:

Should we expect this function to roll out in updates to Publisher and Photo?

It is already in Affinity Publisher beta 1.9.0.829. I do not think it is as immediately useful in Photo work as it clearly is to Publisher and will be useful to Designer. You can argue a use case but it seems fairly niche.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Regarding the "Save as Package" feature, did I miss something or is there still no way to link rather than embed images, so 'packaging' linked images would only be useful if the images were linked in APub & then the file was opened in AD?

EDIT: I guess by "images" I really mean file types like .afdesign or others that can be linked instead of embedded in APub. From what I can tell, in this AD beta it does not matter if I set "Image Placement Policy" in File > Document Setup to "Prefer Linked." Regular single-layer image file types like png or jpeg are always placed as embedded "(Image)" layers, & .afdesign, .afphoto, multi-layer PDF, etc. files are always placed as embedded documents.

IOW, only APub (retail or beta) has a functional link document option; the AD beta does not even have the "Link Picture" option in the Replace Document dialog.

Am I making any sense or do I have this all wrong?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, MattP said:

Apologies for the fact that we've got another beta after such a short time...

My opinion: no need to apologize for sending new betas our way soon after the previous. The way many of us are eager for the next great thing (like packaging here), that is a bit like saying, "I'm sorry to give you this nice gift today after I gave you the last gift only yesterday." Honestly, these beta release posts are usually the ones I look forward to the most.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Staff

Thanks @rui_mac. Please can you make a new beta forum thread and provide a file or request an upload link

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does the mode "preferred linked"  improve the workflow process in any way? I'm asking because this reminds me of working in Indesign, in that you didn't have to have full renders of links in the doc, only a fast view version of a linked file making saving a file faster. Or moving linked files on the canvas faster.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, evtonic3 said:

Does the mode "preferred linked"  improve the workflow process in any way?

... or rather: Do embedded resources have any advantage concerning app performance during work?
(Besides their disadvantage of making copies of every resource by embedding & increasing the file size of the Affinity document.)

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Do embedded resources have any advantage concerning app performance during work?

With the resources being embedded in the document, I can imagine the software would be able to *find* them faster, though that would be a negligible performance advantage for the most part.

The real advantages are more practical in nature:

  • If access to the original file is lost, it doesn't break the document.
  • If the document is to be transported to another user, the embedded resources are in effect "pre-packaged" into the document, so no need to "relink" them if a folder path changes, etc.  No concern either over whether or not any resources were missed when transferring the document, as the ones which are needed are in the document itself.
  • Resources can be embedded into the document from another source in which the resource as used was not saved into a file to begin with (via copy/paste), which is not possible as a linked resource unless it is first saved as an external file.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/6/2020 at 11:38 PM, retrograde said:

Save as package is a welcomed addition and is going to come in handy!

So have you found a way to link documents using only Designer? Otherwise, it seems to me the only use for the AD package function is to package fonts into the saved folder unless you can link the documents in APub (because placed documents are always embedded in AD).

IOW, at least for me, in this beta it does not matter if I set "Image Placement Policy" in File > Document Setup to "Prefer Linked." I get either an "(Image)" layer (for single layer file types like jpg or png) or an embedded document for multilayer file types (like for native Affinity files). So unless my AD document includes text, my saved package folder includes just an *.afpackage file & an empty "Images" folder.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, R C-R said:

So have you found a way to link documents using only Designer? Otherwise, it seems to me the only use for the AD package function is to package fonts into the saved folder unless you can link the documents in APub (because placed documents are always embedded in AD).

IOW, at least for me, in this beta it does not matter if I set "Image Placement Policy" in File > Document Setup to "Prefer Linked." I get either an "(Image)" layer (for single layer file types like jpg or png) or an embedded document for multilayer file types (like for native Affinity files). So unless my AD document includes text, my saved package folder includes just an *.afpackage file & an empty "Images" folder.

If you use view > resource manager it doesn't help you make them linked/embedded?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, dcarvalho84 said:

If you use view > resource manager it doesn't help you make them linked/embedded?

Thanks! I did not realize that the AD beta includes a Resource Manager like the one in APub, which indeed does let me change embedded documents & placed images to linked files.

But I still am puzzled why setting the "Image Placement Policy" to "Prefer Linked" doesn't seem to work for me. Does it work for you?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, R C-R said:

But I still am puzzled why setting the "Image Placement Policy" to "Prefer Linked" doesn't seem to work for me. Does it work for you?

I'm pretty sure it works for me on Windows, just as in Publisher. (But I can't check at the moment.) The only related function missing from Publisher, I think, is the application Preference to automatically update Linked files when they're changed externally.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

So have you found a way to link documents using only Designer? Otherwise, it seems to me the only use for the AD package function is to package fonts into the saved folder unless you can link the documents in APub (because placed documents are always embedded in AD).

IOW, at least for me, in this beta it does not matter if I set "Image Placement Policy" in File > Document Setup to "Prefer Linked." I get either an "(Image)" layer (for single layer file types like jpg or png) or an embedded document for multilayer file types (like for native Affinity files). So unless my AD document includes text, my saved package folder includes just an *.afpackage file & an empty "Images" folder.

This works for me. It saves the fonts and images as dcarvalho84 mentioned above, using the resources manager to link the images if they are embedded.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm pretty sure it works for me on Windows, just as in Publisher. (But I can't check at the moment.) The only related function missing from Publisher, I think, is the application Preference to automatically update Linked files when they're changed externally.

Yeah this would be a welcomed addition.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, retrograde said:

This works for me. It saves the fonts and images as dcarvalho84 mentioned above, using the resources manager to link the images if they are embedded.

Are you saying that the Image Replacement Policy "Prefer Linked" setting works for you? If so, are you using the Mac beta?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

Link to comment
Share on other sites

45 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Thanks! I did not realize that the AD beta includes a Resource Manager like the one in APub, which indeed does let me change embedded documents & placed images to linked files.

But I still am puzzled why setting the "Image Placement Policy" to "Prefer Linked" doesn't seem to work for me. Does it work for you?

 

11 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Are you saying that the Image Replacement Policy "Prefer Linked" setting works for you? If so, are you using the Mac beta?

They work for me. I've done a quick test, i've placed 2 images in a document with prefer linked setting and then i've closed the document and deleted one of the pictures. I've reopened the document and i have a warning tell me that one of the resources are missing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Are you saying that the Image Replacement Policy "Prefer Linked" setting works for you? If so, are you using the Mac beta?

No. I don't even know where that setting is located. What I'm saying is that if you have an embedded image, using the resource manager will allow you to change it to linked.

Where is the "prefer linked" setting? I'm using the mac beta. 

Whoops just found it in the document setup dialogue. It should be an option as well when using the place image command...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, retrograde said:

No. I don't even know where that setting is located. What I'm saying is that if you have an embedded image, using the resource manager will allow you to change it to linked.

Where is the "prefer linked" setting? I'm using the mac beta.

When you create a new document you have the option right after the document sizes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.