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Where Affinity fails


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Affinity all products 1.9.3 - i see this in publisher Mac, but it is certainly all the same problems on Windows and the all apps.

I said this 3 years ago: Affinitys swatches are built wrong. Anyone using a swatch does this is in the assumption that elements it applies to stay connected to the swatch. Therefore changing the swatch all elements change with it. Would a user not want tis connection, he would simply define independent colors on the color mixer instead of defining a swatch. The connection is the whole reason why swatches exist, otherwise why bother defining one?

But in affinity, if you want elements connected to a swatch this way, you have to learn using Global swatches and know how to do it and always be very careful in applying. The slightest error and you end up with elements that do not change when changing the swatch.

Furthermore, despite you then have an element with a connected gobal swatch - when copy paste to another document, the swatch does not come with it. There is again another type of swatch for that - why do things simple, when you can do it complicated so everyone has to read a book or flood the forum before being able to use affinity products - seems to be the motto at Serif.

And there are so many more subtle wrong implementation in Affinitys GUI that make their usage so frustrating and errors happening so frequently. One of many examples: You define a color for a text style, say you use a specific swatch and highlight it. You close the style setting. If you later check, open the edit window of that style again and check its color, the color mixer comes up, you have to change over to the swatch list and even then you still do not know what color is set because no swatch is shown highlighted.

And dont get me started on the handling of paths and path points, the missing of a fundamental distort tool in Designer - all that defies any logic too.

As an interface designer and founder of the FreeFreeHand movement, I gave such input to Affinity already three years ago FOR FREE and they still don't get it.

Do not understand me wrong. I am using Affinity products every day and I am glad they are around. But I would have much more confidence in them, if those fundamental functions would work correctly, instead of me having to work around them all the time.

Bildschirmfoto 2021-05-09 um 10.04.48.png

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This seems like a Feature Request, not a Bug report. Perhaps you should Hide this and repost?

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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4 hours ago, Thomahawk said:

Affinitys swatches are built wrong

Don't know if it's "right" or "wrong", but there's definitely a major flaw or a bug:

4 hours ago, Thomahawk said:

the handling of paths and path points

I, for one, like it.
Unlike the "Schmadobe Way".
Apparently you can't please everybody… ;)

4 hours ago, Thomahawk said:

missing of a fundamental distort tool in Designer - all that defies any logic

That's not a matter of "logic". The feature just hasn't been implemented yet. I'd strongly assume the Serif developers have reasons, be it technical or business-wise, but they obviously won't tell us. It sucks, but that's all we can do about it now. When they're ready, it will come.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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  • 1 year later...

Well, it is ONE YEAR later and still, Affinity designer is not able to handle this basic tasks. I defined a global spot color, as a document swatch. Copying it over to another document, the swatch does not come with it. Sure, you could create a systemwide swatch, but if I would do that for every set of swatches I use, I would have hundreds of them.

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  • Staff

Hi @Thomahawk,

Firstly, let me apologise for the lack of response to your initial post - I have checked the internal 'ticketing' system that our Technical Support / QA team use and it appears as though this post did not create a 'ticket' at the time, so our team had missed this thread. I've informed my manager of this, to check we are not missing any further posts, however I extend our apologies for any feelings of being ignored here, as it certainly wasn't intended.

On 5/9/2021 at 9:27 AM, Thomahawk said:

Furthermore, despite you then have an element with a connected gobal swatch - when copy paste to another document, the swatch does not come with it.

I can confirm this is unfortunately a limitation of the applications currently - however this is logged with our development team as an improvement for a future update, so I'll be sure to add your voice to this internal report now.

On 5/9/2021 at 9:27 AM, Thomahawk said:

You define a color for a text style, say you use a specific swatch and highlight it. You close the style setting. If you later check, open the edit window of that style again and check its color, the color mixer comes up, you have to change over to the swatch list and even then you still do not know what color is set because no swatch is shown highlighted.

When defining a swatch for a Text Style, the name of the swatch can be seen in the Style Settings dialog, at the bottom of the Text Style dialog. Equally, if you reopen the colour swatch within the Colour & Decorations tab, setting the colour view to 'Tint' (which happened automatically for me when reopening this dialog) will show you the name of the applied swatch -

image.png

I hope this clears things up & we sincerely appreciate your feedback here - as we understand how important this is to continue to develop and improve the Affinity apps for our users :)

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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Thank you for your interesting feedback. Great to hear some official information on the swap problem.

Regarding textstyle color setting in publisher, it is indeed still so, that the actual swatch is not highlighted, as you can see on this screenshot from the actual version 1.10.5 for mac. Good that a color is visible in the rectangle, but imagine you use several swatches with very similar colors, but in the color palette you can not see which one is actually selected.

Bildschirmfoto 2022-06-16 um 11.30.06.png

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1 hour ago, Thomahawk said:

but imagine you use several swatches with very similar colors, but in the color palette you can not see which one is actually selected.

But what do you see in the Color (Fabre) tab? Does it give you the name, at least? And what about the Style Settings box at the bottom (which your screenshot doesn't show)?

Yes, highlighting it would be nice, but if the name is visible that at least gives you something to distinguish among the similar colors.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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  • Staff
1 hour ago, Thomahawk said:

Regarding textstyle color setting in publisher, it is indeed still so, that the actual swatch is not highlighted, as you can see on this screenshot from the actual version 1.10.5 for mac. Good that a color is visible in the rectangle, but imagine you use several swatches with very similar colors, but in the color palette you can not see which one is actually selected.

Thanks for confirming that for me, I've checked in Publisher Windows and the swatch is highlighted here -

image.png

Therefore I'm logging a bug with our developers now for macOS, as I believe the swatch should be highlighted in this dialog, as it is in the Swatches Studio / Context Toolbar fill :)

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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