Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.9.0.23 - RC3)

[MattP]

Status: Release Candidate

Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes

Requirements: Purchased Affinity Designer

Mac App Store: 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

- Replacing an image via the context toolbar now allows users to specify linked or embedded placement
- Fix for TIFF in the Export Preview window
- Present user with notice relating to the terms accepted in order to use H264 encoding in Export Timelapse

 

Changes Since 1.8.x

- Numerous drawing issues resolved
- Fix for paste-style leaving objects with misbehaving lines
- Fix for PDF export on an M1 Mac causing issues
- Fix for PDF passthrough failures. Disabled passthrough of multi-page PDFs (for now, at least)
- Fix for macOS beep when using keyboard shortcuts within the Export Preview window
- 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
- 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

[000]

YES! Awesome update! I'm waiting for the App Store release. Thanks for the great work in advance! 

🥂 or 🍻 or 🍹🍹 -- whichever you prefer!

[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 beta, as we are still making last minute changes

We have 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 initially receive a free brush kit (the luminance brush kit) for testing purposes. This might be a kit you already have, but if you don’t you will get it for free. Over the next few weeks this will be expanded to include all of the store content you may already own.

 

There have been lots of behind the scene improvements and more of the purchasable and (historical) free claimable content is being added. PLEASE report anything you find using "My Account" IN THAT THREAD

[Gear maker]

I'm still having the problem if the layer panel has focus then most if not all keystrokes are ignored.  Which is the majority of the time that I use hotkeys.  If I select a layer from the layer panel then want to change tools I have to click in the drawing first, I might as well click on the tool than do that.  So basically all hotkeys are useless to me.  What was changed back around 1.9.0.11 that would cause this?

 

[MattP]

On 1/26/2021 at 2:36 PM, Gear maker said:

I'm still having the problem if the layer panel has focus then most if not all keystrokes are ignored.  Which is the majority of the time that I use hotkeys.  If I select a layer from the layer panel then want to change tools I have to click in the drawing first, I might as well click on the tool than do that.  So basically all hotkeys are useless to me.  What was changed back around 1.9.0.11 that would cause this?

 

There should be another RC beta being built any moment that I can hopefully release to you tomorrow that will resolve this problem

[Gear maker]

33 minutes ago, MattP said:

There should be another RC beta being built any moment that I can hopefully release to you tomorrow that will resolve this problem

Matt, that would be great.  I can get back to using the betas then.  Thank you.  Mike

[Patrick Connor]

25 minutes ago, ashlenn said:

I downloaded the file and installed it in the same location as my Mac App Store purchased Designer application and it keeps asking for a product key. I really need to package a project and it's not work.

 

This is the Designer beta thread. Your screenshot shows Affinity Publisher.

Any beta build released before the 12th November 2020 will not run up anymore since Publisher 1.8.6 was launched on the Mac App Store

Publisher 1.9.0.796 shown in your screenshot was released on 13th October.

I suggest you download the Affinity Publisher 1.9.0.920 Release Candidate in the top post in this thread 

If you are also having a problem with an Affinity Designer beta released before 12th November 2020, then I suggest you download the latest beta for that also (first post in this thread) 

[ashlenn]

1 minute ago, Patrick Connor said:

Any beta build released before the 12th November will not run up anymore since Publisher 1.8.6 was launched on the Mac App Store

Publisher 1.9.0.796 shown in your screenshot was released on 13th October.

I suggest you download the Affinity Publisher 1.9.0.920 Release Candidate in the top post in this thread 

 

Downloading that one now. I thought I had downloaded that one but must have grabbed something else.  I desperately hope this fixes the issue. I love this software. 

[Dazmondo77]

Finding Select Tag Colour and Select Same Name a really handy feature but seems a bit awkward to easily access when right clicking a tagged layer to view the contextual menu, as all the stuff at the top is the obvious shortcut fodder for most users and the Tag and select stuff is hidden at the bottom - what would be great was if we had a way of reorganising this contextual menu as I realise that some users probably do use this as an option to copy and paste, but I suspect that most users would just use the standard shortcuts, in which case the space is wasted - I'd personally love the option to move the Tag and select stuff to the top for easy access which could open up options for a really great workflow for organising items scattered throughout a layer stack