smooth tool or simplfy path

[sarah uk]

Hello,  I have just bought affinity designer but come from a background of using adobe illustrator. 

 

I would like to smooth lines on a handrawn (ipad pro apple pencil) imported pdf  - using apple draw to create vectors on ipad  and transfer files as a pdf in creative cloud to maintain layers whilst awaiting affinity designer for ipad pro - The imported pdf vector drawing has many anchor points as you would expect. In adobe illustrator I could use the smooth tool to quickly remove number of anchor points whilst maintaing a handdrawn quality. 

 

1) is this possible in affinity designer? If so what is the tool called and where could I find it

 

2) Also I would use the path simplify from drop down menu in adobe illustrator to smooth and reduce anchor points - is there something similar in affinity designer.

 

I am working through the tutorials but these are some of my first issues I have come across.

 

3) Would also appreciate if there is a list of all the available tools so I don't need to keep asking in the forum

 

Thank you affinity - really enjoying using designer 

[v_kyr]

See this thread here!

[sarah uk]

Interesting thread, answers point one and two although would now love to know if there is a tutorial as to how im going to be able to take hand drawn illustrations from ipad pro and apple pencil to affinity designer. and remove all the extra anchor points without having to do them one by one.

 

Would like to know if affinity are planning on adding either of these functions in the near future.   It seems that everything is set up for using only the pen tool which is disappointing.

 

Also would like an answer still for 3) 

 

Thank you

 

 

[v_kyr]

Well I don't know which file format (vector or bitmap) your hand drawn illustrations from iPad pro and Apple pencil have. In case you can export or take over from the iPad your drawings as certain PDF, EPS, SVG files then there are chances that you can open these in AD (Affinity Designer). I said chances here, since there are differences if a certain file format uses proprietary by AD unsupported extensions, which are sometimes vendor specific (like for example specific Adobe application file format extras etc.).

• PDF should be a good general usable candidate for export/import
• EPS usually works too, if it isn't created and exported with Adobe AI (Illustrator) specific extensions
• SVG is also widely used for exchange here, though AD sadly doesn't support the full 1.2 spec
  some things like (<markers/>, <use/>, <symbol/>...) might not work and be ignored during import parsing

For the vectorization of bitmaps (jpg, png, tiff etc.) you would have to throw these first into some tracing app or service and store these as one of the previously listed vector formats. Some tracers (potrace, autotrace...) do support to simplify and optimize node creation partly. Some (autotrace, RapidResizer) also support centerline tracing, which results to less nodes and simple lines/path forms.

Finally a list of the AD tools and functions etc. can be found in the online help system here.

[sarah uk]

Thank you for getting back to me, I am using the adobe draw app which is vector based (on ipad pro 2 with apple pencil) and allows to send as pdf which affinity designer can open in layers.  I think it should be ok once i get used to not relying on smooth tool. Moving node points doesn't take so long I know there will be some new ways of doing things with this new software.

 

Thank you for the bitmap advice too I used to use live trace quite a bit when I first started using adobe illustrator so its nice to see a way of doing this too especailly the node reduction too

 

Thank you also for a link to the list of tools and functions