Please, where are Drawplus Tools?

[JGCreaGraph]

Hello,
I bought AffinityDesigner the first day it was released and quickly noticed that it was closer to Adobe software than the DrawPlus I worked with every day.

I immediately saw only the faults of AffinityDesigner, so I decided to stay on Drawplus, because of a much easier use to access all the (powerful) features offered by Drawplus.

Recently I read an article in a post that mentioned AffinityDesigner as a tool that could easily compete with Illustrator, so I thought "why not try again".
I did the same job twice, once in Drawplus, once in AffinityDesigner.
With AD I took almost 2 hours to do what I did in just 10 minutes with Drawplus.

But as Drawplus is no longer maintained (unfortunately), I decided to persist and try to get used to working with this Adobe software... uh... affinityDesigner sorry!... it looks so similar in terms of ergonomics very impractical that you can easily confuse them, but it's so different in terms of power that you quickly realize that you're not using Adobe (by the way, I hate Adobe software which are not at all ergonomic... like AffinitnyDesigner), but as I decided to persist, I am looking for the tools which are in Drawplus but which I cannot find in AffinityDesigner, that is why I call for you to know for example:
1 - Where is the transparency management tab in AD? I did find a transparency slider, but nothing to do with drawplus' powerful tools for transparency effects?
2 - Fans of "fx effects" where are the "mirror" (reflection) mode management functionalities?
3 - Where are the powerful tools for managing shadows (because in AfinityDesigner, there is something, but there are not the locking points to make shadows locked at the bottom and thus, easily make the shadows of an object?
4 - Where are the perspective tools, scratch tools, gradient/depuplicate tools.

I will eventually get used to this new software (for me), but I can't find these tools.
And they are necessarily there since AffinityDesigner is an evolution of Drawplus, and removing powerful and useful tools is not a progression, but a regression, so it cannot be so.
In, if someone would have the answers to provide me concerning the tools that I am looking for, that would be really nice.
Thanks very much

[firstdefence]

Never used DrawPlus so I cannot relate to the transparency management tab, there is no Mirror fx unless you use symbols and flip them to create reflected patterns etc. the only option for shadows is under the fx window, no perspective/warp tool, although there is one in Affinity Photo but using it would rasterise a vector. There is a gradient tool, but again probably basic compared to DrawPlus. Ctrl + J is the keyboard shortcut for the power duplicate function but it has no panel so you cannot create an array of shapes by using rows and columns, it has to be done with keystrokes.

Affinity Designer is new code so DrawPlus features cannot simply be ported over, they would have to be written in the new code so it will take a while for better functionality to be added if at all.

[Catshill]

7 hours ago, JGCreaGraph said:

Hello,
I bought AffinityDesigner the first day it was released and quickly noticed that it was closer to Adobe software than the DrawPlus I worked with every day.

I immediately saw only the faults of AffinityDesigner, so I decided to stay on Drawplus, because of a much easier use to access all the (powerful) features offered by Drawplus.

Recently I read an article in a post that mentioned AffinityDesigner as a tool that could easily compete with Illustrator, so I thought "why not try again".
I did the same job twice, once in Drawplus, once in AffinityDesigner.
With AD I took almost 2 hours to do what I did in just 10 minutes with Drawplus.

But as Drawplus is no longer maintained (unfortunately), I decided to persist and try to get used to working with this Adobe software... uh... affinityDesigner sorry!... it looks so similar in terms of ergonomics very impractical that you can easily confuse them, but it's so different in terms of power that you quickly realize that you're not using Adobe (by the way, I hate Adobe software which are not at all ergonomic... like AffinitnyDesigner), but as I decided to persist, I am looking for the tools which are in Drawplus but which I cannot find in AffinityDesigner, that is why I call for you to know for example:
1 - Where is the transparency management tab in AD? I did find a transparency slider, but nothing to do with drawplus' powerful tools for transparency effects?
2 - Fans of "fx effects" where are the "mirror" (reflection) mode management functionalities?
3 - Where are the powerful tools for managing shadows (because in AfinityDesigner, there is something, but there are not the locking points to make shadows locked at the bottom and thus, easily make the shadows of an object?
4 - Where are the perspective tools, scratch tools, gradient/depuplicate tools.

I will eventually get used to this new software (for me), but I can't find these tools.
And they are necessarily there since AffinityDesigner is an evolution of Drawplus, and removing powerful and useful tools is not a progression, but a regression, so it cannot be so.
In, if someone would have the answers to provide me concerning the tools that I am looking for, that would be really nice.
Thanks very much

I would agree with your comments about the intuitiveness and additional functionality of Serif DrawPlus and it’s why I have kept it on my system even though it is rather dated. Even so, almost all of my work is carried out in ADe. 

[GaryLearnTech]

23 hours ago, JGCreaGraph said:

And they are necessarily there since AffinityDesigner is an evolution of Drawplus, and removing powerful and useful tools is not a progression, but a regression, so it cannot be so.

A better way to think about the relationship is not that Affinity Designer is in any way a direct evolution of the old Drawplus - rather that it is the younger sibling and maturing as fast as it can, learning new tricks and abilities with each new release.

[R C-R]

On 4/4/2022 at 5:08 PM, JGCreaGraph said:

And they are necessarily there since AffinityDesigner is an evolution of Drawplus, and removing powerful and useful tools is not a progression, but a regression, so it cannot be so.

AD is a completely new-from-scratch app. Unlike any of the Serif "Plus" apps it is designed from the ground up to be cross-platform (for Macs, Windows, & iPadOS) & to use a single 'universal' file format for all 3 of the apps in the Affinity range. 

So none of the tools of DrawPlus were removed from it -- they were never there to begin with.

[JGCreaGraph]

I'm really sad to see that there seem to be no plans to bring such useful functions into AD.

I was hoping that there would be a response to my message, that evolution projects "were on the way", that "we are working on it to improve AD in this direction"... and, the transparency tool.. .this is something that was so great in Drawplus, that I can't imagine there weren't plans to bring it into AD. Even Illustrator doesn't have such a tool. So why not make a bigger difference yet and use such an advantage?
I know the code was taken from scratch, but even though I don't know how to do software development, I know a bit of html programming... CSS... JS... and I know that it is possible to recover "snippets of code" and adapt them to the new denominations. I'm not saying it would be easy, but I'm convinced that for developers, taking existing code and integrating it is quite doable.

So, I will remain with my old sofware... still hoping that one day, things will change and that evolution will be there.

I'm so used to working with these tools, that I can't waste time doing multiple layers, which can be done in one click with the old software.

I just can wait.

Thanks to everyone for your answers.

[firstdefence]

There are lots of potential features in the coming months and years but Affinity don't put out a crib sheet of what they are working on. I wouldn't write Affinity off because it is missing something an old app had.

[PaulEC]

4 hours ago, JGCreaGraph said:

the transparency tool.. .this is something that was so great in Drawplus,

I haven't used DrawPlus for quite a while, but I thought I would revisit the Transparency Tool. (I remember thinking, when I first started using ADesigner, that it was odd not to have one!) However, I can't see now that there was much you could do with it, that you can't do with the Fill Tool in ADesigner. 😉 

[firstdefence]

9 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

I'm personally not writing off Affinity. I have all three apps on macOS.

But I do understand the complaints sometimes when old software has a feature and new software (still) does not. I have encountered this personally with the lack of a knife tool in AD. There was no really feasible workaround. 

Good to know, and I agree there are some glaring omissions from the toolset that anyone would consider essential tools. Things will improve and features will get added, I'm sure of that, just not soon enough lol!