Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.9.0.20 - RC1)

[MattP]

Status: Release Candidate

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

- Numerous export preview improvements (press Escape to close the preview quickly, you can now reposition the export dialog so you can work with it and the preview window more easily at the same time, shortcuts for zooms implemented (as per the main view), click-drag with mouse to pan the preview, Apple Magic Mouse better supported
- Account-related improvements
- Miscellaneous small bug fixes and crash fixes

 

Changes Since 1.8.x

- Added user-controlled Mitre limit to the Contour Tool
- Enabled PDF passthrough context toolbar control
- PDF import improvement with mask images
- Fixed Contour Tool's light UI context toolbar icons being invisible
- Contours now form miters (when requested) until greater angles
- Performing a boolean operation on an object with a contour no longer leaves the new object with an additional (unwanted) contour
- Double-clicking the View Tool's tool icon should zoom to fit
- Export preview UI tweaks and ensure it uses the correct ICC profile to show the colours as intended
- Improved performance of OpenType features
- Added export preview panel (for raster types) - updates live whenever you change an export parameter
- Added JPEG-XR 101010 import support (useful for screen captures from Xbox, etc.)
- Added new splash screen
- Content download service improvements
- Numerous assorted fixes
- Help improvements
- Localisation improvements
- Export Time-lapse should now draw without pixellation when showing zoomed in areas
- PDF export improvements - particularly around filter effects
- Added 'Select Same Name' and 'Select Same Colour Tag' options
- Updated Help
- A few Big Sur UI-related tweaks
- Fix for printing of passthrough PDFs
- Fix a number of potential symbol-related problems
- Text improvements - particularly relating to mid-word punctuation
- Snapping tweaks - you can now snap to column guides if they're hidden and you have 'snap to hidden objects' turned on
- Added hierarchical antialiasing control - accessed from the Blend Options dialog on the layers panel
- Added 'Export Time-lapse' feature from Photo
- Fixed insertion target button failure!
- Fixed font combo not previewing changes in the document correctly
- New cat shape (accessible on Friday 13th or if you know the magic trick!)
- Misc PDF export tweaks
- Fix for Column Guides not updating correctly
- PDF Import improvements (particularly around tinted colours and unknown fonts)
- Fix for a UI issue in Big Sur (the vertical positioning of some checkboxes)
- New samples! 
- Added Preferences item to allow auto-updating of linked images in the document when the images are edited externally
- Fix for 'Embed'/'Link' image placement preference working incorrectly from some dialogs...
- Added 'Save as package' feature for easy delivery of a complete project
- Improvements to application registration and content syncing
- 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)
- 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

[pruus]

A lot of changes. Thanks!

[Patrick Connor]

Please can users of this beta look at the My Account feature (top right of the main toolbar) even if you have already done so recently in another recent beta.

We have now added the ability to link your Affinity app to your Affinity account through a new app registration process. This will have the advantages of you being able to stream any content you have purchased (or received for free from the Affinity store) directly to all your apps without having to manually install them. This is of particular use to customers who have more than one of our apps, or run our apps on different devices and operating systems as all your content will automatically be available across all of them.

If you register the beta app you will receive a free brush kit (the luminance brush kit) for testing purposes to add to any of the store content you may already own that should also show up.

There have been lots of behind the scene improvements and most of the purchasable and (historical) free claimable content has being made streamable as the beta has progressed.

PLEASE report anything you find using "My Account" IN THAT THREAD

[Gear maker]

Matt, it's been over 6 years using AD and I have done every update to AD that have been published.  But since about 1.9.0.10 there have been so many nagging issues like the following.  The first 3 I have been able to duplicate in the RC1 version.  So I will continue using 1.8.6, it's too hard to go back in released versions.  I already have 4 projects started in 1.9.0.* that I can't work on in 1.8.6 and can't see starting any more.

 

[Dazmondo77]

Export preview is now great 👍

[ELinder]

Divide is still broken in this release candidate.

 

 

[R C-R]

12 hours ago, MattP said:

... you can now reposition the export dialog so you can work with it and the preview window more easily at the same time, shortcuts for zooms implemented (as per the main view) ...

I am not sure making the export dialog & export preview window move together is useful. Personally, I would prefer that they both be movable independently, but maybe that is just me.

The zoom shortcuts work but produce an annoying system beep (just like in the latest Mac AP beta). The commands are also greyed out in the View > Zoom window & probably should not be.

[MattP]

19 hours ago, ELinder said:

Divide is still broken in this release candidate.

 

 

I have to say this, unfortunately, that if something hasn't been explicitly stated as fixed, it's not reasonable to list it as still not fixed - because we haven't said we've fixed it yet. If everyone did this then we would have a number of pages full of things that aren't fixed yet. That's simply not helpful. The Divide operation has been fixed in a development branch, to the best of my knowledge, but this is currently unreleased. A fix is coming, but it is not appropriate to put it into this version at present as the potential for disruption is far too high at this stage.

These long-standing issues are not ignored and they are not somehow classed as 'okay'... we simply haven't forgotten about them just because you see no obvious movement. As mentioned in the other forum post, Sean reiterated that the bug is logged and with development. Progress was being made and we're looking better with a comprehensive fix now, but it needs time and appropriate phases of development to launch this to the public.

Many thanks for bearing with us, I know it's not easy looking in from the outside when there is only so much we can say :)
Matt

[Jhonatan S]

Many Thanks @MattP 
I'll be testing right away 😊

[ELinder]

3 hours ago, MattP said:

I have to say this, unfortunately, that if something hasn't been explicitly stated as fixed, it's not reasonable to list it as still not fixed - because we haven't said we've fixed it yet. If everyone did this then we would have a number of pages full of things that aren't fixed yet. That's simply not helpful. The Divide operation has been fixed in a development branch, to the best of my knowledge, but this is currently unreleased. A fix is coming, but it is not appropriate to put it into this version at present as the potential for disruption is far too high at this stage.

These long-standing issues are not ignored and they are not somehow classed as 'okay'... we simply haven't forgotten about them just because you see no obvious movement. As mentioned in the other forum post, Sean reiterated that the bug is logged and with development. Progress was being made and we're looking better with a comprehensive fix now, but it needs time and appropriate phases of development to launch this to the public.

Many thanks for bearing with us, I know it's not easy looking in from the outside when there is only so much we can say :)
Matt

Matt,

I'm glad to hear that it's been fixed internally. However, when the list of fixes for the beta versions always include lines like "miscellaneous bug fixes and crash fixes" how are we to know what is or is not covered by that?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you're going to have beta versions, it needs to be done more systematically. Do you want people to just use the betas and generally see what happens, or do you want them to hammer specific problem areas? The list of specific things that are being worked for each release needs to include the bug numbers. Failing that at least give the registered beta testers the ability to read a bug tracking log to see what's fixed, what's actively being worked on, or still in the queue to be looked at.

Erich

[MattP]

1 minute ago, ELinder said:

Matt,

I'm glad to hear that it's been fixed internally. However, when the list of fixes for the beta versions always include lines like "miscellaneous bug fixes and crash fixes" how are we to know what is or is not covered by that?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you're going to have beta versions, it needs to be done more systematically. Do you want people to just use the betas and generally see what happens, or do you want them to hammer specific problem areas? The list of specific things that are being worked for each release needs to include the bug numbers. Failing that at least give the registered beta testers the ability to read a bug tracking log to see what's fixed, what's actively being worked on, or still in the queue to be looked at.

Erich

The problem is that those 'miscellaneous' items are usually things which the dev spots or nails down before they've even been brought to their attention as issues... If there's something like "Attempted to fix a long standing, widely reported problem" needs saying on the release list, it will most certainly be on the release list, so don't worry about missing it! I do agree that for testers it would be fantastic to have as much info as possible, but we have a very limited number of developers - who have very little spare time - it's not that it hasn't been thought of, it's more that it's hard to find the headspace and opportunity to log these things somewhere  

[Boldlinedesign]

6 hours ago, MattP said:

Many thanks for bearing with us, I know it's not easy looking in from the outside when there is only so much we can say :)

Thanks @MattP for sharing that whole last post. It's hard being on the outside looking in and wondering as time flies by if things we feel are necessary for full switch to Affinity will ever be added. I was worried some of the issues were just going to be left as-is - ok but never great - like the boolean operations. It's good to know that is not the mentality and approach Serif is taking overall. The list you all posted in the beginning was helpful to many of us because we had an idea of the vision and direction. I understand it came with some backlash from the customers and added pressure to your team's schedule.
So many of us want to see Affinity take off and be the solution for many abandoned by unnamed software companies. Some get rude in their frustration, I try hard to be blunt but not confrontational lol. I try to remember there are two sides to every story and I try to assume the best. Thanks for reminding us that you and the team are reading the comments and that you're not going to be settling for good instead of great

[Dazmondo77]

On 1/19/2021 at 3:48 PM, Dazmondo77 said:

Export preview is now great 👍

Shame I won't be using it, although it would be really handy - why? I use Designer and Photo via Publisher studiolink 95% of the time - I thought this was the whole point of studiolink

[fde101]

21 minutes ago, Dazmondo77 said:

I thought this was the whole point of studiolink

I believe the point of StudioLink is to make it more convenient to work with resources embedded in Publisher projects, not to replace the use of the other programs for their own dedicated tasks.

This is hardly the only thing you are missing by working that way - no access to the RAW development feature set or the Liquify or Tone Mapping features of Photo, no Export persona, etc.

[Move Along People]

-

 

[Dazmondo77]

6 hours ago, fde101 said:

This is hardly the only thing you are missing by working that way - no access to the RAW development feature set or the Liquify or Tone Mapping features of Photo, no Export persona, etc.

I don't have a problem with opening photo for RAW development feature set or the Liquify or Tone Mapping - or export persona and whatnot 

7 hours ago, fde101 said:

I believe the point of StudioLink is to make it more convenient to work with resources embedded in Publisher projects

I do believe that that you believe that that may be the point but I believe I have a pretty smooth workflow although I'm beginning to believe I'm being a very naughty boy for using publisher the wrong way

 

[fde101]

16 hours ago, haakoo said:

If one uses studiolink the 3 programs are bought and installed and should use all tools available to edit/adjust and export through all personas and not be restricted to one or the other.

Then what would be the point in having three programs?  They could just build it all into one program and be done with it - but that obviously is not what they want, as has been discussed multiple times in the past.

 

9 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

I believe I have a pretty smooth workflow although I'm beginning to believe I'm being a very naughty boy for using publisher the wrong way

If it works for you, great - nothing wrong with that, just possibly not what was intended.

[Dazmondo77]

8 hours ago, fde101 said:

If it works for you, great - nothing wrong with that, just possibly not what was intended.

Also just possibly what was intended? I love the way StudioLink works, probably my favourite thing about Affinity, in my opinion

[fde101]

3 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

Also just possibly what was intended?

Explained here: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/publisher/studiolink/

 

The way I'm reading it, the intent of "StudioLink" is to allow access to photo and illustration tools from within a Publisher project - in other words, you are designing a publication (what Publisher itself is intended for) and need to create or manipulate vector artwork, so you can switch to the Designer persona within Publisher to work with vector artwork that is being used inside of a document that is still basically within the realm of what Publisher is ultimately designed for.

I don't see any indication that it was ever intended to replace using Photo separately for working with a photo as the end product  or using Designer separately for creating vector artwork as the end product.  If you are creating an illustration as the end product in its own right, it would still be best to do that in Designer rather than in Publisher - but if you are creating a book or similar product and need to create an illustration to use within the book you are working on, that is what StudioLink is for, and for that it is great.

 

The current Export Preview feature is really optimized for standalone art pieces and does not seem to be particularly optimal for a publication.  While adding it to Publisher would not be unwelcome, I don't believe it would be particularly helpful for the use cases that Publisher is intended for.  I think a better option for Publisher would be to add a separate persona for prepress setup and similar tasks such as color separations and imposition and that a more complete preview function should be included as part of that persona.  Yes, Publisher would benefit from an export preview, but to really be useful for its intended use cases it needs something a bit more sophisticated than what has been added to Photo and Designer in this round of betas.