[AD] Isolation Mode

[fernandolins86]

Hi QuietDesign,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

I don't know if you are already aware but you can already isolate pressing and holding ⌥ (option/alt) and clicking on a layer in the Layers panel. All the other objects will return as soon as you select something else or click on canvas.

 

Hi MEB, this is quite cool., thanks!

Would be nice, as a future improvement, to have a more direct way to do this instead of the layers panel, like a keyboard shorcut that acts on the selected object, and a contextual menu item. I don't know about the other designers but I only use the layers panel if I need to make masks and check for project hierarchy, so there's very little use.

 

Also there needs to be some visual feedback that you're in "isolation mode", maybe text on that bottom bar that says "Object isolated. CLICK outside it or press ESC key to show all objects" in a different color, an icon somewhere...

[QuietDesign]

Hi QuietDesign,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

I don't know if you are already aware but you can already isolate pressing and holding ⌥ (option/alt) and clicking on a layer in the Layers panel. All the other objects will return as soon as you select something else or click on canvas.

 

MEB, I was totally unaware. Thank you for pointing it out. Are there any plans to improve the mode? Having the isolation mode fade and/or outline the rest of the artwork would be a better experience than if the isolation mode hides everything on the board. Also adding symbol isolation (unless this exists already) would be fantastic. Last, it was mentioned above, maybe implemented shortcut for selected items on the board in addition to (option/alt) in the layers panel.

[retrograde]

Hopefully this is getting addressed in 1.6. The current "isolation mode" is only good for viewing not for working...

[pier]

Is this ever going to be implemented?

[powerupmedia]

+100 for this feature! Please implement!

[El Calvin]

+20 for Isolation mode and hierarchy. these are essential for our explainer motion graphics work.
Need to buy 20+ affinity licences, But will wait till this feature is implemented. 
Without this feature, it reduces our productivity by 30-40%.

[meefox]

+1

[Mountainking]

It's possible, i've made a video about it, same for AD:

 

[powerupmedia]

On 10/6/2017 at 3:00 AM, Mountainking said:

It's possible, i've made a video about it, same for AD:

 

Unfortunately this just hides the rest of the objects/layers for a moment, but it doesn't lock them or 'move into' the selected object. When I want to select a couple of sub-objects within, by dragging a selection, the rest becomes visible again.
Just dubble-clicking the object is in my opinion already more like the isolation-mode, since that at least lets you select sub-objects.

Still handy to know about this feature though

[pier]

@Mountainking that's not really isolation mode but hiding other layers.

 

At this point I have lost all faith in Designer. Even if this feature has been asked by many users, for years, it's not even in the roadmap.

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/842-affinity-designer-feature-roadmap/

 

Reading the roadmap thread it seems all progress in Designer is stalled. What a shame, it was a promising project.

[fuzzum19]

The current isolation mode in AD can actually edit shapes, the only issue is we don't see the other layers like the one in Illustrator where the layers are a bit translucent when you isolate them.

 

For us artist who create detailed artworks, the editable-in-isolation mode is very important when there's already lots of layers.

 

It seems Affinity Designer is prioritizing designers who create UI art.

 

For now I only use AD for coloring, I like the way how you can color & add gradients easily in AD

But for vectoring from scratch, I don't recommend AD, due to lack of complete editable-in-isolation mode and shape builder tool.

[Georgesd]

To be honest when I found out about Affinity Designer, I thought I just found illustrator replacement, I've been using it for few days now, it's awesome in many aspects, like constraints, snapping and grids, it's much more better than illustrator in many aspects, BUT, it's also lacking on many ESSENTIAL features, like isolation mode, I just found out that there's no such thing in AD, and it's kind of shocking, relying on locking an unlocking layers is counter intuitive and slows the work process a lot.

Now when I find out that essentials features like isolation mode, or RTL support are requested since 2014, and still are not there... Well I can't say that AD is a replacing AI anytime soon.

[MEB]

Hi Georgesd,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Press and hold ⌥ (option/alt) and click on a layer to edit/isolate it temporary. Clicking on other object on an empty area of the canvas will display all objects again.
RTL support will still take some time until it's available sorry. This is a complex task that will require quite some time/testing and there's other things taking priority.

[Georgesd]

5 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi Georgesd,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Press and hold ⌥ (option/alt) and click on a layer to edit/isolate it temporary. Clicking on other object on an empty area of the canvas will display all objects again.
RTL support will still take some time until it's available sorry. This is a complex task that will require quite some time/testing and there's other things taking priority.

Hi MEB,

Thank you for the warm welcome  , clicking while holding (alt) isolates the layer, but once I try to drag-select anything inside that layer, it exits isolation mode, I don't really see the point of having visual non editable isolation mode!

The thing is, I have an artboad that has some elements, each element is a layer or a group that has lots of nested shapes, is there a way to select the shapes inside a specific element in the viewport? 

[MEB]

This mode is only practical for editing single objects, not isolating a group to work on their elements as in Illustrator. That's not available in Designer.

[luispedrofonseca]

Hey @MEB, it's been almost 3 years since I created this tread and unfortunately this feature hasn't been added yet, and apparently won't be anytime soon.

Can I ask why a feature that has this many replies (and thread views) isn't considered as a common feature request? I don't see it on this list: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/10410-common-feature-requests-index/

Also, why isn't this feature considered for implementation if it's clearly lacking?

 

[MEB]

Hi luispedrofonseca,
It's the dev team who decide what (and when) some features are added to the app. The common feature requests list is mostly intended to avoid duplication of threads requesting the same things. All suggestions are considered no matter if they are on that list or not.

[luispedrofonseca]

I understand that the features are decided by the dev team.

What I don't understand is why after so much time we still don't know if this has been at least considered, if it's totally out of question or any other "official" stand on this feature.

For the past 3 years, you've been suggesting the same solution to anyone that asks about it, while that "solution" is really not an alternative at all.

Sorry for the rant, I know you're not the one to blame, but it's a bit annoying that this has been ignored for such a long time.

[MEB]

Hi Luís,
I've been mentioning it because it's the closest feature we have and that may help a few users (in some cases). I'm aware it's not the same, nor a replacement for a "true" Isolation mode like you find in Illustrator. Although i know i'm repeating myself, let me stress again that it's really difficult for a small team to acknowledge/address the impressive amount of features users have been requesting with all the work planned that's currently being done on the background. It may not seem obvious from the "outside" but they are doing the best they can already. Some requested features will come with v1.7 but there's still a "million" that will have to wait. I understand how this can be frustrating but only time (and a few more developers - which Serif is already trying to hire) will help smooth things out.

[Mandu]

I would definitely like to see a proper isolation feature in Affinity that allows work not jus preview. It is obvious for working on complex projects.

[pier]

On 7/23/2018 at 11:01 AM, MEB said:

Hi Luís,
I've been mentioning it because it's the closest feature we have and that may help a few users (in some cases). I'm aware it's not the same, nor a replacement for a "true" Isolation mode like you find in Illustrator. Although i know i'm repeating myself, let me stress again that it's really difficult for a small team to acknowledge/address the impressive amount of features users have been requesting with all the work planned that's currently being done on the background. It may not seem obvious from the "outside" but they are doing the best they can already. Some requested features will come with v1.7 but there's still a "million" that will have to wait. I understand how this can be frustrating but only time (and a few more developers - which Serif is already trying to hire) will help smooth things out.

Hey MEB

As mentioned many times in this thread over the years, this feature is essential. It's not a nice-to-have. Designer is basically unusable for some people without being able to work properly with groups.

How many of those "million"  feature requests make the software unusable for your paying customers? This should be the number one priority on your roadmap, and it's not even there.

[Tupaia]

Hello!

Any news on this one? A "True" isolate mode? (not the ALT-click-a-layer-thing which falls out of isolation the moment you click anywhere)

I concur with pier, this is much more than a 'nice to have' feature!

I do a lot of CAD and 3D work, too, and you wouldn't get along without an isolate feature there. Same here, in complex drawings.

Thanks!

 

[BennyD]

+1

[Frozen Death Knight]

Would really like an isolation mode as well for layers, with the additional request to make it functional in Photo and Publisher. Would make things a lot simpler when you want to do stuff like colour picking on a single layer, but there are a bunch of layers in the way that make you unable to sample from that specific layer.

[valcoholic]

So after owning Affinity Designer for years now, I once again thought I'd give it a try to see if I can grow into that workflow to ditch Illustrator at least for my private stuff. And so far it's very promising. I started creating an isometric city with all kinds of bells and whistles but after there's a growing amount ofthings going on, I'm afraid it hurts more and more to work without the ability of isolating a layer or a group in a way that makes sense. And no, Alt-clicking the layer makes no sense. That might be nice for demonstrating something, but not for working on it. 

I do understand that creating an illustration software and then 90% of the time receive the feedback of doing something like the competition does it might be frustrating, but it's not like Illustrator invented isolation modes. I've seen this in all kinds of applications; Photoshop has something similar going on with Smart Objects and Cinema 4D also lets you just blend out everything to focus on your detail. And that's what it's about. It's totally worthless when everything jumps back at you as soon as you click anywhere on screen. That's not isolating something but a brief moment of spotlighting. Can also be nice to quickly check if there's anything inside a group that doesn't belong there, but isolating things is just as crucial to me (and looking at this thread to others as well) as it is to press space to move around. 

So please, please, please Serif put this on the list. As I noticed the past days, you already implemented so damn much I wanted to see, some of which I even requested here and some of which seemingly weren't as crucial to you but made a big deal for me, like the ability to hit Space while drawing bezier-points to readjust the position of the point on the fly (thank you I love you ) and this is a way bigger gamechanger and especially a partypooper if you're in the middle of a project, finding out more and more how important this is to you.