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Swatches and Text feature from CorelDraw


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As a veteran Corel Draw user, after 48 hours i immediately found Affinity Desinger truly fascianating. Its fast, smooth and im glad Affinity adopts solutions from Illustrator and Corel too, and im expremely happy that AFD is available for Windows already. I would be ready to change my workflow to continue daily work with Affinity only but there are few things i really miss.

Please consider to implement these things:

 

- Swatches part1: To me its awfully slow to choose the right colour of fill/stroke to an object. This is what i truly hate in Illustrator too. In CorelDraw there is a very simple way to do that: Palettes are always visible on the right side of the screen - RGB, CYMK or any palettes you want. Left click to fill, right click to stroke. It makes the procedure lightning fast.

 

- Swatches part2: There is no way to work comfortably with swatches (saying as a Corel user). I would love to see them all the time on the side, and use the colour wheel only if its neccessary. Also i really wanna know what colour im actually using on an object. CorelDraw is amazing in that case. See the attached picture.

post-55940-0-83548800-1491328691_thumb.jpg

 

Working with text: In Corel there is an option to move each letter independently in the letter boksz with the Shape Tool. As far as i know there is no option for that in AFD yet.

post-55940-0-14746200-1491328733_thumb.jpg

These may seem small things, but it truly fastens the process while working on a complex graphic, without clicking a bunch of times across the screen. If u could make these options available somehow im sure more and more users would be ready to change to Affinity.

Thanks and respect for your brilliant work, Dear Affinity Team!  

 

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Hi Zoltan,

 

To move a letter within a word, you can place the cursor between two letters, press and hold the "Alt" key and adjust the space between letters using the right and left arrows on the keyboard .

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Yes, the two proxy model is slow and cumbersome. But I don't think Serif is going to change how setting the fill/outline color nor how swatches work.

 

Swatches as they are could be made simpler anyway.

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   As a lifetime Corel user, I was wondering the same thing. I did find out when you adjust the space between letters, as above, this moves ALL the adjacent letters too. rather than the individual letters. I cannot adjust the spacing between just two characters without affecting the spacing between all other characters. With CorelDRAW, in the word 'Canuck', I can change the spacing between the letters 'u' and 'c' such that the 'c' ends up overlapping the letter 'k'. This cannot be done in Designer. With Designer, in the word 'Canuck', when I change the spacing between the letters 'u' and 'c', the letters 'c' and 'k' are all pushed to the right. Hell, I can even move the individual letters up or down from the baseline. Cannot do this in Designer either.

   I think I am becoming somewhat disillusioned with Affinity Designer. Too many things it cannot do that CorelDRAW can do with ease. 

 

Canuck

Hi Canuck,

 

In his request, Zoltan asked for a method to move each letter individually, which is why I made this answer.

 

You can also move several letters at the same time, left or right, up or down, just select the letters you want to move.

For horizontal movement, adjust the approach and for vertical movement the baseline.

The method is not very flexible for a more recent software than DrawPlus (which allows him to select one or more letters to move them manually), but in the meantime better ...

post-37692-0-01592200-1491488485_thumb.png

post-37692-0-95356300-1491488485_thumb.png

post-37692-0-33835200-1491488487_thumb.png

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Hi Canuck,

In his request, Zoltan asked for a method to move each letter individually, which is why I made this answer.

 

Thanks reglico, but actually its a half-solution, becuase its only for horizontal or vertical movements and the method is complicated (it requires several clicks). In Corel i can drag&drop the letter and move wherever i want, with two clicks, independently from the text box or the baseline. So yeah, lets say your suggestion works, but its still not exactly the thing i wish.  

 

Believe or not i use this feature quite often when i work on text-heavy graphic-based pdf documents. Sometimes the simple x-y alignement method isnt enough. Corel is brilliant in that.

 

ps: ... but just to be fair, Corel is less smooth and optimized in processing than AFD. Thatswhy i would love to see that Serif would be open to develop itself not just as an Adobe-killer, but a Corel-killer too. :) My opinion is that Adobe is obsessed to define everything with numbers and strongly force the user to get used to that. Corel is more like a "drag-and-drop-anywhere-you-want" based software. ... and as a creative worker i prefer to be productive as fast as i can without calculating every of my movements and crossing it with ten thousand clicks. Simplifying things is the key to fast and fruitful creative work, and thats also the key to reach a wider circle of users. ;)      

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Thanks reglico, but actually its a half-solution, becuase its only for horizontal or vertical movements and the method is complicated (it requires several clicks). In Corel i can drag&drop the letter and move wherever i want, with two clicks, independently from the text box or the baseline.

Zoltan, I agree with you, I also await the possibility of moving the letters quickly, simply by pulling them. I am not like you a big user of this method, but I sometimes use it and in this case I regret DrawPlus.

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   Not the same. Look at how we can do it in CorelDRAW...

 

 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ldv6bkmdu4mwshg/Text%20Manipulation.wmv?dl=0

   

   I surely hope Serif adopts this as it is a far superior method. 

 

Canuck

Hi Canuck,

 

Thanks for the link to the video. I had seen from the attached Zoltan's thumbnail what he was asking and since AD did not allow it to do so, I was simply giving a track to get a similar result, even though the method is rather restrictive.

 

I was referring to DrawPlus which allows text manipulation in the same way as CorelDRAW (see screenshot attached).

 

So I hope that Affinity will take over the DrawPlus method and integrate it into AD.

post-37692-0-20928800-1491721047_thumb.png

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I just discovered you cannot create multiple pages as in CorelDRAW. Well, Designer is a long, long way from being a Corel-killer. I am becoming disappointed.

 

I think multiple pages is one of those things (like bullets and numbering) which will be added to Designer when we get it in Publisher.

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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Serif would do well to implement the feature.

To match such capabilities as it stands, one would be required to convert all text to curves, then break up the curves into pieces to allow one to manipulate individual portions of text.

I agree with you, especially since in Serif DrawPlus, when selecting a letter, in addition to moving it is also possible to tilt it by a handle.

Vectorization is actually a solution if the text does not have to be changed afterwards.

post-37692-0-19587300-1491763890_thumb.png

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   Yes, but why not add that same ability to Designer? You want you should be required to purchase another piece of software? I can have as many pages as I want within CorelDRAW. If Serif comes out with 'Publisher', I do hope it is worthy of Adobe InDesign. I used Aldus PageMaker and Quark Xpress back in the day. I recall using Microsoft Publisher and laughing. I see Microsoft still sells it. Why?

   I had forgotten to check that. Designer does not have the ability to create bullets and numbering? I am beginning to regret my purchase of the software. 

 

Just because CD can make multi-page publications doesn't mean it is efficient for it. I've used CD since version 1.2, am currently using X8, and still haven't made something more than a two-sided brochure with it. 

 

As regards bullets and numbering being a (possibly) Publisher only option? At the price of the software, one can buy all three if one chooses and end up spending less money than an update to CD. Because all the Affinity applications can open each other's files, it makes it even less an issue for bouncing back and forth between them no matter the method of so doing.

 

Certain features that will arrive with Publisher will be ported to AD. It's not a bad method for extending functionality when these applications are immature.

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I think multiple pages is one of those things (like bullets and numbering) which will be added to Designer when we get it in Publisher.

   Yes, but why not add that same ability to Designer? You want you should be required to purchase another piece of software?

 

You misunderstood me. Once those features are made available in Publisher, they will be added to Designer in a free update.

 

 

Certain features that will arrive with Publisher will be ported to AD. It's not a bad method for extending functionality when these applications are immature.

 

Serif's Dave Harris has indicated that bullets and numbering will be one of those features (unlike linked text frames, which look set to be a Publisher-only feature).

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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