Vector/pattern fill

[typeglyph]

It is interesting how this topic has become a focal point for VectorStyler. I wonder if the Affinity team is actually seeing the depth that is happening here.

Now if we could find a way for publisher, designer et.al to develop structures in PDF via CSS & HTML & IML (also good for epubs) so that the software can meet the accessibility requirements of many countries, and people. 

[Mithferion]

3 minutes ago, typeglyph said:

I wonder if the Affinity team is actually seeing the depth that is happening here.

By "depth" do you mean the VectorStyler-centered publicty? I'm sure they've noticed ir.

I installed the Beta and I couldn't work with it, so I uninstalled it. The same way I did with Gavit Designer, by the way.

Best regards!

[R C-R]

50 minutes ago, Mithferion said:

I installed the Beta and I couldn't work with it, so I uninstalled it. The same way I did with Gavit Designer, by the way.

I bought Vector Styler using the discount coupon offer but so far I find its UI very difficult to use, mostly because it seems like the author wanted to include access to everything possible in multiple places in its nested menus & windows.

[Mithferion]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

I bought Vector Styler using the discount coupon offer but so far I find its UI very difficult to use, mostly because it seems like the author wanted to include access to everything possible in multiple places in its nested menus & windows.

I found other problems (for me) when using the Tools themselves. Hope they improve it over time.

Best regards!

[Dazmondo77]

16 hours ago, R C-R said:

so far I find its UI very difficult to use, mostly because it seems like the author wanted to include access to everything possible in multiple places in its nested menus & windows.

Agreed - I paid full whack for VS as soon as it was released, mainly for vector distortions which I use a lot, but I've found (real) vector brushes, vector fills, type on a path distortions, simplify path have all enabled me to complete publisher jobs -  I usually copy paste in and out of VS as quick as possible and back into the comfort of Publisher to refine and finish off - it just takes a bit of time and patience to figure out the VS way of doing things, it's not nice and not Affinity but I'd recommend digging in now you've purchased, as we could all be waiting years for these features to appear in Affinity, what other options are there? Inkscape is horrible, slow, no external clipboard (at least on mac) and no CMYK, whereas VS is less horrible and quick - all the other options either don't have Affinity's missing basics or are subscription (Nah!)

15 hours ago, Mithferion said:

I found other problems (for me) when using the Tools themselves.

Agreed - not nice, but put in a bit of time and you could have additional possibilities a copy and paste away - TODAY!

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

-  I usually copy paste in and out of VS as quick as possible and back into the comfort of Publisher to refine and finish off - it just takes a bit of time and patience to figure out the VS way of doing things, it's not nice and not Affinity but I'd recommend digging in now you've purchased, as we could all be waiting years for these features to appear in Affinity, what other options are there?

What I would like is if it was easy to find whatever it is I need to do in VS so the copy into & then back out of it was quick & easy, but as it is now, there is just too much to sort through to make that something I want to take on. It is sort of like having a giant toolbox with thousands of tools in it, all jumbled together with no simple way to find the right one for the job at hand.

[Boldlinedesign]

The things Affinity does, it does very well; the big issue is that there's not enough "things" in the program and the inordinate amount of time it's taken Serif to add them. Affinity is one of the best alternative options to Adobe or CorelDRAW out there. Affinity is focused on building up three programs simultaneously with it's revolutionary studio link and universal file format. This is exciting news and for those who primarily use raster and vector together in their work, this is a winning formula. The potential downside to this approach is that the attention and energy is spread across three programs and not niche down to making one great. For years I always thought of Designer as the inevitable "Illustrator killer" and I think for some people, it is now, or eventually will be. This is because not everyone needs all the options available in Illustrator/Corel and a streamlined efficient program like Designer will suffice.

For vector power users and those who may need more than the basics offered in Affinity, the alternative options are sparse. Stick with Adobe and pay through the nose or cling to CS6 until technology's advance makes that impossible, or make do with Inkscape or CorelDraw or use another program that has the missing features. Patrick from Serif made an telling point a few weeks back, (paraphrasing) that we should choose to invest in Affinity for what is is now, not what we hope it will one day become. We all expect Affinity to continue to mature and develop over time, but we should not purchase today based primarily on the future expectations we want to project onto it.
This is why I don't think Serif would mind that we discuss alternative programs and workarounds that provide solutions to missing features in Affinity now. Every forum discusses the pros and cons of the supported programs. It's human nature to look for solutions even if they fall outside the normal channels.
As @Dazmondo77 has shared, investing in another program that accomplishes the tasks currently missing from Affinity makes it worth the purchase. I have used alternative programs for specified tasks long before Affinity, when I was primarily using Illustrator. Vectormagic for vector trace, Vectoraster for vector halftones, etc. In fact, for a long while, Affinity was an alternative tool I used to gain certain results that my version of Illustrator could not produce! Even today, if I get an AI file that will not open in my old Illustrator copy, I can usually rely on Designer to open it without issue!
I agree that Vectorstyler is not as polished a UI as Affinity and that it can be confusing to use where Affinity is more streamlined. There are also some features in VS that appear to be similar to one another but organized as separate features. There are a LOT of options and tools and it can be confusing for sure. I admit that I was turned off by this approach when I first started learning VS. The more I used it however, the more it became comfortable it became. I started by doing what basics I could in VS and then when I got stuck or confused, I'd push as far as I could before copying and paste the work into Affinity or Illustrator and complete it there. (I had done the same thing when I was first learning Designer - moving things over to Illustrator to complete)
In VS, I focused on getting familiar with the toolbar functions that were universal to any vector based program and then expanded out from there. Going through the panels menu was what helped me next after that. I also try to keep in mind learning a new program is always challenging and a struggle because we are so used to what we already know. I spent too much time trying to request and hope that Affinity would do things just like Illustrator because I was so used to Illustrator already. It wasn't until I let go of expectations and embraced the idea that Affinity's way was different, and that was not necessarily "bad", I do the same with VS and other apps as well.

 

[Boldlinedesign]

41 minutes ago, R C-R said:

What I would like is if it was easy to find whatever it is I need to do in VS so the copy into & then back out of it was quick & easy, but as it is now, there is just too much to sort through to make that something I want to take on. It is sort of like having a giant toolbox with thousands of tools in it, all jumbled together with no simple way to find the right one for the job at hand.

What task are you trying to accomplish? Most of the common features missing from Affinity can be easily accessed in VS without knowing a ton about the VS program. Text warp for example is a tool on the vertical toolbar. pure vector brushes are available with the brush tool.
Many answers can be found in the documentation section on the site, or in the search box inside the program itself. Searching the forum also is a great solution. Worst case you can just ask in the forum and people are very quick to answer

 

[R C-R]

11 minutes ago, Boldlinedesign said:

What task are you trying to accomplish? Most of the common features missing from Affinity can be easily accessed in VS without knowing a ton about the VS program. Text warp for example is a tool on the vertical toolbar.

Currently, I see 22 tools on the toolbar, & 19 of them are pop-outs similar to Affinity's tool-groups. It is not easy to tell at a glance which tool does what -- many of the icons are not very suggestive of any specific function or of what other tools might be lurking in the pop-out. Worse, sometimes the tooltips appear on the pop out & other times not, & sometimes the pop-out doesn't even pop out the first time I click on its triangle or click & hold on the visible tool's icon.

So my first challenge is just finding the right tool among what seems to be close to 100 of them. For instance, I counted 19 different warp tools in one tool group & 7 others in another group, for a total of 26 (!!!) warp tools, not just one, & I am not even sure I have found them all.

I know there must be somewhere in the maze of preferences options to set up the tools panel however I want but finding that, like so many other things in the app, is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

37 minutes ago, Boldlinedesign said:

Many answers can be found in the documentation section on the site, or in the search box inside the program itself.

If you mean the search box in the Help menu, if say I type " text warp" into it I get 'no results found.'  There is no search box I can find elsewhere in the UI but maybe I missed it. In particular, there is no way I have found to search for a particular tool on the toolbar or for anything specific in the preferences. I have spent a little time browsing through the documentation on the site but for some reason the search feature there just defaults to showing Google results, only some of which are even from the VS site.

Basically, there are so many features to sort through that finding & learning how to use even a small subset of them has already taken much more time than I want to spend doing that, & it seems that I still have a long way to go.

[Boldlinedesign]

@R C-R I appreciate you sharing what you did, though I am having difficulty believing your use of VS is truly as complicated as you suggest. I assume based on your struggles with VS, that you did not regularly use programs like Corel or Illustrator for your work. Perhaps a program like Corel or Illustrator or Vectorstyler are either too advanced for your liking or you're unwilling to invest the effort into any of them. I could be wrong, but it comes across like you are unwilling to put an average amount of effort into learning or you would prefer not to learn so you can complain about it. I admit I am a huge fan of Vectorstyler, but I am also a huge fan of Affinity. The best of both programs together would be impressive indeed! Vectorstyler is not competition for Affinity; I can see great value in having both in my professional workflow. For me when it comes to pure vector work, VS is my primary program and Designer is a "plug-in". I know others who use them in the reverse roles.

Being a long-time Illustrator user, I found the setup of VS very similar. Most tools in the vertical toolbar are nearly identical to that of Illustrator. Hovering over any tool-tip gives an explanation of it's use. Simple testing of any tool can answer most questions. I don't consider myself a genius, but with a little effort and persistence, I was able to quickly pick up the basics and move into the deeper tool options.

Vectorstyler has been improving at such a rapid pace, the documentation has not been able to keep up. That said, there's a pretty decent explanation of a majority of the tools and features in the documentation section of the website.
 

[R C-R]

57 minutes ago, Boldlinedesign said:

Perhaps a program like Corel or Illustrator or Vectorstyler are either too advanced for your liking or you're unwilling to invest the effort into any of them.

I never had a need for Illustrator or Corel that justified their cost. VS with the coupon discount seemed like a good deal, but as I said, I need to invest a lot of time learning how to use it, beginning with just finding the right tool for the task at hand among so many of them.

It also does not help that, as I said, the tooltips do not work about ½ the time & I have yet to figure out why. I am having other issues with it as well, including delays when switching panels & what seem to be unusual or at least unanticipated actions occurring when clicking on various items in the UI or workspace.

All this could be the result of some misconfiguration I have done or some other local issue with my Mac but it still will take me a lot of time & effort to sort all this out before I can begin to feel comfortable using the app.

[typeglyph]

26 minutes ago, R C-R said:

it still will take me a lot of time & effort to sort all this out before I can begin to feel comfortable using the app.

I think you have identified that this is the crux of the issue you are having: Learning Curve.  

Maybe your should find a forum for VectorStyler and use it to sort out the problems you are having. 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, typeglyph said:

I think you have identified that this is the crux of the issue you are having: Learning Curve.  

Maybe your should find a forum for VectorStyler and use it to sort out the problems you are having. 

The big problem I am having with the learning curve is the app is not, as far as I can tell, behaving as it should, not just for one or a few things but for so many that I would not even know how to explain what they all are on the VS forum.

For example, I keep finding myself staring at a panel that I have no idea what I did to open it & other panels disappearing because (I assume) I accidentally clicked on some obscure UI button that hid it. Quite often, I cannot even repeat the same action I just tried & get the same or even similar results. Along with the delays before some changes take effect, the tooltips that do not appear consistently, & the plethora of tools & panels to sort through, this makes it very hard to learn much by testing or just to describe any sequence of events that doesn't seem to be working right on the VS forum.

Don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting the app itself is flawed or that anybody else will have the same difficulties I have had. I have to assume that at least a large part of the issues I keep running into are due to some local problem with my Mac or the installation of VS on it. But until I can get a good handle on that, for me the learning cure is all but insurmountable.

[typeglyph]

R C - R

I give up. The last line of my comment is / was 

“Maybe you should find a forum for VectorStyler” 

[Old Bruce]

22 minutes ago, typeglyph said:

R C - R

I give up. The last line of my comment is / was 

“Maybe you should find a forum for VectorStyler” 

And R C-R's first line has:

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

I would not even know how to explain what they all are on the VS forum.

I think R C-R is actually trying to come to grips and I don't think he is disparaging the application. There have been many mentions where he questions his Mac and his Mac's setup being a potential source of some of the frustration.

[R C-R]

58 minutes ago, typeglyph said:

R C - R

I give up. The last line of my comment is / was 

“Maybe you should find a forum for VectorStyler” 

Like I said, I do not even know how to describe most of the problems I am having with the app, so how can I ask for help solving them on some VS forum? It seems like every few minutes that I try testing it, some new oddity appears somewhere in the UI, some setting seems to change on its own, things that AFAIK should not be greyed out & were not the last time I checked are now greyed out or unresponsive, & so on.

It is obvious this is not something others are experiencing but until I can figure out enough about how it should work, I am not going to get very far with it, help or no help from a forum, the documentation, or any of the rest of it.

[R C-R]

32 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

I think R C-R is actually trying to come to grips and I don't think he is disparaging the application.

I am certainly not trying disparage the app. I am just having what I assume are extremely unusual difficulties getting it to work for me as I believe it should & probably does for others.

[ra.skill]

For better or worse, after 1 year on Affinity I've jumped back on the Adobe ship this week, mainly because I need to do a bunch of vector pattern creation and some vector brushes too and image trace would be handy. 

In the process I've realised 2 things....

1. I loooooove Affinity Publisher, it seriously walks all over InDesign and this alone keeps one of my feet in Affinity camp. I also love Affinity Photo, in particular the nondestructive workflow. 

2. I still looooove Adobe Illustrator and Affinity Designer has yet to win my heart with a long way to go till it compares (vector patterns, brushes, image trace, a frigin curve measuring tool, better dashed line adjustment) and because vector drawing is my main focus this has sadly moved me back to Adobe, price and all.
I'll see how this pans out for another year and I might also toy with the idea of continuing to use Apub and Aphoto and just replacing Ades with Ai, though I'd prefer to stay in one suite.

Will be watching from the other side for a while, maybe Designer version 2.0 will bring some joy.

[Boldlinedesign]

@ra.skill Did you try out vectorstyler while you wait for affinity to catch up?

[ra.skill]

30 minutes ago, Boldlinedesign said:

@ra.skill Did you try out vectorstyler while you wait for affinity to catch up?

No...
My other conundrum is that I teach Adobe iD and Ai at a University and over the past year whilst I dabbled in Affinity I was finding my myself getting out of touch with Adobe during my teaching... forgetting menus and shortcuts etc., also made grading student work a little tricky. So really it makes sense to go back.

I just hope Affinity is actually listening to all the banter here and paying attention... cos I'll come straight back if Designer gets up to speed.

[QBerenguer]

+2 have one at office and one at home

I really miss the Macromedia Fireworks fill, making layers one over teh other, really great for texture making.

[onepixelpunch]

+1 

Fairly new to Designer and I am honestly shocked that vector pattern fill isn't a feature. It might be a deal breaker for me, which is a shame as I have been otherwise very happy with it. 

[eobet]

Does this massive thread encompass true vector brushes as well or patterns along paths?

It's very difficult to search for answers because there's so many questions about this on this forum and a lot of what I'm getting is all the way back from 2015.

[JokerMartini]

+1 been asking for years for this one.

[Old Bruce]

3 hours ago, eobet said:

Does this massive thread encompass true vector brushes as well or patterns along paths?

It's very difficult to search for answers because there's so many questions about this on this forum and a lot of what I'm getting is all the way back from 2015.

To the best of my knowledge there are no Vector fills nor what are termed "True Vector" Brushes available. That is why there are so many questions going back to the launch of Affinity Designer.