2.1 Beta Build 2 (1709) release notes

Ash · February 22, 2023

Hi All,

We're happy to make the second build of the 2.1 beta available today - 2.1.0.1709. This should now be available for you on auto update.

Here's some of the main changes in this build:

Had a lot of great feedback on guides - thank you. In this build we have:

Added Alt-Click to delete a guide
Made Alt-Shift while dragging snap to delta. We had already made holding shift snap to ruler units from page origin. What this new option gives is if you have a guide placed at, say, 35.3mm from the page origin and you want to move it 10mm - you can now drag while holding Alt-Shift to snap to that difference. Of course this also works if you have alt or cmd dragged a duplicate of the guide
If guides are currently set to not visible, then dragging out a new guide from ruler (or moving an existing guide from indicator on ruler) will automatically turn guide visibility on in all OSs

Generally tightened panel up somewhat so less vertical space was being used.
Brush names if you have chosen to show them are now justified to left
Light UI should now hopefully look correct
Modifying a brush using drag shortcuts (e.g. ctrl+alt+click drag left and right) keeps brush selection in panel (and shown as modified as appropriate).

Now added correctly in Windows version so the live versions of these filters are available
Have now added to pixel persona in the iPad version of Designer. You will have two new options under the + button in Layers panel where you can choose to add either of these live filter layers.

New icon has been added for tool to distinguish between the raster flood fill tool in Affinity Photo
When you are in tool you can now drag and drop swatches directly from the swatches panel into any area the fill tool recognises from your selection
If you are in "In Between" mode the additional shapes / fills which are created are automatically added to your selection so if you subsequently change the fill of them again additional shapes are not created.
Bitmap fills are now supported. This means you can pick a bitmap fill swatch from swatches to use as your fill colour (or drag and drop a bitmap fill swatch into the appropriate area). Few notes on this:
- Currently if the bitmap fill has transparency this will be added as an additional fill (in appearance panel), so can be added as a texture over an existing colour fill. It's a cool feature, but we probably need to add a modifier / option in context toolbar about whether you want that to do that vs. replace the fill altogether.
- You will notice in the context toolbar some new options for min, max and stretch to fit. These options are only relevant for bitmap and gradient fills and determines how the gradient or bitmap are scaled within the new fill being created.
- A nice thing to try is when you are in fill tool you can drag from assets into your active colour on the toolbar to automatically create a bitmap fill to use - as shown in the video below.

Erase bend mode now available to configure on macOS and iPad
Ordering of blend mode list and default keys should now be consistent between operating systems