What I wish to have in Affinity Designer

[Susan220263]

I wish Affinity had the following:

• Tracing option

• A scissors with different edges like in CraftArtist.

• Acquire Scan like Craftartist.

• Gradient picker like Craftartist.

Craftartist was retired for a better program. I am loving Affinity and help my ladies to use it more and more in card making. However I can not get them to move away from Craftartist because of these missing tools.

[Benfischer]

Acquire Scan (Image) is available in Photo, on the Mac at least, if you mean that it will pull an image in from an attached scanner.  It would be nice to have in Designer.

 I don't know how the gradient picker in Crraftartist works, but you can apply an existing gradient to a new object by using the Style PIcker, which admittedly applies the stroke style as well which you may not want.

image tracing is commonly requested and I'll add my vote for it here, as well.

[walt.farrell]

13 hours ago, Benfischer said:

Acquire Scan (Image) is available in Photo, on the Mac at least, if you mean that it will pull an image in from an attached scanner.  It would be nice to have in Designer.

It's not available on Windows, though, which is probably the OS that Susan is using if she's a CraftArtist user.

[Susan220263]

Yes I am using Win 11 and it would be great if it was added in at some point.  Thanks for your reply.

 

[Bound by Beans]

On 4/27/2025 at 11:07 AM, Susan220263 said:

I wish Affinity had the following:

• Gradient picker like Craftartist.

Hi Susan,

I haven't used CraftArtist, but I often pick colors from images and other elements to create gradients — is that the kind of thing you're asking about?

Here’s how you can do it:

1. Have your image ready.
2. Place a vector object, for example, and apply a gradient to it, inserting the gradient stops either all at once or as you go.
3. With the Gradient Tool active, select a gradient stop.
4. Move the cursor (which will show a gradient symbol) over the color you want to pick from your source image, hold down ALT (or Option on Mac), and click.
5. The selected stop will now adopt the desired color, and you can continue the same way for the rest of your gradient.

If you're drawing directly over an image:

1. Insert the source image
2. Insert/place another object on top of it
3. Hide that object from the Layers panel
4. Create the gradient on the (now hidden) object
5. Pick the colors as described in my first example
6. Then make the placed object visible again

[walt.farrell]

18 hours ago, Susan220263 said:

Yes I am using Win 11 and it would be great if it was added in at some point.  Thanks for your reply.

 

It's unlikely that scanning will be added to the Affinity applications on Windows, unfortunately. But most scanners have software you can use directly, and with some scanner software it's also easy to tell it to transfer a file to Affinity.

[Susan220263]

Bound by beans: thank you for your message.  I will give it a go and see if it is what I was try to do.  Gradient picker in Craftartist will pick all the colours as you go over them and fill the swatch with lines of colours.  I will have a play and might even put a clip of how it works there.  thanks again I will have a good play tomorrow.

[Bound by Beans]

37 minutes ago, Susan220263 said:

Bound by beans: thank you for your message.  I will give it a go and see if it is what I was try to do.  Gradient picker in Craftartist will pick all the colours as you go over them and fill the swatch with lines of colours.  I will have a play and might even put a clip of how it works there.  thanks again I will have a good play tomorrow.

My pleasure. Yes, absolutely, if you can find the time. 🙂

Here are a couple of somewhat hidden ways to extract ALL colors from an image or document and add them to a swatch. Unfortunately, Serif only did the bare minimum implementation of this in Affinity v1 and hasn’t improved it in v2 either. I imagine customers like you would truly appreciate more and better options! 

or

 

Unfortunately, usability is generally poor in the Color and Swatches panels, but here’s an extra tip:

Somewhat cryptically designed and separated, you can add complementary and other theory-based colors to your swatches from the Color panel — meaning what you do ends up in a different panel. Here, you'll probably prefer having both the Color and Swatches panels visible side by side.

Take note of the TINT option, which in the Swatches panel will create a strip of variations of the color — in this case, blue. Might be something you can use:

Like this:

Serif: Usability. Improvement. Many years have passed. The customers deserve it. 🙂

Note: Unfortunately I have to humiliate both Serif and Canva here by adding that, on the Mac version, simply going through the Color and Swatches panels using basic steps revealed a depressingly number of bugs. As a customer, I shouldn’t be spending my evening trying to find patterns in these — that’s Serif’s job. It’s disappointing, especially in components that have been part of Affinity since version 1. And just to be perfectly clear: you shouldn’t just skim over the functionality — it needs to be tested more thoroughly in real usage scenarios. 

If you encounter bugs or odd behavior, Susan, a program restart may help with the issues I ran into. Unless, of course… Designer crashes. As it did when I experimented with the number of colors in “Create Swatch from Image.” 10 seconds into using it.

[Susan220263]

Again Bound by Beans thank you so much we use the colour pallets already.  However I found my video from 4 years ago and around 2min mark I start doing the gradient picker and how we use it in craftartist. 

 

[Bound by Beans]

Hi @Susan220263

Thanks for that – aha, yes, it really is an automatic colour gradient picker, and I can see it actually has potential for quick, efficient and exciting graphic effects.

That’s something Serif hasn’t implemented in Affinity, so it’s all painstaking manual work instead, as I showed:

1. Create a gradient
2. Add the desired number of gradient stops, either initially or on the fly
3. Use the gradient tool to select each stop and Alt/Option-click the colour you want for it
4. Repeat, repeat, repeat 😞

Alas. I don’t understand why Serif has neglected colour-related features for so long – these are essential tools that deserve attention. Anyway, happy creating to you creative ladies from one creative to others. 🙂

BONUS: Through my Adobe Creative Suite subscription I found their gradient image extract tool, which is elegantly and flexibly implemented. You can move the sampling circles around on the image and tweak the gradient stops directly on the bar below. So yeah, Serif – there is a need out there. One that works for the customer. 

[influxx]

On 4/27/2025 at 2:07 AM, Susan220263 said:

I wish Affinity had the following:

• Tracing option

Yes yes yes. I really miss that function from illustrator. A lot.

And the Blend tool.

In almost every other regard AD is better.

[GillCh]

Hi, I’m with you Susan. I love using Affinity, the more I use it the more I like the program. Yes it would be great to have the options you have suggested. Hopefully someone will read your post and look into the possibilities of them.