Hello, welcome to this new tutorial on Serif Affinity Designer, an
outstanding tool to realize vector drawings, graphic designs and logos,
supporting color codes including 32bit RGB, CMYK and Pantone. With respect
to Adobe Illustrator it comes with a perpetual license for Windows, MacOS
and iPads!
When you open Affinity Designer the Welcome Screen opens showing the latest
news and social links. Go to New Document at the bottom to start with a
new project, selecting the correct page size between several standards that
include web players, tablets, smartphones and smartwatches.
On the right customize the page settings such as width, height, quality in
DPI, the units to use, the orientation and the color code. At the bottom
set the margins between content and page borders and bleed to reserve extra
space from the page borders.
The new document opens on the main interface, with defined bleed and
margins on it. You can open other documents and files with File, Open...
Designer supports Photoshop PSD files, Illustrator AI files and also PDF,
JPG, TIFF and SVG files, complete with their original layers and vector
drawings. All documents will be listed with their own tab on top.
The main interface is very simple. On the center you get the preview (or
canvas); on the left several tools you can use to draw and edit. Some of
these get a white corner, collecting more tools you can show by
right-clicking on it.
On top you have the toolbar with all the options related to the current
tool. On the right you get several panels we are going to see in this
video.
If any panel misses, you can reopen it by going to View, Studio.
In the top left corner
you have three different workspaces called Personas: Designer Persona
collects everything you need to make vector drawings; Pixel Persona to edit
images and photos and Export Persona to export the result of your work. We
will start with vector drawings first.
Enable the Pencil or the Vector Brush Tool to draw freehand. These drop
vector curves that do not lose any quality thanks to the algorithms that
define their shape.
To ease your drawings you can zoom in and out with your mouse wheel while
holding the CTRL (or Option) key down and pan around with the Spacebar key.
From the View tab you can also show grids and rulers if necessary.
With the Pen Tool you can make precise vector drawings. Click on the canvas
to fix nodes and make straight segments. Whereas click and drag to make a
curve, always connecting to the latest node. Close the shape or use the
Escape key to finish the drawing and going on with another one.
Moreover enable the Snapping button to snap to keypoints, guidelines and
get live measurements on distances.
With the Shape Tools you can click and drag to drop regular shapes like
rectangles, circles, polygons, stars and much more. You can also use the
red nodes to refine the shape as you like.
From the Assets panel on the left you also find ready icons and images to
drag and drop inside your document! Check it out!
If you make any mistake you can undo with CTRL (or CMD) and Z. You can also
open the History panel on the right and go backwards.
To customize your drawings enable the Node Tool and click on any object.
Each curve is made by two kinds of nodes: squares for sharp angles and
circles for smooth ones, getting tangent handles you can move to adjust
the curve. You can also change the node by selecting it and going to
Convert above.
Click and drag any node or path to move it. Double-click on any path to add
new nodes and select any node and use the Backspace key to remove it.
Pay attention to all the drawings made with the Shape Tools. These must be
transformed into curves with Convert to Curves before you can edit these
with the Node tool.
Enable the Corner tool and click and drag from any sharp node to fillet or
chamfer its corner depending on your selection above. Whereas use the
Contour tool to add or remove a constant offset around a shape path.
To adjust any object appearance select it with the Move tool and check the
properties on top. Set stroke thickness and both fill and stroke colors,
selecting white with a red line for a complete transparency.
On the right pick any color from the Color panel or enable the Color Picker
Tool to take one from the canvas.
Select Gradient to apply a color gradient to fill and strokes. Click on any
point to set its color and transparency and click on the gradient envelope
to add further points and customize the gradient. You can also enable the
Fill Tool to adjust the gradient feather and its direction and the
Transparency Tool to gradually change the opacity level on the shape.
Open the Stroke panel on the right to adjust the line style, its thickness,
the caps-join options and the style of the endpoints.
Inside Brushes you find artistic brushes to apply on the selected object
path and on Styles several ready-made styles for fill and stroke. Check
these out!
You can also drop text with the Artistic and the Frame Text Tool.
Enable Artistic to drop quick text lines and annotations. Click and drag to
define the text size and type in, using the nodes to scale the entire text
or rotate it as you like.
Whereas use the Frame Text Tool to drop a text paragraph contained within
a delimited text box. Click and drag to fix the box and use the nodes to
scale text, resize the box or even invert the text direction.
On top set font family, style, size and paragraph options. You can also
open Character to adjust letter and line spacing, font color, lines and
strokes with proper thickness and color. Make sure to select text to make
all these changes effective. Use the Escape key to apply.
As you make drawings the document gets filled with several objects called
layers, all collected under the Layers panel. All curves, shapes, text and
assets are indeed vector layers that you can click to select, hide or show
with the checkbox on the right and click and drag up and down to adjust
the order of visibility in case they overlap.
You can also select any layer and open the Effects panel to apply some
blur, shadow, glow and much more!
Affinity Designer includes several features for images and photos! When you
open any image this comes as a new document with a single layer called
Background. This is indeed a pixel layer such as an object defined by
pixels and not by math algorithms like vectors. So this layer may lose
quality when resized and edited.
On Pixel Persona the toolbar on the left changes showing all tools to edit
images and photos. With Paint Brush Tool you can brush freehand on the
image, adjusting brush styles and color as seen for the vector tools.
Whereas use the Flood Fill Tool to spread any color on entire regions with
a similar color gradient.
Pay attention that these pixel brushes act on the image itself, editing its
layer permanently. To avoid this you can make a new layer above the image
and draw on it independently.
You can also draw vectors again with the tools under Designer Persona. You
can always convert these vectors into pixel layers by right-clicking on
these and going to Rasterize... This way you can edit these drawings just
like pieces of images.
Enable the Dodge or the Burn Brush Tool to increase or decrease the image
brightness; the Smudge Brush Tool to drag pixels and hide details and
imperfections and the Blur or the Sharpen Brush Tool to increase or
decrease the blurriness level. Above adjust the brush Width and the trace
opacity, flow and hardness.
Enable the Erase Brush Tool to remove pixels from the image. Transparent
regions with no pixels and colors show a checkerboard area.
Below the Layers panel click on Adjustments to add an adjustment layer and
correct colors, brightness, exposure and much more! This is applied on the
entire image unless you delimit any region with the Marquee tools before
adding the adjustment layer.
To import images in your document enable the Place Image Tool, browse for
the image and click and drag to define its correct size. This is added as a
new pixel layer with its file name and fill and stroke options on top.
Also in this case you can switch to Pixel Persona to edit the image and
also your vector drawings after rasterizing them.
To manage your layers enable the Move Tool and click on any to select it.
At this point click and drag to move it or use its nodes to rotate and
scale, holding down the Shift key to save the aspect ratio. On top you can
also flip and rotate by 90 degrees.
Cut, copy and paste any layer with CTRL (or CMD) and X, C and V. You can
cut any object to remove it in no time.
You can also manage multiple objects by selecting these while holding down
the Shift key. This way you move, scale and rotate these together.
Now let's see how to save and export! Go to File, Save As to save your
document and all its layers as an Affinity Designer project that you can
reopen and modify any time.
Whereas go to File, Export... to export your document into different
formats, including PSD and SVG to save all its inner layers and vectors or
PNG, JPEG, GIF or TIFF to render the document into an image to share and
export. In this case make sure to check your drawings with the Pixel view
mode to see your vectors quality once they are rendered into pixels.
Switch to Export Persona if you want to export specific regions from the
document. Enable the Slice Tool and click and drag on any interested
region.
All these regions are listed under the Slices panel. Here you can select
any and adjust its Export Options above. Then click on Export Slices!
This is all! Thank you very much for watching this tutorial! Make sure to
visit our YouTube channel and our official website to catch our next free
tips and tutorials!