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Affinity Designer Customer Beta RC2 (1.1.2.23562)


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Purpose: Improvements, Features, Fixes

Status: Release Candidate

Requirements: Purchased Affinity Designer

Mac App Store: Not submitted

Download: https://s3.amazonaws...stomer Beta.dmg

 

We intend to update the currently available Mac App Store product in the near future and will produce the binary for this from the current beta. We feel that we have added a great many new features and bug fixes and would like to get these into the hands of the majority of our customers. We are aware that not every bug has been fixed but we have to commit to updating the App Store version as long as we are not introducing any regressions in functionality or usability. For now, our focus must be on making sure the features included in this release candidate build are as stable and robust as possible, so we will not be adding any new features until we have released this version. We would appreciate it greatly if you are able to spend some time looking at this release candidate version and thoroughly testing it, letting us know any issues that you are having with it so we can prioritise our time to tend to as much as possible.

 

To use this beta, simply download the file from the link given above and double-click on the file to open the installer. Follow the instructions to install the beta version. The beta sits alongside the Mac App Store version and will not interfere with it.

 

Documents made in this version will not be openable in older versions of Affinity Designer. This change was necessary in order to ensure a consistent baseline for our file format for the Affinity Photo Beta. When we update the Mac App Store version it will upgrade to this new archive version number too so will not be an issue in the future.
 
Improvements, Features, Fixes
 

- Fix for ‘text in points’ logic error

- Automatic panel resizing logic added to cope with translated strings that were becoming cropped

- Performance improvement for non-RGB8 colour formats

- Fix for Transform panel changes ignoring any ‘nudge’ adjustments previously made with the arrow keys

- Improved cursors for Gradient Tool, Transparency Tool, Vector Crop Tool and shadow offset tools

- Path Text tweaks - support for filler text, many speed improvements

- Removed visible ’focus’ highlight on the line page style buttons

- Reduced the level of danger implied by the warning given when saving history with documents

- Completely changed the way we deal with high-DPI documents. There is now no ‘retina’ checkbox and all documents for physical devices are specified in points with a given DPI.

- Fix for hit-testing issues with the colour wheel and ‘recent’ colours in the Swatches panel

- Fix for a few Layers panel issues - Shift-Click on a thumbnail works as expected to multi-select the rows again and dragging a layer to the New Layer button now duplicates the layer again.

- Text context toolbar now has live preview enabled for its Leading control

- Correctly read DPI information from PNG files when we load them

- Hopefully improved the speed of opening the Character panel when you have many fonts installed

- PDF import improvements

- Fix for Divide boolean operation creating the wrong results and/or crashing

- Fix for Pixel Persona menu items being in a different order to the Draw Persona menu items

- Fix for changing a line’s pressure profile not remembering each Undo step correctly

- Fix for entering a Hex colour not always producing the correct colour

- Improved the user experience when dealing with documents which take a long time to draw (typically very effect-heavy documents)

 

 

 

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Short note about translated help content 

You should be seeing French and Spanish Help in the app. German to come. 

 

- The French help's Table of Contents navigation is broken in this build - we've already fixed this, but you can't navigate the books at the moment.

 

As a workaround please use the Help's search instead.

 

Apologies

Andy Capstick

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Thanks for the new beta - great stuff. 

 

Question about..

Completely changed the way we deal with high-DPI documents. There is now no ‘retina’ checkbox and all documents for physical devices are specified in points with a given DPI.

 

 

This works when the document is set to points, however the user slices don't scale with the artwork so need repositioning - so it's only useful if you are doing a single document export.

 

When the document is in pixel mode and 'rescale' is on, I would expect changing the DPI to adjust the pixel size of the document. Or can we please have a check box for it to do so? Also we'd still need the slices to be scaled accordingly.

 

btw I think photoshops 'image size' dialog is rather good as it shows both the physical and pixel changes to a document, so leaves no uncertainty as to what is happening. 

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Hi Malcolm,

 

Thanks for that :)

 

I've just tried resizing the document and can confirm that existing slices don't act as I'd expect - I'll try to look at sorting that out right now but need to be sure that my fix would not introduce any additional errors in order for me to be comfortable with changing it for this version (which I intend to upload as a Mac App Store update in the next few days if no further regressions are found). I'll try to update you on my progress.

 

For DPI to affect the pixel dimensions of a pixel document then we'd need an extra option - I think this is something we intend to add.

 

With the way that everything is set up now, you should just be able to make a new document based on the iPad Air template (for example) then go to Export Persona and just export 1x or 2x assets easily with no obstacles. Everything should appear at the correct size on the screen and the output images you produce should have all their properties correctly set, ready for use in your projects. Hopefully that's the case?

 

Thanks again,

Matt

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#BugsReport for 1.1.2.23562

 

Zoom out with "zoom tool" malfunction.

It zoom out once and zoom back in again when I was zooming out with "option key" hold.

 

--

MBP retina w/ osx 10.10.2

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Hi Matt,

 

now the character panel opens quite fast, but the application launch takes about 40 seconds on my Lion Mac Book Pro 2.4 GHz i5 (and no, this is not the first time I opened the new version) ... oh my, this can’t be right, don’t you think? Made a very boring screen cast to show you what happens in Activity Monitor during app launch ... 

 

I suspect you made the app compile or cache the font list on application launch instead of on invoking the character panel ... but now Affinity Designer shows the same startup delay as I noticed in the last Beta when I forgot to close the character panel on quitting the application ...  :(

 

I am deeply sorry to give you so much headaches ... but I can just tell what happens on my machine ...

 

Cheers,

Alex  :)

 

EDIT Deleted the video just to free some space on my forum account. The somewhat strange solution to the issue is reported below ...

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It's a spinning HDD ... and the font list duplicates are also still there ... just to give you more headaches ...  :(

 

(Unfortunately I have to leave my office now, but I will be back later this afternoon, if you have further questions ...)

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I asked Andy about the duplicates and he confirmed that he was not going to risk the change to fix it prior to this Mac App Store update as it only affects a relatively small number of users, whereas the fix risks introducing a large number of issues that everyone would be exposed to. He is currently fixing the issue, but in another branch which will be folded in after we push the App Store update.

 

Thanks for letting us know about your HDD - I'll tell Andy and see what he can come up with...

 

:)

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Hi Matt

With the way that everything is set up now, you should just be able to make a new document based on the iPad Air template (for example) then go to Export Persona and just export 1x or 2x assets easily with no obstacles. Everything should appear at the correct size on the screen and the output images you produce should have all their properties correctly set, ready for use in your projects. Hopefully that's the case?

 

Yep, with my current project I can setup my doc at 72dpi and use the 2x export.

Only hoop to jump through is then removing the @2x from each exported file as that naming convention isn't required/used by the engine. But I'm sure you'll get around to addressing that at some point too. 

 

Best of luck getting the App Store version updated - you'll have lots of very happy customers when it lands - it's a great update.

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FYI I suspect this was accidentally left in.  There's a debug tab on the Layers Effects Styles panel.  I decided not to play with it when I saw button named Crash!  :o

 

Just a fantastic up date.  AD has gotten to be so much fun and so powerful.  Great work from everybody on the team!

iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) with macOS Sierra

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Yikes! If you close down the application then run it up again holding down the Ctrl key immediately after clicking to launch it, you will get a dialog asking to reset some settings - if you just select 'clear' with the default items checked then it should reset the studios. Do you get the Debug panel coming back? It shouldn't be there as you rightly suggested! :S

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Hi Matt,

 

now the character panel opens quite fast, but the application launch takes about 40 seconds on my Lion Mac Book Pro 2.4 GHz i5 (and no, this is not the first time I opened the new version) ... oh my, this can’t be right, don’t you think? Made a very boring screen cast to show you what happens in Activity Monitor during app launch ... 

 

I suspect you made the app compile or cache the font list on application launch instead on invoking the character panel ... but now Affinity Designer shows the same startup delay as I noticed in the last Beta when I forgot to close the character panel on quitting the application ...  :(

 

I am deeply sorry to give you so much headaches ... but I can just tell what happens on my machine ...

 

Cheers,

Alex  :)

 

Hi A_B_C,

 

Sorry to hear about your problems. I will fix your long load time for the next version! That of course shouldn't happen at all. As for the duplicate fonts, that will take a bit more effort to change so probably won't be fix for this version.  Hopefully that's okay. :)

 

AndyT

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New RC but still very important color converting problems still exist.

 

The EPS import color bug:

Make a new doc, draw a box with color 100M 100Y 15K (or any other) and export it as PDF and EPS.

Open the files in AD - the PDF displays the correct color but EPS something at 3C 96M 81Y 11K.

 

Changing the profile changes not only the color how it's displayed, it also changes the color value.

Make a new document with the "ISO coated v2 300% (ECI)" profile for professional  printing workflow. Draw a box with my loved color 100M 100Y 15K (or any other) and saved it to an AD file. It has now a file size of 1.4 mb cause of embedding the ECI-profile and the color is displayed right as expected. Now change in the document setup the profile to "Generic CMYK Profile" and the color look darker and dirtier, and the values have changed to 1 C 90 M 96 Y 4 K. Optic may change, but the values from CMYK <-> CMYK? Nope. And now, when I change the colours (not the profile) back to the wanted and correct 100 M 100 Y 15 K the red looks again fantastic, as it should (though the change of the profile). And if I save the file now it is only about 50 kb cause the profile doesn't get anymore embeded.
That is a big problem for me cause color have to be 100 % reliable - optic may change little but the values absolutely must not, at last it have to be selected if conversation by values or display).

Maybe the EPS import color-problem results from a miss interpretation of the profile, too? -> uses Generic CMYK Profile but should have used the ECI-one. Illustrator does this correct. The profile is not embeded in the EPS but the name of it which should be used (or it should show an profile error and let user select a correct one ).

 

Please look into this, as long as I have no guarantie the colors don't change like wild with unexpected results I have hardly a chance to use the files for production :(

 

Thanks in advance for looking into this, as always, cause I know that all of you have just two hands (or four paws?). Oh, and all other helpfull advice is greatly welcome :)

 

Attached is the ECI-Profile for colorsync and a little screencast of changing values.

 

PS: Or should I have postet it into the bugs section???

ISOcoated_v2_300_eci.icc.zip

color-converting-profile.mov

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017), i7 4.2, Radeon 580 Pro 8 GB, 40 GB DDR4-RAM, 1 TB Flash, macOS 10.14.6

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MattP,

 

Great, thanks for all the hard work! I noticed it in the last beta but I wanted to say thanks for adding the "Paste Style" option, very handy! I also like the "Find in Layer Panel" as well. I'm still hoping that you guys will add a "Hide" and "Show All" short cut sometime! Keep up the great work! 

 

Hokusai

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Hi Markus,

 

Your second question is much easier to answer, so I'll start with that one... Basically, when you change your document's colour profile you will by default be set to convert to the other profile. The mapping specified by your source and destination profiles chooses the colour values we give to your objects afterwards. This means that when you choose to convert to Generic CMYK that your document's profile will become the Generic CMYK profile and all your colours will be converted (i.e. modified) to become their best representations in the new profile as specified by the mapping from source to destination profile. If you do not want to perform this conversion (and you are basically saying that you don't) then just change it to assign, not convert. This sets the document profile but leaves the colours alone. I don't believe there are any issues here, it all works faultlessly in my trials.

 

Your first question about EPS import colour is simply because we can export CMYK colours to an EPS, but when we read an EPS file there is nothing in it to say what colour space it was meant to be in, so it defaults to an RGB space. We can probably be smarter in the future and guess that it was meant to be a CMYK document, but this isn't a quick fix... When Illustrator writes an EPS file, it writes an 'Illustrator EPS' file with an embedded Illustrator file at the top of its stream so that it can get back to exactly the document you were working with in a seamless way - but we have no way of reading this embedded Illustrator stream. The PDF file does contain information of its intended document format, so when we open the PDF file we can correctly set the document's colour format, which is why it appears to work as intended.

 

Thanks,

Matt

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I asked Andy about the duplicates and he confirmed that he was not going to risk the change to fix it prior to this Mac App Store update as it only affects a relatively small number of users, whereas the fix risks introducing a large number of issues that everyone would be exposed to. He is currently fixing the issue, but in another branch which will be folded in after we push the App Store update.

 

That does sound very sensible indeed, Matt, ... the duplicate font list entries are just a minor problem, since you can access all font styles through the context toolbar as well ...  :)

 

And Andy, thanks for caring for the long startup time issue ...  :)

Keep up the good work, cheers everyone,

 

Alex

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Hi headwrong,

 

Any examples you send me will make my life easier when trying to fix these - I have a number already and I am aware that I need to spend time looking at them. This is my intended focus after this update is pushed to the App Store. It takes time to look through and make work properly and I cannot rush it - otherwise I will just make things worse, so I cannot hope to get this 100% before the update.

 

I tried to reproduce your test case... and got success... so as I mentioned, any .afdesign files you can send that go wrong will be great. Just send anything to support@seriflabs.com and I can pick them up from there - thank  you! :)

 

My test, for your reference

 

post-5-0-20302300-1426085655_thumb.png post-5-0-51890600-1426085667_thumb.png

 

Thanks,

Matt

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