All Affinity Designer V2 Tools Explained in 15 Minutes

hello there welcome back in today's video we're going to check each and every tool in Affinity designer version 2. I'm going to use a desktop version but it's quite a similar on iPad if this is your first time here please consider subscribing to this YouTube channel for more Affinity content alright as you can see I'm in the document here already and we're going to focus on the left part of the interface this time because all of our tools are here on the left starting from the top is a move tool shortcut V move tool as the name say allow us to move different Vector objects and raster images around our screen more than that using this move tool we can also do some basic transformation just by pulling those transform points adding rotation and similar stuff that you can expect from and move tool over hover your mouse like that as well so that's your move tool to move and transform objects all right below that there is artboard too artboard tool create canvas by default we start with this one artboard if I click insert add bar right now it seems like nothing happened but actually I insert the first alright one I already been using from beginning and from now on I can keep adding different artboards take a look let me zoom out I can just keep adding artboards and if I export this document as PDF each artboard will be a new page this way you can create two artboards for a business card and have a front and back of the business card in one design document all right let's delete those outboards simply by pressing delete on my keyboard so that's output 2. below that there is something that looks similar to the the first two move tool but it's white here all right and this is very common mistake for beginners there are two different tools take a look the first tool let's back here for a moment the first move tool move the whole object and the white tool the node tool this will move only one node of that Vector object and you can even add more nodes by clicking on the line you can drag the line to make it curvy so this is really powerful tool and this is the favorite tool of known artist designers like myself because if my shape is not perfect I can always grab a node tool and drag this line a little bit left and right make it exactly as I want all right so very powerful tool the node 2. take a look there's a little triangle below if I hold I can see there's no tool by default and there's also another tool below so we got Point transform to below all right so this is the center of the transformation that we can move around the object and now our object is transforming to that point it's not in the center anymore so we got different result okay keep in mind if you're transforming your object with any of those two you can hold shift for snapping results like that okay let's move to the next guy the next thing is Contour tool that was kind of one of the I think that was the last tool added in version one before we switch to version two and at first it was really buggy but now it's so much better by using this tool we can add additional Contour around the shape it can also work as the negative so we can go inside like that of course for each of those tools there are tricks and techniques we can use use on them with them but in this tutorial we're going more like a list and if you want to learn more about certain tools you can search for other tutorials all right now we are heading towards 100 tutorials of English designer so I cover most of those tools in separate tutorials already and some of them I will cover in the near future so if you search for certain tools you can check other videos all right so that's the counter tool make the shape larger or smaller very handy if you're designing stickers so you can make this extra white thing around so then the cutting plotter can cut around that Contour thing we can back this into appearance and then we got a normal shape all right next one that's uh Corner tool it's not only for rounding Corners all right that's the common misconception let's take a look the corner tool of course by default it will round your corners like that but we can also modify the style of it take a look if you use the corner tool we've got several different styles we can cut the corner inside like that and round them all right so there are different styles different stuff we can do with that for example if I use it this way I can build make a little Shield very quickly all right just using Corner tool so not only for rounding Corners keep that in mind all right and down below that there's a pen tool I recently released a whole new video about pen tool so just for you to know this is the tool that allow you to draw custom shapes and that's it below that you would say similar tool but not really that's a pencil tool we draw custom shapes but without full control of the notes all right what next there's a little triangle so there's also Vector brush tool very misleading name I would say and in this case we end up having a line but it's going can apply a vector brush right now by default no brush on it but we can change that very quickly in the brushes menu take a look there's a brush just keep in mind it's a call Vector brush too but it's not really a vector brush we got a vector path but the brush that is following this path is raster take a look we cannot expand this to Vector that can be really frustrating for new users all right they call it Vector brush because we got Vector puff not because the brush is Vector itself so keep that in mind all right what next is a knife tool so we need something to cut with the knife all right knife tool that's a new addition in version two by the way this will allow you to Simply cut through some shapes to split them all right so we can split shapes very quickly with knife tool next one that's just a fill tool so we can quickly put some gradient on change the gradient style change the color over here very basic stuff all right after gradient tool is another tool called transparency tool this one applies special mask gradient to hide part of your shape keep in mind it's four Vector objects all right next one that's not actually a tool I just Place image option so we can play some images there's a vector crop tool something I never use why should I crop vectors okay so we can crop your vector like that and it's still there you see and the original Vector is still there we just crop The View so we cannot see it but it's not this non-destructive so I can pull it back and I can see it again and not very useful in my opinion all right and now we're moving into shapes territory so we got a standard rectangle if you hold the shift you will maintain one to one proportions we've got a perfect square exactly same deal with oval tool we got ovals and then holding shift with a perfect circle and then my favorite part does so many pre-made Tools in Affinity designer most of vector drawing software offer you triangles circles and squares and stuff like that rectangles and ovals and sometimes stars and that's it and in that in in our case we got so many different tools so some people kind of new users keep forgetting about this stuff so instead of just pull the heart shape tool from the list they start drawing the stuff with pen tool so keep in mind there are many pre-made shapes for us and some of them come with those Smart Control points with see the orange color over there let me zoom in a bit see the orange we can control those shapes with this Orange Point we can turn this into a flower in seconds take a look nice and of course you can expand this we can convert to Curves and we got normal notes and we can go back to node two and work with notes so that's nice so shape tool and below the shape tool there's brand new a great shape Builder so something we've been waiting for years and now it's finally here shape Builder tool allow us to design interactions between different shapes so we can then draw and this side that we want to subtract or add certain elements the best part is it's detecting all the intersections between shapes so take a look we got just two shapes the star and the heart shape but with the shape Builder tool selected he can detect each of those intersection and treat them as the separate parts all right there's a whole long tutorial about shape Builder so if you are into that check out that video right what next there is of course a text tool for artistic text one liners and frame we elongated for longer text so that's really basic text tool we can of course modify fonts and colors everything is here at the top all right we got just a few more to go what next there's a Color Picker and there's a new style picker so you can pick the style from one object and move it to another so let's create two objects and apply a layer style to this second one so let's give it some kind of shadow okay so this one got shadow and now I can select object number one and using style picker I can pick that style Shadow alright so that's C here and of course Color Picker is just a color keep in mind there's one extra Color Picker here in the color section and you can even pick color from outside the artboard from different programs where webs websites and stuff like that so that's really handy okay what else there is a new area tool so this will be very handy if it is making plans on Maps take a look you can of course set up the scale 1 to 10 1 to 100 one to one and using those new tools we can that would be very helpful while working with maps because you can check a distance right now I'm working with pixels one to one so that's not very exciting but you can use A4 paper set a scale and then design house or garden and stuff like that much easier with those new tools and the area tool showing us the lathe of this or area of the feeling inside and if you got like two objects that's a little bit more complex right and this will still apply you can see the area we can see each wall how long it is so that's really nice all right and the very last one we got Zoom tool and hand two and some people really complain about that they put those two tools together Zoom tool and handle because they keep using them all the time and they really sad that now they must switch between them here and personally I never use them from the tool list because they are so intuitive to use on keyboard so all my life I always Zoom with comment Plus zoom out of common minus that's what I do all the time with my left hand while working in office designer and to use the hand tool they want to pan around I just press spacebar like that the advantage is if you got two like pen two I can press spacebar I release spacebar and back to pen two I don't need to jump between different tools so try to not use pen tool and zoom tool from the tool list all right that's my advice is we really speed up your workflow below the tool panel we got our colors so the circle is for the fill color and the donut is for the outline color for the line you can also see similar icons here in the color section on the right but today we are focusing on the toolbox on the left so that's it all tools cover I hope this video was useful keep in mind it's not your task to learn all the tools first before you jump into your first project learn when you need them all right nobody will open a toolbox in front of a new student and tell them to learn all of the tools before they can start building some simple projects that's not the way that's not how people learn so today we briefly went through all the tools and don't worry too much about it you will learn them when you need them in your products thank you for today please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel and I hope I will see you in the next lesson bye

Channel: Kru Mark Tutorials

Views: 20,172

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Id: hsbtJxqBi_I

Length: 15min 6sec (906 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 07 2023