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Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.2.0.24229)


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Ben, I posted this in another thread but never heard back — I know you guys are busy :) — so since I got your attention here, I figured I'd repost:

 

It would be great if:

 

1. Grids were a little smarter, by offering a mode where they appear and disappear only while the user is dragging an object around. 

 

2. Guides/Grids can be manually or are automatically toggled on while the mouse is held down. As soon as the mouse is released, the grids/guides disappear.

 

3. Custom colors/blend modes for guides and grids, including solid and dotted/hashed lines.

 

4. Load and Save Grids/Guides ala Swatches, Styles, etc. 

 

Once again, the tool is feeling great!

 

 

All these things are noted.  I'll see what I can do when I get chance.

 

Saving grid presets will get done later.

 

I'll have to have a think about 1 and 2. Not sure how annoying it will be to have grids popping in and out every time you mouse down.

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I've added the swap line/fill Shift+X shortcut... Removing a fill - hmmm, what shortcut would that be? Also, you can currently hold Alt (Option) and drag in any tool that doesn't use the Option+drag to mean something special and it will access the colour picker. Is that no good? :)

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YESS!!!!

 

Forward slash "" is the traditional keyboard shortcut for None as it pertains to line/fill color. This is such a huge time saver, thanks for finally adding this Matt!

 

Currently, while using the arrow selection tool, one can't change the color of an object using a keyboard shortcut to access the Color Sampler tool; one has to find the color picker and the eyedropper there, then click and drag (which is a pain on laptop trackpads — enabling 3 finger click and drag somewhat mitigates this) to pick up a color. This is a convoluted process...

 

Perhaps if the Color Sampler tool is ALSO accessible from the tool palette (keyboard shortcut using the letter " I ") it can function like a traditional tool (click once to select tool, and once more to pick up the desired color) while leaving the click and drag functionality to the sampler tool currently on the color picker...? 

 

I like the Color picker functioning more as a traditional artist's palette, i.e., a place to mix AND TEMPORARILY STORE colors, before they are permanently placed in the Swatches palette. I think you could expand it and allow the color sampler to pick and store a cache of 6 colors. Check out the attached rough layout of what I mean.

 

post-1105-0-10377900-1428580066_thumb.jpg

 

EDIT: I just remembered I made this on another post on the past :)

post-1105-0-94812600-1428580603_thumb.png

 

Thanks for all you do Matt. Just some more ideas to consider... :)

 

I've added the swap line/fill Shift+X shortcut... Removing a fill - hmmm, what shortcut would that be? Also, you can currently hold Alt (Option) and drag in any tool that doesn't use the Option+drag to mean something special and it will access the colour picker. Is that no good? :)

 

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Good point Miguel. With all the different international keyboards, Affinity really needs a UI for customizing keyboard shortcuts. Asking people to change years and years of muscle memory is not a good idea...

 

As a stopgap solution, what if default keyboard shortcuts are tied to Language localization set in Affinity Preferences, so that if I'm set to US English, it's safe to assume I have a US English keyboard with the corresponding key layout and specific keyboard shortcuts tailored for that keyboard layout; similarly for Portuguese, German, etc. So US users who are used to the slash " / " key can use that, and those who use other language keyboards, can use the appropriate shortcut that corresponds to their keyboard layout....?

 

Just an idea...

 

The slash "/" is only available in some keyboard configs. In a PT keyboard for example you will have to press ⇧ (shift) + 7 to access it.

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I've added the swap line/fill Shift+X shortcut... Removing a fill - hmmm, what shortcut would that be? Also, you can currently hold Alt (Option) and drag in any tool that doesn't use the Option+drag to mean something special and it will access the colour picker. Is that no good? :)

 

No for the Alt + some tools that work with it. Just use “i” key just like in AI.  

 

As for remove fill/stroke the / key is a good solution. 

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I'm happy to add the simple '/' shortcut for 'No Fill' as it is trivial and not dangerous, but if I started to look at locale-specific shortcuts then I'm entering days of work and potential for bugs - which is fine apart from the fact that we are going to add customisable shortcuts which would address this properly in the future, so I don't want to do work which I know is going to be deleted quite soon...

 

If we can accept the fact that it's not going to work for all keyboards for the moment, but that it'll be properly resolved in the future (and at least be useful to some customers until such time as we implement the proper solution) then I'm happy to add it?

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Makes sense, Matt, you guys are plenty busy, it was just an idea without knowing what kind of work it would take to implement.... What about the Color Sampler shortcut and functionality ideas?

 

I'm happy to add the simple '/' shortcut for 'No Fill' as it is trivial and not dangerous, but if I started to look at locale-specific shortcuts then I'm entering days of work and potential for bugs - which is fine apart from the fact that we are going to add customisable shortcuts which would address this properly in the future, so I don't want to do work which I know is going to be deleted quite soon...

 

If we can accept the fact that it's not going to work for all keyboards for the moment, but that it'll be properly resolved in the future (and at least be useful to some customers until such time as we implement the proper solution) then I'm happy to add it?

2021 16” Macbook Pro w/ M1 Max 10c cpu /24c gpu, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Ventura 13.6

2018 11" iPad Pro w/ A12X cpu/gpu, 256 GB, iPadOS 17

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I like the idea of the recently picked colours area - we'd have to talk it over though to make sure it was something everyone was happy with :)  I may look at a separate Colour Picker tool - accessible from 'i'... again it needs talking about though... Tony is out of the office until Monday so we'll try to talk it through next week :)

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Matt if you're looking at the colour picker, will you guys bring up auto assignment of the selected colour? Perhaps with a modifier to determine whether a colour is stored in a recent bin or instantly applied to the selected object. I like the idea of having the loupe do a little more, you guys should look at the loupe in xscope for some inspiration, it's a pretty nifty bit of kit.

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I like the idea of the recently picked colours area - we'd have to talk it over though to make sure it was something everyone was happy with :)  I may look at a separate Colour Picker tool - accessible from 'i'... again it needs talking about though... Tony is out of the office until Monday so we'll try to talk it through next week :)

 

As for recently sampled colors add some option to make a swatch out of it. Also regarding swatches add the ability to drag and drop recently sampled colors in doc default swatches. I don’t want to make a new one for each thing I try.

 

The / Needs to work to remove stroke as well if stroke is active.

UI Designer, CG Artist

 

Macbook Pro 15" 2014

2.5 Ghz, 750M

 

https://www.behance.net/VladMafteiuScai

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Thanks for considering these ideas and all your hard work, Matt!

 

 

I like the idea of the recently picked colours area - we'd have to talk it over though to make sure it was something everyone was happy with :)  I may look at a separate Colour Picker tool - accessible from 'i'... again it needs talking about though... Tony is out of the office until Monday so we'll try to talk it through next week :)

2021 16” Macbook Pro w/ M1 Max 10c cpu /24c gpu, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Ventura 13.6

2018 11" iPad Pro w/ A12X cpu/gpu, 256 GB, iPadOS 17

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Hi Matt, not to turn this thread into a wish list thread but on the colour picker discussion. I'd like to see a similar idea for the paste style workflow. Currently to grab a style from another object you have to deselect your current object (the one you want the style to go to), select the object you want the style from, copy, re-select the target object, then paste the style... in a complex project it would be faster, better, smarter to "sample" the desired style from the original object to the targeted object while your target object is still selected. Using the "i" key with maybe an additional key perhaps could not only grab the colour but also all of the styling...

 

Thoughts?

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Hi Matt, not to turn this thread into a wish list thread but on the colour picker discussion. I'd like to see a similar idea for the paste style workflow. Currently to grab a style from another object you have to deselect your current object (the one you want the style to go to), select the object you want the style from, copy, re-select the target object, then paste the style... in a complex project it would be faster, better, smarter to "sample" the desired style from the original object to the targeted object while your target object is still selected. Using the "i" key with maybe an additional key perhaps could not only grab the colour but also all of the styling...

 

Thoughts?

 

This is how AI Eyedropper tool works. Also samples text styles.

UI Designer, CG Artist

 

Macbook Pro 15" 2014

2.5 Ghz, 750M

 

https://www.behance.net/VladMafteiuScai

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This is how AI Eyedropper tool works. Also samples text styles.

 

Haha, I guess that's correct. Although sometimes for me it doesn't behave consistently in Ai. Sometimes it picks up everything and other times it doesn't. Either way it seems a quicker route to transfer styles from one object to another without the deselect target object, select object with style you want, copy, select target object and paste style operation...

 

Saving styles works for times when you're going to need it constantly, but you don't want to necessarily save a style every time...

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Hi 00Ghz, the node tool marquee behavior is by design … as retrograde pointed out in another thread this is quite sensible in complex designs:

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4314-marquee-for-node-tool-independent-of-path-selection/

 

And yes, retrograde, the divide operation is funky in the latest Beta, and Matt is already aware of this …

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/7013-add-and-divide-shapes/

 

Cheers, Alex  :)

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Hi 00Ghz, the node tool marquee behavior is by design … as retrograde pointed out in another thread this is quite sensible in complex designs:

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4314-marquee-for-node-tool-independent-of-path-selection/

 

And yes, retrograde, the divide operation is funky in the latest Beta, and Matt is already aware of this …

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/7013-add-and-divide-shapes/

 

Cheers, Alex  :)

 

Yes but I would like some options to toggle that behaviour off for the node tool marque behaviour.

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https://www.behance.net/VladMafteiuScai

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Just a shout out as I don't really have too many details but I'm getting a crash relatively often just after having created a new document, before it appears on screen. I'm not certain if its the case all the time, but I think its usually when I've changed the settings (e.g from "Print" to "Photo") and press return to accept. Maybe something is trying to use something that's not quite loaded yet? 

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