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Feature request for Affinity Designer


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I just recently purchased Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo for my Macbook Pro laptop.

Most importantly, I want these softwares to remove my dependency on the industry standard softwares I have been using for the last over 20 years - Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw.

Affinity Designer did open up my Adobe Illustrator files but did not add the elements which were placed outside the page. If it could open up the complete AI file as it is with all the elements, both on the page and outside the page, it will be wonderful. It will save a ton of work for designers who routinely put a few objects outside the page knowing they may need to use it later.

I recently created a complex branding guideline brochure for a client entirely in Adobe Illustrator using multiple Artboards for making a multiple page document. Affinity Designer will make it impossible to create such a document. You really need to consider either giving it a multiple page feature or a multiple artboard feature which can make it easy to create a multiple page document.

The biggest feature request I ask of you is CorelDraw file support. Affinity Designer should be able to open or import a CorelDraw document. CorelDraw has been a world favourite of designers and illustrators for decades and is one huge reason many designers have not moved to Mac because there is no Corel version for Mac. This is also one reason I have sacrificed a 100GB on my Macbook to install Windows through Bootcamp. Just so that I could keep using CorelDraw. My first response to using Affinity Designer was delight since I found it more intuitive and friendlier to work with than Adobe Illustrator (which is why I had not been able to completely move to Illustrator all these years). If you add CorelDraw file support I may finally be able to ditch Bootcamp and Corel and move my complete design workflow to Affinity. And I can assure you there are thousands of designers out there working on Macs who are looking for a CorelDraw replacement (have gone through a lot of blog posts and forums when I myself was looking for one).

Lastly, is there any way that the sidepanel (Studio) can be hidden with just a small arrow/tab peeking out clicking on which pops it out into view again?

Hope you find the above ideas and requests worthy of your time and respond positively.

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On 8/2/2018 at 5:23 AM, Anand Prakash said:

using multiple Artboards for making a multiple page document. Affinity Designer will make it impossible to create such a document.

What do ADe Artboards do not suit you for?

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
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ADe can have as many artboards as you like within a single document.

I do not use Illustrator, so I can't comment on importing multi artboard Illustrator files, or objects outside Illustrator artboards not being imported/shown.

But within ADe I can place objects outside artboards with no issue.

Perhaps you can attach a small example file, produced in Illustrator that shows the issue?

Alternatively, I hope someone with experience of both softwares can assist you.

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3 hours ago, Aammppaa said:

I do not use Illustrator, so I can't comment on importing multi artboard Illustrator files, or objects outside Illustrator artboards not being imported/shown.

Here are two very basic Illustrator files you can try yourself.

For comparison I include a screenshot of what the file looks like in Illustrator itself:

d.illustratorartboards.thumb.PNG.dbd744bc1a6732785b367e4af8f7faf1.PNG

 

You'll see, objects outside the artboards are not part of the import.

d.

AI-artboards-for-import-into-AD.pdf

AI-artboards-for-import-into-AD.ai

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CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator use proprietary file formats which will probably never be made public by their owners.Therefore no other software will be able to open those files. When Affinity Designer successfully opens an AI file, it actually opens the PDF part of it, not the actual editable Illustrator code. That’s the reason why objects outside the artboards are gone. They don’t exist  in the PDF data.

So, don’t hold your breath waiting for CDR support.

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23 hours ago, Pšenda said:

What do ADe Artboards do not suit you for?

I never noticed that there were Artboards. Like in Illustrator, they are easy to add, but in AD I did not see the option anywhere - not in the menu and not in the sidepanel. I only realised that AD can have multiple pages and artboards when I opened a multi page PDF file. And after a lot of hunting I realised that you can create a shape and save it as an artboard. They should simplify it a little.

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16 hours ago, tudor said:

CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator use proprietary file formats which will probably never be made public by their owners.Therefore no other software will be able to open those files. When Affinity Designer successfully opens an AI file, it actually opens the PDF part of it, not the actual editable Illustrator code. That’s the reason why objects outside the artboards are gone. They don’t exist  in the PDF data.

So, don’t hold your breath waiting for CDR support.

I get it. But there is an Opensource software - Inkscape - that does it, albeit in a very rudimentary method and does not do justice to it. So if an opensource software can try to do it, my guess was AD has a lot to gain if they could manage it. Not to mention they would REALLLY make my life easy. 

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20 hours ago, dominik said:

Here are two very basic Illustrator files you can try yourself.

For comparison I include a screenshot of what the file looks like in Illustrator itself:

d.illustratorartboards.thumb.PNG.dbd744bc1a6732785b367e4af8f7faf1.PNG

 

You'll see, objects outside the artboards are not part of the import.

d.

AI-artboards-for-import-into-AD.pdf

AI-artboards-for-import-into-AD.ai

Got it. Thanks.

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22 minutes ago, Anand Prakash said:

I never noticed that there were Artboards. Like in Illustrator, they are easy to add, but in AD I did not see the option anywhere - not in the menu and not in the sidepanel.

What to try to help? It's just the first entry for the introduction.

Screenshot_2018-08-04-14-06-52.thumb.png.5dd2b9f32c202bf8a372b982674f702d.png

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/Artboards/artboards_about.html

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

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