Affinity Designer Windows Customer Beta - 1.9.0.903 (RC2)

[Mark Ingram]

Click here to download the latest beta

Status: Customer Beta - Release Candidate 2
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post a new thread in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback. 

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.

Changes

• Fixed blank page when viewing registration page
• Fixed high memory use when installing content via account page
• Fixed potential memory corruption when using multiple Affinity applications at the same time
• Changed Export Preview shortcut keys to zoom in, rather than zoom out (Ctrl+2 = 200%, Ctrl+3 = 400%, Ctrl+4 = 800%)
• Fixed Export Preview window to close when transitioning to a format that doesn't support preview
• Fixed Export Preview window size to be remembered across sessions
• Disabled Export Timelapse if no history is available

1.9.0.900 release notes

[Jowday]

Export preview is great now. 🙂

Thanks

[MickRose]

I don't know if I'm missing something but PDF Passthrough seems to have gone. Maybe it was to fix the missing preview issue on some PDFs.

[Mithferion]

2 hours ago, Mark Ingram said:

Fixed Export Preview window to close when transitioning to a format that doesn't support preview

It still closes.

Best regards!

[Patrick Connor]

13 minutes ago, Mithferion said:

It still closes.

?? yes it's meant to, that is the fix . No preview for PDF or SVG so the preview window closes rather than stay open as in earlier incarnations. Is that not what you are seeing?

[Mithferion]

Just now, Patrick Connor said:

?? yes it's meant to, that is the fix . No preview for PDF or SVG so the preview window closes rather than stay open as in earlier incarnations. Is that not what you are seeing?

I never tried it before it so I thought the fix was the opposite. My apologies on not understanding the release note.

Best regards!

[Powerhorse]

In the Export Preview window Ctrl + 0 (for 100%) does not work

[Uncle Mez]

Thank @Mark Ingram for this release.
installed it on my side and it works good, will maybe give it a quick project to see how it handles stuffs a bit later during the day.

One thing i've noted that could bring a huge change for further release is font loading.
AfDesigner (but also AfPublisher and AfPhoto) are slow at font loading on startup but also when having to select from the app, if possible please make some improvements to that for the good of all users, it is crucial to have it proceed much faster.

I know it seem to run much faster with less than 500 fonts but in my case I do a lot of test and have to load new fonts like almost everyday and growing my base (currently around 2800 fonts) ... or unless you can do things the way Blender do them, allow us to select fonts from an external folder without a need to install them on our system then we will be able to lessen the load and gain more speed and reactivity of the app.
But i'm not a Dev so, I leave this to your skills and appreciation.

Thanks for the release!

[Seneca]

13 minutes ago, Uncle Mez said:

allow us to select fonts from an external folder without a need to install them on our system

This would be great indeed.

[carl123]

19 minutes ago, Powerhorse said:

In the Export Preview window Ctrl + 0 (for 100%) does not work

Ctrl+0 is zoom to fit, so it will zoom to fit the current preview window's size

Ctrl+1 is 100%

[Frozen Death Knight]

2 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

?? yes it's meant to, that is the fix . No preview for PDF or SVG so the preview window closes rather than stay open as in earlier incarnations. Is that not what you are seeing?

It works the way it is intended. As I mentioned in my preview feedback post about the feature, having the window close for file formats with no preview seemed like one solution to one of the problems plaguing the UI, and right now it works just fine on my end. Another thing that works really well is the Preview window remembering its placement and window size when closing down and opening, which is a much appreciated feature. I hope this gets added for other tools and features in the future. 

[Frozen Death Knight]

Anyway, some feedback time!

Right now the zoom values are inconsistent in that it is not possible to get 100% zoom with regular scrolling consistently. Apparently changing export size of your final image affects the % values for your zoom. When I typed in 2k in height for one project the zoom values became even so I could get 100% zoom values, but when I changed the values some more the base % values became uneven again, which makes you unable to get the desired 100% zoom value to check for any potential rendering artefacts (unless you break the controls by pressing "Z" on the keyboard which unlocks the values completely by zooming in every 1 percent instead of ever 10 percent like it is now).

Another piece of feedback I want to give is in regards to the lack of feedback on the Preview window when the program begins rendering based on settings changed for a specific file format. When you switch between file formats you get this swirly loading bar at the bottom of the window, which is really nice, but when you do minor edits that can take a while for a specific file format (i.e. changing settings like Resample, Size, etc.) the only feedback you get that the preview is rendering is in a small section called Estimated File Size which says "Calculating...". I would honestly like it if the swirly bar at the bottom appeared in those cases as well, since at first I got very confused when I tried different Resample settings and nothing seemed to happen until I saw that small "Calculating..." text, which I think is inconsistent with the UI that has been created when switching file formats.

P.S. I tried to upload a video of these problems, but got error -200 on the forums.

[Jowday]

2 hours ago, Powerhorse said:

In the Export Preview window Ctrl + 0 (for 100%) does not work

@Mark Ingram 100% doc window vs 100% export window? JPG export.

Hint: I have configured Windows to scale fonts to 117% (but I can't image why it would affect the pixel preview).

Edit: It probably is the scaling; it doesn't occur on my work machine with no scaling.

Windows 10 shortcuts:

• Control + 0 = Fit to window
• Control + 1 = 100%
• Control + 2 = 200%
• Control + 3 = 400%
• Control + 4 = 800%
• Control and +/- zooms in increments of 10%
• Control + mouse wheel zooms in increments of 10%
• Shift + control + mouse wheel zooms in increments of 100%
• Alt + mouse wheel = vertical scrolling
• Shift + mouse wheel = horisontal scrolling

[Frozen Death Knight]

20 minutes ago, Jowday said:

Windows 10 shortcuts:

• Control + 0 = Fit to window
• Control + 1 = 100%
• Control + 2 = 200%
• Control + 3 = 400%
• Control + 4 = 800%
• Control and +/- zooms in increments of 10%
• Control + mouse wheel zooms in increments of 10%
• Shift + control + mouse wheel zooms in increments of 100%
• Alt + mouse wheel = vertical scrolling
• Shift + mouse wheel = horisontal scrolling

Are you able to replicate the Z-key bug? If you press Z the controls for your mouse/tablet pen change drastically from what you wrote down here. At least it does on my end.

[Jowday]

52 minutes ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

Are you able to replicate the Z-key bug? If you press Z the controls for your mouse/tablet pen change drastically from what you wrote down here. At least it does on my end.

Nope Z doesn't seem to alter the behavior.

[m.vlad]

3 hours ago, Uncle Mez said:

Thank @Mark Ingram for this release.
installed it on my side and it works good, will maybe give it a quick project to see how it handles stuffs a bit later during the day.

One thing i've noted that could bring a huge change for further release is font loading.
AfDesigner (but also AfPublisher and AfPhoto) are slow at font loading on startup but also when having to select from the app, if possible please make some improvements to that for the good of all users, it is crucial to have it proceed much faster.

I know it seem to run much faster with less than 500 fonts but in my case I do a lot of test and have to load new fonts like almost everyday and growing my base (currently around 2800 fonts) ... or unless you can do things the way Blender do them, allow us to select fonts from an external folder without a need to install them on our system then we will be able to lessen the load and gain more speed and reactivity of the app.
But i'm not a Dev so, I leave this to your skills and appreciation.

Thanks for the release!

have you tried FontBase? It's supposed to help you manage large font libraries by only enabling fonts when you need them

[Uncle Mez]

8 minutes ago, m.vlad said:

have you tried FontBase? It's supposed to help you manage large font libraries by only enabling fonts when you need them

Tried it but
1- fontbase run slow on my PC
2- is external and I'm not sure it can mimic or achieve  what i asked ... but i'll consider to give it another try one of these days 

Thanks

[Mark Ingram]

2 hours ago, Jowday said:

@Mark Ingram 100% doc window vs 100% export window? JPG export.

Hint: I have configured Windows to scale fonts to 117% (but I can't image why it would affect the pixel preview).

Edit: It probably is the scaling; it doesn't occur on my work machine with no scaling.

Windows 10 shortcuts:

• Control + 0 = Fit to window
• Control + 1 = 100%
• Control + 2 = 200%
• Control + 3 = 400%
• Control + 4 = 800%
• Control and +/- zooms in increments of 10%
• Control + mouse wheel zooms in increments of 10%
• Shift + control + mouse wheel zooms in increments of 100%
• Alt + mouse wheel = vertical scrolling
• Shift + mouse wheel = horisontal scrolling

Hmm, your preview does indeed look approx 17% larger... 

[Jowday]

3 minutes ago, Mark Ingram said:

Hmm, your preview does indeed look approx 17% larger... 

It is caused by display scaling. I took the liberty to make a thread especially for this: 🙂

 

[Jowday]

 

[giusbru]

on the version -beta-1.9.0.903 after using brush tool for few strokes on illustration, the app crash. instead in the previous version -beta-1.9.0.891 if I use always the brush tool before app crash I did a lot of layers and curves, for illustration, allow me to complete drawing (almost), for artists is better.

 I'll continue to use the version -beta-1.9.0.891 until the problem is fixed on the newest because the artists use affinity designer to create illustration and the basic need is brush and pencil tool with a lot of layers.

p.s. sometimes the restore copy isn't available, why?

[thegary]

So far so good...Fast, really like the contour tool.

Looking forward to final  release.

Gary

 

[dev4press]

Latest RC2, for me preview export doesn't work. Preview window is open and empty, and loader icon is spinning and it does nothing. Tried it with PNG, JPEG and GIF export.

And, when I open Export Preview, memory usage skyrockets, from about 1GB to 4GB.

The export preview starts working, if I close and reopen Designer few times. But, with any preview, memory usage is very high.

[Mark Ingram]

16 minutes ago, dev4press said:

Latest RC2, for me preview export doesn't work. Preview window is open and empty, and loader icon is spinning and it does nothing. Tried it with PNG, JPEG and GIF export.

And, when I open Export Preview, memory usage skyrockets, from about 1GB to 4GB.

The export preview starts working, if I close and reopen Designer few times. But, with any preview, memory usage is very high.

Sounds like you have a pretty large / complex document (it probably is still generating the preview). Can you attach the document in question so we can verify?

[Jowday]

27 minutes ago, Mark Ingram said:

Sounds like you have a pretty large / complex document (it probably is still generating the preview). Can you attach the document in question so we can verify?

I verified with my most complex drawing - can't share it unfortunately - but generating the preview takes a very long time, same goes for every update when I change JPG compression setting.

I must add that I would rarely pixel peel such huge documents at various export settings in Designer - I use the feature for small to medium sized web images. But perhaps smaller documents with tons of layers and complexity takes time to render as well. My test doc is A2.

Also have to add that I would use it to inspect and pixel peep high res photos to check for banding and JPG artifacts if I used Photo for my photography - but I don't. But it looks like Photo updates the preview much faster.