affinity designer Artwork for greetings cards

[William Overington]

Saturday 1 May 2021

Two issues that have been puzzling me. Can anyone help please?

First issue.

Papier (needs/prefers) CMYK at 300 dots per inch.

Thinking back to when I produced the artwork for the card with the software unicorns I could not remember choosing CMYK, and checking now on a copy of the .afdesign file, I cannot find anywhere in the export facility that appears to give me a choice.

Yet it is entirely possible that the original gif file was rgb colours - but I do not actually know.

So is a jpg file automatically always by definition CMYK?

The hardcopy print is fine. So whatever happened regarding the colours, either they were fine as sent or the Papier system did what was needed.

Second issue.

Also, I am wondering, if an rgb image file from outside is placed in an Affinity Designer document, and a CMYK output is requested in some format, does Affinity Designer do whatever is necessary, or is a placed image sent out as it was placed, or is the action selectable?

William

 

 

[William Overington]

There are replies to the above issues in another thread.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/141333-colour-format-when-exporting-in-jpg-from-affinity-designer/

William

 

[Wosven]

On 4/19/2021 at 9:01 AM, William Overington said:

I have been wondering how to do a vase with shade and light using an Affinity Designer watercolour brush.

I am thinking of drawing the vase using the pen tool, and flood filling it with a light grey colour.

Then adding a new layer and, using a watercolour brush, drawing a grey vertical on the left side of the vase and a white vertical on the right side of the vase.

Then adding a new layer and, using a watercolour brush, paint the whole vase in a pale blue colour.

Is that the way to produce an image of a vase with shade and light please?

Usually, oil/gouache use a different way to construct the painting than watercolour.

With oil and gouache, you begin with darker colors in the background, and add the lighters ones layers by layers above. With oil, it can give a subtle idea of transparency, since the last layers of colors can be translucent.

With watercolors, usually, the white is the one of the paper. So you'll add the lighter colors first, sometimes with large brushes, and go to darker colors later, to add finest  details in the end.

[William Overington]

The following web page has a list of Esperanto correlatives

http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/correlatives.html

I am thinking of how to design a language-independent emoji for each of them and to produce an image showing them all.

I am thinking of double deck designs with the upper half indicative in some stylised way of the first part of the Esperanto correlative word and the lower half indicative in some stylised way of the second part of the Esperanto correlative word.

Yet language-independent abstract bold designs.

So my initial thoughts are to use a 7 by 7 chunky pixel grid (in an 8 x 8 cell) and have the upper part in three rows and the lower part in three rows with the middle row blank.

I am thinking of also adding some designs such as a language-independent emoji for the English word 'here' which in Esperanto is 'ĉi tie' and is thus related.

The designs need to be clearly distinguishable each from the others even if in monochrome, but I am thiking of colour-coding, so that, for example, the 'universal' ones are green and the 'negative' ones are red, with other colours for the others.

Please note that the Esperanto word 'iam' is translated into English as 'sometime', the Esperanto word for the English word 'sometimes' is 'iafoje'.

So I need to design an emoji for the English word 'sometimes' as well.

William

[Alfred]

24 minutes ago, William Overington said:

Please note that the Esperanto word 'iam' is translated into English as 'sometime', the Esperanto word for the English word 'sometimes' is 'iafoje'.

Is that ‘sometime’ as in ‘erstwhile’?

[William Overington]

2 hours ago, Alfred said:

Is that ‘sometime’ as in ‘erstwhile’?

I am not sure.

I have just looked up the word 'erstwhile'.

https://www.lexico.com/definition/erstwhile

The word 'sometime' is listed under the synonyms for 'erstwhile'.

However,

https://www.lexico.com/definition/sometime

has 'erstwhile' as a synonym of only one of the listed meanings of 'sometime'.

William

 

 

 

[William Overington]

Here are the first two of the upper part designs.

These are for the 'never' group and for the 'universal' group.

never group This was the most straightforward. The n from the Esperanto, which is the n from never, nothing, no, not, non, ne, nein.

 

universal group. Originally I was thinking of the c from the c circumflex used for the universal words in the Esperanto correlatives, but it seemed that it would need a horizontal line all the way across rows 1 and 3 counting from the top, with just column 1 filled in row 2. However, the design that I decided to use is both indicative or universal and has a sort of pure mathematics connection to the set theory symbol for union and is the inverse shape for the symbol used for the upper part for the negative group. So it seems a much better solution.

 

William

 

 

 

[William Overington]

Here is my design for the upper part of the emoji for the pointer group, which start with a letter t in Esperanto.

Here is my design for the close up versions of the pointer group (for example 'here' as the close up version of  'there'), which are in Esperanto two words, the pointer word preceded by the two-letter word spelled by c circumflex followed by i. I have produced this stylised design, which is influenced by the c from the c circumflex and the t.

William

[William Overington]

For the upper part of the 'some' group, here is my design. It is influenced by the letter i as it appears in some monospaced fonts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The design for the upper part of the question group was a bit of a problem.

I had thought of a design influenced by the k of the question words of Esperanto.

However, upon producing the design it did not seem to work well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I produced a different design based upon a question mark.

William

 

[William Overington]

Now for the lower parts.

I am hoping to produce them in the order of the rows in the table in the following linked document.

http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/correlatives.html

Each design is influenced to a greater or lesser extent by the Esperanto ending.

The designs are shown in grey. This is not the intended use colour. I am thinking that the colour used in an abstract emoji will be the same colour as the colour of the upper part of that abstract emoji.

Here are the first two designs. The colourful part is five chunky pixels wide centred.

My designs are that the single letter Esperanto endings are five chunky pixels wide and the two-letter Esperanto endings are seven chunky pixels wide.

This is fine as each of the six upper part chunky pixel designs are seven chunky pixels wide, so the resulting abstract emoji character design will always be seven chunky pixels wide.

Individual, designed influenced by -u

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thing, design influenced by -o

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

William

 

 

 

 

 

[William Overington]

Here are two more. Here the design influence of the letter is not as strong, but is still there, given the design constraints. The upper part of a two level lowercase a, and the lower part of a lowercase e given my design choice to make the designs distinct from each other.

KInd, design influenced by -a

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Place, design influenced by -e

 

 

 

 

 

 

William

 

 

[William Overington]

Motion, design influenced by -en

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

William

 

[William Overington]

Time, design influenced by -am

 

 

 

 

 

 

Motion, design influenced by -om

 

[William Overington]

Manner, design influenced by -el

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reason, design influenced by -al

 

 

 

 

 

 

`

Possession, design influenced by -es

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

William

 

[William Overington]

So, try for a complete abstract emoji by using an upper part and a lower part together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is it better with a pale yellow background to indicate that it all part of one glyph?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

William

 

[Alfred]

15 minutes ago, William Overington said:

Is it better with a pale yellow background to indicate that it all part of one glyph?

I don’t think it’s necessary to include a background colour. After all, letters like i and j don’t routinely have one, nor do symbols such as =, ÷, % and ‰.

[William Overington]

So, with the recipe for sixty abstract emoji characters explained, there needs a method to use them.

For research purposes, and maybe for long-term practical use, a Mariposa System encoding can be used.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/mariposa_novel.htm

Suppose that we introduce two parameters, U (for upper) and L (for lower).

For question, let U=1

For pointer, let U=2

For indefinite, let U=3

For universal, let U=4

For negative, let U=5

For pointer nearby, let U=9, so that the same technique is used, but somewhat separate from the others as it is not part of that collection as such.

Let values of L go from 0 through to 9 for the lower parts in the order in which they are dissplayed in this thread, which is the same order as in the table in the linked document.

Then each of these emoji may be referenced by a code of the format

%8UL

The figure 8 being chosen as it has both an upper part and a lower part.

So, for example, the abstract emoji displayed two posts previously, is encoded in The Mariposa System as

%845

as the upper part has U=4 and the lower part has L=5 so, using %8 as the start of the sequence, the encoding is

%845

An OpenType font with a suitable GSUB glyph substitution statement encoded as if the abstract emoji glyph is a ligature (using the OpenType liga table) gives access to the glyph in a suitable application program, with a graceful fallback display in non-OpenType applications or without use of a suitable font or with ligatures turned off..

William

 

 

 

 

[Alfred]

17 minutes ago, William Overington said:

An OpenType font with a suitable GSUB glyph substitution statement encoded as if the abstract emoji glyph is a ligature (using the OpenType liga table) gives access to the glyph in a suitable application program, with a graceful fallback display in non-OpenType applications or without use of a suitable font or with discretionary ligatures turned off.

If it’s a discretionary ligature, shouldn’t the glyph be tagged as ‘dlig’ rather than ‘liga’?

Contextual alternate (‘calt’) is another possibility, although I think there is still relatively poor browser support for that feature.

[William Overington]

22 minutes ago, Alfred said:

If it’s a discretionary ligature, shouldn’t the glyph be tagged as ‘dlig’ rather than ‘liga’?

Contextual alternate (‘calt’) is another possibility, although I think there is still relatively poor browser support for that feature.

Yes, you are correct, so as I intend liga to be used I will edit the post to remove the word discretionary.

William

 

[William Overington]

On 5/5/2021 at 10:22 AM, Alfred said:

Contextual alternate (‘calt’) is another possibility, although I think there is still relatively poor browser support for that feature.

How would contextual alternate be applied for these glyphs please?

William

 

 

[Alfred]

50 minutes ago, William Overington said:

How would contextual alternate be applied for these glyphs please?

William

It’s too long ago since I last looked at this, so I’m afraid I’m not sure of the details. I only mentioned it because I remembered that Terrance Weinzierl’s Rebus Script uses the feature to substitute line drawings for certain letter combinations (e.g. a bed wherever the letters b, e, and d appear in sequence). Edit: Please see the rebus vocabulary chart on pages 10 and 11 of the Ascender Font Pack 2010 User Guide.

By the way, the name of the OpenType feature is ‘Contextual Alternates’ (plural). My apologies!

[William Overington]

I have found these threads, which I had forgotten about. The second one relates to Affinity Publisher.

https://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4680

https://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7815

William

 

[William Overington]

This link may be of some interest to readers.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/75641-copying-text-out-of-a-pdf-document-when-the-font-has-opentype-ligature-capability

William

 

 

[William Overington]

I am thinking of buying a graphics tablet.

There is a spin-off thread about this as follows.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/141780-i-am-thinking-of-buying-a-wacom-drawing-tablet/

William

 

[William Overington]

So, having admired the image of the robot in the thread

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/141604-may-the-4th-be-with-you/

and learning it was done using acrylic brushes using a graphics tablet, but not having a grraphics tablet myself at the time, I am now trying to have a go at trying to gain experience of using acrylic brushes with the pen tool 

William