waffl Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 I've just downloaded the trial of Affinity Designer in the quest for an ideal replacement for designing websites other than the typical bloated Adobe Photoshop/Indesign combo, especially after all the hassle of Creative Cloud. Affinity Designer seems more oriented towards illustration, but I was wondering if anyone is using it for more traditional design purposes? So far I really enjoy the feel of AD's UI, it feels very stable, smooth and fast, but I was wondering if there were ways to achieve certain basic things that are quite critical to my workflow. Is there any way to setup column based grids, for example a 12-column grid with custom gutters and so on? I suppose one could manually create all the guides in the 'Guides manager', but it seems a bit cumbersome. Is there any way to define 'Master Pages' or 'Master Artboards' in a sense? Is there any way to set character/paragraph styles so type styles can be re-used and modified document-wide? Is there a way to prevent text frames from showing overflowing text? Is there a way to place images within existing rectangles/frames and access a variety of fitting options? So that one doesn't have to simply place the image and manually use the crop tool. I suppose those are my main questions so far, as these items are the critical building blocks for my design workflow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Leigh Posted March 30, 2016 Staff Share Posted March 30, 2016 Welcome to the forums waffl :D It's possible to setup a 12 column grid from scratch but it would be easier to find a PSD template with the required grid setup and open it in Affinity Designer for editing. Affinity Designer doesn't have Masterpages yet. Perhaps symbols is what you need - they should be coming soon :) Text Styles are coming. They're on our roadmap and will be available in the future: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/842-affinity-designer-feature-roadmap/ It's not currently possible to hide overflowing text. You could add a clipping mask to the text layer to hide overflowing text or just delete text that isn't needed. If you draw a shape, select it and then select the Gradient Tool, you can select Bitmap from the Type dropdown in the Context Toolbar. This option will allow you to select an image. You can also drag the nodes to stretch the image. There's also an Extend dropdown in the Context Toolbar that will give you options such as Mirror, Repeat, Wrap & Zero. Hope this helps! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Artistwright Posted April 28, 2016 Share Posted April 28, 2016 I would also love to have the option of having editable column based grids just like Waffl explained: 'Is there any way to setup column based grids, for example a 12-column grid with custom gutters and so on? I suppose one could manually create all the guides in the 'Guides manager', but it seems a bit cumbersome.' I tried creating it with the guides but it was too much hassle Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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