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A few feature ideas/suggestions/requests that would be awesome, inspired by other apps - basically a wishlist for Designer & Photo as an illustrator. 
Here they are, in no specific order:

Quick shapes, like Procreate - I can't explain the amount of time this saves.
Essentially incorporating rulers into your pen so that you don't have to create a vector shape every time you want to draw one.
Quick shapes really speed up the drawing process and eliminate the need to create vector shapes every time you need a geometric shape drawn out.

Special Rulers, like Sketchbook Pro, and Clip Studio Paint, - drafting rulers like french curves, elliptical rulers, perspective rulers, etc.
You can place and move a floating, transparent ruler on the canvas and your pen will automatically snap to it.

Lasso Fill, like Clip Studio Paint - being able to toggle 'auto foreground/background colour fill' when using the Lasso/Freehand Selection Tool. 
That way you don't have to make a selection, select the Flood Fill Tool, and click to fill every time, the selection automatically fills with a colour.

Dissolve Blend Mode, like Photoshop - great for comic art, gritty textures, and removing anti-aliasing to make artwork easier to set up for screen-printing purposes.

A pro level colour wheel with colour theory options integrated, like Coolorus - one of the things I miss most about using Photoshop. 
Coolorus is a PS plugin that is far more sophisticated than the standard colour wheel and is used religiously by artists working for the likes of Disney. 

A Rotation Tool, like Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, and Sketchbook Pro. A big time saver. PS and CSP have dedicated tools for this, and Sketchbook Pro gives you a rotation pop-up window when you move using the space bar. Much better than having to select "Rotate Left/Right" every time, or pressing a keyboard shortcut, which also only rotates a few degrees at a time.

External Floating View Windows, like Photoshop. Being able to save a second view of your artboard is already available in Affinity, but you're not able to remove it from the app window. It's great to have the second, zoomed out, view on a second monitor so that you can see how your artwork and design is looking in full while you're working on it in another window.

Alternate brush views/display, like most creative software - having the ability to view your brushes panel in different ways, like brush icons, of lists with titles (like the Affinity iPad apps). 

I feel like these types of features will really open the market up to the likes of illustrators who prefer raster tools, as well as digital painters, concept artists, and comic book artists a lot more. Similarly it will also attract more 'influencer' type artists, as online audiences absolutely love seeing timelapse videos of the process - I know people who prefer painting in Photo and Designer, but use Procreate purely because of its timelapse feature to bring their audiences into their creation process.

Affinity has really established itself so well with graphic designers, vector illustrators, and photo retouchers and editors already. There are of course people who love using Affinity software for digital painting, myself included, but there are also many who still prefer other software due to the lack of the aforementioned features. I've read about this on the forums, and elsewhere on the web, and also heard the same echoed by other creatives/digital artists/illustrators I've spoken to about Affinity. I feel that these features will open up a whole new market, and a whole new world for Affinity and users alike. Just some food for thought. 

Apologies for the lengthy post! :10_wink:

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3 hours ago, ChristiduToit said:

A pro level colour wheel with colour theory options integrated

If you happen to be on the Mac, you might want to check out Spectrum: http://www.eigenlogik.com/spectrum/mac   or ColorSquid: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/colorsquid-color-scheme-designer/id1057705278?mt=12

Not integrated or a plugin, but either can export palettes as .ase files, which the Affinity applications can then import into swatches.

The Apple Color Picker (which is available from within the Affinity applications) also supports plugins, and while I can't quite find one for this, there are a few others around that you may still find useful - examples: http://www.chromaticbytes.com/shadesTour.php   https://sipapp.io/     https://bjango.com/mac/skalacolor/

In theory, a plugin for the color picker could be developed with the kind of functionality you are interested in and then used within most Mac applications, not limited to just the Affinity products.  Good opportunity for a 3rd-party developer...

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@fde101 These are great options for now! Thank you so much for sharing. 
Sadly still not quite as versatile as Coolorus, but still very handy to have nontheless - much appreciated. 

There's, of course, nothing wrong with Affinity's colour wheel as it stands, but I do feel like there's a lot of opportunity to do more with it and make it more intuitive and feature rich for designers and artists. It's such a simple tool with so much room for innovation (colour plays such a big role in the creative world), but for some reason not many design programs take advantage of that.

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1 minute ago, ChristiduToit said:

Sadly still not quite as versatile as Coolorus

I was just looking at the web page for Coolorus; if you scroll to the bottom I see this:

 

Where I can get Coolorus 1.x?
Coolorus v1.3 can be downloaded from HERE, and version for Apple Mac (native color picker app for apps like: Pixelmator, Sketch etc.) from HERE

 

So it looks like there might be an older version of Coolorus itself that can be installed as a native color picker plugin?  Haven't actually tried that yet...

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22 minutes ago, fde101 said:

So it looks like there might be an older version of Coolorus itself that can be installed as a native color picker plugin?  Haven't actually tried that yet...

Yeah, I've actually spoken to the Coolorus support team about it - in hopes that they might possibly release a Coolorus plugin compatible with Photo (no luck). 
Unfortunately that version is so old that it's quite buggy (froze up and wouldn't close) and is missing most of the features that really make Coolorus awesome (gamut masks, colour blending/mixing, luminosity lock, etc). Skala Color looks really useful though, thanks again for the recommendation!
 

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  • 1 month later...

@fde101
Good news!

I've managed to reach out to the people over at Coolorus again, and they mentioned that they plan to make an improved/updated and compatible version of the old Coolorus Mac native colour picker that would then be 100% usable within Affinity apps, albeit slightly less feature rich then their Photoshop CC (Coolorus 2.5) version. 
Unfortunately there's no set release date, but they mentioned that they've had multiple requests for an Affinity compatible version of Coolorus and will be working on it. :D

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On 6/20/2019 at 6:05 AM, ChristiduToit said:

External Floating View Windows, like Photoshop. Being able to save a second view of your artboard is already available in Affinity, but you're not able to remove it from the app window. It's great to have the second, zoomed out, view on a second monitor so that you can see how your artwork and design is looking in full while you're working on it in another window.

I like this, especially when working with fine detail. I often need to zoom out and in again and again to see if the changes I made look as I expect them to and having a separate window with the zoomed out drawing would do wonders for my work.

architect student (5/10) · designer · developer · geek
Affinity Publisher 2.1.1 / Affinity Designer 2.1.1 / Affinity Photo 2.1.1
Windows 11 Pro #22H2 / Dell G15 AMD Ryzen 5 32GB RAM

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On 6/20/2019 at 5:05 AM, ChristiduToit said:

External Floating View Windows, like Photoshop. Being able to save a second view of your artboard is already available in Affinity, but you're not able to remove it from the app window. It's great to have the second, zoomed out, view on a second monitor so that you can see how your artwork and design is looking in full while you're working on it in another window.

That should be available already.

On Windows: With the new view active, use Window > Float and then drag it to your other monitor.

On Mac: Using Separated Mode, you should also be able to drag the new view to your other monitor.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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@walt.farrell Apologies, I should have been a bit more specific. :)
I realise that this can be done in 'Separated Mode', but it feels a bit excessive having to change the entire workspace just to be able to drag a new window to a different monitor. 
Separated Mode (as the name suggests) also feels a bit too disjointed for me, and it changes all of my custom toolbars back to default when I switch. 

I've also noticed that my original custom toolbars sometimes shift around or reset to default when I switch back to normal from separated mode (perhaps a bug?).
I don't like praising Photoshop in the Affinity forums, but Photoshop does handle this pretty well, where you can easily drag a window out of the workspace without having to change anything first. It's not the end of the world, but I thought I'd mention it anyway as it would be quite a nice feature to have without needing to change your workspace/studio to Separated Mode first.

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  • 2 months later...

A few feature ideas/suggestions/requests that would be awesome, inspired by other apps - basically a wishlist for Designer & Photo as an illustrator. 
Here they are, in no specific order:

Quick shapes, like Procreate - I can't explain the amount of time this saves.
Essentially incorporating rulers into your pen so that you don't have to create a vector shape every time you want to draw one.
Quick shapes really speed up the drawing process and eliminate the need to create vector shapes every time you need a geometric shape drawn out.

Special Rulers, like Sketchbook Pro, and Clip Studio Paint, - drafting rulers like french curves, elliptical rulers, perspective rulers, etc.
You can place and move a floating, transparent ruler on the canvas and your pen will automatically snap to it.

Lasso Fill, like Clip Studio Paint - being able to toggle 'auto foreground/background colour fill' when using the Lasso/Freehand Selection Tool. 
That way you don't have to make a selection, select the Flood Fill Tool, and click to fill every time, the selection automatically fills with a colour.

Dissolve Blend Mode, like Photoshop - great for comic art, gritty textures, and removing anti-aliasing to make artwork easier to set up for screen-printing purposes.

A pro level colour wheel with colour theory options integrated, like Coolorus - one of the things I miss most about using Photoshop. 
Coolorus is a PS plugin that is far more sophisticated than the standard colour wheel and is used religiously by artists working for the likes of Disney. 

A Rotation Tool, like Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, and Sketchbook Pro. A big time saver. PS and CSP have dedicated tools for this, and Sketchbook Pro gives you a rotation pop-up window when you move using the space bar. Much better than having to select "Rotate Left/Right" every time, or pressing a keyboard shortcut, which also only rotates a few degrees at a time.

External Floating View Windows, like Photoshop. Being able to save a second view of your artboard is already available in Affinity, but you're not able to remove it from the app window. It's great to have the second, zoomed out, view on a second monitor so that you can see how your artwork and design is looking in full while you're working on it in another window.

Alternate brush views/display, like most creative software - having the ability to view your brushes panel in different ways, like brush icons, of lists with titles (like the Affinity iPad apps). 

I feel like these types of features will really open the market up to the likes of illustrators who prefer raster tools, as well as digital painters, concept artists, and comic book artists a lot more. Similarly it will also attract more 'influencer' type artists, as online audiences absolutely love seeing timelapse videos of the process - I know people who prefer painting in Photo and Designer, but use Procreate purely because of its timelapse feature to bring their audiences into their creation process.

Affinity has really established itself so well with graphic designers, vector illustrators, and photo retouchers and editors already. There are of course people who love using Affinity software for digital painting, myself included, but there are also many who still prefer other software due to the lack of the aforementioned features. I've read about this on the forums, and elsewhere on the web, and also heard the same echoed by other creatives/digital artists/illustrators I've spoken to about Affinity. I feel that these features will open up a whole new market, and a whole new world for Affinity and users alike. Just some food for thought. 

Apologies for the lengthy post! :10_wink:

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On 10/31/2019 at 12:03 PM, tomsdesign said:

External Floating View Windows, like Photoshop. Being able to save a second view of your artboard is already available in Affinity, but you're not able to remove it from the app window. It's great to have the second, zoomed out, view on a second monitor so that you can see how your artwork and design is looking in full while you're working on it in another window.

+1 for this one. Especially useful with Sidecar/Astropad so that you can use brushes/etc on the canvas with the iPad , but still have your main monitor as reference containing all the tools.

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All, it is best to create separate posts for each feature you are requesting in order to let people more easily comment on them.  Otherwise they tend to get  jumbled and confused as discussion happens on one thread to cover a multitude of separate topics.

Please search first to see if someone else has already requested it, as otherwise there wind up being a zillion threads to discuss the same topic and the conversation gets spread out all over the place - consider also that there may be different terms that someone else used for the same thing (we have had countless threads pop up requesting "Data Merge", "Mail Merge", ...)

 

@tomsdesign, welcome to the forums, but out of curiosity, why did you duplicate the original post from @ChristiduToit without quoting or even adding to it?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi,
Don't know whether this is already suggested, but it would be much easier to work with Selection Brush Tool if there is additional keyboard support for add and subtract to selection ( shift and alt like in Ps). Right now you have to toggle add and subtract button every time and that hinders with workflow.

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Just now, HarshMellow said:

Hi,
Don't know whether this is already suggested, but it would be much easier to work with Selection Brush Tool if there is additional keyboard support for add and subtract to selection ( shift and alt like in Ps). Right now you have to toggle add and subtract button every time and that hinders with workflow.

@HarshMellow 
You can hold Alt to subtract from the selection or hold Ctrl to add to the selection while using the freehand selection tool. :)

It's very similar to in PS, but instead of Shift and Alt you just use Ctrl and Alt.

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