jonas Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 Hello. First of all, Affinity looks amazing, something I didn't expect to happen. It looks like a tool that could replace Illustrator for many tasks. For me and many other designers, those tasks are related to UI work: icons and interfaces. I have successfully moved from Photoshop to Sketch, but for icon design I still have to use Illustrator, because Sketch doesn't have some features that are needed. #1 - Expanding strokes into curves. I saw in another post that this is being worked on. Perfect! This feature is necessary to compose complex shapes using boolean operations and "pathfinding" tools. This is also something Sketch is notoriously bad at. #2 - Option for stroke to be on center, inside or outside of path. This is quite complicted, I am sure, but Sketch does it well, as does Illustrator. #3 - Setting coordinates for each point in path. Now when a node is selected transform controls are disabled. I would really need the ability to set X and Y coordinates for each point manually. It is possible to work around using snapping, but it can only go so far. Bonus #4 - seeing distances between objects. Not needed for icon design, but something Photoshop copied from Sketch. In Sketch holding Alt shows distances between currently selected object and object hovered by mouse. Bonus #5 - selecting objects below via Right-click. Again, something both Sketch and Photoshop has, and very useful for UI work. Overall, this looks like an amazing tool. By expanding the uses cases far beyond illustration it could become much more relevant for screen media design. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonas Posted August 3, 2014 Author Share Posted August 3, 2014 Oh, and one more thing. Everyone is talking about how to change the UI of AD itself. I think Apple Pro apps (esp. Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5) are examples of Pro UI done very right. Simply removing color from toolbar icons would be a great step forward. Colorful icons are competing for attention with actual work. https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/ https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/motion/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted August 9, 2014 Staff Share Posted August 9, 2014 Regarding your #2 point, you can somewhat do this if you apply a stroke effect to a shape. There's an alignment option in the "advanced" options (click the cog on the right in the stroke effects panel). Point #5: don't know if you are aware but you can press the alt key while in the selection tool to pick objects that lay behind other objects. Agree with #3 and #4. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference | Call for Camera Images Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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