Quickly rotate view by 90°

[grough]

I often want to quickly rotate my document view 90° counter-clockwise so that I can check my work in both portrait and landscape orientation.

I haven't found a way to do this easily in Affinity Designer 2.

I know of three ways to rotate the document view that don't meet this particular need:

• View -> Rotate Left – this rotates -15° per click, requiring me to open the menu to and click it 6 times over before I get to -90°
• Canvas rotation with trackpad – this is a nice feature, but it is imprecise (no snapping) and doesn't allow me to rotate by exactly -90°
• Canvas rotation with ⌘ + scroll wheel – same as trackpad

Does anyone know how I can rotate the document view quickly by a specific angle? The best case would be a keyboard shortcut. Maybe there's a way to map a custom keyboard shortcut that I'm not aware of. Thanks

[carl123]

I don't think there is a command for rotate document view by 90°.

But if using an Artboard, you can select the Artboard in the layers panel and use Layer > Transform > Rotate Left

You can assign a shortcut to this and to Layer > Transform > Rotate Right  to quickly switch between a portrait and landscape view of your document

[firstdefence]

Assign a keyboard shortcut, you still have to use the shortcut 6 times but you are only holding one key down and pressing the other six times so at least it's quicker.

[Pšenda]

6 hours ago, grough said:

I can check my work in both portrait and landscape orientation.

Is it just for checking? (rotate, check, and return)

Try OS rotate screen (Windows Ctrl+Alt+Left arrow, and Ctrl+Alt+Up arrow). 

[firstdefence]

Another option is to have two views.

1. Open your document
2. Select View > New View
3. In the New View tab rotate the document -90º using the menu option View > Rotate Left or the using the assigned shortcut keys, for me that would be ^L (Ctrl + L) 

That's it, you now have two tabs open, one with the document as it opens initially, and one document view rotated -90º you can simply click on the tab to see the view. What you do in one window will be reflected in the other. On Mac you can switch between the two views using the keyboard shortcut Cmd + ` not sure what it would be on windows but I'm guessing Ctrl + `

On Mac, the ` key also has the tilde symbol ~ on it

[grough]

Thank you all. My initial failure to understand how keyboard shortcuts are configured was holding me back. I've now set up a few shortcuts based on your suggestions, and my problem is solved.

11 hours ago, carl123 said:

if using an Artboard, you can select the Artboard in the layers panel and use Layer > Transform > Rotate Left

Right, it makes sense to rotate the Artboard instead of the view. I have mapped Control-L to Layer -> Transform -> Rotate left

 

7 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Assign a keyboard shortcut, you still have to use the shortcut 6 times but you are only holding one key down and pressing the other six times so at least it's quicker.

I have also mapped Control-Shift-L to View -> Rotate Left and indeed it is much faster than clicking the menu.

 

7 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Try OS rotate screen 

That's a clever trick I will keep in mind

 

6 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Another option is to have two views … In the New View tab rotate the document -90º

Very cool, setting up two views works perfectly for this purpose.

I have just started learning Affinity Designer 2. You have all given me very helpful information today. Thank you!

Edited December 14, 2022 by grough