affinity designer Affinity Windows – after a week playing my first drawing

[ernie-f]

Hi @ all,

 

I'm a newbie in Affinity Designer and this is my forst post here. My name is Ernie and I'm an old school Grafik Designer, Typesetter and Printer from Germany, Bavaria.

For my work I use several programs like AI, CorelDraw, Serif DrawPlus, Inkscape but my favorite drawing program is still Xara. With Xara i made my most work in vector drawing and desining book covers for print and e-books.

For Typesetting I use TangoSolo, Indesign and Serif PagePlus.

 

My fun is creating photo realistic vector drawings like this one which is made in Xara.

 

 

Just a week i play arround with Affinity for Windows an try out some drawings. One, is still in work because is to complex and affinity can't handle it, must wait until Affinity will be ready to deliver and most bugless.

 

So I try some easier projects. These I'll share here with you:

 

 

 

Sorry for my German-English, I hope You understand me nevertheless.

 

From Bavaria

Ernie

[MEB]

Hi ernie-f,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Nice way to start. Fantastic work. Thanks for sharing with us.

Looking forward for more!

[ernie-f]

Thanks MEB.

I think it will be a lot of fun when AD for Win is ready for bussinens.

 

The first day I had problems to navigate in the menus and find all functions I need. But luckily the shortcuts are most indentical with AI. Some feauters aren't so like I know it in other programs. But hey, it's still beta!

 

Maybe I'll find in Affinity (-Designer, -Photo and -Publisher) my new tools and can worth the others. This would save me a bunch off money. We will see.

 

Until i get some work ready I'll share it herein.

 

From Bavaria

Ernie

[peter]

HI Ernie...Wow! That watch is stunning.

 

With your background in the more senior apps, Xara, AI, Corel Draw and DrawPlus; you have a valuable insight from user interfaces to tools, right down to the simplest of shortcuts. This means your comments will be very welcome in this forum....What Affinity Designer and Photo lack in features is simply down to the fact that we haven't reached version 2 yet. So give it time and have some fun. The Devs are very responsive, as for your English; it's more than adequate. We do have a couple of forum users here, who have posted in both their own language and English; so feel free to post in German too, if that helps!

 

peter

 

PS how does Xara compare to DrawPlus? 

[ernie-f]

Hallo Peter,

sorry I answer late, I spent a few days on vacation.

 

 

PS how does Xara compare to DrawPlus?

DrawPlus has pretty tools thye in Xara not exist. Ex. is the mesh fill-tool, roughen the edges, the replicate-tool.

But DrawPlus is still slower then Xara. If I draw things like the Breitling I'd shown, DrawPlus freezes for about two minutes and if I have the luck it crashes.

 

Xara is for me intuitively to handle then all other Vector Drawing Programs I know, AD included. Tha fastness in Xara is incredible and such a drawing like the Breitling Watch with 1475 objects it handles like a lightning.

 

 

The PDF Import in Xara is more precise, Xara uses the embedet fonts to reconstruct the PDF to its native. Not so in DrawPlus or PagePlus. Her some screenshots:

 

original PDF in Acrobat

 

PDF in DrawPlus

 

PDF in Xara

 

The same behavior in AffinityDesigner

 

There will be a lot of work for you guys. There are many thinks I miss in AD like blend-tool, mesh-fill, lines modifiyng like in AI, copy all atributes of one object and paste it in an other, transparency/fill tool may be intuitively like in Xara, 3D shadow, the possibility to create multi page documents etc. etc. etc.

 

I looking forward to the end version of AD and wish You all the power to create the best vector drawing tool on the market.

 

With the best wishes from Bavaria

 

Ernie

[Crad]

Hi Emie,

 

Thank you for your contribution. To copy all attributes from one object to another, you can try control + C (normal way to copy) and instead of control + V to paste, you will do Control + Shift + V with the new item selected. I hope this helps. 

 

If you on a mac (Control is command) 

 

Cheers.

 

Sammy.

[ernie-f]

Hi Emie,

 

Thank you for your contribution. To copy all attributes from one object to another, you can try control + C (normal way to copy) and instead of control + V to paste, you will do Control + Shift + V with the new item selected. I hope this helps. 

 

If you on a mac (Control is command) 

 

Cheers.

 

Sammy.

Hi Sammy,

 

thanks for the suggestion. I know the shortcuts for copy and paste only the styles to an other object. For objects thye stay alone it works, for objects set under in the layer palette it doesn't. I can then only copy and paste in ex. the fill or only the transparancy by selcted its tools. Not the propetties of the whole object. I hope in the end version of AD this behavior will be fixed.

 

It'll be fine to get the possibility to copy the propetties of a group and paste it to an other at the order they where created.

 

Servus Ernie

[Patrick Connor]

Hi Ernie-f

That's fantastic work, and a great start in affinity.

If you had any problems while making your designs then please don't forget to post your findings to the beta forum. Issues found in real projects are very welcome, and those problems posted in the beta section are likely to be commented on by the developers and QA staff.