Designer - Free transform tool (perspective distort)

[MCFC_4Heatons]

10 minutes ago, Andy05 said:

That's the point. Affinity's apps are not meant to be a full replacement for Adobe's products. There's only a fraction of adobe's customers which Serif is aiming at. 

That said, this doesn't excuse the missing of some essential functions (partially established for decades in comparable programs) in their apps at all. Like a free transform tool or vector brushes for a vector program!

You still need the fundamentals and basic transform tools be be found other non-Adobe products available right now, so IMO that is a very lame excuse ...  I think Affinity have spread their resources to thin and dropped the ball on this one, iPad versions and the introduction of Publisher have meant that Designer has been neglected.

[Mark Freeman]

1 hour ago, Andy05 said:

That's the point. Affinity's apps are not meant to be a full replacement for Adobe's products. There's only a fraction of adobe's customers which Serif is aiming at. 

That said, this doesn't excuse the missing of some essential functions (partially established for decades in comparable programs) in their apps at all. Like a free transform tool or vector brushes for a vector program!

+1

[DJ_Jaybee]

We have no idea of whether these essential functions are on the road map and that is the frustrating part. I'm happy if bug fixes and smaller features are implemented in .x.x numbers as free updates and there if there is an upgrade price for the main version number 2.0 update - we expect would introduce substantial features and functionality improvements.

If it's this model that is holding it up, then if there is an interim update charge to implement some of the these essential missing functions - if it's reasonably priced, people would pay to for these and also keep the project moving...

If we could see the proposed features on the road map and vote, then at least we would know what's on the to-do list - and get and get feedback on what is considered important to address next in line.

[Mark Freeman]

6 hours ago, DJ_Jaybee said:

We have no idea of whether these essential functions are on the road map and that is the frustrating part. I'm happy if bug fixes and smaller features are implemented in .x.x numbers as free updates and there if there is an upgrade price for the main version number 2.0 update - we expect would introduce substantial features and functionality improvements.

If it's this model that is holding it up, then if there is an interim update charge to implement some of the these essential missing functions - if it's reasonably priced, people would pay to for these and also keep the project moving...

If we could see the proposed features on the road map and vote, then at least we would know what's on the to-do list - and get and get feedback on what is considered important to address next in line.

Agreed 👏🏻

[MCFC_4Heatons]

8 hours ago, DJ_Jaybee said:

We have no idea of whether these essential functions are on the road map and that is the frustrating part. I'm happy if bug fixes and smaller features are implemented in .x.x numbers as free updates and there if there is an upgrade price for the main version number 2.0 update - we expect would introduce substantial features and functionality improvements.

If it's this model that is holding it up, then if there is an interim update charge to implement some of the these essential missing functions - if it's reasonably priced, people would pay to for these and also keep the project moving...

If we could see the proposed features on the road map and vote, then at least we would know what's on the to-do list - and get and get feedback on what is considered important to address next in line.

I agree and the silence is puzzling and makes me suspicious

[tytus 01UNIT]

It is interesting that Affinity abandoned the idea of listening own audience. A lot of huge companies loses a touch with real customers and there are few projects that took the lesson and started to listen and implement what professional users wants. It is free knowledge for affinity. I remember when Adobe overslept with SKETCH and they made a Adobe XD. They created a place where people could give them ideas and we could vote for new implementations. With their budget and all of that feedback, they quickly made something that is valid alternative for UX/UI designers.

Affinity, think about it. If you are short on money open a KICKSTARTER or whatever, I would be happy to support you for a next generation of affinity or a clear roadmap. If you would really support your programs I bet there would be more PROs who would throw a extra coin on your products. If not, personally I think you are already outdated and in my opinion you’re becoming a very good entrance level casual software. I still manage to use it professionally (and it is love/hate relationship), but I know that I have to avoid a lot of ways to design stuff just because I know it is impossible to make it in affinity. I wish it wouldn’t be a thing. I already bought more then one set of your programs for my team and I'm willing to buy more, but please... Listen, Implement, be honest and communicate plans, be more transparent - as every new inventive "startup" should be, to give people ownership and to create a trust and hope for a change.

[ism_zigs]

I also find the silence puzzling I have asked several questions on their youtube channel with no answer. I am missing the free transform tool badly, the custom shapes presets (on the ipad) and proper mirror tools. The symbols are erratic and crash a lot. (And a lot of extra steps). I want to stay away from Adobe as much as I can and support indy companies. I own Photo and Designer and never really looked back but yeah it is missing serious tools. 

I would be more than happy to chip in to a kickstarter!!!!! 

[BofG]

On 12/15/2020 at 1:03 PM, tytus 01UNIT said:

If you are short on money open a KICKSTARTER

 

41 minutes ago, ism_zigs said:

I would be more than happy to chip in to a kickstarter!

Serif (Europe) Ltd profit after taxation:
2018: £6,202,298
2019: £9,750,692

These are public records, they are not short of money. Maybe some of these major features are being planned for the v2, after all they are a business and profit is the end goal so getting people to upgrade has to be on their minds. I prefer things that way to ongoing subscriptions.

[Mark Freeman]

1 hour ago, BofG said:

Serif (Europe) Ltd profit after taxation:
2018: £6,202,298
2019: £9,750,692

 

On 12/15/2020 at 7:03 AM, tytus 01UNIT said:

Affinity, think about it. If you are short on money open a KICKSTARTER or whatever, I would be happy to support you for a next generation of affinity or a clear roadmap. If you would really support your programs I bet there would be more PROs who would throw a extra coin on your products. If not, personally I think you are already outdated and in my opinion you’re becoming a very good entrance level casual software. I still manage to use it professionally (and it is love/hate relationship), but I know that I have to avoid a lot of ways to design stuff just because I know it is impossible to make it in affinity. I wish it wouldn’t be a thing. I already bought more then one set of your programs for my team and I'm willing to buy more, but please... Listen, Implement, be honest and communicate plans, be more transparent - as every new inventive "startup" should be, to give people ownership and to create a trust and hope for a change.

These two points, coupled with Affinity’s deafening silence, only adds to my disappointment with some aspects of Affinity management. Even an acknowledgment that there are hurdles to getting the tools to customers... whether they be financial or straight up willingness would at least let us know where we stand. I have mentioned before that I would be willing to pay for specific features and it is increasingly clear I am not alone. Affinity, your products are too cheep if you can’t compete (on a basic level in terms of free transform) with CC! I F**king hate Adobe’s business strategy as much as the next guy,  but Affinity keeping mum about development, especially in areas frequently requested doesn’t exactly make you the protagonist in the situation. I Love you guys, love your products, but please, disclose your intentions on how you plan to move forward in terms of competing with the behemoth. We are here, we want to support you, but personally I feel less inclined to when my, and others desires and concerns are treated like they don’t exist. I feel like I need to go see a marriage counselor 😂

[ism_zigs]

It is difficult times here in the UK for everyone however a lot of companies and individuals have been hit by Covid badly. So we need to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I still manage to do an vector job on it. I come from 3D software, years of drama with Autodesk killing software so I'm used to learning new ways to do stuff. So the workarounds are a big faff but are there for something so affordable too.

But yeah that's a good amount of money to add some extra tools, but then I don't know how business of that level works with designing software and what kind of money it needs. 

Edited January 26, 2021 by ism_zigs
typo

[SS Gilbert]

On 6/11/2018 at 7:39 AM, MEB said:

Hi dpcdpc11,
A perspective distortion tool in Designer would be used to change/transform the geometry of vector shapes, not images. In your example if you do want to transform the perspective of an image go to menu File ▸ Edit in Photo... to switch the document (with all History) to Affinity Photo where you can use the Perspective Tool or the respective Live Filter to do it.

Very helpful. Just be aware that that layer will be rasterized, which may affect you later when scaling your vector image.

[DJ_Jaybee]

There are plenty of things that Fireworks did perfectly years ago - that in 2021 I’m still scratching around hoping for a proper alternative to use. Affinity Designer is close - and does some things better than Fireworks, but is still missing some essential functionality that would make us able to forget the F word for good. I understand importing Fireworks PNGs isn’t possible... and I’d still like the states / animated gif ability that Fireworks had... and export preview to adjust quality/ file size optimisation... but the free distortion tool is something that should really be part of the vector and pixel tools and is most important to me. Fireworks also had a plugin / extension ability that allowed other developers to create useful tools and functionality - maybe this should be introduced to Affinity Designer so that there is another way for additional features to be introduced.

[zer0aster]

How frustrating is this? I would consider a free-transform tool a basic tool. One should be able to distort things easily and it should be in Designer first, as the vector app. And it seems this question was asked in 2018, so time would not seem to be a valid excuse. Neither should the idea that Affinity isn't a replacement for Adobe. It is!

[Andy05]

18 hours ago, zer0aster said:

[...] Neither should the idea that Affinity isn't a replacement for Adobe. It is!

No, it's not. Only for private tasks and maybe for an extremely small sector of professionals. If you do graphics and illustrations for money, you can't work all day with time consuming workarounds in order to get the job done.

A bicycle can get you from A to B. But I still wouldn't deem it a solid replacement for a car, if you have to drive for 200km per day for work.

[MCFC_4Heatons]

21 hours ago, zer0aster said:

How frustrating is this? I would consider a free-transform tool a basic tool. One should be able to distort things easily and it should be in Designer first, as the vector app. And it seems this question was asked in 2018, so time would not seem to be a valid excuse. Neither should the idea that Affinity isn't a replacement for Adobe. It is!

I don't see how apps that don't have non destructive free transform, perspective and warp tools can replace Adobe .. When I first came across Designer I got excited as it was the nearest thing I'd seen to Adobe Fireworks, however the lack of non destructive free transform tools is a real problem and we've been waiting a looong time without a peep from the people at Affinity....

[Mark Freeman]

1 hour ago, MCFC_4Heatons said:

I don't see how apps that don't have non destructive free transform, perspective and warp tools can replace Adobe .. When I first came across Designer I got excited as it was the nearest thing I'd seen to Adobe Fireworks, however the lack of non destructive free transform tools is a real problem and we've been waiting a looong time without a peep from the people at Affinity....

Yup... the silence is deafening.

[zer0aster]

4 hours ago, Andy05 said:

No, it's not. Only for private tasks and maybe for an extremely small sector of professionals. If you do graphics and illustrations for money, you can't work all day with time consuming workarounds in order to get the job done.

I don't do graphics or illustrations for money (well, not often) but I do need a full graphics suite and Affinity is the closest to the Adobe offering I have found. That it is cross-platform is brilliant and that it is not subscription-based is absolutely the reason I chose it over Adobe. But there are omissions, and the free-form tool is the big one in my book.

So yes, a clunky work-around is to select the paths to distort, go to Edit menu chose Edit in Photo, and use the distort filter there. And then place as pixels in your original vector document. Clunky indeed. Hopefully someone will come up with a plugin?

[Andy05]

11 minutes ago, zer0aster said:

So yes, a clunky work-around is to select the paths to distort, go to Edit menu chose Edit in Photo, and use the distort filter there. And then place as pixels in your original vector document. Clunky indeed.

Not clunky, but completely useless in a lot of scenarios as the exported result will be pixels, not vector. Latter is needed i. e. when designing vector stock illustrations (which already can be a PITA with Affinity's apps, if you do some more complex ones) or when creating vector templates for CNC/Laser cutting and engraving.

Don't get me wrong, Affinity apps are great and can do a lot of the daily tasks for many. But it's far from being a replacement for some of the other apps like Adobe's (or Corel's which have a great support for CNC/Laser) on the market. I see it more as an alternative for private use and a small sector of professional designing.

That's all I wanted to say. And I don't think that Serif is seriously trying to target Adobe's main market. For that, simply too many basics are way too "clunky" as you said or missing completely.

[Mark Freeman]

35 minutes ago, Andy05 said:

And I don't think that Serif is seriously trying to target Adobe's main market. For that, simply too many basics are way too "clunky" as you said or missing completely.

That’s what is so frustrating. If only they were to focus some energy on those essentials, they potentially could be a legitimate competitor, not perhaps universally, but at least to a wider segment of professionals.

[SvenH]

Free transform tool/perspective distort is the most important missing part of Affinity Designer. I have just bought the iPad app and it is a great piece of software, but i sooooo miss perspective distort!

 

[Annabella_K]

On 6/11/2018 at 4:39 PM, MEB said:

Hi dpcdpc11,
A perspective distortion tool in Designer would be used to change/transform the geometry of vector shapes, not images. In your example if you do want to transform the perspective of an image go to menu File ▸ Edit in Photo... to switch the document (with all History) to Affinity Photo where you can use the Perspective Tool or the respective Live Filter to do it.

Hi @MEB It's not enough if it only changes vector shapes. In designer you can use raster brushes to add texture, so a transformer tool should be able to change the raster elements too.

[Pinkerton]

I wanted to chime in that a free transform or perspective distort tool feels like basic functionality to me, and I can't accomplish of a lot of the effects I want to achieve without it. I would love if it were added for both vector and pixel elements, and could probably stop using Photoshop entirely for my design work if it were. Seeing how long people have been asking for this feature is pretty disheartening.

 

[jhdesigns]

+1 on what everyone in this thread has been asking for. We need vector perspective distort badly (and other warp tools would be nice too) to use this software professionally without frustrating workarounds. I love Affinity. I was a Fireworks user years ago and was so annoyed when Adobe bought it and just let it die not realizing the value it brought in ease of use and layout for screen. For a while I lost about 30% efficiency. Affinity has that intuitive ease of use but is missing this most important feature. I'm tired of trying to evangelize this software but having to say for years now, "It's great, but.... there's no vector perspective distort / warp tools or auto-trace." I want to be able to tell people hands down that Affinity can suit all the needs of most professional graphic designers. We're not there yet, but soooo close. Maybe Serif should get a round of funding and purchase VectorStyler to incorporate their features with some improvements for usability? Or maybe you're on the cusp of great things including this feature for version 2.0? Sure would be nice to have some idea when or even if this is going to be released.

[Mark Freeman]

14 minutes ago, jhdesigns said:

+1 on what everyone in this thread has been asking for. We need vector perspective distort badly (and other warp tools would be nice too) to use this software professionally without frustrating workarounds. I love Affinity. I was a Fireworks user years ago and was so annoyed when Adobe bought it and just let it die not realizing the value it brought in ease of use and layout for screen. For a while I lost about 30% efficiency. Affinity has that intuitive ease of use but is missing this most important feature. I'm tired of trying to evangelize this software but having to say for years now, "It's great, but.... there's no vector perspective distort / warp tools or auto-trace." I want to be able to tell people hands down that Affinity can suit all the needs of most professional graphic designers. We're not there yet, but soooo close. Maybe Serif should get a round of funding and purchase VectorStyler to incorporate their features with some improvements for usability? Or maybe you're on the cusp of great things including this feature for version 2.0? Sure would be nice to have some idea when or even if this is going to be released.

+1000

[AllAppsUser]

On 2/9/2021 at 4:37 PM, Andy05 said:

I don't think that Serif is seriously trying to target Adobe's main market. For that, simply too many basics are way too "clunky" as you said or missing completely.

I know this thread is perhaps done now but to clarify something.

Check out the title bar for serif.com. Note the word "professional".

Now the "professional" creative IS Adobe’s market.

I also remember seeing an article before any affinity app was released (not been able to find it) that clearly stated the apps were a challenge to the Adobe suite. The article was a press release written by Serif. I’m certain about this, because it’s what put these apps on my radar and I’ve followed their development ever since because of it.

Therefore the clunky stuff has to be on their list for developing, unless they’ve lowered their sights, or don’t really mean (or understand) "professional".