JuSchu

First, yes I know that if you double-click the size handle the text frame automatically resizes to fit the text. Also, if I want to have a text that is not restricted to any text frame I could just use artistic text. But there are still problems without a dynamic size option just like the one in InDesign. Most obviously it's just more convenient to tell the text frame to dynamically resize to it's content than double clicking the size handle every single time. When I want to give the text a colored background of course, I want to have a margin between the text and the background. You can only have this margin with a text frame and not with an artistic text. An artistic text automatically sets its with AND the height. You can't tell it to only set the widht OR the height. You can't just click the size handle to resize the text when the content of the text frame is not text you manually enterd but a field (Text->Insert->Fields or View->Studio->Fields). The lenght of that text can change, so setting the text frame to a fixed size, manually or atomaticcaly, isn't a good idea. Here's a use-case why we need a better solution. I was using named sections in my document and I wanted to show the name of the section in the top left corner of the pages. So I made a master page and there I put a text frame and inserted the section name as a field. Of course, on the master page I only see the placeholder "<sectionname>" and when I double-click the size handle, Publisher will set the size of the text frame to the size of the placeholder, which doesn't make any sense. When I look at that text frame on the actual pages the size is always the size of the placeholder, no matter if the actual section name is longer or shorter. I wanted it to have a colored background to be more visible. That's why I couldn't just use an artistic text. I could still set a colored background there but I can't set a margin between the text and the border of the colored background. That way the text looks like its squished into that colored rectangle. So how to make it better? Basically just like InDesign (or even better). You can tell the text frame to have a dynamic size which depends on its content. You can choose between no dynamic size (default), only height, only width, height and width, height and width (keeping the aspect ration). You can choose if when resizing the left/top, center, or right/bottom will have a fixed position. You can set a minimum height/widht. Perhaps a maximum height/width also would be a good idea. You can choose to have no line-breaks at all.

There needs to be a non-destructive live filter for the deform filter. There already are a few distortion filter as live filter version, but the deform filter is really hard to get right on the first time when you're using many pins. When something is hard to get right on the first time it needs to be non-destructive. Also, I think it's the most versatile distortion filter and the one which gives you actually the most practical use in compositings when you want to bend an object into its place. Meanwhile, there are live filter versions of something like waves, where I really don't know when you actually need this. It also would be nice to be able to convert a layer into an embedded document without having to save it as a new file. Photoshop can already do this. You can just right-click a layer and convert it into a smart object.

In Photoshop there is the the puppet warp tool to deform an image by moving pins around. It's great if you want to put an object into an compositing and want to bend it in a way that everything fits. Affinity Photo has the same thing under "Filter -> Distort -> Deform". I really like that you can see the original position AND the deformed position of a pin. You can't see that in Photoshop. However, in Photoshop the puppet warp is non-destructive as long as you use it on a smart object. In that case, you get a puppet warp entry below the smart object in the layer panel and when you open it you see all your pins right where you left them. That's really essential. We don't live in a perfect world where we get every operation right on the first try. In reality, usually you notice at some point that it still is not the way it should be and you tweak it. When you do a new deform over and over again you will lose quality over time. So please add a non-destructive version of the deform filter. For example, as a live filter right next to the perspective live filter.