Out of the box experience
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I'm using Affinity Designer pretty much exclusively at the moment but one of your users on the Facebook AD group said to have a look at VS and post on here if need be. So my very short out of the box experience, Windows 11, 4k monitor 250% (recommended) scaling. Bit of a mix of impressions and bugs.
- I use the pen tool nearly all the time and sorry to say but I find this one horrible. The circle to indicate the path will close isn't obvious and you have to be far too precise or it leaves the path open. Even changing the tolerance to 22 didn't make it any less horrible. There maybe a knack to using it but you shouldn't need to learn one.
- Not a fan of the pen cursor design but that's might just be me.
- The UI element sizes are fine but the cursors are tiny, had to change to 200%.
- It looks like the colour swatches panel covers the palettes. But you move the swatches away and find that the palettes are actually just cut off. Un-docking and then re-docking doesn't fix it.
- Layers palette is slow to update even with just a couple of objects.
- The preferences window category list on the left is squished up.
- Preferences>modifier keys, Key heading not aligned with the key drop down.
- Display in split mode and the mode text (the vertical labels) are too small to read. Also picking the splitter is difficult probably for the same reason, too thin.
A short list but I stopped because of the pen tool. I had downloaded the trial to do a thing or two for main site as it could it do with some better artwork as has been said in the forum too. Not that it ever particularly shows off the app but the person using it (but you still obviously want it). Anyway as it stands I might have thrown the laptop at the wall if I carried on (only joking, it's a new one) so not sure that's going to happen.
Marc
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@VectorVonDoom Welcome to VectorStyler, and thanks for the feedback.
- I use the pen tool nearly all the time and sorry to say but I find this one horrible. The circle to indicate the path will close isn't obvious and you have to be far too precise or it leaves the path open. Even changing the tolerance to 22 didn't make it any less horrible. There maybe a knack to using it but you shouldn't need to learn one.
Is the closing the only issue, or are there other problems too?
- Not a fan of the pen cursor design but that's might just be me.
Will try to improve it.
- The UI element sizes are fine but the cursors are tiny, had to change to 200%.
Yes, this might happen with scaled monitor on Windows. The cursors can be scaled in preferences.
- It looks like the colour swatches panel covers the palettes. But you move the swatches away and find that the palettes are actually just cut off.
A screenshot might help to better understand what happens here. Again, it could be caused by the monitor scaling.
- Layers palette is slow to update even with just a couple of objects.
There is a small (intentional) refresh delay of the icons in the Layers panel. This will be improved.
- The preferences window category list on the left is squished up.
A screenshot might help here. Again I suspect the monitor scaling for this one also.
- Preferences>modifier keys, Key heading not aligned with the key drop down.
Yes, will try to fix this.
- Display in split mode and the mode text (the vertical labels) are too small to read. Also picking the splitter is difficult probably for the same reason, too thin.
Again, this could be a compatibility issue with monitor scaling, will try to improve it.
I added these issues to the backlog, and will try to improve, where possible.
I would like to know more about what other issues you encountered with the Pen tool.
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Hi, it was really that it was hit and miss (more miss for me) whether the path was closed with the pen tool. Illustrator and AD are sort of magnetic , sort of snap, so it's that much easier. I didn't do much with it other than have a quick play and didn't notice anything else during that time.
I understand that cursor size and the split view were down to the windows scaling setting however it should really set them for you, you shouldn't have to set them up yourself except for tweaking. It just doesn't give a good first impression, even though it is easy to change (except split view), especially when toolbar icons look fine.
Sorry, not sure how image link works! But palettes, split and preferences:
www.glyfz.com/1.png
www.glyfz.com/2.png
www.glyfz.com/3.pngMarc
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@VectorVonDoom Thanks for the link. Clearly there is a UI scaling issue here, and I will try to replicate and fix it ASAP.
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One more thing. For me, if I'm doing photorealistic then I'm using blur a ton of times. There doesn't seem to be a really quick way to get to it, didn't see a way to remap keys so gaussian blur could be quickly accessed rather than 3 clicks to get to it.
Plus the dialog is modal so you have those same three clicks each and every time. You can't just leave it open or open and collapsed.
Also not sure why it's in adjustments and not fx in the appearance palette as I'd always call that an fx (not that it's too important as long as it's there somewhere).
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@VectorVonDoom Blurring and image effects can be added in multiple ways.
For a non-modal panel use the Panels -> Effects -> Image Effects panel and use the [+] icon to add a new Gaussian Blur effect.
The Image Effect panel will show the effects of the selected objects.There is no "default" action for quickly applying an image effect.
One thing to do here is to create an image effect "preset" (in the image effects panel, Style drop down) and use that, but that is two clicks.It is also possible to record a new action (of applying an effect) and assign this action to a shortcut.
The Adjustment Layer effects are a different thing. These can be used to apply the effect behind the object or layer (not on the object).
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Using the Image Effects Panel plus a preset that you then alter once applied seems fine. Thank-you.
