My Experience with Affinity Designer (1.7 Beta cycle) - Quick review

[Uncle Mez]

Hello everyone !
Happy to share this with you today; Yes i'm back because power outage was fixed in my suburb but only for few hours then we may go back into ... no power at all for the time or number of days they decide .
Not a problem at all as opportunity is given and i take it on both hands. Now let's move !
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My Review and propositions for Affinity Designer 1.7.0.2 (also applicable to Affinity Photo and Publisher too)

Well the new Affinity Designer load faster than what I've seen up to now and i'm really really happy with it and can just imagine how great would be the final version.
Brushes are more fluid and easy to use and they flow in more natural way, it's simply a pleasure to make use of it.

BUT !, because there is always a but in stages like this !

These are the few problems or difficulties i had with (that is existing since old versions):
Brushes Loading was really fast (just drag and drop and click Ok)
.afassets, .afpalette, and .afstyles still can't be added or loaded to the software by selecting them from the file browser using the drag and drop method.
From the import window opening i can only select one item after another, would be very useful if select all is activated allowing to select everything compatible within the same folder then just click Ok/Add for the software start loading them.

My Proposition to the above problem
this is a proposition i have for the above problem i encountered and still encounter:
Well, to me a good Fix would bean Assistant working similar to a font manager but a bit differently. It would ask the user where is the folder with desired stuffs to load then that kind of resource manager would scan that folder looking for everything compatible (palettes, brushes, styles, macros, etc.) then display it in a list (like when we try to add PS stuffs on Affinity) they would be classified by categories with level of usability and trust (orange, green and red etc.), from that place we would make our choice to activate and/or approve whatever we want (on a column with check boxes ON/OFF) and the software would just load our choice then after it is done we would receive a DONE message.

That solution would make it even simple and take less minutes than leaving it to us to manually load them one by one and could be very helpful even for those using the iPad version and who have their stuffs somewhere on the iCloud.
Please think about this, it may save lives.

This is what I like from the new (affinity Photo) beta version :
The icon used on the top bar to indicate the different personas are far away better than what Affinity had, it's more refined and i personally feel better looking at it, now left the tools icons, they need a refresh like you did with the personas icons: Please implement it on the next Affinity Designer, they are simple and beautiful.

This is what i believe Serif should start thinking about or add in this beta cycle:
1- A rotate on plane functionality that will help us to rotate subjects such as shapes, beveled/extruded texts, curves etc... thus moving one step close to a real 3D capability
2- Make Designer more capable of making UI/UX with new functions or simply revised functions and why not bringing the Prototyping Persona where all prototyping for Ui/UX guys to feel at home and create the best they can or want.
3- The Fill Tool used to create gradient must now become curvable, allowing the user that create a gradient to also bend it or curve it in one or another direction or even or draw circles or complex lines with it, to me, it will make it possible to create the "up to now" impossible multicolored curved gradient that ever existed (maybe it does exist somewhere else and just don't know about... )

Well, that's everything i wanted to share with you and even bring up to light, may you have advice or corrections, please feel free, it will help us all grow !

Blessings !

[fde101]

11 hours ago, Uncle Mez said:

import window opening i can only select one item after another

Suggest that this be enhanced to allow multiple selection.

[Uncle Mez]

53 minutes ago, fde101 said:

Suggest that this be enhanced to allow multiple selection.

That's also what i suggested as a solution but a resource manager to make the load much automated would be a better choice 

[nikolai.ylirotu]

One thing what I miss is a appearing colour droppers icon when you press Alt. Now you see brushes icon and it is not the easiest way to select certain point and certain colour with 20 pixels wide brush.