Some Requests for Affinity Designer

[Robert22]

1. Customize toolbar - add Undo, Redo and all View/Zoom menu items as options. I saw the comment elsewhere about not doing this for professional reasons, but it is extremely useful work flow when using a tablet.

 

2. The Selected Tool is not distinctive enough, highlight the icon background with a more contrasting color. This is also true for link icons and check boxes in dialogs. The Gamma slider option is not good enough on my monitor.

 

3. Allow jumping of View Points using short cut keys, to circle around to the beginning or end of the list (or create a new command that will do this).

 

4. The View menu needs a little reorganization.

 

Move the View > Studio sub menu items to the Window menu.

 

Create a new menu item, Tools. Move the Toolbar and Tools items from the View to Tools menu. Move the Assistant, Guides, Snapping, Grid and Axis Managers to the Tools menu. Move Preferences from the Edit to Tools menu.

 

5. Allow placement of Affinity Data to be moved from:

C:\Users\NAME\AppData\Roaming\Serif\Affinity Designer\1.0 (Beta)

 

to another drive / directory. I have an SSD and that data currently takes up over 500MB and some of it is often re-written when starting or exiting the program, although none of the data has changed  (which is not good for an SSD).

 

6. The Preferences Dialog is awkward to use, requiring too many mouse clicks. Use something that has a categories selection list on the left of the dialog box like DrawPlus, Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint.

 

7. Create a Gallery like DrawPlus to store and retrieve reusable objects.

 

Thanks so much for creating an excellent program! Can't wait for Affinity Photo too...

[Mark Ingram]

1. Customize toolbar - add Undo, Redo and all View/Zoom menu items as options. I saw the comment elsewhere about not doing this for professional reasons, but it is extremely useful work flow when using a tablet.

 

2. The Selected Tool is not distinctive enough, highlight the icon background with a more contrasting color. This is also true for link icons and check boxes in dialogs. The Gamma slider option is not good enough on my monitor.

 

3. Allow jumping of View Points using short cut keys, to circle around to the beginning or end of the list (or create a new command that will do this).

 

4. The View menu needs a little reorganization.

 

Move the View > Studio sub menu items to the Window menu.

 

Create a new menu item, Tools. Move the Toolbar and Tools items from the View to Tools menu. Move the Assistant, Guides, Snapping, Grid and Axis Managers to the Tools menu. Move Preferences from the Edit to Tools menu.

 

5. Allow placement of Affinity Data to be moved from:

C:\Users\NAME\AppData\Roaming\Serif\Affinity Designer\1.0 (Beta)

 

to another drive / directory. I have an SSD and that data currently takes up over 500MB and some of it is often re-written when starting or exiting the program, although none of the data has changed  (which is not good for an SSD).

 

6. The Preferences Dialog is awkward to use, requiring too many mouse clicks. Use something that has a categories selection list on the left of the dialog box like DrawPlus, Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint.

 

7. Create a Gallery like DrawPlus to store and retrieve reusable objects.

 

Thanks so much for creating an excellent program! Can't wait for Affinity Photo too...

 

Hi Robert, thanks for your feedback, many of your points can be answered by saying that we are aiming for parity with the Mac version, so unless it's a specific bug for the Windows version, you can raise it in the Feature Requests forum. Here's a couple of answers to your questions that aren't generic:

 

1) Try using the History panel instead. We're going to look at usability for tablets in the future as well.

 

4) The zoom items are in a sub-menu in build 5.

 

5) If that folder is 500mb it's because you've downloaded samples, we don't write those everytime, and probably only write a couple of KB of data for preferences / window layout etc. Worrying about an SSD wearing out is a little extreme in this scenario (we've been using SSDs for years here, and write GB of data every day without a failure).

 

7) Try the Assets panel

[Robert22]

Thanks for your response Mark!

 

1. I do use the History Panel currently, but would prefer to have the Transform or Navigator Panels in that location. I know you can move them, but there is only so much screen real estate that I want to devote to the Panels. And I have plenty of room on the tool bar (I have a 32 inch monitor with 2560 x 1440 pixel screen resolution). I always think allowing UI configurations is the best approach, it makes an application so much more personal. In addition there are lots of different work flows for different people so the more customization the better, in my opinion.

 

4) The zoom items are in a sub-menu in build 5.

 

4. I prefer them the way they were, for quicker access to these often used tools. I'll make the Feature Request thanks.

 

5. The 500MB are mostly made up of Brushes and Styles in the \User folder with .Propcol file extensions. These seem to be rewritten often, even when they weren't changed.

 

As another point, these files are not cleaned up, but keep growing. I deleted a bunch of styles, exported the reduced set of styles, removed all styles, and then imported the reduced set. I monitored the file size after each operation and also exited the app each time. The file just kept on growing. This was:

 

C:\Users\rh2o1\AppData\Roaming\Serif\Affinity Designer\1.0 (Beta)\user\objectstyles.propcol

 

A lot of apps park their data on the C:\ Roaming directory. So it is nice when they can be moved to another drive, thanks.

 

7. Didn't know about the Assets panel... works great! Thanks for the info!

 

Thanks again Mark! Great program, keep up the good work!

[Alfred]

7. Didn't know about the Assets panel... works great!

 

Me too neither! It does indeed work very well, but I don't understand why it's hidden by default.