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Autodesk has bought iDraw, added some new features and renamed it "Autodesk Graphic." It hit the streets on October 8th.

 

First of all, not saying that anyone should be worried, it's just that I've found that it's always good to keep an eye on your competition. Congratulations, Affinity...you have garnered Autodesk's interest in the vector creation/illustration market share. Given the fact that they added brushes, clearly this was meant as a warning shot at you and/or the Foundry (for Mischief).

 

The good news is this: Autodesk has already announced that they plan to take all of their offerings and place them under a subscription model (similar to Adobe) by the end of 2015.

 

http://www.graphics.com/article/idraw-relaunched-autodesk-graphic-vector-design-and-illustration

 

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/10/08/idraw-for-ios-is-now-autodesk-graphic-and-gets-an-iphone-app/

 

http://graphic.autodesk.com/

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I think they acquired Indeeo to have a tablet-ready vector tool available for the launch of iPad Pro.

They have been harmonising UI for years: an Autodesk user makes concepts in Sketchbook, refine in Alias Studio, export to Surface or Inventor. Almost seamless.

iDraw is far from any UX paradigm designed by Autodesk recently.

I have the sensation that they will dismiss it once their vector graphic tool is done...

 

Anyway Autodesk Graphic is not the only one.

 

From mothballs ( :P ) ... Canvas 8 re-built for OSX...

http://www.canvasx.com/en/products/canvas-draw

The white dog, making tools for artists, illustrators and doodlers

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I worked on the Canvas 6 packaging when I was freelancing for one of my professors in undergraduate design school, back when it was owned by Deneba, out of Miami, FL. They were doing vector and raster in one app, and it had some very neat features, but we did all the packaging and graphics work in Illustrator, Photoshop and Quark (no Indesign back then)... Funny seeing it resurrected, lol...

 

 

I think they acquired Indeeo to have a tablet-ready vector tool available for the launch of iPad Pro.

They have been harmonising UI for years: an Autodesk user makes concepts in Sketchbook, refine in Alias Studio, export to Surface or Inventor. Almost seamless.

iDraw is far from any UX paradigm designed by Autodesk recently.

I have the sensation that they will dismiss it once their vector graphic tool is done...

 

Anyway Autodesk Graphic is not the only one.

 

From mothballs ( :P ) ... Canvas 8 re-built for OSX...

http://www.canvasx.com/en/products/canvas-draw

 

 

Canvas Draw...look who just came back (I used Canvas 3.5 for illustration at a job in New Mexico)!

2021 16” Macbook Pro w/ M1 Max 10c cpu /24c gpu, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Ventura 13.6

2018 11" iPad Pro w/ A12X cpu/gpu, 256 GB, iPadOS 17

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PLEASE SERIF, make using colors with the Affinity gradient tool as easy to use as it is in Graphic! This is the main big blemish on Affinity Designer.

Are you referring to the on-document gradient tool, or the context menu drop-down gradient panel? I find the on-document tool insanely easy - but I'm open to improvements if we've missed something? :S

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MEB  - What I would like for it to do is make it easy to move the purple to the end of the gradient (I am going off of the example video.) Yes, I could click on the blue and change it to purple but I want to keep the blue in the gradient. Try doing this operation in Graphic (switch the blue and purple) and then try doing the same thing in Affinity. With Graphic there really is nothing to it; you move the blue away from the end which frees up space where you can drop a copy or move the blue.

 

Matt - This problem effects both gradient tools if I remember correctly.

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Thanks, Kip - now I understand what you meant - no, we currently don't allow you to move the end colours away from the start/end of the gradient's path unlike Graphic. That was deliberate so that you have a better, clearer interaction with regards to just placing the gradient on your design where you expect it to be. I'm sure we can add this extra functionality with a modifier to detach the colour from the start/end but I wouldn't want it to work like that without the modifier - I use our gradient tools quickly and efficiently all the time and this extra functionality shouldn't interfere with the default behaviour, as moving the colours in from the start/end is a far less common use-case.

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I looked at it very briefly, then dismissed it. The main reason is that I´m mighty impressed with Designer already, like what I can do with that probably for a long time to come, if not forever. A secondary reason is that I also love Autodesk´s SketchBook Pro, which is subscription based indeed; however, the fee for that is peanuts compared to Adobe really, I´m billed about 20$ for a yearly one... It can build up quickly though, if not paying attention.  ;)

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Matt, we agree fully. Sorry for discussing this here. The “problem“ we have with the gradient tool is that snapping (of the stops) is not working right from the start and if one stop was already activated or if we want to snap an added stop, it does not snap.

 

 

Thanks, Kip - now I understand what you meant - no, we currently don't allow you to move the end colours away from the start/end of the gradient's path unlike Graphic. That was deliberate so that you have a better, clearer interaction with regards to just placing the gradient on your design where you expect it to be. I'm sure we can add this extra functionality with a modifier to detach the colour from the start/end but I wouldn't want it to work like that without the modifier - I use our gradient tools quickly and efficiently all the time and this extra functionality shouldn't interfere with the default behaviour, as moving the colours in from the start/end is a far less common use-case.

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Matt, I think we can reach a common ground between what both of us our saying. If I could drag the middle swatch in the gradient down to the end so it "bumped" the end swatch in the gradient down a way from the end a little (so the two swatches swapped places) I would be fine with that solution. This way there would always be a swatch at the end of the gradient and yet it would be vastly easier to perform the color location swap.

 

For an example of what I mean by swatch swapping think about how dragging an icon over other dock icons causes them to shift to the side as they are passed over. I could see something exactly like that used with the swatches. This seems like it would be a solution that actually works better then Graphic since it gives you the best of both worlds.

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Hi KipV,

Do you know you can use the Colour panel to select gradient's colours directly? You don't have to use the Gradient panel or dialogs. Check this clip (no sound).

This is what I noticed when doing what you did MEB. I think I did it like you but it is acting weird. Check it out. It reverts back to default when I try to change the colors on the stops onscreen.

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Matt, I think we can reach a common ground between what both of us our saying. If I could drag the middle swatch in the gradient down to the end so it "bumped" the end swatch in the gradient down a way from the end a little (so the two swatches swapped places) I would be fine with that solution. This way there would always be a swatch at the end of the gradient and yet it would be vastly easier to perform the color location swap.

 

For an example of what I mean by swatch swapping think about how dragging an icon over other dock icons causes them to shift to the side as they are passed over. I could see something exactly like that used with the swatches. This seems like it would be a solution that actually works better then Graphic since it gives you the best of both worlds.

 

 

Hi Kip, the behaviour you're describing sounds sleek, but what if you have to deal with a large amount of points?

What to do with middle point handle?

 

I think that the current way to edit/create gradients has only to be "digested" a bit.

The start/end stops equivalence with handles is a more than acceptable compromise.

The strengths of AD approach are at least three:

 

1) Consistent way to direct/indirect gradient editing

2) Designed for direct editing (the only usable direct gradient tool today with Sketch's one)

3) Last but not least... It is mobile ready

The white dog, making tools for artists, illustrators and doodlers

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I'll try to explain my point a bit more...

Swapping points from center to borders (start/end) is an "happy path".

 

In a scenario like the one below, where I need at least 4 stops in a 24px wide area, as a user such a feature could drive me crazy

 

gradient.png

 

Where does swapping threshold start/end?

The white dog, making tools for artists, illustrators and doodlers

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