optical kerning?

[HenrikF]

Switching over from Adobe because I really prefer the Affinity concept.
I got Photo, Designer and Publisher to do a full replace (and to show my support).

There's a bit to get used to, but more often than not it turns out great.

So far, I have only installed Photo (which will be my main program). Great software.

However, optical kerning is something I definitely miss. I'm actually surprised how much of a difference it really made. It's a huge time saver and it's quite annoying to spend so much extra time doing everything manually. I'm sure it might even be a deal breaker for some (I had the thought, but will remain hopeful).

Therefore, a massive +1 from me.

[timewilltell]

+1 For optical kerning

 

 

This is the only reason I can't quit that damn adobe suite shit

[vendara]

+1 from my side aswell.

I think it's a really important feature.
And I feel like after almost 4 years of this feature being requested, it should be about time.

[Hoost]

Is this working yet in version 2.0? Or can we STILL not abandon the Adobe ship...?

[garrettm30]

10 minutes ago, Hoost said:

Is this working yet in version 2.0? Or can we STILL not abandon the Adobe ship...?

Unless I missed it, this one is not a part of the update. There is a lot of goodness in the update, and I am satisfied with the current release, but of course it leaves room for further room to grow. Some sort of optical kerning solution would still be nice.

For me, I am personally more interested in setting kerning pair overrides as part of a text style rather than automatic kerning. Usually, the professional hand tuning of a font's kerning is best, but there are times when a particular pair is not ideal. In InDesign, I can then decide whether the font's kerning or automatic (optical) is better, but usually it is a tradeoff either way. That is why I would prefer to have some way to set kerning overrides. I work in French, and the l’ or c’ is a common complaint I have, and I wish I could just tweak those cases in some way other than local overrides.

[HenrikF]

Unfortunately I don't see any info that optical kerning is added to Affinity Photo 2.0. A shame really, I would have updated without thinking twice about it, if it was included. Maybe I'm missing something and there's already another solution with a different name? If so, I would love to know about it. This is the only major thing I miss from my previous software. It was such a time saver. I've seen it being discussed in various forums since many years. Maybe it's really difficult to implement and that's why?

[Palatino]

Optical kerning was also the first thing I looked at. I would have done without some of the "magic tricks" of version 2 for that.

What the heck, I can't use v2 anyway - yet - Mojave.

[Tony Pritchard]

On 4/13/2019 at 4:45 PM, Nanndc said:

Optical kerning is an absolutely necessary feature. Whenever you are using fonts that have no good kerning tables optical kerning takes care to modify differently the spacing between each letter and puntuation mark. Doing this manually, for each letter, would be an absolutely impossible feat to do even for a few sentences.

I don't know why affinity decided that this feature wasn't necessary nor urgent, even if in 2016 was already discussed and requested.

The lack of optical kerning makes it practically impossible for anyone working with slightly less used fonts to use affinity instead of photoshop.

@Dave Harris

I hope you really reconsider your stance on this matter, I'm sure many people need this as much as I do.

Agree optical kerning is the starting point for a good looking text

[CK-]

Chiming in here: Optical kerning is not only useful for sub-par fonts; I find that even excellent fonts sometimes benefit at different sizes from different treatments. A book font like Garamond Premier Pro might perform excellently at text sizes Manually but if I ever want to deploy it in headline sizes or in a different medium (knockout white over a web image) having the Optical option is excellent.

I imagine that Optical kerning is a major programming task.

In the meantime, a QXP-style "User Defined" setting might be extremely useful and get you 90% of the way to Adobe. To wit, give the user a Font Kerning override database/table that's manipulated via a simple dialogue box. The commenter who asked for different spacing for the French "c’est" could manually kern instances of c’ and/or ’e. The database/table should record the user's Font Kerning overrides with the following data:

FONT(s) (text) • do allow for multiple fonts (bold, caption, extended, etc.) within a family

KERNING PAIR • allow for inclusion of multiple act-alikes like e, é, è, ê, ë on both left and right side of pair. Perhaps allow "any letter" or "any digit" options.

SIZES (positive integer) • allow for a point size range to which this would apply, including "ALL SIZES"

TRACKING MODIFIER (positive or negative integer) • how many percentage points tight (negative) or wide (positive) to track the particular kerning pair. This should probably modify the existing kerning table (standard 10 minus user 6 equals 4), not replace it.

If you allowed these tables to be XML import/export saveable, users could share their best practices for different fonts. En dashes for number ranges, for example, are often disgusting. Em dashes are often too tightly spaced if they're going to be used for a text dash. Ellipses are all over the place in terms of how people like to implement/kern them. Importing someone's best practices table should give you the option to ADD to existing font overrides, or REPLACE them. Perhaps you could also allow multiple rules and have the user specify if new rules will get top priority or bottom priority in a stack. You get the idea.

Good luck continuing to implement this exciting software package.

Edited June 29, 2023 by CK-
typo

[Tony Pritchard]

On 6/29/2023 at 3:07 PM, CK- said:

Chiming in here: Optical kerning is not only useful for sub-par fonts; I find that even excellent fonts sometimes benefit at different sizes from different treatments. A book font like Garamond Premier Pro might perform excellently at text sizes Manually but if I ever want to deploy it in headline sizes or in a different medium (knockout white over a web image) having the Optical option is excellent.

I imagine that Optical kerning is a major programming task.

In the meantime, a QXP-style "User Defined" setting might be extremely useful and get you 90% of the way to Adobe. To wit, give the user a Font Kerning override database/table that's manipulated via a simple dialogue box. The commenter who asked for different spacing for the French "c’est" could manually kern instances of c’ and/or ’e. The database/table should record the user's Font Kerning overrides with the following data:

FONT(s) (text) • do allow for multiple fonts (bold, caption, extended, etc.) within a family

KERNING PAIR • allow for inclusion of multiple act-alikes like e, é, è, ê, ë on both left and right side of pair. Perhaps allow "any letter" or "any digit" options.

SIZES (positive integer) • allow for a point size range to which this would apply, including "ALL SIZES"

TRACKING MODIFIER (positive or negative integer) • how many percentage points tight (negative) or wide (positive) to track the particular kerning pair. This should probably modify the existing kerning table (standard 10 minus user 6 equals 4), not replace it.

If you allowed these tables to be XML import/export saveable, users could share their best practices for different fonts. En dashes for number ranges, for example, are often disgusting. Em dashes are often too tightly spaced if they're going to be used for a text dash. Ellipses are all over the place in terms of how people like to implement/kern them. Importing someone's best practices table should give you the option to ADD to existing font overrides, or REPLACE them. Perhaps you could also allow multiple rules and have the user specify if new rules will get top priority or bottom priority in a stack. You get the idea.

Good luck continuing to implement this exciting software package.

Thanks CK. I've been doing all the kerning manually. I've accepted this as in my situation the benefits of Affinity vs Adobe rent are outweighed. I have now committed to this large-scale project as a one off. If I was working commercially or within a university I'd opt for InDesign for the optical kerning aspect. It's all a balance.