Keyboard shortcuts

[abra100pro]

Hi there

I love this app (Designer) so much I hardly use Illustrator anymore. AD is so intuitive and powerful. Thank you for that.

My number one feature request is the ability to use Adobe's shortcuts. AD is here very uncommon while other apps - up to MS Word! - use the same basic keyboards, such as SHIFT+ ENTER for a new textline without making a new paragraph (this shortcut works even in CMS-Texteditors such as TinyMCE or Redactor or CKEditor). Could we talk of an "industry standard", here? Yes, I think so, this goes far beyond Adobe.)

There is also a confusion about when using SHIFT to proportionally scale something and when not.

ALT (Option) has been the standard for scaling from the center ever since. ...

 

So my pledge:

Please either

• change them to the well known standards, not only used by Adobe
• make keyboard shortcut prefs that can be changed thoughout and saved
• integrate a preference for that in which one can choose "Adobe" as possible Shortcut set.

 

Thank you very much - this would be insanely great.

Alex

[MEB]

Hi abra100pro,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

The keyboard modifiers we use were chosen to accommodate the needs/workflow of our apps primarily and then, when possible, industry standards. Keyboard Shortcuts can be configured in the Affinity Preferences, Keyboard shortcuts section.

 

Regarding scaling proportionately: by default Affinity Photo keeps the ratio of all objects that possess an intrinsic aspect ratio intact - like images and text - where most of the times you don't want to distort them. So if you select a single image or text layer the ratio will be kept without the need to press Shift. For other objects types or multiple selections it will not keep the aspect ratio. You can control this behaviour going to Affinity Designer/Photo Preferences, Tools section, Move Tool Aspect Constrain dropdown.

[Pšenda]

SHIFT + ENTER works on Frame Text Tool

[abra100pro]

MEB: Thank you for the answer. I will check that out - however it would be a really good strategy to win Adobe users to offer them their well known shortcuts sets as an option, no?

 

Pšenda, It dows not with my AD - see mp4

 

 

AD-ShiftEnter.mp4

[cuulblu]

I agree with abra100pro. While I am a hobbyist not a professional, I have a degree in Digital Effects & Animation. I have worked with Adobe software a great deal and using those shortcuts is second nature. I am just beginning to learn Affinity Photo and have not had an issue yet. But simply having a setting in Preferences to set Adobe short cuts as the default would be great.

[Sedders]

yes I agree, i've just downloaded a trial copy of affinity designer, I've used illustrator professionally for years but as I am now not working but still like to do the odd project Affinity designer is way more cost effective for my to use but the first thing I want is shortcuts like illustrator. Please please, this would be so awesome!!

[loukash]

3 hours ago, Sedders said:

the first thing I want is shortcuts like illustrator

Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts > change any command to whatever shortcut you like

On 11/18/2018 at 12:03 PM, cuulblu said:

having a setting in Preferences to set Adobe short cuts as the default

Um… which ones?
English? German? French? Chinese? Japanese? Russian…?

You get the picture.

Other than that, see

 

[tboettiger]

On 1/12/2018 at 4:01 PM, abra100pro said:

Hi there

...

Please either

• change them to the well known standards, not only used by Adobe
• make keyboard shortcut prefs that can be changed thoughout and saved
• integrate a preference for that in which one can choose "Adobe" as possible Shortcut set.

I absoluty agree, since all apps on macOS use this "standard set", even outside the designer space, e.g. Pages or OmniGraffle. That would greatly enhance the user experience.

 

 

[Pšenda]

Hi @tboettiger, please write your contribution out of reacted post. This way it is not clear what you are reacting to and what your text is.

[loukash]

7 hours ago, tboettiger said:

all apps on macOS use this "standard set"

In which parallel universe?

Every time I've been (re)installing MacOS  or setting up a new Mac in the past decade or so, I've been spending a significant amount of time to re-sync my most used keyboard shortcuts across apps, including Apple's own, so that they actually match when using the same or at least similar commands. Some apps have their own propriatery shortcut editing interface, like Affinity, Logic Pro, Adobe etc., others needs to be configured via System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts.
As for the latter, in the meantime I have learned how MacOS stores and handles these custom shortcuts via plist files (it's pretty complex and not necessarily obvious) so that I don't need to retype all of them all over again, simply copying and pasting the NSUserKeyEquivalents dictionaries from my old MacOS installation or backup over to the new installation instead.

And then add other variables like region and language specific keyboard layouts:
For example, try to find " [ " and " ] " on the Swiss keyboard layout, let alone actually use it for such common shortcuts like changing brush sizes or "Back", "Forward" etc. Good luck.

Heck, already in the 1990s I learned how to use ResEdit and "hacked" e.g. the XPress 3 app resource forks to have keyboard shortcuts that actually work with Swiss keyboard layout.
And nowadays you have apps that don't give an F about MacOS Human Interface Guidelines at all, including some Apple's own, and force you to resort to clumsy workarounds like UI scripting, global macros via Keyboard Maestro and the like.
It'll always be an uphill battle.

That all said, some default Affinity shortcuts are "a bit off", indeed.
But since there's now Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts > Save/Load, I definitely can't complain.