Work flow enhancement suggestions Affinity Designer

[Craig Deeley]

This is a personal partial feature wish list that would make AD even more outstanding.

Most of these are work flow enhancements. The ability to use them would enhance, simplify and speed the work process.

Some of these may exist already. If that is the case - the options are not clear or only available thru perhaps unnecessarily complicated steps.

 

Brushes:

Add a contextual menu item for Brush menu: Copy (Duplicate) to (another) category of a brush selected in brush menu. The present Duplicate and then having to manually copy the duplicate in the popout Brush menu calls for un-needed extra steps.

 

Menu (top of working interface):

Set Brush/Controller to Brush Defaults as the default setting. 

Reason: Remove the extra and sometimes forgotten step of setting the brush. Just about every custom brush is made with specific settings. These should be available from the start.

 

My big number one wish list item:

Identify and switch brush by selecting a stroke on the canvas.

Select a stroke would identify the stroke and make it active in the Brushes menu.

This should be the minimum action/behavior when selecting the brush on canvas. 

 

However, switching to this brush should also load the attributes applied to the stroke:

Color, Width, Transparency, Direction. The Brush tool should inherit all of these attributes on selecting a stroke on the canvas.

In the Brushes menu - if another Brush is selected while all the attributes are active - only the Brush would change but all other attributes would remain the same until manually changed.

 

If this is problematic. Add an option in the pop up contextual menu - when clicking an item: Switch to this Brush/attributes.

 

Alternately - IF the above brush switch is not easily implemented:

Identify Name of Brush in the menu: Curve (clicking on the brush preview and mini adjustment panels)

and make switching to the identified brush and option from this menu.

 

 

The Brush revealed in this menu would be the bare minimum to enhance the brush palette to being quick switch usable.

 

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Fills:

Same as above (Identify and switch…)- applied to fill.

 

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General context switching in menus based on selection:

Context switching of adjustment menus or tools.

For instance. If a stroke (only) is selected - the color options should switch to stroke on top (make it active on top) so that any adjustment can be made to the stroke without further clicking to activate/prioritize the stroke color. The attached image here shows the selected stroke - but the color circles remaining on fill as priority - requiring attention to change.

 

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Select (enhanced select menu options)

Under an overarching Select:

Select (others) by same attribute (as a selected)

For instance:

Select (others) by same brush/stroke.

Select (others) by same stroke color

Select (others) by same fill color

The attached image shows how bare the cupboard is under the Select menu.

 

I may be unaware of a way to select an item where the selection is not dictated by the items bounding box. If this bounding box is the items selection area:

 

Selection: Make option to select stroke center (outline) instead of bounding box when selecting strokes on canvas.

 

And additional contextual option wish:

Contextual (right click or Option Click(Mac) )menu option from canvas (drawing area) to Lock Selected (Item).

Associated Context menu to Unlock All 

 

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Color dropper:

Color dropper should be a tool in the tools collection and easily invoked with a key command.

 

Color dropper should be stroke or fill sensitive. If stroke only is selected - stroke should be on top in color stroke/fill menu. If an object has both stroke and fill - color menu does not change (will require manual changes).

 

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Copy and Paste effects:

Copy and Paste Effects from one item to another. Either thru the Effects menus or another means.

Drag and drop attribute option. Either a tool (similar to dropper) that acquires attributes and can carry the attributes to another item… Or a contextual menu that copies brush or style etc attributes and pastes them to some other object.

 

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All of these features were built into original Creature House Expression3 in 2004. They would make outstanding feature tool enhancements to AD, E3's clear successor.

 

Thanks!