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Some early thoughts on Designer


marke

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I've been playing around with the new version of Affinity Designer now, and I'm truly impressed how capable and fast the product has become. However, I collected some early observations, with some questions.

 

 

# Feature requests

 
- A way to set Text Frame height ‘auto’.
- Arrow keys don’t work for changing values in some fields. Like Characters panel/Type bar
- Scrolling to change value in fields is slippery road I think. Magic Mouse and trackpad way too sensitive, so I’d never use it anyway (it's been bugging me in Illustration for ages).
- Setting artboard bleed and margins: there should have ability to set all the values in one step, not setting all four manually
 
 
# Questions
 
- How does the bleed function work? I’d like to have it visible around the artboard, with snapping etc.
- Shouldn’t esc key activate the Move tool? (I draw a shape, hit esc to move other elements/continue my work)
- How do I lock the bitmap ratio, so resizing it, I wouldn’t need to hold Shift key. I even think it should be ‘on’ by default
- Is masking only possible in layers panel?
- Dragging to select layers seem to be inconsistent. Is there some logic, or it's just a bug, that sometimes things can be selected and sometimes not…?
 
 
# UI
 
- Font properties, gradient editing and some other stuff is happening in the left top corner of the UI, which is not a best location I think (on 27” screen for example).
- ".afdesign" file icon is the same as app icon; no Quicklook preview.
- Dark UI. It’s mostly a question of taste, but I would really prefer a native OS X colors for the UI, instead of a custom-looking thing. Even the Preferences - why not use the default style, that always looks fresh and up-to-date… But again, it’s just cosmetics.
- There are also some parts of UI that would need some “love”. For example layers panel is somewhat confusing; some icons and elements look blurry, etc.
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- A way to set Text Frame height ‘auto’.

 

+1. Less clutter is always a good idea. Could be achieved by double clicking the lower middle point (think FreeHand) or via context menu.

 

 

- Shouldn’t esc key activate the Move tool? (I draw a shape, hit esc to move other elements/continue my work)

 

Sounds good to me. I think additionally a double click in an empty or locked area should do the same. Just like a double click on a path gets you to the node tool.

 

As it is right now the double-click-anywhere–to-change-to-move-tool-shortcut is not very consistent. It works with the pencil and brush tools but not with the gradient and transparency tool nor with the different shape tools to the text tool.

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Hi marke,

Welcome to Affinity Forums and thanks for your feedback.

 

Regarding your questions:

1) currently there's no bleed preview (on canvas). There wasn't time to implement it for 1.4 release. It will be added soon.

 

2) ESC only deselects the object. The Move Tool shortcut is V. You may not necessarily want to go to the Move Tool after drawing an object.

 

3) Go to Affinity Designer ▹ Preferences, Tools section and select the behaviour you want from the Move Tool Aspect Constrain drop down. The Automatic (default)option will constrain the resize depending on the type of object selected. For objects with an intrinsic aspect ratio (like images or text frames) the proportion will be kept when you resize them. For the others, it will not (you must press ⇧ (shift) to keep their proportions. 

 

4) Yes. You can also drag layers over others to create clipping masks (Layer Clipping). There's also a menu command Layer ▸ Rasterise to Mask.

For more info please check Affinity Designer Help ▸ Layers ▸ Layer masking & Layer clipping

 

5) Can you be more specific? This depends on a few factors. If the layers are grouped or not, how you have set up the marquee behaviour in Preferences, Tools section, if the layers are locked etc.

 

 

There is thumbnails and Quicklook previews for afdesign and afphoto files.

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Auto Resize of text frames is nice - but is there any easy way to let the excess text flow automatically into another connected frame, like in Xara Xtreme? This function is crucial e.g. for pasting multiple columns on the page - and I am really missing it in (otherwise excellent) Affinity Designer...

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A few more:

 

# Bugs/Feature requests:

 

- Duplicating an object while holding option key - snapping is not happening

- Swatches panel doesn’t remain same height when selecting other panel above it (that has a different height)

 

 

Questions:

 

- Working with CMYK files: What color does the preview show? Is it trying to replicate CMYK on a regular coated paper? I have suspicion there are some colors 'off'.

- Masks: I still don't quite get how to move and resize an image/item inside the mask?

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Duplicating an object while holding option key - snapping is not happening.

 

Hold down the Command key (instead of the Option key) to duplicate and object and keep snapping active.

 

I still don't quite get how to move and resize an image/item inside the mask?

 

I am sure you will know that there is a difference between layer clipping and creating a vector mask.

  • Suppose you clip an item A to the boundaries of an vector shape B, such that A is a child of B in the layers list. Then you can move and resize A independently of B, just by Command + clicking it with the Move Tool (or selecting its entry in the layers list) and by using the Move Tool as usual.
  • Suppose you use a vector shape B as a mask on an item A. Then you can reposition item A within your mask by using the Vector Crop Tool.

Hope that helps a little … Alex  :)

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To add this, you can also use the Lock children command (which is found on the context toolbar of the Move Tool, when a layer that has children is selected) to resize and reposition a masked object. However, I must confess I am still stumbling over how the bounding box of the masked object is calculated in that situation. I would expect that the bounding box encloses the whole masked object, as soon as I tick Lock children

 

Does that make sense? Or does anyone have an idea, why the current appearance is preferred?  :unsure:

Transform_Within_Mask.mov

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