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Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.5 - Beta 15)


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Status: Beta Release

Purpose: New features, fixes

Requirements: Purchased Affinity Designer

Mac App Store: Not Submitted

Download: 1.5 Beta 15 Here

 

This is a 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:

  • Improved PSD import (gradient maps)
  • Added option (in Preferences) to always show the selected item in the Layers panel when selection changes
  • Pasting a selection which includes Symbols into a different document should now make sure Symbols are created in the other document. Pasting a selection containing many instances of the same symbol into a different document also ensures they are connected to each other.
  • Detaching a Symbol leaves the object in a state where it can be made into another Symbol now
  • Document snapshots should work properly with Text Styles that were available at that time in history
  • Export Persona's 'Export Selected' now says 'Export N Slices' (where N is the number of slices selected to export - hopefully a little more clear now)
  • Improved slider performance for some Adjustments (particularly when using a Wacom or similar)
  • Crash fix for Character panel
  • Performance greatly increased for multi-artboard documents when creating/adjusting objects/properties
  • Fix for terrible rendering issue I accidentally introduced that caused some objects to export incorrectly
  • Fix for Navigator's viewpoints being disabled accidentally
  • PDF export improved (outputting Symbol fonts with certain characters)
  • Snapping should work for Guides now
  • Fix for Line width on Context Toolbar not updating past a certain size (oops)
  • Hopefully improved file read/write stability across network shares
  • Miscellaneous other small fixes
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Congrats for that!

 

We've been so lucky to get so many cool features and improvements these past fews months that I can only hope we still have room to something that most of us (if not everyone) would surely enjoy still in this version: 

 

Cheers,

 

Reminous

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Pasting a selection which includes Symbols into a different document should now make sure Symbols are created in the other document. Pasting a selection containing many instances of the same symbol into a different document also ensures they are connected to each other.

 

That is awesome, Matt … I am going to try this in a minute  …  :)

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  • Performance greatly increased for multi-artboard documents when creating/adjusting objects/properties

 

Good!!!!

The graphics performance is very good now.

 

Thanks so much!!!

 

Great work Matt

 

P.S. The problem remains with the selection tool. I've posted a new video at my original post

 

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Unfortunately, the copy & paste algorithm seems to have some issues, Matt.  :(

 

I created two quick documents for you to demonstrate.

  • Create two symbols with two instances each in “Test_Source.afdesign.”
  • Detach some of the object properties, such as stroke colour, from the instances, change layer blend mode as well.
  • Copy construction from canvas to “Test_Target.afdesign.”
  • Detached properties missing, blend mode not preserved.

Hope that helps …  :)

Alex

post-1198-0-15454200-1474640292_thumb.png

post-1198-0-08774600-1474640297_thumb.png

Test_Source.afdesign

Test_Target.afdesign

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Can we get some attention towards the snapping tool?

 

For some reason the snap to centre is nested within the snap to object bounding box part. Most of the time these collide and the snapping becomes useless. Especially for infographics where you need to connect things. Best to have each on its own.

 

In general I'd like to see something simpler where I don't have to modify any threshold when dealing with vector graphics. They have defined edges already.

The snapping feature right now is unnecessarily complicated in that regard. Threshold settings make sense when you deal with lines in a bitmap context but that's not how it currently works. Maybe when the vectorisation engine is ready as these two seem related (contrast snap and vectorisation)?

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Unfortunately, the copy & paste algorithm seems to have some issues, Matt.  :(

 

I created two quick documents for you to demonstrate.

  • Create two symbols with two instances each in “Test_Source.afdesign.”
  • Detach some of the object properties, such as stroke colour, from the instances, change layer blend mode as well.
  • Copy construction from canvas to “Test_Target.afdesign.”
  • Detached properties missing, blend mode not preserved.

Hope that helps …  :)

Alex

Thanks for this, Alex :)

 

It's actually a much harder problem to fix than you'd imagine - the top-level 'Symbol' nodes both share the same unique ID and thus, I try to connect the two objects to a master instance - and that's updating the properties of all the children to all match those of the master, it's overwriting any local detachments and pointing everything at the master... I'll have to think of a way to get around this...

 

Cheers,

Matt

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Can we get some attention towards the snapping tool?

 

For some reason the snap to centre is nested within the snap to object bounding box part. Most of the time these collide and the snapping becomes useless. Especially for infographics where you need to connect things. Best to have each on its own.

 

In general I'd like to see something simpler where I don't have to modify any threshold when dealing with vector graphics. They have defined edges already.

The snapping feature right now is unnecessarily complicated in that regard. Threshold settings make sense when you deal with lines in a bitmap context but that's not how it currently works. Maybe when the vectorisation engine is ready as these two seem related (contrast snap and vectorisation)?

 

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying...?

 

'Snap to cente' is an extension of snapping to bounding box - i.e., snapping to the centre of the bounding box.  You will have to demonstrate the problem where snapping to edge of the bounding box is causing you a problem when trying to snap to the centre. I have not seen another app that only snaps to centre, but I have seen a few that only snap to the outer bounds of an object.  So, we have that option.

 

What do you mean by "threshold"?  Are you referring to the snapping tolerance?  That just defines the distance in screen pixels at which you want things to snap when editing.  It is really a metric for defining how 'responsive' or 'active' snapping behaves.  Lower values for tolerance will require you to move objects more closely or precisely before they snap, higher values will make it snap more readily.  It is also not a value in terms of document units - it is always in screen space and is entirely independent of zoom levels or document units.

 

And, trust me, the snapping tool is getting a lot of attention.

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I'm not sure I understand what you are saying...?

 

'Snap to cente' is an extension of snapping to bounding box - i.e., snapping to the centre of the bounding box.  You will have to demonstrate the problem where snapping to edge of the bounding box is causing you a problem when trying to snap to the centre. I have not seen another app that only snaps to centre, but I have seen a few that only snap to the outer bounds of an object.  So, we have that option.

 

What do you mean by "threshold"?  Are you referring to the snapping tolerance?  That just defines the distance in screen pixels at which you want things to snap when editing.  It is really a metric for defining how 'responsive' or 'active' snapping behaves.  Lower values for tolerance will require you to move objects more closely or precisely before they snap, higher values will make it snap more readily.  It is also not a value in terms of document units - it is always in screen space and is entirely independent of zoom levels or document units.

 

And, trust me, the snapping tool is getting a lot of attention.

 

Illustrator could snap to just the centre. You just had to turn the centre point on first. It didn't snap to much of anything, but that worked.

Thanks for the explanation of the tolerance. That makes a lot more sense now.

 

The thing I'm not getting still is why snapping sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. That's with the same objects in the same file. Especially when using guides. And yes I turn on snap to lines before I try that. I mean mostly guides not snapping to objects most of the time. My workaround is to zoom in to where I'd see where the ants got their locks and eyeball it. That's where it'd be great to be able to click on a guide and type in where that guide should go.

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Heyyaaaa I just press print in this beta version and crash! I did it 3 times and keeps crashing :(

It's probably specific to the document you're printing - it will crash every time if it crashes once, so if you can send us the file to support@seriflabs.com then we can fix the bug :)

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- delete -

 

had some file uploaded that had performance issues yesterday but seems it was just because I upgraded to macOS and now as the Mac is back to normal schedule it´s working flawlessly 

 

I also checked another massiv eps which was not perfekt in a previous beta but works extremely impressive now

 

cheers

 

 

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I do quite a bit of T-shirt design which needs setting up for screen print but I can't get spot colours to behave as expected - seems like a fingers crossed experience - making a spot colour overprint a light spot colour seems to convert it to CMYK in the pdfx file - the other option that kind of works is to use multiply on simple areas which works as expected - just can't get it to work on a vector halftone graduated tint set up as a spot and placed inside a container it just comes out as CMYK in the PDFx file and trying to convert the halftones geometry to add or combine is too much and just locks up affinity for an hour before I end up force quitting (I've had to do this on a far few jobs so far) - my only option at the moment is to try and get it into Illustrator with spots intact and in a few clicks I'll have a useable PDFx file to sent to the printers - I realise it's early days and affinity does a lot of things really great, but it would be so cool to be able to just do this stuff easily in Affinity so I can lob Illustrator - Control over trapping would also be a bonus

 

See attached

BABTee2a.afdesign

BABTee2a.pdf

Daz1.png

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