Affinity Designer for Windows - 1.7.0

[Patrick Connor]

This build has been superseded by the release of 1.7.1 announced here

We are pleased to announce a major update for the Windows release of Affinity Designer, version 1.7.0

The changes in Affinity Designer for Windows 1.7.0 over the last Affinity Designer patch 1.6.5 are as follows:

CHANGES SINCE LAST VERSION

Tools

• We've overhauled most of the core tools, adding subtle new features to make you more productive.
• New Point Transform Tool allows you to scale and rotate objects from any node.
• The Node Tool now contains a 'Transform Node' option which provides a containing box for the selected nodes and allows for more freeform editing of the nodes.
• New 'Cube' grid setup mode (take a look in 'View' -> 'Grid and Axis Manager...').
• Pen tool now has a 'rubber band' mode and also a mode to allow future curves to be added to the current object's curves (for example, the character 'a' is constructed of two curves in a single 'curve object' and this mode makes that construction simpler).
• Node tool can now auto-snap nodes if you drag a node from one curve over the top of a node from another (selected) curve and pause, it will offer to snap to the same geometry as the node you're hovering over (ie,  modify the on and off-curve nodes to match). This is really useful for trying to reconstruct areas of one curve from another curve.
• Node tool now allows for lasso selection of nodes by holding the Alt/Option key and dragging a selection lasso.
• Pencil tool now offers a 'sculpt' mode that allows for extending or manipulating curves in a more natural way. More to come in this area soon.
• Many tools now allow for 'Alignment widgets' which you can toggle the visibility of in the context toolbar. When enabled you can visually adjust the alignment or even, for example, 'align to centre, snapped to the left edge of this object' by simply click/dragging.
• Fill tool correctly allows editing of skewed fill handles and newly-created skewed fills draw much nicer now.
• Ruler origin can be edited by simply dragging the area where the rulers intersect each other - it can even be snapped onto objects in the document.
• Guides can be edited in most tools by simply dragging a guide in the ruler area.
• Grid setup is now more interactive: origin can be dragged, axis scale adjusted and angle adjusted on-document, complete with snapping to objects and angles in the document to help you reconstruct useful grids from finished artworks or sketches.
• By enabling 'Edit in Plane' on the new Isometric Panel, tools can edit objects and appear to make those edits along the currently active plane - extremely useful for artists who enjoy working with any axonometric projections.
• You can now drag the rotation centre point (when enabled on the context toolbar) while holding Ctrl and it will translate the object - this is actually very useful for positioning and snapping objects relative to others.
• Shapes tools now have presets so you can create your own favourite shape setups and more easily use them again.
• There are just far too many subtle tool changes to mention here, but hopefully you'll find the tools much improved 

General

• Arrowheads are now available in the Stroke Panel.
• New Appearance Panel allows for multiple strokes and fills on a single shape.
• HDR / EDR monitor support
• New brushes, styles and assets are now shipped with the product.
• Visible bleed (accessed from the View menu) so you can more easily design into the bleed area - a common feature request.
• “Alternate futures” for document history have been added. Traditionally, if you roll back the undo history then do something else all your changes after that point are lost. Designer will now display a small branch icon in the history tab when you do this. Pressing that button will cycle between all the different “futures” after that history entry - meaning you will never lose work you have done.
• New 'Isometric Panel' makes it easy to setup and work with various axonometric projections within the application.
• HEIF images can now be loaded directly into Designer. If they contain a depth map, this will also be loaded as a second layer. Because depth maps are typically lower resolution than the main image, optional “smart” upsampling will be performed.
• Designer now supports custom document presets - a popular feature request.
• A new blend mode - Linear Burn - has been added.
• Layers Panel now allows you to tag individual layers with a colour and display thumbnails with transparent backgrounds and at different sizes.
• New “Move inside / outside” commands have been added - useful for quickly clipping/unclipping.
• New "Merge curves/Separate curves" commands.
• Grids now have an editable number of angle subdivisions.
• The Hard Mix blend mode has been improved.
• Numerous text improvements have been made - including new features such as bullets and numbering.
• Significant PDF import / export improvements and fixes.
• Improved Freehand import slightly - failing to read all of a file shouldn't force it to produce a 'failed to load' response, instead we just load the bits that we *could* read
• New splash screen and Persona icons

Brushes

• Designer 1.7 introduces a new “sub-brush” mechanism, developed in conjunction with Paolo Limoncelli (DAUB® Brushes). This exciting feature allows any raster brush to have a list of other brushes attached which will draw at the same time. Each sub-brush has a fully separate and customisable set of dynamics. You can control when the sub-brushes are drawn and how they blend with the main brush.
• Symmetry (up to 32-way) is now supported - including on-canvas controls and optional mirroring.
• Wet edges and accumulation are now available on colour brushes and brushes with HSL variance.
• Brushes with multiple nozzle textures have always chosen the nozzle at random. In 1.7, the nozzle choice has a dynamic controller and ramp for greater control.
• All pixel brush tools now support left and right arrow keys for rotation - a common feature request.

Adjustments

• The HSL adjustment layer has been rewritten. It now supports custom hue ranges, a new algorithm, new UI and picker controls.
• The Levels adjustment layer now supports output levels - a common feature request.
• The White Balance adjustment layer has been rewritten.
• The Selective Colour adjustment layer has been rewritten.
• PSD import / export of adjustments has been improved.
• The Vibrance adjustment layer has been rewritten.
• The Recolour adjustment layer has gained a lightness slider.

Misc

•  There is currently new free content available to claim in the Welcome Screen

This thread is for commenting on this announcement. Please do not post bugs or problems that you find when using this version of the software in this thread, instead make a new thread in the Designer Bugs on Windows section and questions about usage go in the Desktop Questions forum.

UPDATING TO THIS VERSION (Free for existing customers)

For purchases from the Affinity Store the software:  Each time you start the software it will check for updates and offer any available update, or it can be downloaded from here. The new build will install over the top of any earlier version, with no need to uninstall. Alternatively you can log into the affinity store here and find the order in your account and use the download button in there.

For purchases from the Microsoft Store: These are done automatically by the operating system (next time you start the application)

[Bill33]

Is the upgrade from 1.65 free ?

[Mithferion]

Just now, Bill33 said:

Is the upgrade from 1.65 free ?

Yes, it is.

Best regards!

[Martigny]

Brilliant. Thanks for that. It will take a while to take it all in ;)

[Przemysław]

Thank you!

[Uwe367]

Thanks a lot, guys. The improvements, additions and the improvement of the performance are enormous and have improved the software many times over.  Thanks a lot and keep up the good work. Thumbs up

[Erwins_Cat]

1 hour ago, Patrick Connor said:

CHANGES SINCE LAST VERSION

Arrowheads are now available in the Stroke Panel.

I came here just to thank you for that feature alone. Small things like this were the only reason I kept Illustrator on my drive. Thank you for being finally able to deinstall Illustrator :-)

[DShardlow]

35 minutes ago, BobsDaubs said:

No. 1.7 is an upgrade. It will install over any previous installs of AD.

For me 1.7 installed alongside 1.6.5. instead of installing ver the top

of it. I could find no option to uninstall version 1.6.5.

[Patrick Connor]

@Erwins_Cat

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums   and thanks for the thanks

[af-user]

Congratulations for the new great release!

 

oh ....: "There is currently new free content available to claim in the Welcome Screen" damn, I will have to wait until tomorrow what this is teasing

 

[Mosseab Chakrani]

finally, an update

[Blue89]

I have the windows Affinity version that I bought from the Microsoft Store.

It is not automatically updating to 1.7 as the instructions say it will. 

Why???

[Patrick Connor]

@Blue89

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  

The store will update but we cannot control when. If you run the application it should check for updates first, but there may be some delay of a few hours for it to roll out everywhere. Please check back tomorrow, and post in the questions forum if you need more assistance.

[cgcody]

I'm disappointed...

...Opened up Designer to get some serious work done this morning, and thanks to you lot at Serif, I've now spent the last few hours playing with the new features. So thanks for that! 

[whitehead]

Bitmaps along paths seem to be working perfectly: fantastic. Can't wait to dig in further.

[IvanIsGreat]

"Alternate Futures" This is a really cool name for a fantastic idea and will prove to be ridiculously useful. 

I also love the idea of double borders. 

Thanks for all the work. 

[putude]

After a long long time as beta tester Finally... V1.7 was out!

But sadly still without finding and replacing text tool. But nevermind .. I'm waiting for the final Affinity Publisher and ready to switch from AD to AP! hahaha... 

Thanks for the discounted price Affinity! Great software with affordable price. BRAVO!

 

[LittleFella]

I really like that "rasterize and trim" option takes the bleed into account. This is just perfect for me. Also finally rasterizing an image without cropping it to the page. Life saver update!!

Oh and another one: Being able to resize a rectangle from the sides without having to zoom in and out.

A BIG THANKS to the team.

[BnBGobo99]

Giant thank you!  I signed in tonight to export a file in pieces because it hasn't been exported as a whole correctly in previous versions--saw the update was available, re-launched and exported as a single file in perfect form.  This update saved me over an hour of work, thank you so much!

[bkdroid13]

thank you so much for shaing this post, thats just what i wanted to know. its helped to me a lot.

[nitro912gr]

holy s*** guys what have you done? It took around a minute for affinity designer to open with me 2700 fonts and now it opens instantly! (I have an ssd)

if this is just with the improvements alone I wonder how much faster it could be with the gpu support later on!

Thank you for another great update!

[Friksel]

Wow, the history slider was already briljant and so much fun to use in comparisson to the old-fashioned undos in other software, but the new “Alternate futures” is making it even greater. Nice addition! Thanks for that! 

[pixelinkmedia]

Thanks for the upgrade... I love the Appearance addition.... multiple strokes!!!! Awesome!

[johnyoungphotos]

Not used it all yet but I see we can now save custom page presets - That is new right I am sure we could not do that before or did I just miss it all the other times But regardless is very useful so thank you

[sergix7440]

Holy YES!!!

Fantastic update. Especially love the new grid options, and the guide manager columns are a very useful tool for me personally. (I saw this feature in the Publisher Beta and was wondering how long it would take y'all to put it in Designer... )

Kudos to all of you wonderful people developing this exceptional piece of software.