Time again for another more substantial feature update of Paragraphic. This time it doesn’t add as many new flashy features, but instead concentrates on refining and improving a lot of core systems under the hood for a more responsive experience working with the application. Of course there’s a bunch of new interesting features to go along with this as well, but focused on more general improvements to existing functionality. Combined with a lot of other optimizations and fixes this will hopefully make the application a lot nicer to work with.
New dedicated halftone tool
A new tool for generating halftone effect layers that automatically sets up the appropriate nodes and connections for you. Just select the image or other layer you want to generate the halftone effect based on and then click and drag up the area where you want the halftone to generate. Once added you can then of course continue changing any of the parameters to customize your halftone pattern, but this way it’s much easier to get the initial setup in place.
Multi-threaded generation
The core generation system in Paragraphic has now been redesigned to run on a separate process. This makes the UI, like value input and handle dragging a lot more responsive when editing complex layers that take a while to update.
Deep change Apply to mode
A key use-case of Paragraphic is making complex multi-level repetitions, which is easy by adding a sequence of repeater nodes to a layer. However, once you then have multi-level repetition like that it can be tricky to apply changes to the individual elements, as normally Change and Group nodes only act on elements one level down in the group.
This is where the new Deep change option comes in handy, available in most Change and Group nodes it allows you to apply for example a scale gradient, randomization or some other change to the individual elements in nested group repetitions.
Row, column and checker Apply to selection modes
While technically it has been possible to apply changes to elements based on columns or rows in patterns it’s be a little involved and required using the slightly more advanced generation index input nodes. To make this easier and support a couple of common cases you can now just use the new Apply to selection modes Rows, Columns to apply any change or group node changes to specific rows or columns in any 2d repetition group.
This also includes a new Checker selection pattern that will select a checker pattern based on column/row intersection that conveniently works regardless of the number of columns in the repetition.
Layer locking
A bit of a standard feature in other layer based design tools, Paragraphic now also has layer locking. Locked layers can still be modified as usual by editing node parameters or input connections, but they cannot be selected or modified via handles in the main view. So locking a layer is a good way to prevent accidentally selecting it when you’re working on other overlapping layers.
You can toggle layer locking using the little lock icon top-right in the inspector panel when you have a layer selected or using the layer context menu.
Full change list
Finally, below you can find the full list of all changes in the new version
Changes and improvements
– New multi-threaded generation, making the UI a lot more responsive when working with complex files.
– New dedicated halftone tool, making it much easier to set up a halftone pattern effect based on a selected image or layer.
– New Deep change Apply to mode, allowing you to apply most Change and Group node changes to individual subgroup elements.
– New row, column and checker Apply to selection modes, available in all Change and Group nodes to allow making row and column-based selection without using generation indexes.
– Layer locking, locked layers can’t be selected or interacted with in the main view.
– Performance and memory management improvements.
– Grid and Area repeater offset patterns can now have vertically offset columns as well as horizontally offset rows.
– Added new Pivot Angle input option for the Apply Function node, allowing you to apply angle-based gradients in groups.
– Area selection now prioritizes selecting layers in the same group as the current selection, just like click select.
– Layer list items now show layer name in a tooltip for cases when it’s truncated.
– Layer output structure panel now updates automatically when changing layer selection.
– Change Transform node flip options can now be used independently from scaling.
– New hide/show and lock/unlock items in the layer menu.
– You can now apply offsets to random change node apply to selections and shift this selection like other apply to selections.
– Improved undo action names for a lot of actions.
Bug fixes
– Fixed incorrect layer node panels when selecting some combinations of layers.
– Fixed rendering thread timing issue that could cause layers not to update.
– Fixed incorrect offset in instance layers when changing pivot point of parent layer.
– Fixed multi-layer selection node preview not updating correctly when manually aligning selected layers.
– Fixed svg export groups not getting their paragraphic group names.
– Fixed missing parameters on nodes after specific replace node operations.
– Removed invalid Replace node menu items on Comment nodes.
– Fixed change node relative group index max values.
– Fixed incorrectly showing input angle in Apply Function node when paraeter was unused.
– Fixed node preview panels not updating correctly in some cases when switching between single and multi-layer selection.
– Multiple fixes to issues with node previews.
– Fixed node panels mixed enable state when selecting multiple layers where the same node had different enable state.
– Fixed node panels not updating on undo of disable/enable node.
– Fixed a bug with automatic layer naming when replacing the generator node (start node) of a layer.
– Fixed Layer Structure info panel remaining open after document was closed.
– FIxed color picker title bar sometimes ending up outside screen on windows.
– Fixed some issues with changing Apply To mode in thr Group Remove node.
– Fixed incorrect naming of elements in regenerated repeated groups.
– Fix generation of function start/end values for non-continous functions with even period offsets.
– Prevent invalid offsetting of artboard using arrow key stepping with artboard selected.
– Fixed file extension being added instead of replaced in export dialogue when exporting to a new format.
You can check for updates and download the latest version from within Paragraphic if you have it installed, or you download it from paragraphic.design