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Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.6 - Beta 7)


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19 hours ago, abarkalo said:

One question and I don't know if this is the beta because it also happens with the MAS version.  If I open a multipage PDF (one I didn't create) the auto spellchecker is highlighting words that are obviously correctly spelled.  I thought that maybe a foreign language dictionary is being used but I check on text/spelling and I don't see those settings or where to change that.  Apologies if this is a simple setting that I am not seeing.  

 

 

Screen Shot 2017-08-15 at 10.10.52 AM.png

 

The spelling language is set via the Character Studio panel, in the Language section. I doubt that's the problem, though.

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Bug: Typography Engine, General

 

Tab stops. There's no visual editor for placing them. It's guesswork. (AKA: Not good)

The fill characters don't fill. Just one instance is placed.

 

Edit: Alignments in tabs do nothing.

 

Glyph browser distorts all glyphs to a square preview box, already reported by someone else in last version IIRC.

Edited by Frank Jonen
Edit: Alignments in tabs do nothing.
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6 hours ago, Frank Jonen said:

Bug: Export Persona 

 

When you set artboard positions to non integer values, the slice tool will get the values wrong. You'll get 1025 x 1024 on a 1024 square for example. 

Set it to an integer position and it gets it right.

This isn't a bug, but it's not what you'd expect, I'll agree... When you create an artboard it is forced to be pixel-aligned, so you won't get the wrong output, but if a user then moves the artboard to off-pixel then they will get inflated output. The Export Persona deals only with the final output space, so if your content is not pixel-aligned the output area must be inflated in order to show the correct antialiased partial coverage on all sides. Hope that makes sense?

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Why wouldn’t one expect that? For me that’s totally logical that an exported image can only be full pixels and that any half-pixel bleed would have to be exported, too, in an extra row of pixels. It was always annoying to me when I got PSD or AI website designs by people that were not familiar with website/UI design, and their shapes would be all over the place, exporting with blurry edges. Perhaps that’s why I’m familiar with this issue? But other programs (PS/AI) are doing this as well.

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On 8/15/2017 at 9:25 PM, Bri-Toon said:

I was trying to figure out Bagmetv's issue, and I was about to suggest to go into Layer > Studio > Reset Studio, and see if it works with the default workspace (assuming the right tabs may have been accidentally repositioned), but now I am unable to move a tab set. Designer stops responding if I attempt to click and drag (not a tab) but a tab set. This is after the workspace has been reset.

 

Hi!

 

Thanks. I've just toggled UI (tab key) on and off and left tab side is start working ok as expected after that.

 

Cheers

Vitaliy

 

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Yes, Stephan, I also believe the extra-pixel confusion arises due to the special approach of Designer, where an artboard is an object within the document hierarchy and not the root node of a hierarchy of its own. So I would definitely say that it makes sense, but I also understand the confusion … for whatever it’s worth … ;)

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3 hours ago, bagmetv said:

Thanks. I've just toggled UI (tab key) on and off and left tab side is start working ok as expected after that.

 

Interesting.

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On PDF export there seems to be a bit of artifacting - please see attached sample.  It's noticeable on compressed images (JPGs) within a document - typically anything below 50% compression.  I do realize that there is a tradeoff -if  you want crisp /smooth images then you pay for it with a bigger size output.  But the the issue is that I'm getting a crosshatch pattern, a blockiness that is even worse then the usual blurring or low res artifacting.

 

What I'm really trying to do is match InDesign's efficient PDF output.  I think I'm nearly there but Designer outputs are about 30% larger to get to the same smoothness.  If I want to match bit for bit I can and most of the image look almost identical with Indesign's output - but then there is the crosshatch pattern which seems to plague smoother areas. I have the same crosshatch pattern when using Photo, and I made a post about that, and thought the problem unique to Photo and refine mask. Please see attached also the InDesign "high quality print" settings.  CCITT 4 compression is lossless is seems.  I'm using bilinear - is that the best?  What is CCITT 4, lossless it seems, and can I emulate that?

 

Screen Shot 2017-08-17 at 12.12.14 PM.png

Screen Shot 2017-08-17 at 12.02.35 PM.png

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7 minutes ago, abarkalo said:

On PDF export there seems to be a bit of artifacting - please see attached sample.  It's noticeable on compressed images (JPGs) within a document - typically anything below 50% compression.  I do realize that there is a tradeoff -if  you want crisp /smooth images then you pay for it with a bigger size output.  But the the issue is that I'm getting a crosshatch pattern, a blockiness that is even worse then the usual blurring or low res artifacting.

 

What I'm really trying to do is match InDesign's efficient PDF output.  I think I'm nearly there but Designer outputs are about 30% larger to get to the same smoothness.  If I want to match bit for bit I can and most of the image look almost identical with Indesign's output - but then there is the crosshatch pattern which seems to plague smoother areas. I have the same crosshatch pattern when using Photo, and I made a post about that, and thought the problem unique to Photo and refine mask. Please see attached also the InDesign "high quality print" settings.  CCITT 4 compression is lossless is seems.  I'm using bilinear - is that the best?  What is CCITT 4, lossless it seems, and can I emulate that?

 

Screen Shot 2017-08-17 at 12.12.14 PM.png

Screen Shot 2017-08-17 at 12.02.35 PM.png

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_4_compression

 

Quote

CCITT Group 4 compression, also referred to as G4 or Modified Modified READ (MMR), is a lossless method of image compression used in Group 4 fax machines defined in the ITU-T T.6 fax standard. It is only used for bitonal (black and white) images. Group 4 compression is based on the Group 3 two-dimensional compression scheme (G3-2D), also known as Modified READ, which is in turn based on the Group 3 one-dimensional compression scheme (G3), also known as Modified Huffman coding. Group 4 compression is available in many proprietary image file formats as well as standardized formats such as TIFFCALS, CIT (Intergraph Raster Type 24) and the PDF document format.

G4 offers a small improvement over G3-2D by removing the end of line (EOL) codes. G3 and G4 compression both treat an image as a series of horizontal black strips on a white page. Better compression is achieved when there are fewer unique black dots/lines on the page. Both G3-2D and G4 add a two dimensional feature to achieve greater compression by taking advantage of vertical symmetry. A worst-case image would be an alternating pattern of single-pixel black and white dots offset by one pixel on even/odd lines. G4 compression would actually increase the file size on this type of image. G4 typically achieves a 20:1 compression ratio.[citation needed] For an 8.5"×11" page scanned at 200 DPI, this equates to a reduction from 467.5 kB to 23.4 kB (95% compression ratio).

 

 

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11 minutes ago, mdriftmeyer said:

 

Thanks for this  - but wondering which methods we have available here are best for PDF export - when you want a smaller size document.  I think it's bilinear since I tested the others and text gets a bit jaggy.  I don't think we have a lossless method or if these perform similarly.

Screen Shot 2017-08-17 at 12.38.15 PM.png

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14 hours ago, MattP said:

This isn't a bug, but it's not what you'd expect, I'll agree... When you create an artboard it is forced to be pixel-aligned, so you won't get the wrong output, but if a user then moves the artboard to off-pixel then they will get inflated output. The Export Persona deals only with the final output space, so if your content is not pixel-aligned the output area must be inflated in order to show the correct antialiased partial coverage on all sides. Hope that makes sense?

 

That's pretty much what I suspected. I think it's something that'll need to be addressed somehow, otherwise new users will constantly ask about it in the future, creating support overhead / frustration.

The way I ended up with the inflation was when I tidied up the project and aligned all artboards evenly by distributing horizontal centres.

 

So a way you could deal with this would be to tell the align tools to only use full pixels when dealing with artboards.

Another option would be to only allow artboard edges at full pixels. That way it doesn't matter what any tool does to them.

 

I haven't used artboards in the Adobe apps much before because of how annoying the apps started to behave with them in use. So my expectation set is: Artboard = document, artboards = documents within a document. Each with their own 0,0 point. So given an own 0,0 point, the path from 0 to 1024 should end at 1024, no matter where the artboard is placed. Placement of the artboard on the infinite canvas should not be able to interfere with how it is converted to a slice. That just makes no sense from a user standpoint as the "sub document" itself is pixel accurate. The only thing that does is create frustration. 

 

 

 

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19 hours ago, A_B_C said:

The fill characters don't fill. Alignments in tabs do nothing.

 

Cannot confirm this (see my video) … :/

 

Tabs-Seem-Okay.mov

 

Yes, with a tailored test to just one tabstop, it sort of works.

Now try with a real world scenario.

 

Word . . . . . . . . . Centred Part . . . . . . 1234.56 _ _ _ _ Right Aligned

 

Word should be Left aligned, Centred should be aligned centre, numbers should be aligned by dot, right aligned should be aligned right.

 

Instead it does absolutely nothing.

 

 

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Serious bug - fonts don't render correctly.  I was having strange PDF output issues where fonts become corrupted.  One of those fonts is Abril Fatface - either you can get on Typekit or also on Fontsquirrel (free version) - both versions have the same issue.

 

First see an Afdesign file called "A test" - only text there is "This is a test" in the Abril Fatface font.  See PDF output - "a test - text" - corrupt.  But if I go back to the file and convert the font to outlines then it prints normally - "a test -outlines.pdf"

a test.afdesign

a test -text.pdf

a test- outlines.pdf

 

Update - I am now using the Google Font version of Abril Fatface and this seems to have fixed the problem - perhaps a corrupt font from Typekit!

 

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What regards the artboard positions – and maybe this is a pretty dumb question, but I never used artboards otherwise –, why is it essential that an artboard assumes a certain position on the document canvas? Is there a real use for this? :/

 

Whenever I am using artboards, I will actually conceive of them, as Frank Jonen said, as documents within a document, and every object I place in these artboards will assume its position in relation to the respective artboard, and never in relation to the document that holds these artboards. Even the Transform Panel will give me the x- and y-values of the object relative to the artboard. So while I understand that the measurement space of the underlying document will be used for positioning artboards relatively to each other (for aligning them in a visually pleasing way), these particular document properties will not be reflected in your work after it is to a production-ready format.

 

So while I do understand the logic behind the current setup, Frank’s question seems to make a lot of sense … :/

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2 hours ago, A_B_C said:

Again, I have the impression that tabs are working perfectly, even in real world examples … hmm … :/

 

Perhaps very very few ;) users have problems because the tab stop with decimal alignment still does not work in German. :(

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I'm not entirely sure what causes this since the behavior seems randomized, but some times the "Rotate Center Point" of new selections appears in the top left side of the document. I am having to keep dragging it back down into the selection box.

The website is still a work in progress. The "Comics" and "Shop" sections are not yet ready. Feel free to connect with me and let me know what you like or what can be improved. You can contact me here, on my contact page, YouTube channel, or Twitter account. Thanks and have a great day!

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15 hours ago, A_B_C said:

Again, I have the impression that tabs are working perfectly, even in real world examples … hmm … :/

 

Tabs.thumb.png.6e4c3aa913f0abef241f4cac7d09fde4.png

 

Tabs.afdesign

 

 

Your file works for me, I just can't create these here. I tried setting different languages on yours, no influence. They kept working.

Hmm. Weird. Thanks for posting it. For now I'll just keep editing a copy of that whenever I need tabs. Not ideal, but whatever works.

 

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