Designer_George

Hello Ian, A wide range of people who want to use Affinity Suite professionally are eagerly awaiting moves in this direction. There are many comments on this forum from people who have an idea of how professional tools should work. Personally, I really hope that you will be able to add new or improve existing functions that are most needed by professionals. Also, users who use Affinity Suite programs for non-commercial purposes will benefit greatly from this as they start doing their work more efficiently and faster. For my part, I will gladly share my knowledge to support the development of our favorite programs. Best regard George

@walt.farrell as I wrote earlier, I tested your method and it generally works but is very imperfect in more difficult layouts. I understand what you said and there is no need to repeat the same thing because the forum is getting messy. There is no point in discussing a specific layout when I have shown that the tool is not suitable for this purpose. Please familiarize yourself with the way Global Layers works, play with some program with correctly implemented Global Layers (even the free Scribus, it is very crude tool but Global Layers work properly). When you increase your knowledge, you will see how wrong you are. Right now you don't know what you're saying. In my case it was the same. When I created publications in Corel, it seemed to me that it was the perfect tool for the task. Then I learned to use inDesign and if someone had told me to go back to using Corel, I would have considered it a punishment.

@Petar Petrenko you've gone too far and gone off topic or you're mixing up functions (I think it's the second one). We're talking about the Clip Canvas function, not the Crop Tool. Read my post again, open APhoto and do what I wrote. Think about whether this function works as it should. The whole dialogue about the Crop Tool is completely unnecessary. As for the functionality you expect from Crop Tool, @PaulEC is absolutely right. APhoto is not for that. I would advise you to deepen your knowledge not only about how Affinity programs work, but also about the specifics of a graphic designer's workflow in general. I repeat - The Crop Tool is not the same as Clip Canvas. The Crop Tool works fine. Clip Canvas doesn't.

I managed to prepare a publication for printing, 40 pages. Complicated layout, frequent transfer of elements between pages at the client's request. I wanted to see how APub would work in real work. The lack of Global Layers (i.e. the lack of pasting with saved layers) and automatically added swatch colors caused a lot of confusion. Checking if an additional color appeared required creating a new palette from the document, which introduced additional mess. You can't use APub in combat conditions and that's it. No matter how much you curse reality - you can't and that's it. Of course, if it's about doing the job well and quickly.

I completely agree, nothing to add, nothing to subtract.

For real hardcore gamers I recommend APub or Scribus 😀

@ianstudio, yes, I see - this is Sisyphean task. Something like presenting facts to a fanatic - pointless. It is extraordinary that defenders of dysfunctional APub do not want a change for the better. It follows that they have no idea about real DTP software and generally about the idea of how it works, what an effective workflow looks like. And after all, these are creators and artists who use these tools every day. After a dozen or so minutes of serious use of APub, I wanted to throw it out the window and forget about it. Even Corel seemed better for DTP to me. With such clients, Affinity has no reason to dream of reaching Adobe's level. I wonder what the fate of this software will be. Probably similar to the fate of the Amiga computer. Although, compared to Affinity Suite, it was refined and worked stably. More stable and reliable than all PCs produced to this day. 😀

@walt.farrell, thank you very much for this explanation - that's what I meant. I checked your method - it works for simple layouts, but in the case of more complicated ones, where most pages differ from each other, this method is not suitable. Text fields must be disconnected from the Master Page and the whole method stops working. The method using states seems to be the only option but as I have shown it is a total misunderstanding.

@AlainP, thank you for your attention. Are you sure I am using Affinity software? What made you conclude that? Are you sure I'm crying? Can you tell me what I'm supposed to be crying about? 😀

@walt.farrell if you can explain something then please explain. Claiming that I am doing something wrong is not constructive and does nothing.

@fde101 explained. Thanks @fde101. But States is very unstable. It's not just this module, many other things are very unstable - that is, sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. Additionally, adding additional elements to the document, including linked ones (raster and vector graphics, other APub documents) causes unpredictable behavior of APub. Please create two APub documents. In one, create two layers and place something on them. Then place this document in a new APub document. Now try to turn layers on and off in the linked document. You will see what wonders Affinity Publisher starts to do. When it comes to messing around with placing text on layers in Master Pages, in my opinion it's very unintuitive. Instead of making it easier, APub makes it harder. I have the impression that the creators of this solution tried to reinvent the wheel and did it in such a way that instead of a circle they ended up with a square, and a crooked one at that. States may be useful for some things, but not in this edition. I suspect that because of it, other functions may not work properly, for example nested linking. The solution from Global Layers is very effective, elegant and very intuitive. I think that people who have never worked with a professional DTP program such as PageMaker, QuarkXPress, inDesign will have no idea what I'm talking about.

Can you explain how to actually use Master Pages?

You have a document that has 1000 pages. Each page has two language versions of the text - in EN and FR. You need to prepare two versions of PDF files - one containing the text in EN, the other containing the text in FR. You cannot use incorrectly implemented Master Pages in APub. Moving text from page 1 to the Master Page will mean that it will be visible on all pages in the document. Note! In both cases, I do not include the time spent on moving the content to individual layers, i.e. EN texts to EN layers and FR texts to FR layers and exporting to PDF. This will take a similar amount of time. Affinity Publisher 1. You need to create two layers on each page/spread and name them Click Add Layer Click on the layer and name it EN Click Add Layer Click on the layer and name it FR This operation needs to be repeated for 1000 pages. Number of mouse clicks - 4000 Number of keyboard clicks - (2 (EN) + 1 (Enter) + 2 (FR) + 1 (Enter)) * 1000 = 6*1000 = 6000 2. You need to turn off the visibility of all FR layers Click Toggle Visibility on each FR layer in the document to turn off its visibility Number of mouse clicks - 1000 3. In the States panel, add the state of the visible EN layers Click Add new captured state Enter the name EN Press OK or Enter Number of mouse clicks - 1 Number of keyboard clicks - 2 4. You need to turn off the visibility of all EN layers and turn on the visibility of all FR layers Click Toggle Visibility on each FR layer in the document to turn on its visibility Click Toggle Visibility on each EN layer in the document to turn off its visibility Number of mouse clicks - 2000 5. In the States panel, add a state of visible layers FR Click Add new captured state Type the name FR Press OK or Enter Number of mouse clicks - 1 Number of key clicks - 2 6. PDF export In the States panel, click the triangle next to Captured States EN Export the file to PDF In the States panel, click the triangle next to Captured States FR Export the file to PDF Number of mouse clicks - 7004 Number of keyboard clicks - 6004 Working time Mouse clicks - 7004 * 3 = 21,012 seconds, 5 hours 50 minutes Keyboard clicks - 6004 * 1 = 6004 seconds, 1 hour 40 minutes Total - 7 hours 30 minutes If you change anything in the document with the created Captured States you will have to do everything again. I checked. QuarkXPress / inDesign 1. Name the layers Double-click the layer with the EN text Type EN from the keyboard Press Enter Double-click the layer with the FR text Type FR from the keyboard Press Enter Number of mouse clicks - 4 Number of keyboard clicks - 6 2. PDF export Click the FR layer visibility icon to turn it off (what was on the FR layer will disappear in the entire document. Export the file to PDF (EN version) Click the FR layer visibility icon to turn it on (what was on the FR layer will appear in the entire document. Click the EN layer visibility icon to turn it off (what was on the EN layer will disappear in the entire document. Export the file to PDF (FR version) Number of mouse clicks - 3 SUM Number of mouse clicks - 7 Number of keyboard clicks - 6 Working time Mouse clicks - 7 * 3 = 21 seconds Keyboard clicks - 6 * 1 = 6 seconds Total - 27 seconds of work It seems to me, dear colleague Pšenda, that at first glance, doing this job in APub requires a lot of free time. If you have 1 hour to do this task, then in the case of using the Affinity program, you have to give up the task or quit or go crazy. I speak from my own experience. Correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't know APub very well. I will add that the example of the publication I described is very simple. There are much more complicated publications in which Global Layers are irreplaceable. In my humble opinion this is a pretty illustrative example of how powerful Global Layers are - but only when properly implemented and working flawlessly. If you intend to produce complex publications in Affinity Publisher, I advise against this program because it is not ready for that yet. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of the shortcomings and errors it has. PS. Buddy Pšenda, you're buying me a beer when I come to the Czech Republic, because I wasted a lot of time explaining the usefulness of Global Layers. 😉

Either way, it is clear that we are missing Global Layers (used, among other things, to paste many elements copied from one page to another into the same layers, to disable the EU price layer in the entire document with one click and enable USD prices, to disable texts in one language and enable them in another, etc.), we are missing Swatches automatically added and named according to their type (C10 M0 Y35 K5, R10 G20 B50). We are missing well-functioning and always working nested linking of Affinity documents. If it were, we would not be sitting on the forum trying to explain that we need it, we would just be working 😀

😉