softsound

Yes, but this seems like something I should be able to do in the beginning. I made a quick mock-up of my idea. Just saves a few extra steps. Also I would not get rid of the document option, just temporarily removed it for the mock's sake. I would probably remove double insert artboard buttons too. (I suppose X & Y would be W & H but same idea. Would be also nice if I could save artboard templates like affinity has there)

@v_kyr That shows it's not possible to manually type it in, thank you. I'll request the feature later.

Ah, nvm I found I can just set size in the transform tool. It would be nice if I could just directly type it in though while creating it.

Hey I was wondering if there was an easy way to create artboards set to print sizes? I see that I can set them to mobile/device sizes but is there a quick way I can resize an artboard to print sizes? I didn't see anything at first glance. Also is there a way to set the size of certain artboard to be like 4x6 and others to be like 6x8? I didn't see a way to manually set size without trying to drag the artboard nodes to the right size, I'd like to be able to type in artboard sizes and create them that way.

This might be a bad comparison but in Clip Studio Paint you can toggle a reference layer and clearly see the layer marked as well. I could imagine them implementing something similar. They could probably also go the Krita route with an actual reference tool. These two reference tools work very differently with reference layers being a useful layer for filling, outlines and other functions that allow layers to reference one another while reference tools are used for loading a group of reference images you are using and you can easily adjust all reference opacity and load and unload them. I think both would be useful. Here is how the reference tool works in Krita. (Video)

@HuniSempi Yeah I don't have that kind of ram, I have 8gb ram. I can't really copy between photoshop or affinity photo without it crashing due to large file sizes which I understand (so yeah a window will pop up about the file size being too large) and it struggles when I work with larger files. I just stick with photoshop because it's just more compatible and doesn't struggle. I don't really use Photo much when Photoshop just works better for me. It could be a ram issue or just a photoshop thing, either way, Photo isn't up to Photoshop standards yet. It's not a big deal to me though and I'd prefer the other things I mentioned worked on over this. I use Designer a ton though, and if I could get away from Photoshop I might (though I still use it a ton for handing off design projects and I can't hand off Photo files to my team). Overall I'm really happy with Designer, but Photo to me still seems a fair way off before I'd recommend it over Krita, Clip Studio or Photoshop.

1) Photoshop layer effect - Pattern Overlay - I use this all the time in PS. Look at Krita if you need help, they have it working and it's free & open source maybe you can sneak some code idk. 2) Layer Fill & fill opacity not to be confused with flood fill or layer opacity. Layer fill only targets the image on the layer and ignores alpha we currently do not have a workaround so I stick to PS. This is a very big time saver! If I can't get layer fill to control alpha then give me an alpha toggle at least... Like how Krita & Clip Studio handle it. 3) Adjust window text sizes (Especially when working with glyphs) I just blindly guess what I'm clicking on since the text can only be like 12x12px and some glyphs don't show well that small. 4) The ability to open large photoshop files or handle file sizes - Crashes most of the time when working in 4k so I don't bother. I can't image how it would handle 8k. I stick to PS.

Yes, I second this, as I work with fonts and glyphs often and really wish I could make I could make the glyph window larger when viewing characters. I generally end up guessing on what I'm clicking on as the characters are around 12x12px and some characters are not meant for that size and don't read well.

Can I also request we make this a layer effect as well? In Photoshop they have something called Pattern Overlay, it would be cool if I could overlay a vector pattern similar to Photoshop's bitmap pattern overlay. I use pattern overlays a lot in my work to quickly add detail and while this is a minor request it would be really handy for me.

Just use an emoji font and it will work fine. I made a blog post covering this here. I even cover kaomoji. Not very many emoji fonts exist but I recommended 3 of them in my blog post. I also show an example of how I use emoji's in game design using Affinity Publisher. The 3 fonts I recommend are: Google's Noto OpenMoji and Code2000 (This one may have copyright issues so I would not use it professionally) Now of course if the font doesn't support the glyph it won't work but all of these fonts are quite large with code2000 being one of the largest in the world so you should have some support. This method does not support fancy color though as affinity does not support that, so you'll have to use basic font colors, but you can always convert into a shape and recolor it if you want. Considering emoji's are updated every year you may not have the latest emoji's in these fonts but you will find a lot of support still.

These look like good ideas, getting organized libraries would be really really nice.

I would like it in Photo/Designer/Publisher if I could save gradients in the layer effects (Gradient Overlay). I use gradients a lot in my work and it would be nice to have a unified gradient system similar to how Photoshop handles it. I would like to able to click on the gradient color and see past gradients I've created recently or saved. It's a minor thing, but it save me the trouble of recreating my gradient overlay every time. It would also be nice if the gradient tool itself also had the ability to save/export/import gradients. And it would be nice if gradient maps had a similar way to save/load/export gradients. So please allow unification of all three gradient systems (gradient overlay, gradient tool, gradient maps) and allow me to see easily see past gradients and export/import gradients. It's minor but it would be nice. If there is currently a way to do this, it's not very apparent. A tiny other idea, maybe if you get cloud support and asset management someday.. It would be cool if all three programs could somehow see all the same gradients like I could create something in design, and create a similar a style in photo using a gradient I created from design.

I mean if they already made something like this I'd hate to see them throw it out. I didn't say it would beat all those other tools but I think it's really cool they thought of that. I'm much more of a noob with texturing stuff and don't really use 5 other tools I just do everything in Photoshop so I don't have a lot to say on the matter. 😅 I was excited to see that and bought Photo today just for that, that's the only thing to me that makes it slightly stand out compared to Photoshop to me (Photoshop tried this before and it was so slow it wasn't useable). Until they get a layer fill option like Photoshop or some interesting feature that really makes it stand out I won't really use Photo over Photoshop, but I wish for the best for them and really love Designer and Publisher! For me I mainly use Clip Studio (best for digital painting with 3D models & reference work with vector painting), Krita (best for sprites), Photoshop (general tool), and Designer (vector & UI) for most of my work and Publisher for anything marketing or print related. I don't think it's bad for them to be more general like Photoshop but I mean right now they don't have anything that makes them stand out feature wise from Photoshop to me. I don't think I'd use the layer and channel info you would... Or I'd just end up using Gimp in the end for some of that. But hey like I said it's not really a tool I use so I don't care a great deal on the direction, I'm sure all that layer & channel stuff would be helpful to others and defiantly think they should add that. So TL;DR I think it's a still a cool idea and I'd use it. Photo doesn't have much that makes it stand out so I think slightly helps but I don't really use Photo so I'm not really the target audience. Maybe after they add in all the other features you requested they might add this in later. I mean, it's like telling people they shouldn't use Photoshop for digital painting or making comics, sure it's a bad tool for that but people make it work and I think a lot of people like Photoshop because it has some digital painting options even if they kind of suck compared to better tools like Clip Studio Paint.

Wow if this 3D painting stuff & preview happens I'd be so excited, I normally just do everything in Blender and Photoshop but that could definitely be a game changer and save me a lot of back and forth having a preview (would be even better if it also supported .fbx). I know everyone is like don't do too much, but honestly it's worked out great for Blender. Blender is definitely an all in one tool. But yeah tile tools like in Krita would be great too. You already have something similar in Designer with your pattern creator (which at some point you should make vector friendly currently it just works with raster if I recall). I think animation itself should be it's own software though if you do go in that direction, considering how easy you make it to open up other apps I think an animation app would be a better direction for that, if you went in that direction man I'd love to create vector animations!!! Using after effects for that sort of thing is overkill.

Well, publisher has better support now, but in the end I had to use indesign because I kept running into a weird bug. I have not tried with the newer update though. I'll have to try again in the future.

Yes, it seems others have run into the same issues I have, while minor they add up. I often do create small projects and getting these little fixes in would be helpful.

Text style copy & paste ( like in google docs, it is called the Paint Format tool) I do not want to create a new style every single time I am working with text, sometimes I just want to copy and paste a style! I know this is more word processor based but it's such a nice option to have, hands down useful. There is a reason text editors have styles and paint format/format paint (Google Docs/Word) options. And it seems like it would be super easy to implement. I don't want to clutter my global text styles with two-three pieces of text that I want to be the same style. Just make a button like those word processors. Story editor - The ability to go through text and copy and paste parts of it out would be really helpful... Or better yet let me link to a google doc somehow. I know this is a bit of a stretch but hey, thought I'd throw it out there. I have to copy and paste text a lot and just creating a text filler block and being able to update that outside the page would be nice. Table updates - This needs a lot of work to really be that useful, but minor things like highlighting the cell you are in would be nice, adding a checkbox to link stroke on outside & inside stroke would be nice (even though it would only save me a few clicks I would like the option), the ability to right click on row > resize all rows to the currently selected row would be nice... Actually is there even a way to alter all rows or columns? It wasn't very clear to me if there was... Also it wasn't super clear how to affect the whole table at once, like I get I can select all the cells by clicking in the first cell and dragging to the last cell but if I had a very large table this could be a problem. Having a global table option and control would be nice because what if I want to hide all inner table dividers? Also having some default table styles would be nice, just a few basic colors which I can edit later because a lot of tables have different colored rows to make them easier to read. Including one or two different table formats with a global color option for alternate rows would be very handy. Having the ability to make nice tables would really really be amazing. Perhaps I missed something though and these options are available elsewhere. Also headers on tables would be great. Would be nice after some of those updates are fixed: Footnotes and endnotes. While they have not become a big issue yet, they would be very nice to have as I aim to be creating a manual down the line and don't want to have to work this in manually. I work as a book publisher and I know Publisher isn't actually built for that but it's been really helpful and I think working on a few of these additions would help my workflow considerably.

I'm honestly super happy publisher has been released in its current state, while I have have not yet tackled the larger projects you all have with footnotes/references/math etc, to me, it has been so helpful as I was able to publish two picture books with it, create flyers, banners, and n-up some work for print. It's getting better every month, and I'm sure they will get this functionality in soon. But being able to add-in proper footnotes and such will be very helpful once I start tackling larger projects as I'm working on a game manual now. Considering how quickly they improve it, I've been very happy with the software that came out last summer. It would be nice if they did more with tables though and fixed window adjustments, for me not being able to resize elements in a window makes it hard for me to see what I'm clicking on and that's super frustrating when trying to pick out glyphs which I use a lot in my design work. I also found the table of contents pretty poor compared to google docs, but I'm grateful they are working on this software and can't wait for improvements.

My solution, for now, was just to redo the page and copy another page with the original master page working and move all the content over to a new page so I could have my page numbers working again.

I'm using publisher 1.7.3 on windows. I was having issues with a white background showing on my page numbers so on some pages I removed the original master test by deleting the text from the master page layer in the master page folder, then realized I can change the master page to delete the white background in the text by doing a factory reset. I couldn't figure out how else to remove the background color on my text. Is there a way to refresh the page so that the master page will reload and fix the pages I tried to adjust or are master pages handled more like instances and each one comes from a parent but can be changed individually? It would be nice if I could reset the pages that use master pages to the original master page from which they came as they are cleared still linked but I don't see where the option to restore them is. I included what my original master page looked like and an example of a page using a master page where I deleted the master page content. If I could click a button to restore to the original master page that would be very helpful.

Is there a way I can do this globally? I decided that adding a colored background to my 20 artboards would make it easier to see. I just did a bunch of logo mock-ups and wanted to see if there was a faster way to handle this. I didn't really notice any way to easily change the BG on all the boards so I created a symbol and slowly duplicated and dragged it from board to board and had to redo all my layers to make sure it actually was at the bottom of the board on the correct board but if there is a faster way to handle this I'd be happy to hear it for the future.

I don't want to create a new style when I copying and pasting text around in one textbox and would love it if I had a button like Paint format in google docs so I could grab some text in a section of text and click the format button and then drag it over other text to apply that format to other text, it would be nice if the colors, font, and formatting carried over so I could quickly format sections of text the same but still be flexible enough to change the format later without creating styles I don't know if I'll use. And yes copy and paste fx or style does not work in this case, it doesn't even show as an option as I'm not using either FYI. So tl;dr in one text frame it would nice if I could grab one styled text and apply it to other text in the same frame without creating a whole preset for something I don't know I'll use. This is for testing how different fonts look together in paragraph form. Google docs has something called Paint Format, Word has something called Format Painter that works the same. It's a super-fast way to make mock-ups which I can then decide to make a style if I choose.

Thank you so much for this! The idlm import worked great! I was about to post why importing pdf's to get around the idlm wasn't working for me and here the solution was given! Here is an example of the impact importing gives me! This is huge! Now if I could just get the older version of .indd I'd be all set with a publisher I work with but this is still great! ;3

I remember this coming up before but I can't remember who posted it originally so I thought I'd leave a note here for others. I remember someone saying it wasn't possible and wanted to make a tutorial on it just in case someone got lost. First some quick overview of text file types. (I'm quickly covering a blog post I wrote if you want more info. I'm no expert just doing this so I don't forget.) Right now there are 3 main text file types currently. TrueType(TTF) Old limited file type OpenType (OTF) Standard file type. and OpenType-SVG(SVG+) Non-standard limited support color fonts - super fancy fonts made with raster & vector graphics aka "picture fonts" This term has many meanings. I'm just going to say decorative or involving pictures and not refer to raster pictures. SVG fonts are very much picture focused. Yeah, I'm not going to be covering SVG, they only work with Adobe software and are kinda all over the place atm. But you can still add picture fonts without SVG like emoji! Emoji fonts can be used since affinity supports the use of glyphs. Some fonts that work great would be Google Noto Emoji. I attached a photo of noto emoji as you install and in use. When you install it looks like regular text- but if you use the secret mode called glyphs you unlock tons of emojis! This great for print materials that need icons like card games and board games. Example case- I used this to help set up a chinchilla card game with my friend. He designed, I just did art and some beginning formatting. Link to full game btw. To use glyphs go to Text > Show Glyph Browser You can search for different glyphs like hearts or cats or paw prints! Just double click on the icon to use it. -FAQ- Why would I use this font? It's a quick way to add symbols to a document, it's also faster than searching for a generic SVG and importing it. This great for saving text space and adding decorations, or adding just a little more modern pop to some work. This is dumb, why not just use dingbat fonts? Dingbat fonts like Entypo are really limited compared to this method, but they do also work. They don't tend to match up with these more standard fonts. This is dumb, why aren't they in full color? Sorry, it's not supported. Does this support color? No, only stroke color/text color can be used to change colors. Can you zoom in to see the glyph better? I don't think so. Considering my friend had eyesight issues, I think this would be a nice feature. Does this support kaomoji? Yep! My example showed kaomoji working great :3 Why is my symbol showing as a square? Make sure you have the right font selected. Why can't I find a symbol I just copied in the search bar? It doesn't seem to register search on the icon itself, only the name so don't copy and paste the icon into the search bar, it doesn't work. It does show recent searches below if that helps. Can I copy and paste symbols off the internet and paste them in this way? Yeah as long as they are common symbols. Most symbols on here would fine for example. Try skull & cross bones for example You can grab more symbols here. What are some emoji fonts I can use? Emoji fonts OpenMoji - the ttf files work for me even though it's beta. Google Noto Emoji. - Works great. Apple and Windows font emoji are not available by themselves (like you can't download) but can still be used with this method. With Windows you can hold the Windows key + (.) period key to open the emoji window, just click an emoji to paste, it looks weird but converts over correctly if you click on the text area, it should convert over if supported. It can get a little finicky, but I was able to convert windows sparkly symbols into the noto font this way.

Actually it appears that pdf/x-1a:2003 works fine for IngramSpark checks! Don't use pdf/X-3:2003 just use pdf/x-1a:2003 and it clears the checks. I looked a little further into the file type and it appears it that covers PDF/X‑1a (2001 and 2003). Since I illustrate children's books I also have to set the color profile to CMYK as well as a heads up to anyone else looking at this problem.