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Just purchased Designer - thoughts...


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Long time Serif Plus line user here.  I just purchased Designer yesterday after receiving the email, so I registered here also to keep up with things.  Just a few observations.

 

First, after getting Designer installed today, I couldn't use it.  I'm on Windows 7 Pro 64, and I use the Windows Classic theme (don't like Aero).  When trying to load Designer, I would get a popup message that Designer would work better under the Aero theme, but when clicking off that message Designer would simply quit.  Tried multiple times, and it never got past the initial message.  Finally switched temporarily to Aero, and it ran fine.  Switched back to Classic, and nothing.  After posting about this in the Affinity thread in the Serif forum, though, Alfred came up with a great workaround.  By simply adding "--no-dwm-warning" to the command line, it not only bypassed the message but Designer ran fine.  Thanks again for that, Alfred.  A good thing to know for anyone else having that problem.

 

Once I got into it and started playing around, one of the first things I noticed was the section in the bottom right corner (Transform-History-Navigator) has been brought back from the Plus line.  Very nice.  If Serif could just add the "Align" tab back to that section, it would be perfect.  I know it's in the right-click options, but I love it in the lower right section for the workflow.  I'm saying 'Please' nicely, Serif, it would great to have that 'Align' tab back also.

 

Everything else in the program has exceeded my expectations so far after using the beta for a short time.  I'm still keeping my Plus line software installed, but a lot of my fears about the Affinity line being a copycat of the many other graphics programs out there have been assuaged.  One the 'Align' tab is added back to the lower right section, I see Designer becoming my goto graphics program.  And, the intro price for current Serif customers was icing on the cake.  Made the purchase decision easy, and seeing the final Designer now will make the purchase of the rest of the Affinity line a no brainer as they become available for Windows.

 

Bottom line, as a longtime Serif customer and Plus line user, I feel right at home with Designer, but see even more potential.  I'm a happy camper.  And not to beat a dead horse, but I will be even happier when the 'Align' tab is added back to the lower right section.

 

Thanks, Serif.  Great work...

 

 

Edit:  I just found out from Alfred that it was Mark Ingram who originally came up with the command line parameter.  So thanks to both...

A computer once beat me at chess.  Turns out, however, it was no match for me at kickboxing...

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Edit:  I just found out from Alfred that it was Mark Ingram who originally came up with the command line parameter.  So thanks to both...

 

Good to see you here, Terry, and thanks for setting the record straight! :)

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Thanks, obtusity, appreciate that.  I had actually come across that while playing with the program more after I posted here.  That will work, though I still miss it down by Transform.

 

I'm finding most of the functionality that was in Plus, and more in the program.  One thing I'm still missing, though, or haven't found, is the ability to resize objects to other objects.  For instance, in Plus I could select two (or more) objects, and with one click resize them all to exactly the size of the largest object.  That was very useful in my work.

 

Maybe I just haven't found the option yet.  I know I can check the size of an object, and use Transform to specify the same dimensions on other objects, but this was so much easier and faster...

A computer once beat me at chess.  Turns out, however, it was no match for me at kickboxing...

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Good to see you here, Terry, and thanks for setting the record straight! :)

 

Glad to be here, Alfred.  And looking forward to as long a history with Affinity as I've had with Plus.  And I won't even mention again here how much I'd like to see an Affinity version of WebPlus.  Woops... :P

A computer once beat me at chess.  Turns out, however, it was no match for me at kickboxing...

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Thanks, obtusity, appreciate the info.  That's a very handy function, and one that I use much more often than one might think.  Hopefully Serif will consider adding it in a future update...

A computer once beat me at chess.  Turns out, however, it was no match for me at kickboxing...

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Sorry, CodeDog, no quick-click solution that I can see in the current release.

 

If you turn on bounding box snapping then you can fairly quickly drag to match sizes if two objects are directly superimposed (but not in place and offset like DrawPlus. nor with multiple objects).

 

They don't need to be directly superimposed, just aligned horizontally or vertically (which is pretty easily achieved, thanks to the snapping options) but it would be nice if they could be in place and offset. At the moment I think the only ways to deal with this are (i) to resize the objects before putting them in their final positions or (ii) snap a pair of guides to an already positioned object, move it to a suitable position and resize it, and then snap it to the pair of guides marking its original position.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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More good info, Alfred.  I think for now, when I'm working on a project that would require much resizing of this type, I'll probably be using Plus.  But if/when Serif adds some of these things to Affinity, it will require less and less 'dependency' on Plus as a fallback, and heavier use of Affinity.  For my case, anyway...

A computer once beat me at chess.  Turns out, however, it was no match for me at kickboxing...

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