Staff MattP Posted May 18, 2015 Staff Share Posted May 18, 2015 Purpose: Improvements, Features, Fixes Status: Beta Requirements: Purchased Affinity Designer Mac App Store: Not submitted Download: https://s3.amazonaws...stomer Beta.dmg To use this beta, simply download the file from the link given above and double-click on the file to open the installer. Follow the instructions to install the beta version. The beta sits alongside the Mac App Store version and will not interfere with it. Improvements, Features, Fixes - Support for the new Force Touch trackpad on new MacBook and MacBook Pro - Added support for Yosemite’s “Photos” app in the media browser - Added ‘Polygon mode’ to the Pen Tool which acts like Line mode used to and changed Line mode to draw individual line segments - Improved translations in all languages - New algorithm used in the Pixel Tool so that you can more reliably paint beautiful, narrow pixel lines - Blend ranges can now be non-linear - LAB/CMYK blend mode improvements - All pixel tools can now use the Ctrl+Option drag size modifier - Grid manager improvements - now has a basic and an advanced mode - Pressing the red close button no longer quits the application - EPS import improvements - PDF import improvements - PSD import improvements - Text no longer draws stroke outline if there is no stroke colour - Text tool selection behaviour improved - Many new keyboard shortcuts (see Issue 2 of Affinity Review for a full list!) - Numerous stability improvements 000, vonBusing, smallreflection and 4 others 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Narlei Moreira Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 The Magic Mouse scroll to edit number values still does not work :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Andrew Tang Posted May 19, 2015 Staff Share Posted May 19, 2015 The Magic Mouse scroll to edit number values still does not work :( This was taken out because most of our users had problems of unintended scrolling with the magic mouse. See: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/5274-magic-mouse-again-please-fix-this/ https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/3977-apples-magic-mouse-issues/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malcolm Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 The icons to switch to draw persona or pixel persona when in export persona aren't working here. I can use the Affinity designer beta drop down menu, so not a complete loss :P Thanks for the update. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gear maker Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 The toolbar is certainly stripped down in this release. Couldn't our modifications of the toolbar be carried over from one update to the next? Otherwise it's looking great! iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) with macOS Sierra Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakerlund Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Guys... what happened to the nifty shortcut (ctrl+alt+drag mouse) to resize/opacity the brush in vector mode :( Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MattP Posted May 19, 2015 Author Staff Share Posted May 19, 2015 Hi Jakerlund, It was never in the vector brush tool or pencil tool - only in raster... I'm just about to add it to the vector tools though :) Thanks, Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted May 19, 2015 Staff Share Posted May 19, 2015 @Jakerlund, As far as i know that shortcut only work for bitmap based brushes (Pixel Persona). A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakerlund Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Thanks guys, you rock :) It's quite a hazzle working without that shortcut on a swedish keyboard without the standard brackets shortcut to resize or make custom shortcuts. Paint, drag resize slider and change to "something" paint again... damn to big, undo, slider again... and so on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rallx Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 - Added support for Yosemite’s “Photos” app in the media browser - Added ‘Polygon mode’ to the Pen Tool which acts like Line mode used to and changed Line mode to draw individual line segments These are great improvements! Thanks. Still waiting (impatiently!) for arrowheads (and tails) on lines and curves -- really essential for any sort of technical drawing. The dashed line manager is pretty clunky -- while it is nice to have the fine control provided by the interface of four text boxes to defined the dashed line, it would be much easier to have a bunch of presets to choose from, as well as the ability to add custom dashed lines to the presets rather than having to recreate them from scratch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronnyb Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Hey Matt, happy to see the Line mode in the Pen tool properly implemented so quickly. Now I can rebuild all the work I lost in last night's non-Save fiasco, quicker... :| Breathing out, I smile :) On a different note: how about adding a live preview to the Polygon and Line modes, so they would behaven exactly like dragging a line would, i.e., we can see the preview. I like to lay down lines by clicking, not by dragging, but I could benefit from seeing the preview of the line before pressing the second click... Improvements, Features, Fixes - Added ‘Polygon mode’ to the Pen Tool which acts like Line mode used to and changed Line mode to draw individual line segments improvements MattP 1 2021 16” Macbook Pro w/ M1 Max 10c cpu /24c gpu, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Sonoma 14.4.1 2018 11" iPad Pro w/ A12X cpu/gpu, 256 GB, iPadOS 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Hi Matt, great update, thanks a lot … especially the improvements of the Pen Tool and the Grid Manager! :) If it’s not too cumbersome, I would like to ask you a little thing about the EPS export … I had detailed the issue here before: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/8681-more-clipboard-and-or-export-options/ I am not sure if I am doing something wrong, but I cannot get Designer EPS files imported into Fontlab (please have a look at the materials in my referenced post) … I attached a simple EPS file exported by Designer (A_Designer) and the same file converted by Inkscape (A_Inkscape) below. While Fontlab opens the second one, the first one is rejected … Well, I am not very experienced in the technicalities of Postscript (doing things graphically works fine for me), but do you have a clue why Designer files are rejected? And would it be technically difficult to achieve compatibility here? Thanks a lot, Alex :) A_Designer.eps A_Inkscape.eps MattP 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evtonic3 Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Using Formata Bold Condensed and noticed that in latest beta, AD uses this "teardrop" glyph (apostrophe key) and in AI I get what I need to have (squared shaped). But I couldn't figure out how to get the right apostrophe to show. Where can I find the apostrophe i need? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 On English keyboards you can access the characters on your left image by using Option+] and Shift+Option+] … :) But when I think about it, you don’t need the single quotation marks, as shown on your left image, but apostrophes indeed … since you are abbreviating the word ‘and’ … right? http://practicaltypography.com/apostrophes.html Okay, so you should use Shift+Option+] in both cases … Russ Johnson 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evtonic3 Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Tried all the possible combinations and could not get it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 You can also try to find the appropriate character / glyph in the OS X glyph panel (Character Viewer) and drag it from there … Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Russ Johnson Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 @evtonic3: @A_B_C is absolutely right. Relying on automatic curly quotes to choose between an apostrophe and open-quotation mark is a bad idea. The choice between them is a matter of meaning; unfortunately that’s a bit hard to program. So, it's coded in terms of context, which actually produces the wrong glyph more often than not. ⌥[, ⇧⌥[, ⌥], and ⇧⌥] (and ⇧⌥W for German, plus ⌥\ and ⇧⌥\ for most European languages) ought to become some of your very best friends. By the way, which keyboard layout are you using? Some don't support the ⌥Option key combinations in the same way. Try using US or US Extended. If you're using German, for instance, the key combinations I gave you will result in •, °, ±, , „, ‘, and ’, respectively. Only ⇧⌥W gives the „ I was talking about, and the European quotes « and » I was talking about change to the open-quote mark (‘) and apostrophe-cum-close-quote mark (’), respectively. ________________________________________________________________________ The Magic Mouse scroll to edit number values still does not work :(This was taken out because most of our users had problems of unintended scrolling with the magic mouse. … @Andrew Tang: I have to agree that manually typing numbers gets a bit tedious. How about implementing a feature so that dragging up or down performs the same action? (This could be triggered only if the pointer leaves the bounds of the text box, to keep the feature from being activated by someone who's actually trying to highlight and type a value.) MattP, Narlei Moreira and A_B_C 3 —Russ Jonson Still and video design, logos, branding, and more RussDoes.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vonBusing Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Thanks for another nice update! ( one + for the grid and another + for the text without outline) Once more I saw: - EPS import improvements and got all eager; but was all disappointed that text is still not imported as text but as curves. No easy edits with AD in sight. I hope this is in the pipeline somehow. (didn't get any respons from my earlier post in the bug section). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MattP Posted May 20, 2015 Author Staff Share Posted May 20, 2015 Hi Matt, great update, thanks a lot … especially the improvements of the Pen Tool and the Grid Manager! :) If it’s not too cumbersome, I would like to ask you a little thing about the EPS export … I had detailed the issue here before: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/8681-more-clipboard-and-or-export-options/ I am not sure if I am doing something wrong, but I cannot get Designer EPS files imported into Fontlab (please have a look at the materials in my referenced post) … I attached a simple EPS file exported by Designer (A_Designer) and the same file converted by Inkscape (A_Inkscape) below. While Fontlab opens the second one, the first one is rejected … Well, I am not very experienced in the technicalities of Postscript (doing things graphically works fine for me), but do you have a clue why Designer files are rejected? And would it be technically difficult to achieve compatibility here? Thanks a lot, Alex :) Hi Alex, Thanks for that - and thanks for the simple example eps files. I'll mention this to Dave who wrote our new EPS exporter so that he can take a look and see if there are any obvious tweaks that could be made to provide compatibility with Fontlab :) Thanks, Matt A_B_C 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MattP Posted May 20, 2015 Author Staff Share Posted May 20, 2015 Thanks for another nice update! ( one + for the grid and another + for the text without outline) Once more I saw: and got all eager; but was all disappointed that text is still not imported as text but as curves. No easy edits with AD in sight. I hope this is in the pipeline somehow. (didn't get any respons from my earlier post in the bug section). Hi vonBusing, Sorry but we've not managed to get editable text coming in with EPS files yet - I'll admit that it's also not on the radar for attention any time soon... I know this probably isn't what you want to hear and I can only apologise, but typically people will be exchanging PDF documents in situations where text edibility would be an issue - EPS is an older format and is more usually used nowadays for sharing vector graphic data where the document needs to look right, but its text edibility isn't usually a super-high priority. Obviously this is important in your workflow - and we do intend to try to add it - but we have to prioritise the features that affect most users. Hope this makes sense and you can understand why it hasn't happened yet? Thanks, Matt [Edit: Actually, I've just realised that if you try to open your EPS file in Preview, it creates a PDF from it, then shows you the preview from that PDF. If you just go to File->Save while previewing that PDF, you can save the PDF somewhere and load that into Designer instead - keeping text editable. At least that's a workaround temporarily] Russ Johnson 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 Wow, Matt, that would be *awesome* … :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vonBusing Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 Hi Matt, Thank you for the reply. Off course, I would have preferred a slightly different answer, but It's still good to know what to expect (and what not to). There are also quite a few other goodies on the roadmap of AD that I can look forward to. In my current case I have loads of older graphs that are in eps format where I need to update a few things like colors but also fonts and fonts sizes and save them again both for printing and web purposes. It would have been great to be able to have the file properly editable in AD right in one step. There are some workarounds (like the one you suggested), but they add on a few steps in the workflow, which have to be multiplied with the number of files to process... Meanwhile, keep the good purr ongoing! /Miro MattP 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nravenlock Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 @rallx The dashed line manager is pretty clunky -- while it is nice to have the fine control provided by the interface of four text boxes to defined the dashed line, it would be much easier to have a bunch of presets to choose from, as well as the ability to add custom dashed lines to the presets rather than having to recreate them from scratch. I agree, presets and custom dashed lines would be a great improvement to see, but I wanted to offer you two workarounds... You can always try transferring dashed line styles from one object to another using the 'copy-paste style' operations. To do this, select the object with the dashed line and then cmd+C, select the object to receive the dashed line and then shift+cmd+V. You can always create a Style which uses a dashed line style. To do this, select the object with the dashed line and then from the Edit menu, select Create Style. You will then find a thumbnail of the style in the Styles panel. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MattP Posted May 20, 2015 Author Staff Share Posted May 20, 2015 Hi Matt, Thank you for the reply. Off course, I would have preferred a slightly different answer, but It's still good to know what to expect (and what not to). There are also quite a few other goodies on the roadmap of AD that I can look forward to. In my current case I have loads of older graphs that are in eps format where I need to update a few things like colors but also fonts and fonts sizes and save them again both for printing and web purposes. It would have been great to be able to have the file properly editable in AD right in one step. There are some workarounds (like the one you suggested), but they add on a few steps in the workflow, which have to be multiplied with the number of files to process... Meanwhile, keep the good purr ongoing! /Miro Thanks for being understanding - I do realise the inconvenience and we will do our best to make it happen as soon as we can. Thanks again, Matt vonBusing 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Harris Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 I am not sure if I am doing something wrong, but I cannot get Designer EPS files imported into Fontlab (please have a look at the materials in my referenced post) … I attached a simple EPS file exported by Designer (A_Designer) and the same file converted by Inkscape (A_Inkscape) below. While Fontlab opens the second one, the first one is rejected … Well, I am not very experienced in the technicalities of Postscript (doing things graphically works fine for me), but do you have a clue why Designer files are rejected? And would it be technically difficult to achieve compatibility here? It looks like it requires a Prolog section, and also doesn't support relative coordinates, but does require short Postscript commands. I have been able to get it importing files, but as it happens there are a lot of other changes going on with vector export, so you won't see this fix until that other work is ready for beta. MattP and A_B_C 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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