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