Designer: How to distort text (corner pinning) for perspective?

[JeffreyWalther]

Hello,

It seems impossible in Designer, but:

How to distort text (corner pinning) for perspective? Just grabbing a corner and move it around to distort it. 

Any ideas?

Thank you.

Jeff

[v_kyr]

Either that, or see ...

• APhoto live filter perspective 
• live filter assets

... as a workaround.

[MEB]

Hi @JeffreyWalther,
Currently there's no vector based perspective (and mesh distortion) in Designer. You have to distort the letters manually moving nodes or if you have Affinity Photo apply a perspective live effect (or use the destructive Perspective Tool - which will rasterise the text) to distort it. The perspective live filter keeps the effect and text editable but it will be rasterised on export.

[Dazmondo77]

Use VectorStyler until Designer gets it - I was really confused that I couldn't find this capability back in 2014 and was gobsmacked that it was released without such a basic standard feature, but gained some faith when it was added to the roadmap - but 😩

[jackjohnbrown]

On 1/15/2021 at 6:47 AM, MEB said:

Hi @JeffreyWalther,
Currently there's no vector based perspective (and mesh distortion) in Designer. You have to distort the letters manually moving nodes or if you have Affinity Photo apply a perspective live effect (or use the destructive Perspective Tool - which will rasterise the text) to distort it. The perspective live filter keeps the effect and text editable but it will be rasterised on export.

I usually use Designer for my work, but need to do a piece that has some text with perspective distortion, which I gather AD doesn’t offer. So I’ve made the piece in AP on iPad (11”x17” at 600dpi), but when I look at the text after using the perspective filter I feel like it’s pretty blurry (and with different levels of blur across the text, it seems?), so I’m worried about the final printed piece being pixelated. 

I know AP is a raster program but is there something I’m doing that might be making it particularly fuzzy (workflow, dpi, etc?)? My steps are: add text>add perspective filter>drag corners in the perspective layer. I’ve attached a screenshot showing some of the different sorts of blur I’m getting.

Also I’ve seen someone mention editing text using AP from *within* Designer — how does that work, if it is indeed an option? Thanks for any tips! 

[Alfred]

4 hours ago, jackjohnbrown said:

I know AP is a raster program but is there something I’m doing that might be making it particularly fuzzy (workflow, dpi, etc?)?

I wonder if it might be something to do with the iPad’s ‘retina’ display. Try doubling the size for working on it in APh, and then shrink it back down when you return to AD on your desktop machine.

4 hours ago, jackjohnbrown said:

Also I’ve seen someone mention editing text using AP from *within* Designer — how does that work, if it is indeed an option? Thanks for any tips!

There’s an ‘Edit in...’ feature (on the File menu) for invoking the other installed apps from any Affinity app. If you have Affinity Publisher (i.e. APub, not APh) you can also use the main persona from Designer via the StudioLink feature, but StudioLink is not available in either AD or APh.

[MEB]

Hi @jackjohnbrown,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Do you mind sharing/uploading the file with that text object where you applied the Perspective live filter - you can delete all the other objects if you want (unless it somehow "fixes the issue - in that case leave them there). Alternatively i can provide an upload link if you wish to keep the file private - juts let me know. I believe you are experiencing a known/logged bug but without seeing the file i can't be sure.

The process described by Alfred above is only applicable to the desktop versions of our apps. On iPad it's not possible to send the file to other applications of the suite via the File > Edit in menu. You can however open the .afdesign file in Affinity Photo, add the live filter there, close the file, then open it again in Affinity Designer.  You can still edit the perspective live filter there as if you were in Photo as long as you add it as a live filter.

[jackjohnbrown]

2 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi @jackjohnbrown,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Do you mind sharing/uploading the file with that text object where you applied the Perspective live filter - you can delete all the other objects if you want (unless it somehow "fixes the issue - in that case leave them there). Alternatively i can provide an upload link if you wish to keep the file private - juts let me know. I believe you are experiencing a known/logged bug but without seeing the file i can't be sure.

The process described by Alfred above is only applicable to the desktop versions of our apps. On iPad it's not possible to send the file to other applications of the suite via the File > Edit in menu. You can however open the .afdesign file in Affinity Photo, add the live filter there, close the file, then open it again in Affinity Designer.  You can still edit the perspective live filter there as if you were in Photo as long as you add it as a live filter.

Thanks — if you can give me an upload link that would be great (project isn’t public yet). This project did start in Designer and I sent it to Photo using the .afdesign method you mentioned (not sure if that affects anything).

[jackjohnbrown]

One more question — if I use it as a live filter and move back to Designer, does the text still get rasterized?

[MEB]

No, it doesn't rasterise the text in app - the live perspective filter layer is independent from the text and both remain editable. See screenshot below for reference. I've created the text in Designer, opened it in Photo, added the perspective live filter, closed the file and opened again in Designer. The text is only rasterised on export. Make sure you do enable the live filters when adding the perspective live filter - there's a toggle on the top of the Filters studio to enable them labelled Add Live filters (otherwise the app will use the destructive version which does rasterise the text immediately after applied).

[jackjohnbrown]

5 minutes ago, MEB said:

No, it doesn't rasterise the text in app - the live perspective filter layer is independent from the text and both remain editable. See screenshot below for reference. I've created the text in Designer, opened it in Photo, added the perspective live filter, closed the file and opened again in Designer. The text is only rasterised on export.

Thanks! If you can message me that link I’ll send you the file. 

[v_kyr]

4 minutes ago, MEB said:

... The text is only rasterised on export.

Which is the overall sad fact here for a vector based application like AD. Some real plain vector based distortion functions are deeply missing.

[MEB]

Hi @jackjohnbrown,
Here's the upload link. Thank you.

[jackjohnbrown]

5 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi @jackjohnbrown,
Here's the upload link. Thank you.

Thank you, just uploaded. In the meantime, can you tell me if the suspected bug exists in the desktop versions as well? If not I’m happy to purchase a copy of Photo so I can continue working on the project.

[MEB]

Hi @jackjohnbrown,
I'm not seeing the issue neither on Photo desktop nor on my iPad (1st gen 12.9" iPad Pro) - see screenshot below. What iPad model are you using?

[jackjohnbrown]

35 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi @jackjohnbrown,
I'm not seeing the issue neither on Photo desktop nor on my iPad (1st gen 12.9" iPad Pro) - see screenshot below. What iPad model are you using?

Wild! Mine is the first gen of the 11” Pro, I wonder what’s happening?

[MEB]

Let me poke around a bit more. I'm checking if someone else can reproduce this (internally).

[jackjohnbrown]

10 minutes ago, MEB said:

Let me poke around a bit more. I'm checking if someone else can reproduce this (internally).

Sounds good, thank you. In the meantime I've gone ahead and purchased the desktop version, and like you said all looks good there, so I was able to export it there for my client.

Interestingly, when I export the project as a pdf from the iPad, it looks fine! Hadn't thought to try it before but wanted to compare it against the desktop version -- I guess that points to it being a display/rendering issue (maybe exacerbated by my high dpi settings?) more than anything else?

Anyway thanks again, always happy to support such a responsive company!

[MEB]

Hi @jackjohnbrown,
The first text layer labelled "FOR THREE MONTHS" has two perspective live filters applied - can you please disable one of them and check if it still displays blurred? Thanks.

[EDIT] I've reproduced this here, even with just one filter applied. It's a bit less noticeable in my case but there's definitely an issue (see screenshot). I'm logging this to be looked at. 

[jackjohnbrown]

49 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi @jackjohnbrown,
The first text layer labelled "FOR THREE MONTHS" has two perspective live filters applied - can you please disable one of them and check if it still displays blurred? Thanks.

[EDIT] I've reproduced this here, even with just one filter applied. It's a bit less noticeable in my case but there's definitely an issue (see screenshot). I'm logging this to be looked at. 

Not sure how I missed that! Indeed turning off the second filter does help a LOT, but like you I still have some areas of weird fuzziness, where one side of a letter is crisp but the other not (like your H). Thanks for giving it the attention.