Hey folks! Like many new members, I’m left disillusioned by the recent news that Adobe is trying to cannibalize the market yet again by buying out Figma. Penpot has a lot of potential as an alternative, plus it’s always good to support FOSS projects! However, it’s lacking a few features that I really got accustomed to in my workflow and that I genuinely can’t give up on. I should probably mention that while I do use Figma for its intended purpose of UI/UX design and prototyping, I’ve found it to be a great tool for vector illustration and icon design - one that’s lightweight and that I find very pleasant to use.
Most of my suggestions will align with that particular usage I’d make of Penpot, so I don’t really have any particular expectations, I’m sure there are many more pressing additions to make that would actually benefit UI/UX designers more, and that’s totally OK! But still, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to share them!
With that said, here are some features I’d really like to see make their way to the app:
- Applying rounded corners to any shape, including boolean groups and individual nodes. I use that a lot to create smooth, complex shapes with minimal hassle!
- Creating arcs out of circles.
- Mask shapes taking effects (blur, shadows) into account. Again, only really useful for illustration, as it lets me do complex shading…
- And while we’re at it, maybe adding a handy little shortcut icon for masking right next to the boolean/flatten ones?
- When editing a node, having the ability for both handles to always have the same length for more uniform shape tweaking.
- Being able to click & drag on a value box to change said value.
- Allowing an image box to have different fit modes, like cover, contain, or tiling to allow the use of patterns.
That’s all I can really think of currently, if I have any more suggestions I’ll add them in further posts. Oh, and if one of my suggestions turns out to already be a thing that I was too dumb to notice, please let me know as well.
Thanks for your time, keep up the good work and good luck! <3