Designer - Free transform tool (perspective distort)

[DJ_Jaybee]

47 minutes ago, BofG said:

Except it's not there (well except basic shear). There is a free trial available, so it's not like this is a secret that people can only discover after making the purchase.

Of course it would be a nice addition for many users, but the complaint that it's "essential" doesn't hold water. If it is truly essential then people would pay the price it demands from one of the "big" players and wouldn't be here.

I'm just happy to have something workable, easy to use and that doesn't cost hundreds of pounds a year.

It's essential. We are also paying for Adobe subscriptions as essential tools like a free distort tool still isn't included. If you have art work you've already created and want to add it into a perspective scene and need to retain vector editability to edit shading etc - with free distortion tool you can place this in the scene in seconds... if as a designer or illustrator you need do this - the first time you find it's missing, you would consider this tool essential.

[Mark Freeman]

2 hours ago, BofG said:

the complaint that it's "essential" doesn't hold water. If it is truly essential then people would pay the price it demands from one of the "big" players and wouldn't be here.

I get what you’re saying man, but something can still be essential even if the frequency in which it is needed is relatively low for some people. I don’t need to pay Adobe their extortionate prices so don’t (primarily out of principal), but it would defiantly save time and money if a feature that has been deemed important enough to be present in other vector programs since I was in college twenty odd years ago, was included in Designer for when I do need it. In those rare moments for me it is definitely essential, and it’s fair to say that if it was there I would use it more often. Overall though, it’s the absence of an explanation from up high that irritates me…. Even more than the inefficient and often inferior workarounds.

[Dazmondo77]

1 hour ago, BofG said:

Genuinely curious to know why you are choosing to use both? If Illustrator does everything you need and Designer doesn't, why take the pain of switching back and forth? Why even buy Designer in the first place when it lacks an essential feature for your work?

For me - I can knock stuff up loads quicker in Affinity via Publisher and Studiolink which total genius - I really hate having to use Illustrator, it's slow and just not nice to use in comparison, I just need it for a few missing basics such as vector distortions, Blob brush, simplify paths, perspective grid, easily create fancy borders, 3d, real vector brushes, Im sure theres a few other things that I can't think of off the top of my head - I don't want to use it but I have no choice if I need to crack on and get stuff done

[DJ_Jaybee]

3 hours ago, BofG said:

Genuinely curious to know why you are choosing to use both? If Illustrator does everything you need and Designer doesn't, why take the pain of switching back and forth? Why even buy Designer in the first place when it lacks an essential feature for your work?

We first got Affinity Designer when Adobe dropped Fireworks... as it's a great hybrid vector / pixel tool and whilst it doesn't do everything that Fireworks does / did we discovered that it's an excellent program for creation and editing.

Affinity Designer has quite a lot of features we consider much nicer than Fireworks and illustrator, so in using it over the years have grown to love it - and will generally prefer to use it... but for some work requirements it is still missing key features - mainly for me, the free distort tool. 

At the moment I would probably use Affinity Designer 70% of the time - if it had free distort tool that would potentially be able to use it 90% of the time.

At that point I would be wondering if we still need Adobe... which seemed to be what Adobe's latest customer survey was asking, so maybe they are getting worried that there is more competition now + people have grown to like other software when they've tried it. 

If they hadn't dropped Fireworks, we probably would never have started looking at other options and seen other software we really like working with.

[Mark Freeman]

24 minutes ago, BofG said:

Fair to say then that it's not essential for the commercial viability of Designer, but essential for some people to be able to ditch Adobe/Corel/InkScape?

Yes, that’s fair. However, considering the amount of attention in this non existent feature gets from users on this forum, I would say that it’s arguable Affinity could shift their position from seeing no major adverse effects due to the lack of free transform etc. (thanks to the UI/other excellent features from a criminally inexpensive app) to raising itself up to being a more legitimate competitor Adobe, especially when factoring in price.

[Mark Freeman]

38 minutes ago, DJ_Jaybee said:

At the moment I would probably use Affinity Designer 70% of the time - if it had free distort tool that would potentially be able to use it 90% of the time.

Fascinating insight mate, great post 👌🏻

[MCFC_4Heatons]

4 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

For me - I can knock stuff up loads quicker in Affinity via Publisher and Studiolink which total genius - I really hate having to use Illustrator, it's slow and just not nice to use in comparison, I just need it for a few missing basics such as vector distortions, Blob brush, simplify paths, perspective grid, easily create fancy borders, 3d, real vector brushes, Im sure theres a few other things that I can't think of off the top of my head - I don't want to use it but I have no choice if I need to crack on and get stuff done

We bought Designer, Photo and Publisher in the hope of a few missing features being forthcoming, but me personally I still use Fireworks CS6 95% of the time due to the lack of perspective tool and one or two other missing features in Designer, I also keep a copy of Adobe illustrator CS6 installed because of the great interoperability  between Fireworks, for example I can copy and paste vectors between the two apps if I need to use the warp tools in Illustrator for example. Fireworks has some extensions for opening, importing and exporting SVGs but they are not 100% reliable, so occasionally I sue Designer top open/edit/export SVGs.

A simple skew tool like Fireworks has  that allows you to drag a corner for a perfect perspective effect would be a game changer for Designer IMO, add some common warp tools like arc, arch and fisheye  as well and Adobe would be under serious threat.

 

[MCFC_4Heatons]

6 hours ago, BofG said:

Genuinely curious to know why you are choosing to use both? If Illustrator does everything you need and Designer doesn't, why take the pain of switching back and forth? Why even buy Designer in the first place when it lacks an essential feature for your work?

The point is people want to drop Adobe but with essentials missing from Affinity Designer they just can't at this point.

[MCFC_4Heatons]

8 hours ago, BofG said:

Except it's not there (well except basic shear). There is a free trial available, so it's not like this is a secret that people can only discover after making the purchase.

Of course it would be a nice addition for many users, but the complaint that it's "essential" doesn't hold water. If it is truly essential then people would pay the price it demands from one of the "big" players and wouldn't be here.

I'm just happy to have something workable, easy to use and that doesn't cost hundreds of pounds a year.

If you have to pay a sh*t load of money to Adobe because of core missing features in Affinity then that means it's essential to a hell of a lot of people. A basic perspective tool is a no brainer...

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Mark Freeman said:

Yes, that’s fair. However, considering the amount of attention in this non existent feature gets from users on this forum, I would say that it’s arguable Affinity could shift their position from seeing no major adverse effects due to the lack of free transform etc. (thanks to the UI/other excellent features from a criminally inexpensive app) to raising itself up to being a more legitimate competitor Adobe, especially when factoring in price.

It is also fair to say that there are other missing features that many users consider essential enough to prevent them from buying AD or if they do from using it full time as their main or only vector app.

For example, the almost complete lack of support for true vector brushes is a deal breaker for many. Others say the lack of vector based symmetry/mirroring drawing tools, a cutting tool (scissors or knife), or a segment based stroke thickness tool makes AD a no-go.

Then there are the things that do not always work as they should, most notably for vector objects the boolean geometry, expand stroke & smooth curve features. Many users think it is essential for those things to work as expected 100% of the time.

The bottom line is ADs commercial success will never really depend on the addition of any one missing feature, no matter how essential any number of users considers it to be. People buy & use it because of its strengths, not its weaknesses. Price is part of it, but so is the UI, the unique native file format that enables all 3 apps to work on a document created by any of the others, the best-in-class customer support, & (for most users) its snappy performance even on modest systems.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, MCFC_4Heatons said:

The point is people want to drop Adobe but with essentials missing from Affinity Designer they just can't at this point.

Actually, just about every missing feature that anyone might consider essential could be done using a free or open source app, so it is not true that whatever is missing from AD is what prevents them from dropping Adobe.

For that matter, there are some that use open source apps exclusively & would never consider buying or using anything else.

[Mark Freeman]

6 hours ago, R C-R said:

The bottom line is ADs commercial success will never really depend on the addition of any one missing feature, no matter how essential any number of users considers it to be.

Overall I agree. I did say “being a more legitimate competitor” with no predictions as to how much the inclusion of the features that are topic of this thread would impact Designer’s standing. Only that it would be positive, and I stand by that. I wouldn’t however say no to those you mentioned either. 

[MCFC_4Heatons]

11 minutes ago, Mark Freeman said:

Overall I agree. I did say “being a more legitimate competitor” with no predictions as to how much the inclusion of the features that are topic of this thread would impact Designer’s standing. Only that it would be positive, and I stand by that. I wouldn’t however say no to those you mentioned either. 

Without a even a basic perspective tool its nothing more than a toy ....

[Mark Freeman]

10 hours ago, MCFC_4Heatons said:

Without a even a basic perspective tool its nothing more than a toy ....

Well that’s clearly not the case when people make money with it. Myself included. Those who find the lack of inclusion limiting in a professional sense have options with Adobe, but again, my frustrations come primarily from the lack of transparency as to WHY it’s not included, since as you say it is such a basic but greatly demanded feature.

[Mark Freeman]

3 minutes ago, BofG said:

I can understand why, there's no answer that will satisfy everyone so it's best to keep quiet rather than "fan the flames" so to speak.

Well if the whole GD software thing doesn’t work out for management…. They can always give politics a go 😁

[Xzenor]

6 hours ago, BofG said:

I can understand why, there's no answer that will satisfy everyone so it's best to keep quiet rather than "fan the flames" so to speak.

I thought of that too but then why not drop a note to one of the moderators. "Yo, we don't have the time or energy to go into all the million questions and threats that are gonna come out of this, so you just tell'm abcdef.." I think most of us are civil enough to not shoot the messenger

[MCFC_4Heatons]

For people who've used Fireworks for many years, this is a very interesting project: https://www.photopea.com/  ... Has  both warp and perspective tools and can open layered Fireworks PNGs

[gentleclockdivider]

I have only two days left   for the demo , and still on the fence about a future purchase 

Biggest shortcomings , no perspective / warp tools and no real vector brushes ( they are bitmaps stretched across a path ) 
Affinity designer is great , but these unimplemented features even after years since it's release and the radio silence from the dev.crew does not show confidence 
Thanks to this forum I found out about vectorstyler , WOW just wow 
Affinity needs to step up their game , once vectorstyler is more widely known it will be the obvious choice for many who look for an illustrator replacement 

[jhdesigns]

5 hours ago, gentleclockdivider said:

Thanks to this forum I found out about vectorstyler , WOW just wow 
Affinity needs to step up their game , once vectorstyler is more widely known it will be the obvious choice for many who look for an illustrator replacement 

Though Vectorstyler is feature rich, I find that the usability still needs some work. It also depends on what people are using the software for. Last I checked, you can copy vectors straight out of VectorStyler and paste into Designer so they work well together. I do more layout work than illustration. I use vector tools mostly for logos, icons, and more basic shapes. I like the workflow of Affinity better for this but I do sometimes need vector perspective/warp and it is a blaring omission! And though I don’t do much illustration it seems obvious to me that the lack of real vector brushes is a problem for those who do. Auto-trace is another missing feature that needs to be implemented. Everyone is just really hoping Affinity surprises us in 2.0 by filling these gaps. It would allow many to leave the Adobe environment forever. Serif, are you listening?

[gentleclockdivider]

Yes and you can copy /paste between inkscape and designer , but designer to inkscape are converted to bitmaps 
 

[Wosven]

31 minutes ago, gentleclockdivider said:

but designer to inkscape are converted to bitmaps

Did you test with this option in the preferences, since it can paste as vector, depending of the effects and properties you used: 

[gentleclockdivider]

Good catch ! 

[Snow Creative]

I was working on a photo today, and need to free-transform some type. I was surprised to find there is no free-transform tool! That's a pretty basic, necessary feature for a graphics program. 

[jhdesigns]

20 minutes ago, Snow Creative said:

I was working on a photo today, and need to free-transform some type. I was surprised to find there is no free-transform tool! That's a pretty basic, necessary feature for a graphics program. 

There are some perspective and distort tools in Affinity Photo that might offer what you’re looking for but they rasterize vector images. There’s currently no distort/warp tools that can preserve curves.

[Snow Creative]

48 minutes ago, jhdesigns said:

There are some perspective and distort tools in Affinity Photo that might offer what you’re looking for but they rasterize vector images. There’s currently no distort/warp tools that can preserve curves.

Yes, that's better than nothing, but the vector distortion tool is what I was looking for.

Edited October 21, 2021 by Snow Creative