Sadly, I've given up on Xara and I am switching to Affinity Designer for Mac

[mwenz]

Join the Affinity forum and ask there, handrawn. They are a friendly bunch and likely you will be answered by one of the developers (who are active on the forums, the regular Serif forums as well).

[mwenz]

I was logged in over there, dunno if the search works easily without being logged in or not.

https://affinity.serif.com/forum/ind...-support/?p=36

The link goes to MattP's response to someone. MattP is one of the developers for Serif who also worked on DrawPlus.

Mike

[JoeSilmon-M]

Hi Omegaman, I'm JoeSilmon-M, new here. I would really appreciate help with layers in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 9. I realise that you've changed to Mac, and are using Affinity. However, your knowledge of layers, transparencies, masks, etc., must be infinitely more advanced than mine, after only a few months with this program. My biggest problem is trying to draw and retain a graphic image. I don't fully understand how to merge layers to produce a final image. Can you help, please? Basically, at the moment, I'm drawing items to go on heraldic shields, for a book I'm hoping to publish soon. A basic background (e.g.: all red); an image (e.g.: three lions of England - as if walking over each other [Plantagenet lions]). I need to fill the background with red, and the lions with yellow [imitating gold]). Would the lions be the only transparency? Thanks for your kind attention. I'll look in again soon. BW. JoeSilmon-M

[omegaman]

Affinity has both Vector and Pixel drawing modes. It's Illustrator and Photoshop combined. If you create a beizer path using the vector Pen, Pencil or Brush tools in Draw Persona mode and switch to Pixel Persona mode you can use the eraser tool to modify the beizer by erasing parts of the path. Essentially it adds a transparent alpha mask that hides part of the path. You can still edit the path when you switch back to the Drawing Persona mode and move or alter the path by its nodes etc. In Persona Mode the Alpha part becomes a separate item which can be deleted or moved without affecting the original path. In Pixel Persona mode the path and the alpha are combined and can be moved as a whole.

Best way, if you have a Mac, is to download the free beta and play with it. I'm still learning the ropes as well, but so far it's a breeze to use and pick up if you are familiar with Xara or Illustrator and Photoshop.

Also, in Pixel Persona mode you can do way more neat things with the brushes. There are lots of sliders for tweaking just about anything you can imagine.

[handrawn]

ok thanks that makes sense

sadly although there is a mac around it is not mine to install software on...

@mike - thanks I may well mosey over to the forum

[omegaman]

Check out this Affinity video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uia7dKqmwTw

It runs through the basics of the UI.

[omegaman]

Hi Mike

Waiting to see what they do with Affinity Publisher as well. Be nice to have a third alternative to QuarkXpress and Indesign.

[handrawn]

thanks for the video

[rsallen]

Thank you for sharing. I have been a Xara user for almost 20 years and have shared it with many people, but I switched to MAC 7 years ago with absolutely no regrets. I have recently been torn with upgrading Xara and now that I see Affinity - I think that is where I may be headed too. Will have to keep Xara for a while, because I have tons of files that were created using that software and don't have time to go and export all of them to another format. I have enjoyed XARA and the flexibility it has given me over the last 20 years.

[gingerbeardman]

I'm going to put together a Xara VS Affinity feature list.

That'll be the only way the mods don't move posts about it out of sight.

Let me know if you want to help