Suggestions for Affinity Designer that I miss from Xara Designer Pro X

[Arlen Keshabyan]

Hello Serif team. Thank you for the great Affinity products that you do!

There are a couple of features that I miss in Affinity Designer from Xara Designer Pro X.

1. The first feature is the Blend tool in Xara Designer Pro that allows you to create a number of transformations from one vector object into another with a variety of options, including morphing colours, shapes and the ability to align the result along a vector path (like aligning a text along a path). It also can duplicate one object multiple times in a variety of ways. Later, you can convert a blend object to separate editable vector objects if you need. As a simple example, this tool allows you to create one vector star object, immediately blend it into multiple stars with preferred spacing between them (even unevenly) and align them all along a circular path. I think, it's a very interesting and powerful tool to have in Affinity Designer.

2. Also, I miss the Contour tool. It allows you to create vector contours around objects with variety of options. Of course, the contour object is also convertible into a vector object.

3. Another very powerful feature from Xara Designer Pro is Guideline Layers. All vector objects that are drawn on such layers turn into guidelines. This ability lets you have very tricky guidelines that cannot be achieved by the simple guideline system such as in Affinity Designer and Publisher.

 

4. The Mould tool in Xara Designer Pro is also very powerful. It resembles the Mesh Warp tool in Affinity Photo, but it also can be applied to vector objects in a non-destructive and editable way.

5. And the great Bevel tool of Xara Designer Pro.

6. And the last in the list but not least, the Shape Painter tool. It's provides a very convenient way of retouching and fixing vector shapes.

Thank you,
Arlen.

[Aammppaa]

The equivalent of the bevel tool, is the bevel layer effect…

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/LayerFX/layerFX_bevelEmboss.html

Your other features have no implementation in Affinity at this time. However, many of them are planned and all of them are frequently requested!

[ashf]

9 minutes ago, Aammppaa said:

The equivalent of the bevel tool, is the bevel layer effect…

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/LayerFX/layerFX_bevelEmboss.html

Your other features have no implementation in Affinity at this time. However, many of them are planned and all of them are frequently requested!

There's one problem. Layer Effects are raster effect.
So they're not as sharp as vector effect and they will be rasterized when export.

[Aammppaa]

I believe that the bevel tool in Xara also creates a raster effect (it certainly used to, but could conceivably have changed in a recent version).

[ashf]

13 minutes ago, Aammppaa said:

I believe that the bevel tool in Xara also creates a raster effect (it certainly used to, but could conceivably have changed in a recent version).

I see.

[Arlen Keshabyan]

14 minutes ago, Aammppaa said:

I believe that the bevel tool in Xara also creates a raster effect (it certainly used to, but could conceivably have changed in a recent version).

Correct, but even if Xara creates a raster effect, it manages to recalculate the effect perfectly every time an object changes or it exports a document for different DPIs.

I agree, Affinity has the bevel layer effect but it's not as powerful and flexible as Xara's yet  But I believe Serif will do the bevel tool more powerful and flexible than that in Xara!

Thank you!