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Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.5 - Beta 2)


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Status: Beta Release

Purpose: New features, fixes

Requirements: Purchased Affinity Designer

Mac App Store: Not Submitted

Download: Here

 

This is the second beta of a substantial change to our codebase and as much as we have tried to ensure the quality of the code, it should be considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that you may be adversely affected by the application failing. In addition it is definitely worth noting that files created in Affinity 1.5 cannot be opened in 1.4 so always make a copy of your important documents before opening them in 1.5 to ensure you do not accidentally overwrite them and are unable to open them in your 1.4 version.

 

To use this beta, simply download the file from the link given above and double-click on the file to open the installer. Follow the instructions to install the beta version. The beta sits alongside the Mac App Store version and will not interfere with it.

 

Fixes/Improvements:

- Fix for screen flicker issues on certain Mac systems (2015 Retina MacBook Pro 13", in particular)

- Numerous Text Styles improvements and fixes

- Fix for Embedded documents which aren't the same colour format or profile as the parent document

- Assets and symbols now work correctly with documents in different colour formats

- Updated assets that make use of constraints

- Fix for 'Lock Children' on the Move Tool's context toolbar causing all kinds of havoc with Constraints

- Fix for Symbols crashing with text

- Added live measurement tool. Select an object then hold Alt/Option and move your mouse over other objects to measure how far away they are. Measurements will also show when holding Alt/Option and nudging with the arrow keys

- Fix for strange behaviour when creating a curve in the Pen Tool if you had snapping enabled (it would draw a very cool-looking but completely crazy magenta 'waveform' as you moved the mouse around!?!)

- Fix for Pen/Node Tools not being able to reduce a node down to being coincident with both off-curve handles by Alt/Option-click

- Fix issues with editing global colours sometimes making many undo steps rather than one

- Miscellaneous small fixes

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;)  Keep up  the great work...

About me: Trainer at Apple, Freelance Video Editor, Motion Graphics Artist, Website Designer, Photographer. Yes I like creating things!!!

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YouTube: Affinity Designer & Photo Tutorials

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Quick question... what am I doing wrong? I've added a simple shape and created a symbol from it, when I change colour all instances change but when I resize only the original changes, am I doing this correct?

 

 

Allan

About me: Trainer at Apple, Freelance Video Editor, Motion Graphics Artist, Website Designer, Photographer. Yes I like creating things!!!

Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/mystrawberrymonkey/

Twitter: @StrawberryMnky  @imAllanThompson

Web: mystrawberrymonkey.com  Portfolio: behance.net/allanthompson

YouTube: Affinity Designer & Photo Tutorials

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Hi Allan,

 

When you made the symbol, it put the shape inside a container (so that you can add other objects alongside it and it will add to all instances) but that means you're not selected on the actual object inside it. When you set the colour, the command sets the colour of all children, so that appears to work. When you resize it, you're resizing the instance's container so it affects only that instance. Instead, just select the object inside the symbol and resize that - then all instances will resize as you'd expect... I think I may need to reconsider this, I'm not sure? It makes sense when you know what it's doing and why - but it's a bit mystifying otherwise... :/

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@mystrawberrymonkey

you have to click the triangle that "opens up" the symbol in the layers panel and select the "children" shape, then all instances will update

-if you make a symbol from a group and rescale the group, only that one instance rescales // versus if you select the contents of the group directly, all other instances of them rescale

 

MattP said it was intentional and/but could be changed but I actually think it´s useful that way

 

 

I thought about the "dedetaching" thing again and it´s actually not that much of a deal breaker 

- if you accidentally detach a shape, just go into one instance of that symbol and add that shape back in and it is added into every instance

 

Matt, might we get the docking of two columns of tool panels to the right (and left) side like possible in AD for Windows?

- now the arrows to resize the collums are back, but could you reduce the minimum size of them? The constraints and symbols tabs at least could definitely be condensed a bit further then one can currently do...

 

bug:

1 there still is a bug where when you clip a shape with another shape2 and add constraints to shape2, AD crashes

2 when I select all parts of a symbol and move them, they still move in a strange relation and their position changes relatively to each other

3 I´ve attached a file where I presumably messed up constraints but I think it never the less is a bug (by letting me do things I´m not supposed to to maybe)

- if you resize the artboard, the right rectangle does not snap to the left rectangle, I think it would be nice if it does

-if you move the left rectangle (I labeled it), you get some weird ghost rectangle 

4 select two art texts that were made through cmd+drag and are inside a symbol and try to fill both with one gradient, strange gradient end points get shown

5 in a file from 1.4.2 I was not able to get objects to snap to each other and cmd + drag did not work as well (in a new document it works)

 

Am I supposed to open up a new thread for each of these issues? IMO they seem pretty small so I thought I´d just agglomerate them in here.....

 

these measurements are amazing! 

+ when you hold shift while moving a shape, you get 45 degree constraints 

and snapping to gaps, I´ve wanted this since I opened up AD the very first time !!! finally !!!

 

pop up thingy, bleed, retina rendering showing two out of three possibilities, dropping stuff into assets and symbol panels...... thanks for giving this quick update regardless of remaining issues  :)

 

 

 

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Thanks,

 

Bugged me since the first 1.5 BETA.

 

Initial thought, I would prefer that if I select the object on the canvas as well as changing colour it also resized. Also when I do select within the layers pane of course it works but only shows me one instance selected compared to if I just added two shapes to the canvas and wanted to resize both by selecting them both are highlighted in the layers pane indicating that i'm affecting multiple instances.

 

Hope that makes sense?

About me: Trainer at Apple, Freelance Video Editor, Motion Graphics Artist, Website Designer, Photographer. Yes I like creating things!!!

Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/mystrawberrymonkey/

Twitter: @StrawberryMnky  @imAllanThompson

Web: mystrawberrymonkey.com  Portfolio: behance.net/allanthompson

YouTube: Affinity Designer & Photo Tutorials

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Minor issues concerning the Text Styles.

 

I don't want to pester you with the issues I reported earlier but

1. Heirachical has not been renamed to Hierarchical (I assume that's the intent)

2. Create Style menu to possibly to be renamed to Create Object Style

 

There is a minor thingy with Import Styles… options.

It offers to import styles from EPS, PDF and possibly other file formats.

I suspect the only file format that it knows how to deal with is .afdesign

 

THANK YOU FOR THE UPDATE

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Great work!!!

 

A problem I found was that I created some Assets at 1.5 Beta 1 and now updating to the new 1.5 Beta 2 all of them have disappeared.

 

Customizing tools is working fine. I don't know the behavior with symbols or another new feature. Maybe those will be reset after update to new betas.

 

Thanks

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Great work you guys!

 

A few bugs I think:

  1. The measuring tool doesn't work with groups, only individual objects.
  2. Holding Alt/Option while hovering over another object and nudging doesn't seem to work. For me, nothing seems to happen, or if I have a text object selected, the tracking is adjusted instead.
  3. Dragging to select doesn't seem to work anymore. Dragging to select without modifiers, as well as holding the Alt/Option key, doesn't work.

Still sinking my teeth into it, but keep it up!

 

Cheers!

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Affinity Team—fantastic work on these extremely useful new features. My only worry is that both betas of 1.5 are much slower than 1.4.2 for common actions like dragging, copying, and resizing objects. All previous versions of AD have always kept up with me, drawing instantly no matter how complex my document was. But 1.5 chugs along, often taking several seconds to rerender as I drag.

 

Will there be a tuneup before 1.5 is released, or is this the cost of the new features? I hope not. To me, AD's most important feature has always been its astonishing performance, which exposes Adobe for the nonnative crap that it's always been. AD is still years ahead, but IMO speed should always come before clever new tools.

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First thanks for the awesome beta's :)

 

Just a small question: Where can we define custom artboards for this?

 

I found out that i can save Artboards in Assets. That is nice :)

post-1804-0-00531200-1467305913_thumb.jpg

Thanks for any reply, Torsten :)

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Quick questions:

 

1. I do not see the bleed of a document. I see it when I export it and choose the options.

2. Why any object is hidden when is placed out of the page?

3- What about this? https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/21035-apply-a-colour-to-a-gray-image

 

Thanks a lot ;)

Graphic designer from Bilbao (Spain) FreeHand forever. Affinity Designer rocks! - Diseñador gráfico de Bilbao (España). FreeHand forever. Affinity Designer ¡mola!

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Affinity Team—fantastic work on these extremely useful new features. My only worry is that both betas of 1.5 are much slower than 1.4.2 for common actions like dragging, copying, and resizing objects. All previous versions of AD have always kept up with me, drawing instantly no matter how complex my document was. But 1.5 chugs along, often taking several seconds to rerender as I drag.

 

Will there be a tuneup before 1.5 is released, or is this the cost of the new features? I hope not. To me, AD's most important feature has always been its astonishing performance, which exposes Adobe for the nonnative crap that it's always been. AD is still years ahead, but IMO speed should always come before clever new tools.

 

Can you provide an example document so that we can do some testing.  Thanks.

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Quick questions:

 

1. I do not see the bleed of a document. I see it when I export it and choose the options.

2. Why any object is hidden when is placed out of the page?

3- What about this? https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/21035-apply-a-colour-to-a-gray-image

 

Thanks a lot ;)

 

Hi krolian,

1. Currently there's no Bleed preview in the document. This will be implemented soon.

2. If you are using regular documents (no-artboards) go to menu View ▸ View Mode and uncheck Clip to Canvas

3. I will check that thread

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Affinity Team—fantastic work on these extremely useful new features. My only worry is that both betas of 1.5 are much slower than 1.4.2 for common actions like dragging, copying, and resizing objects. All previous versions of AD have always kept up with me, drawing instantly no matter how complex my document was. But 1.5 chugs along, often taking several seconds to rerender as I drag.

 

Will there be a tuneup before 1.5 is released, or is this the cost of the new features? I hope not. To me, AD's most important feature has always been its astonishing performance, which exposes Adobe for the nonnative crap that it's always been. AD is still years ahead, but IMO speed should always come before clever new tools.

Hi jakezien,

 

Is there any more info you can give us? Is it specific files? Anything you could send to us (even a screencast) to support@seriflabs.com will be treated in confidence. We never want to reduce the performance - in fact we regularly tweak things to try to subtly improve things over time, so have no fear - if something is wrong we'll find it and improve it :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

 

 

EDIT: Ah, just seen you sent a PM to Ben - is there any chance you can send it to me too so I can look at it later? :) Thanks!

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Hey @MattP, I know you're busy but has any more thought about the UI for constraints happened? particularly the issue I pointed out here: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/21169-affinity-designer-customer-beta-15-beta-1/?p=99058

 

Thanks,

 

William

Hi William,

 

I think the problem is that the UI works in the same way as Xcode's 'struts and springs' UI in terms of when each element lights up, what that means... If I change it then there will be a LOT of people who don't understand it now - it's just the way that all these controls seem to function in dev environments that exist already :(

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Hi jakezien,

 

Is there any more info you can give us? Is it specific files? Anything you could send to us (even a screencast) to support@seriflabs.com will be treated in confidence. We never want to reduce the performance - in fact we regularly tweak things to try to subtly improve things over time, so have no fear - if something is wrong we'll find it and improve it :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

 

 

EDIT: Ah, just seen you sent a PM to Ben - is there any chance you can send it to me too so I can look at it later? :) Thanks!

Gladly! I'll also attach a screencast. Thanks so much—you guys are seriously incredible. Not sure how you have time to develop the pants off the industry leader while simultaneously getting into the weeds with individual users. Keep this up and I'll get a Serif tattoo :)

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Hi dasmurphy,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Currently there's no way to save your own presets.

Thanks for the quick answer and the third time for the warm welcome :)

 

Since i love both of your products, it is not a problem at all to save empty Artboards in the Assets Section :) This is a good workaround for me. Hope you will later implement editing the Artboards on Top there. Makes sense to me.

 

I'm very impressed with the 1.5 improvements and the Windows version. Keep it up and Thanks again.

Thanks for any reply, Torsten :)

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