Things to stop ruining the "flow"

[elguapo]

My main tools in work are Concepts, Procreate and Affinity Designer on iPad, and Affinity Designer + Photoshop on Desktop. I am also learning Publisher just because it's beautiful.

The first two apps are pieces of art, and they just work. Every tool you need is just there. They don't stand in the way and let you create anything you can imagine. And do it impeccably. While I am absolutely passionate about Affinity products, unfortunately, I can't say the same about Designer. It's amazing to be able to have one part of work in pencil draft and other beautifully rendered in one document. Affinity Designer does it like no one else. But there is constantly something that needs to be done in 4 or 5 steps when it could be done in 1. These unnecessary complications constantly ruin the state of "flow," which is the most precious element in our field of work.

I'll create requests for each topic, but they are all part of this one architecture, in my opinion. One philosophy.

1. There is no option to create my own tools. E.g., I can't create an 8 px pencil with specific red color (as in Photoshop or Concepts). I need to choose the brush in one palette (why no context menu), then select the color separately. which brings us to
    
2. Color chooser. The palette is small and non-resizeable. There is a bigger Color Chooser palette, but I can't open it without double-clicking the color. And no shortcut. Ok, I can just drag the Color palette (Some illustrators use the same workaround on Youtube) and let it float in the center, but then it blocks the view. Ok, I can at least add a shortcut to Color studio to show/hide it. But then I encounter this bug. The panel just won't open in full screen again.
    
3. I want to create a layer with a Multiply effect quickly, in one step. No Actions (like in Photoshop). Ok, at least a keyboard shortcut; I'll add it to the Intuos Pro menu or the Astropad menu for faster work. Again none.
    
4. No ability to quickly go through the layers like Opt + [ ] in Photoshop. Same, no shortcuts.
    
5. Palm rejection is terrible on the iPad version. Thing of evil. But if it is so awful, please, bring the small toggle bar somewhere close. Instead, I have to close the document, enter settings, check-uncheck "only for gestures," and re-open the document.
    
6. Same thing with the "Select object when it intersects with marquee." Sometimes I need it, and sometimes I don't need it. In Concepts, it's solved beautifully in the marquee section. Why no keyboard shortcut or tiny checkbox in the V tool?

These and many-many-many other small things combine and, instead of providing leisure after good creative work, provide many repetitions of battling these small mundane tasks.

[Intuos5]

For 4. You should set shortcuts to select previous and next:

You can do everythin in terms of layer reordering, set your shortcut Option (alt) + [ or ] to Select Next and Select Previous (you can also select top and bottom in case you want to).

[elguapo]

I apologize, these are already present. Thanks for pointing this out.

[Intuos5]

I missed those myself as well when I posted a feature request with it listed earlier 😉

[elguapo]

+1 point to this topic.

 

[MikeO]

I'll bump part of your thread instead of creating a new topic: 

Regarding the Colour Chooser: I can't understand why the full featured Colour Chooser window can't be docked as a persistent palette, the same as the Colour, Swatches, Stroke, etc. palettes are presented? The same can be said for other floating "managers" like Snapping and Guides. There doesn't appear to be a functional difference between a Studio and a Manager that I can see. With many users having multi-monitor setups, leaving everything open all the time becomes reasonable. 

I'm wondering if a dev can explain why these two types of windows are treated differently in the interface? Thanks.