captain_slocum

There must be an obvious answer to this but half an hour of trying everything has left me stumped.
 
I have a page with several circles containing photos. The circles are vector ellipses masking underlying images. I now need to alter which bits of the images are shown through the mask (something that is easy to do in Sketch - just select the image layer and click/drag) but try what I might I cannot do it in AD. I can see how to move the mask relative to the image, but that breaks my layout - getting the circles all back exactly in place would be a pain if not impossible. What am I doing wrong?

Sorry to keep banging on about this - which I have been doing ever since the first beta, see many posts - but I was so disappointed these two were not in latest update. Perhaps if I give you a hard example of what I have to do on a regular basis in my job producing magazines, the people at Affinity - who I have the utmost respect for - will see why it is impossible for me to give up InDesign for Publisher.
To take just one community magazine I produce, typically 48pp A5.
Tables: Every month there will be service timetables for 3 churches. There is also a calendar of local events (a bit thin at the moment! But normally running to 3 pages). The information is supplied as tables. The tables import easily into InDesign and of course will flow from one page to another. Impossible in AF Publisher. Even if I could spare the time to break the table into two and paste the second half into a different frame if (when!) the editor requests extra rows, I would have to do it all over again.
Columns: About half the articles are in two columns. They look like this: A centred heading spanning both columns followed by some text in two columns for that section; a sub heading for the next section centred across both columns followed by some text in two columns for that section; and so on. Very easy in InDesign using the Span All command. Impossible, in any practical sense, in AF Publisher.
I would love to ditch InDesign, but alas, AF Publisher is not up to it yet. If only the designers had asked real world publishers like me right from the beginning what was essential.

There seems to be two similar threads to this and I have contributed on this topic to both. Reading my original post here perhaps it came over as unnecessarily harsh snd censorious, so let me post on this forum the piece I wrote elsewhere this morning, which I hope gives a rounder picture of my feelings. (I was responding to a poster who suggested I was being unfair and I should be privileged to have the chance to test out the beta.) I wrote:
Hawk: The absence of inline graphics and tables makes InDesign unfit as a professional tool. So would not having the other features you mention of course. But you are creating a false dichotomy - it is not a case of choosing between essential features. If it really would take another 2 - 5 years to create a professional DTP app (where did you get that figure from?) then either they should hire an extra software engineer or throw in the towel.
The important point that I and others have made is that Affinity did not ask us professionals what was essential in a DTP app. They cite their 25 year experience in DTP (with the dreadful Serif!) but ignore the collective experience of many real world users such a myself who have been using DTP to make a living since its dawn.
Nobody expects the first iteration of new software to be perfect. (When InDesign first came out it did not have tables.) And I know I speak for others when I say we have nothing but goodwill towards the Affinity team's efforts, and that we do not wish to nit-pick. But there are certain elements that have to be in place if an app is to be seen as a viable replacement for an existing go-to app. Without inline graphics and tables (something a developer colleague assures me is quite easy to implement - even the humble Notes on the Mac has it) APublisher just becomes another village fete poster app. [Having read the above post regarding the holy grail ability to open APublisher in ADesigner and APhoto I would suggest that for longer documents (which is what we are talking about here) it is an ambition that could be implemented in full detail later.]
Our motives for these posts is not to have a pop at Affinity, but to help them in their endeavours, which we applaud. We understand that this is a beta and that 1.0 will look different, but we are dismayed that a moderator has said this is not on the immediate feature list.
As for having the beta to play with being a privilege, I think the boot is on the other foot -  Affinity should feel privileged that there are seasoned designers out there freely giving their time to make the app viable.
I suspect that privately there are red faces over this, and (assuming they read these posts!) hope that wiser counsels prevail and that this issue is given the priority it deserves.
As someone has noted elsewhere, a road map of future features would be very useful. If inline graphics is on the list, at the top, then great; if it is not there at all then at least we know not to bother looking at APublisher as a viable ID alternative. My experience of 55 years of business is that openness always pays off in the long run, and I know you guys are committed and working hard to that end. PS: I use ADesigner all the time, you did a great job. Illustrator was always impenetrable to most people who just wanted to get a job done and you nailed it. But knocking ID  off its perch I think is bit harder. But I am sure you will get there - if you listen!
 

A fix type update just released but no new features. Do you have a road map you could publish? You have added a lot of features that we professional users were requesting back in the beta days, but at the moment the only thing that stops me rolling AP to everyone in my group so we can finally drop Adobe suite is we are still missing a). tables flowing across text boxes on to other pages and b). individual paragraphs spreading across all columns in a two or three column layout. To show you my good faith, I have just completed a 48 page magazine using AP, a monthly magazine I usually produce with InDesign. What made it ridiculously difficult was not just the extra time it took (12 hours as opposed to 3 - although I accept some of that would have been a lack of familiarity with AP) but the fact that 1). I could not rely on not having missed out table rows where columns carried over to the next page, and 2). having to re jig a lot of the magazine when a late article was added near the front. I have written extensively about this since the beta days, but it seems your designers are still not listening to the pros. Now of course, if that is not your market, fine, your decision. But please put us out of our misery by publishing a road map so we can see if it is worth carrying on hoping .

May I add my request for this, flowing tables, and also convert text to table. So far I have been very impressed and pleasantly surprised with the finished Publisher and have been able to reproduce most of a monthly magazine of 48 pages without too much effort.
BUT, and it is a very big but, the reason I will still be using InDesign is the inability to flow tables. Here is a real world example: In the centre of the 48 page magazine is a 3 to 4 page calendar which is sent to me as a table in Word. Yesterday the editor sent me a revision, asking for two extra items to be inserted near the front of the calendar. I inserted them in InDesign and the rows flowed across the other pages - job done. With Publisher, I would have to delete the bottom two rows of the first page and add them and their content to the top of the next page, and so on through all the pages. Not only time consuming but very prone to error.
So this is a real biggy for me, and I suspect many real world users, and I am very disappointed that you are only saying "might consider it"
Perhaps you might reconsider your approach to this? So much is good about this programme, and I have several not-for-profit organisations waiting for me to help them set up their magazines so they can publish them themselves, but I can't, alas, recommend AP just yet.
 
 
 

Sorry to keep banging on about this - which I have been doing ever since the first beta, see many posts - but I was so disappointed these two were not in latest update. Perhaps if I give you a hard example of what I have to do on a regular basis in my job producing magazines, the people at Affinity - who I have the utmost respect for - will see why it is impossible for me to give up InDesign for Publisher.
To take just one community magazine I produce, typically 48pp A5.
Tables: Every month there will be service timetables for 3 churches. There is also a calendar of local events (a bit thin at the moment! But normally running to 3 pages). The information is supplied as tables. The tables import easily into InDesign and of course will flow from one page to another. Impossible in AF Publisher. Even if I could spare the time to break the table into two and paste the second half into a different frame if (when!) the editor requests extra rows, I would have to do it all over again.
Columns: About half the articles are in two columns. They look like this: A centred heading spanning both columns followed by some text in two columns for that section; a sub heading for the next section centred across both columns followed by some text in two columns for that section; and so on. Very easy in InDesign using the Span All command. Impossible, in any practical sense, in AF Publisher.
I would love to ditch InDesign, but alas, AF Publisher is not up to it yet. If only the designers had asked real world publishers like me right from the beginning what was essential.

May I add my request for this, flowing tables, and also convert text to table. So far I have been very impressed and pleasantly surprised with the finished Publisher and have been able to reproduce most of a monthly magazine of 48 pages without too much effort.
BUT, and it is a very big but, the reason I will still be using InDesign is the inability to flow tables. Here is a real world example: In the centre of the 48 page magazine is a 3 to 4 page calendar which is sent to me as a table in Word. Yesterday the editor sent me a revision, asking for two extra items to be inserted near the front of the calendar. I inserted them in InDesign and the rows flowed across the other pages - job done. With Publisher, I would have to delete the bottom two rows of the first page and add them and their content to the top of the next page, and so on through all the pages. Not only time consuming but very prone to error.
So this is a real biggy for me, and I suspect many real world users, and I am very disappointed that you are only saying "might consider it"
Perhaps you might reconsider your approach to this? So much is good about this programme, and I have several not-for-profit organisations waiting for me to help them set up their magazines so they can publish them themselves, but I can't, alas, recommend AP just yet.
 
 
 

A fix type update just released but no new features. Do you have a road map you could publish? You have added a lot of features that we professional users were requesting back in the beta days, but at the moment the only thing that stops me rolling AP to everyone in my group so we can finally drop Adobe suite is we are still missing a). tables flowing across text boxes on to other pages and b). individual paragraphs spreading across all columns in a two or three column layout. To show you my good faith, I have just completed a 48 page magazine using AP, a monthly magazine I usually produce with InDesign. What made it ridiculously difficult was not just the extra time it took (12 hours as opposed to 3 - although I accept some of that would have been a lack of familiarity with AP) but the fact that 1). I could not rely on not having missed out table rows where columns carried over to the next page, and 2). having to re jig a lot of the magazine when a late article was added near the front. I have written extensively about this since the beta days, but it seems your designers are still not listening to the pros. Now of course, if that is not your market, fine, your decision. But please put us out of our misery by publishing a road map so we can see if it is worth carrying on hoping .

A fix type update just released but no new features. Do you have a road map you could publish? You have added a lot of features that we professional users were requesting back in the beta days, but at the moment the only thing that stops me rolling AP to everyone in my group so we can finally drop Adobe suite is we are still missing a). tables flowing across text boxes on to other pages and b). individual paragraphs spreading across all columns in a two or three column layout. To show you my good faith, I have just completed a 48 page magazine using AP, a monthly magazine I usually produce with InDesign. What made it ridiculously difficult was not just the extra time it took (12 hours as opposed to 3 - although I accept some of that would have been a lack of familiarity with AP) but the fact that 1). I could not rely on not having missed out table rows where columns carried over to the next page, and 2). having to re jig a lot of the magazine when a late article was added near the front. I have written extensively about this since the beta days, but it seems your designers are still not listening to the pros. Now of course, if that is not your market, fine, your decision. But please put us out of our misery by publishing a road map so we can see if it is worth carrying on hoping .

A fix type update just released but no new features. Do you have a road map you could publish? You have added a lot of features that we professional users were requesting back in the beta days, but at the moment the only thing that stops me rolling AP to everyone in my group so we can finally drop Adobe suite is we are still missing a). tables flowing across text boxes on to other pages and b). individual paragraphs spreading across all columns in a two or three column layout. To show you my good faith, I have just completed a 48 page magazine using AP, a monthly magazine I usually produce with InDesign. What made it ridiculously difficult was not just the extra time it took (12 hours as opposed to 3 - although I accept some of that would have been a lack of familiarity with AP) but the fact that 1). I could not rely on not having missed out table rows where columns carried over to the next page, and 2). having to re jig a lot of the magazine when a late article was added near the front. I have written extensively about this since the beta days, but it seems your designers are still not listening to the pros. Now of course, if that is not your market, fine, your decision. But please put us out of our misery by publishing a road map so we can see if it is worth carrying on hoping .

A fix type update just released but no new features. Do you have a road map you could publish? You have added a lot of features that we professional users were requesting back in the beta days, but at the moment the only thing that stops me rolling AP to everyone in my group so we can finally drop Adobe suite is we are still missing a). tables flowing across text boxes on to other pages and b). individual paragraphs spreading across all columns in a two or three column layout. To show you my good faith, I have just completed a 48 page magazine using AP, a monthly magazine I usually produce with InDesign. What made it ridiculously difficult was not just the extra time it took (12 hours as opposed to 3 - although I accept some of that would have been a lack of familiarity with AP) but the fact that 1). I could not rely on not having missed out table rows where columns carried over to the next page, and 2). having to re jig a lot of the magazine when a late article was added near the front. I have written extensively about this since the beta days, but it seems your designers are still not listening to the pros. Now of course, if that is not your market, fine, your decision. But please put us out of our misery by publishing a road map so we can see if it is worth carrying on hoping .

May I add my request for this, flowing tables, and also convert text to table. So far I have been very impressed and pleasantly surprised with the finished Publisher and have been able to reproduce most of a monthly magazine of 48 pages without too much effort.
BUT, and it is a very big but, the reason I will still be using InDesign is the inability to flow tables. Here is a real world example: In the centre of the 48 page magazine is a 3 to 4 page calendar which is sent to me as a table in Word. Yesterday the editor sent me a revision, asking for two extra items to be inserted near the front of the calendar. I inserted them in InDesign and the rows flowed across the other pages - job done. With Publisher, I would have to delete the bottom two rows of the first page and add them and their content to the top of the next page, and so on through all the pages. Not only time consuming but very prone to error.
So this is a real biggy for me, and I suspect many real world users, and I am very disappointed that you are only saying "might consider it"
Perhaps you might reconsider your approach to this? So much is good about this programme, and I have several not-for-profit organisations waiting for me to help them set up their magazines so they can publish them themselves, but I can't, alas, recommend AP just yet.
 
 
 

I have always found ID booklet very difficult to use and inaccurate especially when trying to print A5 double spreads on A4 paper (A5 is 0.5mm different from A4 folded in half) so I use Create Booklet. I have just tested AP in Create Booklet exporting as PDF (pages) and it works just fine. I don't have any connection to the company at all, but I do recommend this app, it is an absolute must have for me. So even if AP doesn't have a good booklet function, you will always be able to get perfect booklet layout and margin control using Create Booklet.

I frequently produce A5 booklets of 40 to 48 pages that are printed on A4 paper using InDesign and I find that even that mature programme is not capable of producing booklets properly. The only solution I have found is to use a programme called Create Booklet. This takes a PDF and paginates it correctly so it will print as a booklet. A brilliantly simple but powerful little gem (I am in no way connected to the company).
I tried it out yesterday with Affinity Publisher and it works very well. When exporting from AP, make sure in the export dialogue you select PDF - PDF/X-4 - All Pages. And of course, set up your page size as a custom size of 148.5mm x 210mm (A5 is NOT half of A4 remember). I hope that will help anyone trying to create A5 booklets printed on A4 paper.

Thanks Walt. I was going to the regular website and logging in there where it doesn't give you the Download and Products key option. I must remember in future to Google Affinity Store, not just Affinity.

I frequently produce A5 booklets of 40 to 48 pages that are printed on A4 paper using InDesign and I find that even that mature programme is not capable of producing booklets properly. The only solution I have found is to use a programme called Create Booklet. This takes a PDF and paginates it correctly so it will print as a booklet. A brilliantly simple but powerful little gem (I am in no way connected to the company).
I tried it out yesterday with Affinity Publisher and it works very well. When exporting from AP, make sure in the export dialogue you select PDF - PDF/X-4 - All Pages. And of course, set up your page size as a custom size of 148.5mm x 210mm (A5 is NOT half of A4 remember). I hope that will help anyone trying to create A5 booklets printed on A4 paper.

Now I have had time to play with the final release of AP, I am very impressed with how good it is, but there are still two deal breakers in it that need fixing before I can recommend it to the various not for profit organisations I advise. The first is the one discussed here, which I posted about in June - spanning columns. This is not a luxury as some one has suggested, but a massive time saver and aid to good layout. (The second is tables not flowing onto other pages, an even worse oversight).
I am hopeful that both these will be in future releases as there is some evidence that Affinity do listen, as long as we make our cases strongly and professionally enough. For instance, I, along with many others, bemoaned the fact that the earlier Betas did not allow images and tables to flow with the text. We were told by a staff member this was not on the road map and unlikely to happen, but there it is in the final product (or something very like it, pinning)

Now I have had time to play with the final release of AP, I am very impressed with how good it is, but there are still two deal breakers in it that need fixing before I can recommend it to the various not for profit organisations I advise. The first is the one discussed here, which I posted about in June - spanning columns. This is not a luxury as some one has suggested, but a massive time saver and aid to good layout. (The second is tables not flowing onto other pages, an even worse oversight).
I am hopeful that both these will be in future releases as there is some evidence that Affinity do listen, as long as we make our cases strongly and professionally enough. For instance, I, along with many others, bemoaned the fact that the earlier Betas did not allow images and tables to flow with the text. We were told by a staff member this was not on the road map and unlikely to happen, but there it is in the final product (or something very like it, pinning)

May I add my request for this, flowing tables, and also convert text to table. So far I have been very impressed and pleasantly surprised with the finished Publisher and have been able to reproduce most of a monthly magazine of 48 pages without too much effort.
BUT, and it is a very big but, the reason I will still be using InDesign is the inability to flow tables. Here is a real world example: In the centre of the 48 page magazine is a 3 to 4 page calendar which is sent to me as a table in Word. Yesterday the editor sent me a revision, asking for two extra items to be inserted near the front of the calendar. I inserted them in InDesign and the rows flowed across the other pages - job done. With Publisher, I would have to delete the bottom two rows of the first page and add them and their content to the top of the next page, and so on through all the pages. Not only time consuming but very prone to error.
So this is a real biggy for me, and I suspect many real world users, and I am very disappointed that you are only saying "might consider it"
Perhaps you might reconsider your approach to this? So much is good about this programme, and I have several not-for-profit organisations waiting for me to help them set up their magazines so they can publish them themselves, but I can't, alas, recommend AP just yet.
 
 
 

Hawk: The absence of inline graphics and tables makes InDesign unfit as a professional tool. So would not having the other features you mention of course. But you are creating a false dichotomy - it is not a case of choosing between essential features. If it really would take another 2 - 5 years to create a professional DTP app (where did you get that figure from?) then either they should hire an extra software engineer or throw in the towel.
The important point that I and others have made is that Affinity did not ask us professionals what was essential in a DTP app. They cite their 25 year experience in DTP (with the dreadful Serif!) but ignore the collective experience of many real world users such a myself who have been using DTP to make a living since its dawn.
Nobody expects the first iteration of new software to be perfect. (When InDesign first came out it did not have tables.) And I know I speak for others when I say we have nothing but goodwill towards the Affinity team's efforts, and that we do not wish to nit-pick. But there are certain elements that have to be in place if an app is to be seen as a viable replacement for an existing go-to app. Without inline graphics and tables (something a developer colleague assures me is quite easy to implement - even the humble Notes on the Mac has it) APublisher just becomes another village fete poster app.
Our motives for these posts is not to have a pop at Affinity, but to help them in their endeavours, which we applaud. We understand that this is a beta and that 1.0 will look different, but we are dismayed that a moderator has said this is not on the immediate feature list.
As for having the beta to play with being a privilege, I think the boot is on the other foot -  Affinity should feel privileged that there are seasoned designers out there freely giving their time to make the app viable.
I suspect that privately there are red faces over this, and (assuming they read these posts!) hope that wiser counsels prevail and that this issue is given the priority it deserves.

Well, that is hugely disappointing. I had so hoped that I, and the  people I collaborate with could all switch to APublisher. But it is not to be. InDesign it is for the foreseeable future then. What a shame. I use ADesigner and APhoto all the time, so had high hopes for APublisher. How on earth did you miss such a vital feature?! Did you consult with real world users who make their living from DTP? If you had, you would have made inline graphics and tables a must. You had a glorious opportunity to stick one to the big boys and you blew it.

I have posted on the other similar thread to the same effect. Not having inline graphics and tables is just a non-starter. I like what I have seen of AP so far, but this really is a deal breaker. I know that is an overused phrase, but it is just not possible to create a 100 page booklet with graphics and tables unless they flow with the text. Imagine you had to add a paragraph at the front of the booklet - you would have to go through 100 pages adjusting the graphics and tables, which is not just time consuming but very prone to error. So this is an absolutely essential feature and I would not even countenance using AP without it. Please pass this on to your design team.
Now I know that this feature is not in the app, I will no longer waste any more of my time testing it until I am notified that the feature will definitely be in there from the start of the finished product.
 

A bit too late now I suppose, but I think span columns is actually a deal breaker for most people. I have two days to produce a 48 page magazine every month and with out span columns I couldn't do it, or certainly couldn't do in a sensible time or accurately. Like most layout people who use two or three columns in their work, the ability to add pull quotes, span a headline and centre it, etc, and have all the text before and after play nicely, is vital. I have pre-ordered Publisher because it is not much money and hopefully they will realise how important span columns is one day. As someone else in this thread said, if they don't think it important, they have not done much serious layout work in the real world. So I will have to stay with InDesign for now. But I hope AP comes up to scratch one day as it would be great to collaborate with many of our volunteers who cannot afford an Adobe sub.

I have always found ID booklet very difficult to use and inaccurate especially when trying to print A5 double spreads on A4 paper (A5 is 0.5mm different from A4 folded in half) so I use Create Booklet. I have just tested AP in Create Booklet exporting as PDF (pages) and it works just fine. I don't have any connection to the company at all, but I do recommend this app, it is an absolute must have for me. So even if AP doesn't have a good booklet function, you will always be able to get perfect booklet layout and margin control using Create Booklet.

I have come back to this after a bit of respite from it because I do care about whether or not this software is going to be successful.
Re-reading Hawk's reply to my post, I don't want to go over old ground endlessly, but there is one important point that I think, Hawk, with the greatest of respect, you have misunderstood. It could be my fault as I have posted in two different threads about the issue and I may not be clear about what I said, where.
You imply that I am being unreasonable to expect the beta to have all the important features in it - but that is just not so. I don't expect that. I was an early adopter of Final Cut Pro X and there was all sorts of problems with a professional work flow. We were saying, oh no, where's the XML support, where's this, where's that etc, Apple are going all consumer with this. But now FCPX is superb, I wouldn't go back to Avid or Premier Pro for a big clock.
But regarding Affinity Publisher, I had a reply from (I think) a developer who told me that inline graphics and tables was not being contemplated any time in the future. Had they said - hey, we understand, it's an important feature, but we need to get the bare bones out there first - in the way that Apple did with FCPX - that would have been very different.
So perhaps you can see where I'm coming from. By all means add inline graphics in a later version, but don't say it isn't ever going to happen. Just admit that it is an important part of a serious DTP package and put it in the pipeline. As Grapher says, it really is not technically difficult. Even Apple Notes has it. In fact I can't think of a single app with a word processor in it that doesn't; the graphic is seen as just another character.
You might wonder, given that I have to have Adobe Creative Cloud anyway for all sorts of reasons, why I care about this. Well, I do a lot of work with communities and education and they can't afford an Adobe CC subscription. When I am trying to set up charitable and not-for profit organisations with a good, cheap, multi-platform, shareable, print based system for newsletters, journals, historical documents, magazines, whatever, there is surprisingly little out there. So come on Affinity, admit you've taken your eye off the ball on this one and put in-line graphics on the agenda.