Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.5 - Beta 4)

[MattP]

Status: Beta Release

Purpose: New features, fixes

Requirements: Purchased Affinity Designer

Mac App Store: Not Submitted

Download: Here

 

This is an early 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:

• Deleting a curve node will now attempt to keep the curve's shape as much as possible by modifying the magnitude of the neighbouring nodes.
• Text improvements - Paragraph units updated to use text units vertically and document units horizontally.
• Fix for missing font styles - caused by OS X localisation issues.
• PDF import improvements for font matching and stability issues.
• PDF export improvements for transparency groups.
• Improved the visual style of the Assets panel.
• Fix for problems with applying Constraints to Compound objects or Images which were clipped by Compound objects.
• Creating a Style will now also include the text formatting and apply this correctly to other objects.
• PSD import of documents with pattern strokes should now function correctly.
• Added Colour Picker Tool to Pixel Persona.
• Minor bug fixes and stability issues.

[paolo.limoncelli]

 

 

• Deleting a curve node will now attempt to keep the curve's shape as much as possible by modifying the magnitude of the neighbouring nodes.

 

Yeah!!!!!

[Nana]

Thanks Matt.  I can confirm that the PDF export issue I reported earlier https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/21998-affinity-designer-customer-beta-15-beta-3/?p=103952 has been resolved.

 

Thanks again.

 

Nana

[Hokusai]

MattP,

 

Thanks for the update. I noticed on the last couple of betas that when you go to "Customise Tools...." that the icon for the "Donut" tool is missing. I can click on it and it works but it doesn't appear. It is still like that with Beta 4 too.

 

Hokusai

[Gear maker]

• Deleting a curve node will now attempt to keep the curve's shape as much as possible by modifying the magnitude of the neighbouring nodes.

Matt, fantastic.  I was able to use the expand stroke then delete 3/4 of the added nodes and still keep the shape.

[MattP]

Matt, fantastic.  I was able to use the expand stroke then delete 3/4 of the added nodes and still keep the shape.

Ah-ha.... so now you see where I'm going with this... :)  (I needed this function before I started to implement a couple of other things, so I wired it in to the delete node command - and it was so useful, I thought I'd leave it there rather than take it back out again!)

[MattP]

MattP,

 

Thanks for the update. I noticed on the last couple of betas that when you go to "Customise Tools...." that the icon for the "Donut" tool is missing. I can click on it and it works but it doesn't appear. It is still like that with Beta 4 too.

 

Hokusai

Just fixed this one - thanks! :)

[smallreflection]

Looks like the Curves panel bug got fixed too—thanks, guys!

[paolo.limoncelli]

Ah-ha.... so now you see where I'm going with this... :)  (I needed this function before I started to implement a couple of other things, so I wired it in to the delete node command - and it was so useful, I thought I'd leave it there rather than take it back out again!)

 

 

I was doing the very same thing... The route is well traced.

And my imagination just started taking off...

So I put this in Feature Requests

 

:P

[A_B_C]

The new curve approximation feature is great. Thanks a lot, Matt …  :)

 

(Here’s a little issue though. When off-curve control points are missing, the result of deleting an adjacent node is way off … see below. I deleted the second node of each path. Anyway, thanks for this new feature … :))

[MattP]

The new curve approximation feature is great. Thanks a lot, Matt …  :)

 

(Here’s a little issue though. When off-curve control points are missing, the result of deleting an adjacent node is way off … see below. I deleted the second node of each path. Anyway, thanks for this new feature … :))

No problems, I think I can probably sort that one out pretty easily :)

[Seneca]

Thank you for the latest 1.5 beta 4.

 

1. I find Media Browser quite useful but it's extremely underpowered.

I have a number of files in EPS format. These files are not listed when selecting the folder these files are in through the media browser.

I also have a lot of files in SVG format. These files are visible when selecting the folder they are in but the thumbnail representation is not drawn. Only the greyed out icons with a name is visible which is better than above.

Files in jpg format are visible and their icons and names are displayed correctly.

 

2. Also when I drag an SVG file from the media browser onto the page and then click EDIT DOCUMENT button the application crashes. That's in the latest 1.5 beta 4. The button might need to be greyed out to avoid that from happening.

 

3. Will Affinity Designer ever be able to open .ps files? Being a vector based program I think it's a shame that it cannot do it at the moment.

 

Best regards

[anon1]

Also improved:

Text in symbols looks very good now at first sight :)

Dev is approved again, installation works great 

Warning/ option to copy a document that was not created by AD beta software

 

Bugs:

- if you resize the "symbols" studio page, the "sync" button is not constraint to the right side of the page/ panel

- macOS fixes

- one still can´t drag the "opacity" label to change the opacity of layers  :wacko: (like it works for brush size e.g.)

​- Curves are still broken (bevel profiles broken the same way)

 

Missing:

+ retina rendering only showing two out of three possibilities

+ dropping stuff into assets and symbol panels

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

+ Bleed preview, linked bleed values

 

​Thanks for the update, I think we´re looking pretty good in terms of stability now!

[Gatada]

Masking a shape with parent creates an annoying hairline. Is that possible to "fix" for the 1.5 update? This is a blue parent masking a white rectangle. It just gives a feeling that the math isn't sound... and I keep worrying that it will affect pixel output.

 

 

[MattP]

The rendering engine is sound and uses the same optimisations found in basically all other rendering engines - some artefacts are easier to see in some engines than others, but they're nearly always there. We have a different rendering path that you can enable which removes these artefacts but it is slower and this is why it is not normally included in other packages. Go to Preferences->Performance and choose 'Use precise clipping' and this will remove the artefact you can see. This code path is always used on Export irrespective of the view setting that you are able to change, so you never need to worry about seeing these in your output...

 

Thanks,

Matt

[CartoonMike]

Text style alignment is good now. I don't have to size up the palette to see the full name anymore! Thanks!

[anon1]

I just had a weird crash,

Had some instances of a symbol set up and modified one part of an instance

- I think I duplicated one part of the symbol by cmd + drag (at least there where two and I didn´t really want to have two)

-  then I deleted one of the duplicates and AD crashed

 

It recovered everything (another area where you´ve made a more strict approach which might be good for most)

- then I deactivated "sync" and deleted one of the duplicates and everything was good and well

 

The attached file should be the crash report (I took it out of Library > Logs)

 

[MattP]

Thanks for the symbols crash report - I'm going to start looking into these symbol issues over the next week or two now... Hopefully get rid of the niggles :)

[Bauke]

Is it to be expected that the iOS 10 assets that include text (e.g. messages and buttons) don't display the text in the correct font? It looks like these assets expect the San Francisco font, which, if I'm correct, non-developers normally can't access.

 

Best regards,

Bauke

[tml]

I'm experiencing crashing when I create a syymbol, then create a shape, group the two, and try to place the symbol in front of the shape with cmd + ]

[predick]

Is it possible to be same performance as previous version?

PSD file open very slowly in this version, compare with the store version (1.4.2)

 

Cheers. :)

 

file for testing
http://www.teehanlax.com/tools/iphone/

[MattP]

Is it to be expected that the iOS 10 assets that include text (e.g. messages and buttons) don't display the text in the correct font? It looks like these assets expect the San Francisco font, which, if I'm correct, non-developers normally can't access.

 

Best regards,

Bauke

Hi Bauke,

 

They do expect the SanFrancisco fonts, but there's nothing we can do to ship these fonts as they are Apple's property. They silently fall back to system fonts you do have so they don't cause you any workflow annoyances, but the font is shown as missing in the context menu font dropdown. All the assets draw as well as can be expected (apart from one, which I'll get sorted) so I don't know what else we can do there? Do you have any suggestions? :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

[paolo.limoncelli]

SF fonts are free for everybody.

 

https://developer.apple.com/fonts/

[MattP]

Then there's definitely no reason not to recommend that the user downloads them :)

[Bauke]

Hi Bauke,

 

They do expect the SanFrancisco fonts, but there's nothing we can do to ship these fonts as they are Apple's property. They silently fall back to system fonts you do have so they don't cause you any workflow annoyances, but the font is shown as missing in the context menu font dropdown. All the assets draw as well as can be expected (apart from one, which I'll get sorted) so I don't know what else we can do there? Do you have any suggestions? :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

 

Hi Matt,

 

I suspected that would be the problem. You can only download the fonts from the link Paolo provided when you have an Apple developer-account. However I found a way to get the fonts from Apple without a developer-account: https://github.com/AppleDesignResources/SanFranciscoFont

 

The only problem remaining is that when I install these fonts, they have a different name from the system fonts (i.e. San Francisco Display instead of SF UI Display). So it looks like I'm still out of luck.

 

Anyway, although these assets are looking great, I think this is a trivial issue and I'm sure there are more pressing matters.

 

Thanks and have a nice weekend!

Bauke