Book Image

Up and Running with Affinity Designer

By : Kevin House
Book Image

Up and Running with Affinity Designer

By: Kevin House

Overview of this book

Affinity Designer is a widely adopted creative application, and in a reasonably short space of time, it has become a leading design and illustration application. Affinity Designer, along with Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher, is part of a suite of award-winning creative software applications developed by Serif Europe. Built on the latest technologies, which make it fast and smooth, Affinity Designer is quickly becoming the go-to professional creative application for vector drawing and pixel-based painting. Up and Running with Affinity Designer is a comprehensive hands-on guide to the Affinity Designer software. Whether you're new to the creative industry, a seasoned professional looking for a proven alternative, or an enthusiastic hobbyist, this book will help you get up to speed in no time. You’ll learn how to create documents and explore workflow best practices while working through practical exercises using the knowledge and skills developed in each chapter to solidify your understanding of the fundamentals. Finally, you’ll bring it all together with real-world practical applications by building a fun logo and professional illustration, forming a base for in-depth exploration in your own projects. By the end of this Affinity Designer book, you'll have gained the knowledge and confidence to use Affinity Designer as part of your creative toolset.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting Familiar with Affinity Designer's Interface and Layout
5
Section 2: Deeper Exploration of Affinity Designer's Documents, Tools, and Workflow
9
Chapter 7: Tools – Pixel Persona
12
Chapter 10: Workflow: Symbols, Assets, and History
13
Section 3: Bringing It All together

The Zoom Tool

The Zoom Tool (shortcut z) is used to zoom in or out in your document. The icon for this tool is shown here:

Figure 6.54 – The Zoom Tool

When the tool is selected, the zoom default is set to zoom in. In order to switch that to zoom out, press and hold the Option or Alt key; letting go resumes to the default zoom-out function. I rarely ever use the actual Zoom Tool to zoom in or out as there are many other quicker ways to achieve this, as covered in Chapter 1, Getting Familiar with Affinity Designer's Interface.

With the Zoom Tool selected, the following options are available in the Context Toolbar:

Figure 6.55 – The Zoom Tool options

These options, incidentally, are identical to the View Tool. The Zoom percentage is your current document zoom level. You can either input this numerically or adjust the slider. Units are the current measurement system units of your document.