Line Tool Request

[tcarisland]

So, I just got myself a new mac, only downside being that my version of CS5 happens to be for Windows. I happen to have a copy of PS Elements 11, but what I really need is a good vector program. So now I thought I'd get Affinity Designer seeing as any future purchases from Adobe is out of the question for pretty obvious reasons.

 

Sorry if I'm barging in making assertions here without doing the right amount of research, but after googling a couple of scenarios I found these features somewhat missing.

 

Anyway, here's my personal list of suggestions.

 

Crop tool like in PS CS5 - i.e. being able to control cropping by percentage or pixels chosing to crop from the left, right, top or bottom with detailed instructions, I find the resize and crop tools in PS to be somewhat superior to most other programs, and it's a fairly basic, yet important feature for any image editing. Sadly, this seems to be missing in PS Elements as well.

 

Line tool like in AI - the line tool in AI happened to be really great for drawing using orthographic projection. Why? Because I could just click at any point on the canvas, and insert instructions on how long the line should be and at what angle/degree it should be, working with isometric perspective I find being able to create lines at 30, 60 and 120 degree angles to be extremely useful. And also being able to duplicate and move these lines and objects by degree and length. I'm not saying Affinity Designer should be a CAD tool, but for those of us who knows Orthographic Projection from the ground up, a basic vector toolkit is pretty useful for this.

 

Auto-tracing - because even though it's often a bad habit, it's still extremely useful.

 

Automation tools - being able to record actions and execute these multiple times, or for batch processing multiple files.

 

Perspective tools - just might be nice, but again, just a good line tool like I suggested earlier might do the trick.

 

Sorry if I suggested something that already exists, if some of these features already exist, please tell me how.

[peter]

Hi tcarisland,

 

welcome to the forum.

 

The autotrace function has been discussed elsewhere in the forum. Basically one of the staff said it couldn't compete or even match the best available software. So there is valour in defeat, on this occasion.

 

You could search the forums to see better answers, but you will either have to visit a site and download and upload your image. Tryout inkscape, or if you dual boot with Windows use Serif Drawplus.

[tcarisland]

Hi tcarisland,

 

welcome to the forum.

 

The autotrace function has been discussed elsewhere in the forum. Basically one of the staff said it couldn't compete or even match the best available software. So there is valour in defeat, on this occasion.

 

You could search the forums to see better answers, but you will either have to visit a site and download and upload your image. Tryout inkscape, or if you dual boot with Windows use Serif Drawplus.

Couldn't you just implement an auto-trace algorithm taken from Inkscape and release the source code borrowed from open source software on the website? Apple does it all the time, I'm not all that familiar with the legal requirements of GNU, but from what I've read about it it seems perfectly acceptable to take open source software and implement it into proprietary software as long as the GNU source code is released.

 

I'm using Inkscape and Affinity Designer interchangeably now, but I just can't stand the look and feel of most FOSS software, FOSS is good for strictly functional stuff, but my experience is that they pretty much suck when a GUI is involved.

 

Anyway, the autotrace isn't really the most important thing, as mentioned it's easily fixed by using Inkscape and exporting it into Affinity.

 

I'm still missing a (straight) line tool with a fairly simple mathematical dialog window where I just type in the length and direction - it's pretty basic vector stuff actually, what I miss is the strictly vectorial part of drawing vectors - i.e. the ability to just click on a point on the canvas which opens up a small dialog window asking for the length of the line and the direction in the form of an angle. So for example if I want to draw a line that's 10cm and goes 30 degrees upwards in the left direction I fill in "10cm" in one field (in Java the Swing package that would be a JTextField) and "150" in a field marked angle. If this could work together with the "lock to grid" that would be perfect.

 

It would also be interesting with a line tool where I could just type vectors directly, i.e. being able to click on any point and a dialog window opens asking for the X and Y coordinates of the vector.

 

This is perfect for drawing orthographic projection without having to deal with clumsy CAD software.

 

I just found out the crop tools are already there in the "Document Preferences" window, which is awesome, and I see you added dashed lines and arrow heads in the last update - this made it way easier to create proper UML drawings.

 

The reason why I'm a bit insistent on this is because I also think this change should be fairly simple to implement yet still add enormously to the usability of the program.

[Dave Harris]

Couldn't you just implement an auto-trace algorithm taken from Inkscape and release the source code borrowed from open source software on the website? Apple does it all the time, I'm not all that familiar with the legal requirements of GNU, but from what I've read about it it seems perfectly acceptable to take open source software and implement it into proprietary software as long as the GNU source code is released.

 

There are two flavours of the GPL. What they call the Lesser Licence does allow that. Inkscape uses the main licence, which doesn't.

[AshTeriyaki]

Not to mention code infection...