Hilltop

The Artistic Text Tool in Affinity products is great for short amounts of text such as titles, headlines, and logos. This video is applicable to Affinity Designer, Affinity Publisher, and Affinity Photo. 
 
 

I want to be able to edit the text in one document so your approach wouldn't work for me. 

The biggest problem is that there is the chance that each (or some) of the 25 texts will have MS Word text styles that have different fonts, sizes, spacing, etc. but the same name, for example Body. You will wind up with several Body styles, Body, Body 1,  Body 2, Body 3, etc.
Make your Publisher Document and build the Text Styles you want for the finished product. Place each MS Word and use the Find and Replace to find the various MS Word styles and replace them with the Publisher Styles. Now delete the unused Text Styles and Place the next MS Word file and repeat the process. It is tedious but this will pay off in the long run.

Then you will need to manually apply Text Styles paragraph by paragraph, making for an extremely boring and long job. And as with most boring jobs it is prone to errors happening.
Text Styles are wonderful. Spend some time experimenting with them. Make a new Publisher document and paste some text in. When you make Text Styles start with a Group Style for the basic text and a Group Style for headings. When you make the Group Styles Reset the Formatting so you are starting with a blank slate. Set the Font family, the weight, the size, set the Spacing, leading ( I use Exact for a variety of reasons), left, right, first line and, last line indents. Set the space before and after. Everything else can be left alone for now.
Base your Paragraph Styles on the appropriate Group Style. Then you can further base some of the Paragraph Styles on Paragraph Styles or the Group Style. An example would be having Body Text based on the Group Style BASE and then have a paragraph style called Drop Cap and one called Initial Words both based on Body Text. Then you could have a paragraph style named Caption 1 (and Caption 2, 3, etc) based on the group Style BASE because you are changing many things compared to Body Text and you don't want to mess up Captions if you change Body Text's leading.
The way I work is to set up BASE so that Body Text can have absolutely nothing changed. Here is what I set up for BASE. Remember to Reset Formatting. It is perhaps a very good idea to also set the Baseline Grid to off while you experiment.

Now I change things that are highlighted.

I get fewer surprises if I set the Leading to Exact. But that is how I work, you may get fewer surprises with % or Multiple.

 

Take a long look at the Word documents and make Text Styles for everything you'll need. Basic Body Text and Headers. I go so far as to make a Paragraph Style for the page numbers. Do not use overrides for text. Use a Master Page(s) and name each and every item on each and every Master Page. Use names like Left Page Number, Right Page Number, Main Text Right, Main Text Left, Odd little graphic element 1, Odd little graphic element 2, etc. Link those text frames on the Master Pages which need to be linked (Main Text Right linked to Main Text Left).
Work with Double page Spreads, not single pages.
If you need to have each actual chapter start on a right hand page make a Master Page for that, make it a double page spread so the text will flow from the right to the left. Have your Paragraph Style for the Chapter heading start on a new right hand page in the Flow section of the Paragraph Style.
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Books.
I find the Books feature to be either obscure or arcane, not entirely sure which. I would use it only if the document is too large to work with. There are so many caveats that it is difficult to find where a problem lies. There will be problems.
If you have a single document then you have only one set of Text Styles. You can work with Chapters*  if all your Documents are setup from a Template so as to co-ordinate your Text Styles, and Master Pages, and the physical size of the pages. All your Master Pages will need to have no changes from one Document to the next. Sections will need to be starting from page one for each Document. You will need to make sure that each Document ends on an even numbered Right hand page and every Document starts with an odd numbered Left hand page. Toss in your Foot and End notes, your Cross references, and your Table of Contents and I am one hundred percent certain that chaos with a capital K will ensue.
I am sure I am missing other problems people (myself included) have had with the Book Feature.
 
* Individual Publisher documents, which can consist of multiple actual chapters. Meaning you can have a Publisher Book Chapter with one, three, or seventeen, chapters from your actual book in it.
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In this video, we’ll continue looking at the Vector Flood Fill Tool and how it can be combined with painting in the Pixel Persona. This is Part 2 of the Vector Flood Fill Tool series. 
 

When manually adjusting the tonal values of some thousand pictures I am grateful for every single mouseclick I can avoid.
In the levels adjustment dialog I frequently switch between the red, green und blue channel. To do so, I need to open the drop-down-menu, move to the correct entry and click again. This works in about 90% of my attempts.
If the dialog would use horizontal radio buttons, a single click would suffice:
( ) Master ( ) Red ( ) Green ( ) Blue ( ) Alpha
or, if there is not enough space:
( ) Master ( ) R ( ) G ( ) B ( ) ⍺
I would very much appreciate that!

Hi everybody 🙂

After recently buying all 3 of the Affinity programs, this was the 3rd thing I made with Affinity Designer. The other 2 were a Christmas post and a new years post for Instagram. My first impression of AD is that it has potential, but to me it still has a long way to go if it wants to compete with Adobe Illustrator. But of course, it's very difficult to get to the Adobe level, since they have so much experience and money 😅

I bought the Affinity programs to hopefully get less dependent on Adobe software, because I really don't like the 'subscription only' principle Adobe has adopted. I don't like to pay Adobe 'ransom money' to be able to have access to my own documents. And since using Adobe Creative Cloud I've had several bugs that have never been an issue back when I had Adobe software that I bought. So even Adobe isn't as good (anymore) as it should be for that price.

Most of the things I design are T-shirt prints for my webshops and since I'm addicted to designing letters (typography) most of my designs contain custom made text. This 'L' was made for Instagram only. From time to time I design single alphabet letters, to have something more to post on Instagram. I post far less than the algorithm wants, but I don't want to be a slave to the algorithm, so I follow my own rithm 😋

Is anyone else into designing typography?

✌️ Luc
 

If you tried Affinity Photo with the dark user interface you might want to try the light one. In my experience it increases legibility. Go to Edit/Settings/User Interface. There you can find also some other options to suit your preferences.

Let's go back to school, with some of those common and well known school protractors for measuring in degrees.


 

... etc.
 
The protractor assets shared here ...

... are all vector based and do have printed on degree scales. You have to adapt/size the default assets protractor sizes to your document needs and thus scale them up/down so they nearly match your doc measurements.
Note that all protractors are just a bunch of grouped/layered together vector parts (curves and text) thus they can be modified in colorings and the like. Also you should always move & size etc. a whole reused protractor group/layer when needed!
Here is the associated assets file:
protractors.afassets Have a nice school day!
 
 

I have been playing around with styles lately making a bunch for different email marketing campaigns I have been working on. I started off here on the forums to see what others have done and what is possible. In doing so, I came across a post from the pre v2 archive section of the forums from someone looking for a style to recreate an effect in Affinity Designer. See the original post here.
I think I have come close just casually playing with it and I thought I would share the style here (See attached v2 AD Style). Here is the original:

When I make styles for use with text, I like to design it with the text but then apply to a shape then save style from the shape so the font is not saved with it unless I typically use that font with the style.
Below is a single v2 style applied to a font I have called "yellowtail" (Not sure where I got it, probably w/CorelDRAW). I then added the border around the text and the tail. I will show both.
Just the style applied:

With added tail, just drawn with the pen tool with same style applied) and an underlying layer under the text.

I have attached a copy of the tail as well for those who are not comfortable with the bezier pen tool.
I hope someone finds this useful. With In AD v2 more is possible in "styles" than v1 and I encourage more "Styles" creation and sharing
Cheers!
 
Blueliner Vintage (AD v2).afstyles
Tail for Vintage Txt.afdesign

New version! I have uploaded a new version of this unofficial Publisher manual to the first post of this thread. In addition to being updated for the changes in Publisher 2.3, this version covers character and paragraph formatting, text styles, and all the other text-related features. It is 120 pages longer than the original version.
Although it's written for Publisher, most of the text features are the same for Designer or Photo so you may find it useful for the other Affinity applications, too.
Cheers
 

If you tried Affinity Photo with the dark user interface you might want to try the light one. In my experience it increases legibility. Go to Edit/Settings/User Interface. There you can find also some other options to suit your preferences.

If you tried Affinity Photo with the dark user interface you might want to try the light one. In my experience it increases legibility. Go to Edit/Settings/User Interface. There you can find also some other options to suit your preferences.

The Vector Flood Fill tool was introduced in Affinity Designer 2.1. It is a cross between the Gradient Fill Tool and the Shape Builder tool. Today we’ll look at how to use this feature. 
 

What does the mysterious brush option “Protect Alpha” do in Affinity Designer and Photo? Why would we use it? Today we’ll look at this feature (also knows as “Lock Transparency” or “Alpha Lock”) and see some demos of how it can be used to make digital painting much easier.
 
 

Ever want your design to have a more realistic texture on a surface? Displacement Maps are the perfect tool. In this video, you’ll get a deep understanding of how Displacement Maps work and also how to use them in common scenarios like T-Shirt mockups.
 

Hi there!
I was remembering this Feature request where there is a video demo of the required functionality, and while I still think this would be a great addition I asked myself: could this possibly be done right now? And it can, sort of. See video below:

Pseudo-ArcTool-Demo.mp4 As you can see, after you set the Donut Tool, you can switch between it and the Point Transform Tool to create the curves.
The bad:
You need to switch constantly between Tools There is no snapping to any intersecting line You have to delete segments to have a single line in the curved line BUT I think the good news is that:
It can be done It's fun I hope this encourages the Devs to spend some time in it given that it doesn't seem to be that far away Best regards!
 

Vector portrait of movie director, actor, visual artist and musician David Lynch. All 12 stages of progress in my portfolio blog: https://communicats.blogspot.com/2024/01/david-lynch-vector-portrait.html
In aforementioned blog I briefly explained how the effects used have been created, but I will repeat them here for clarity:
In Affinity Designer there are what Serif calls 'Vector Brushes' that actually are based on bitmap images. So, this in fact is not a 100% vector portrait. Users can draw these brushes themselves in vector format, that are exported as png-files. For almost every 'vector' portrait, drawing specific brushes have to be created, since no hair strand or pore texture in a person's face are the same. To such brushes Gradient Fills and Gradient Transparency effects are applied and sometimes they are Duplicated using Filters (below the Layers panel) that in some cases are offset, re-sized, skewed or mesh warped a little. In a number of cases it helps to apply the 3D lighting effect - highlights and outer shadows - to these brushes too. In the Gradient Tool there is an option to use bitmaps as the fill, which also is useful to achieve the desired effect. To these type of fills the same effects can be applied as used to manipulate the Vector Brush strokes.
 

 
 
 
 

 
 

 

My brother bought a new place and requested I make him a poster on human evolution using the skulls. It took a while to research and decide what would work and to weed through alternative ways to present to timeline. The images were draw  in AP and it was set up in Apub.  The illustrations separately are on 15x15" canvases and the printed poster will be 12x18". 

My little Canny Vectors app has just passed the 5,000 acquisitions ‘marker’ in the Microsoft Store which, while not being a massive number, is great for something that has only been mentioned in these forums.
Thanks to anyone who has passed on a recommendation to a friend/colleague/enemy/stranger/etc.
Thanks also to anyone who has posted a nice review/rating in the store too.
Looking forward to making it to 10,000.

i find symbols for the AWS (Amazon Cloud) on github:
 
https://github.com/cosinepi/aws-simple-icons-affinity-designer-asset/tree/master/Asset

Here are some Windows 11 color folder icons and some additional Windows icons I created. These icons can be used to replace the default icon for folders in Windows.
The folder icons were designed to match the style of Windows 11 folders, but they can be used in Windows 10.
My apologies to Mac users that this is a Windows-only resource. I hesitated to share something that can’t be used by everyone, but I’d like to make the icons available to those who may find them useful.
The icon ICO files include the standard Windows icon image sizes. Instructions are included for those unfamiliar with how to change Windows folder icons (it’s easy).


Contents of the ZIP file:
38 folder icons (ICO) 139 additional symbol icons (ICO) 12 brand logo icons (ICO) 1 instructions document (PDF) 2 preview images showing all the icons (PNG) Windows Icons.zip

Please include the option to update all 3 programs at once so we don't have to load each one and update separately.
If a user owns Publisher, I assume it can see the file paths for the Designer and Photo installs.
The updater should check each program's version and make sure D and P are at least the same version as A
 

Snapping to the bottom of the screen (that is, the taskbar), as well as snapping to the sides and top of the screen, seems natural and reasonable to me. If I want to place the panel very close to the edge, I probably want it to be placed "exactly" on the edge. Placing it behind the edge and thus hiding part of the panel doesn't make much sense to me, which is why snapping is useful.