A to Z of Affinity Designer: Tips, Tricks, and Hacks!

i'm going to come right out and say it affinity designer is the best overall graphics application package on the market right now in this a to z of affinity designer i'm going to back that statement up by showing you 26 of its most stand out features unique strengths useful tools and tips and tricks let's jump in a is for artboards affinity designer allows you to create multiple artboards which are independent sub canvases within your document on desktop you can access the artboard tool from the tools panel and on ipad you can activate it from the document menu additionally if you're looking for how to change the background color infinity designer using artboards is actually the correct way after creating an artboard you can select it then change its background color as you would with any other shape b is for brushes from photoshop you can easily take any set of photoshop brushes and turn them into affinity designer brushes that includes all of the 600 plus brush sets in the collection you get access to when you join invarto elements just go to the pixel persona then the brushes panel click the top right corner to open the menu click import brushes then browse for and select your brush files these raster brushes can be used to create awesome affinity designer art such as pencil sketching traditional painterly styles texturing you name it c is for continuous export you can file this one under awesome affinity designer tips and tricks in the export persona you can create image slices then set them to be continuously exported as you work on your design this means if you're integrating your image exports into an external project like a website or game you can just design a way and anytime you check on your project your images will always be in their latest state [Music] d is for dual image type editing affinity designers vector persona and pixel persona combination means you get pro level raster editing and vector editing in the same unified application so not only can you do both types of graphics without switching software but you can do both in the same designs for example you can create your main shapes as vectors then use affinity designer to add texture to those shapes using the kinds of raster brushes we mentioned a moment ago bonus trivia serif's goal of creating affinity between multiple methods of graphic design is actually the reason they chose the name affinity e is for embedding external designs you can take one affinity designer document and embed it into another one as many times as you like and when you make changes to the embedded document you'll see the instances in the main document update in real time this functionality can largely fill the non-destructive editing role that smart objects play in photoshop it allows you to make all kinds of edits while preserving the original image and making it easy to replace with a new one [Music] f is for free hand line stabilizing in the case of both affinity designer drawing and affinity designer vector art the excellent freehand window and rope stabilization tools can be incredibly helpful they're available on the pencil and brush tools in the vector persona as well as on the brush eraser and pixel tools in the pixel persona the rope stabilizer is great if you want your lines to have sharp corners while the window stabilizer creates smooth corners you can also combine these stabilizers with pen pressure for high levels of freehand drawing control g is for grid gloriousness affinity designer has an outstanding grid management system you can create 10 different types of grids including square isometric oblique triangular plus a bunch of others in particular it has the most advanced isometric grid system currently available in any vector application because you can activate the edit in plane and fit to plane options then use all the usual shape drawing tools directly in isometric perspective as though you were working in 3d h is for history branches as well as having history that can be saved into the document so it's included if you share the file affinity designer's history also includes branches if you go back a few steps in your history and start making changes a new branch will be created in your history panel at that branch you'll then have two different possible histories and at any time you can click the branch icon and toggle between one history and another this way if you want to go back and try something different you can do so without losing the work that you've already done up to that point i is for import adobe files affinity designer has the best psd import of any graphics program i've used to date it's the only application i've seen that can import with 100 accuracy consistently regardless of the content of the original file you can also very effectively import illustrator ai eps and svg files into designer as well so if you've been mulling over the perks of affinity designer versus illustrator you don't necessarily have to choose between the two that's because you can always import your files from illustrator into designer and work on them in both programs and let's say you're browsing in photo elements looking for infinity designer logo the robust and accurate importing of multiple file formats means you actually have a lot of options available in addition to the logos that have been specifically made for affinity designer j is for control j to power duplicate power duplication lets you quickly create several duplicates of an object with progressive transforms and rotation applied for example you could quickly create a grid of repeating tile graphics by duplicating an initial tile and offsetting it to the side then repeatedly hitting ctrl j every duplicate will repeat that initial offset forming a row you can then select that whole row duplicate it offset it downward and again hit ctrl j repeatedly to create as many rows as you like and the same thing can also be done with rotation to do things like creating a flower illustration for example k is for keyboard customization on desktop and ipad the ipad version of affinity designer has full keyboard support and all keyboard shortcuts on both it and the desktop version can be fully customized both versions have hotkeys for every tool and they can be set uniquely in each of the personas or you can use the same hotkeys across similar tools such as the vector brush versus the pixel brush l is for layer panel drag and drop the affinity designer layers panel makes it really easy to set up clipping shapes or to target adjustment layers just by dragging and dropping layers into the right place for easy clipping setup just drag and drop a layer or a group onto the layer you want to use as a clipping shape and to target an adjustment layer drag and drop it onto the layer or group you want that adjustment to affect m is for mobile design the affinity designer ipad version has almost complete feature parity with the desktop version i personally now use it more than i do the desktop version with the addition of the apple pencil into the mix it also gives you the advantages of drawing directly under the screen plus touch base interactions such as two finger tap to undo pinch to zoom using a finger to physically smudge with the smudge tool and so on and the experience can be even better if you're using affinity designer on ipad pro with the large display and the additional system resources n is for noise that scales if you're looking for how affinity designer can add texture one of the most accessible and versatile ways is through the vector friendly noise tool that can be used as part of setting fill colors all you have to do is set the noise slider to whatever amount you like and a brain style texture will be added to your shape this noise will recalculate itself and scale to whatever level you zoom making an outstanding way to add texture to your vector shapes o is for opacity gradients with the transparency tool grab the transparency tool and just drag it over any shape to instantly add a fade out effect what this does behind the scenes is automatically create a layer with a black to white gradient then set it as a layer mask so you end up with an opacity gradient and because this tool creates a gradient you can then edit that gradient to fully control the transparency you can change the position and strength of the stops and you can switch the shape of the gradient to elliptical radial or conical [Music] p is for pellets from color chords affinity designer palettes can be automatically generated using color harmonies go to the swatches panel and create a new document palette then add a base color swatch to it right click the new swatch select create color chord then choose the type of color harmony you want to use to generate colors for example complementary triadic tints shades or tones the number of new swatches added to the palette will depend on the color harmony that you choose q is for quick start with templates affinity designer templates are easy to create in any document at any time go to file export as template and follow the prompts from then on you can make a quick start on similar documents by choosing from among your collection of previously exported templates when you start a new document the new document will pick up exactly where the template left off at the time it was exported r is for real-time preview infinity designer you get previews of blend modes color selections masking brushes and so on in real time so this means you don't have to sit through the tedious process of testing undoing and testing again you see exactly what results you're going to get before you commit a thing s is for stroke styles in affinity designer dotted lines are easy to create just apply the dash line style to a shape stroke tweak the dash parameters and you're done it's equally fast to apply the application's other stroke styles too such as vector brush based lines and arrows t is for t-shirt designs if you're wondering whether or not affinity design t-shirt design is a thing the answer is yes i've used it myself for some pod printed designs and both the process and the end results were great designer easily imported the psd design templates that i needed to use and it was smooth and performant to design at the required size and it supported the necessary for print cmyk color format don't forget if you want to get a head start you can always grab a t-shirt graphic template often photo elements and import it into affinity designer as the basis for your own design u is for ui design when you're first learning how to use affinity designer you might not initially realize but it's actually a very capable ui design tool one of the few or maybe the only one that can be purchased for a flat fee and can be used on both desktop and mobile it has artboards as we mentioned earlier but it also has other key ui design features like layout constraints typography controls synchronized symbols an asset library and even a collection of ready-made drag-and-drop ui assets built right in v is for vector brushes one of the most unique aspects of affinity designer art is actually driven by affinity designer brushes no not the raster photoshop compatible brushes we talked about earlier rather affinity's own scalable flexible vector-based brushes grab any vector-based brush paint away like you were working in raster but then maintain the ability to scale without quality loss and adjust the placement of your strokes at any time w is for workspace presets as from affinity designer 1.9 you can create your own workspace presets aka studio presets set up your workspace with the studio panels you want to show position where you like and then go to view studio presets add presets and give your preset a name you can then load that preset up anytime you like to restore your saved workspace layout x is for x-ray vision go to view view mode split view then set one of the side's views to outline mode this gives you x-ray vision of your document whenever you drag the separator back and forth y is for your own asset libraries we saw earlier how affinity designer ships with an asset library of ui elements well you can also create your own asset libraries just like this so you can make graphics once then reuse them by dragging and dropping onto your canvas you can share these libraries between documents and even with other people open the assets studio panel create a new category then create a subcategory and start adding items to it do this by selecting a graphic you've made clicking the top right drop down inside an asset subcategory and choosing add from selection [Music] z is for zooming one million percent affinity designer has a capacity for zooming with speed and fidelity that at this point is first in class start zooming and effectively keep going as long as you like because it's highly unlikely you're ever gonna hit that one million percent zoom limit no that's not a dare so that is the a to z of affinity designer 26 of the coolest features tips and tricks that i know about the software since its initial beta back in 2014 it's become my go-to graphics application i have bought it for every platform on which it exists and i would happily do it all again if you haven't tried it yet do yourself a favor and give the free trial a go and get yourself stacked up with a great big stack of graphics and brushes and all kinds of other assets to use in it over at envato elements thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Envato Tuts+

Views: 21,960

Keywords: affinity designer tips and tricks, affinity designer tutorial, affinity designer logo tutorial, affinity designer brushes, affinity designer pixel persona, logo design affinity designer, how to use affinity designer, affinity designer tutorials, affinity designer, affinity designer tips, affinity designer review, affinity designer features, affinity designer shortcuts, affinity designer text, affinity designer vector art, affinity designer tricks, affinity designer ipad, envato

Id: 9w1k2v3hmR4

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 23 2021