Paul Mc

If I understand correctly it is a case of deleting the curve that represents the hole in each profile. If you double-click on a shape then it will select all the curves in it and also switch you into using the node tool. Then select one node on the hole curve; press Ctrl+A and then Delete.

Even though I've been using AD for quite some time now I've just encountered this issue for the first time. It had me confused. By accident I discovered that if you hold down the right-mouse button and then left-click (while still holding the right-mouse button down) on different regions they will add to the selection. I have to say that this is a strange way to do things. In addition, as has been pointed out above, the hints on the footer don't really explain how this should work. Given that there is already an established culture of using SHIFT to extend a selection I'm hoping that this is considered for a future update. In addition there is the ergonomics issue of pressing two mouse buttons at the same time which I've never come across in any other software. In Windows-land code to test for the right mouse button can be very similar to the code to test for the Shift key being pressed so I wonder if this is a typo in the source! Let's hope so 😉

I've not done this but would selectively applying lens distortion (correction) to the separate channels of R, G and B and then recombining them work? Here's a page I found which appears to describe a method that could be applied using AP. https://nightskypix.com/what-is-chromatic-aberration/

On Windows you can right-click a PDF file and select Open with > and then select the program that you wish to use in that instance. To set a default program select Open with again and then click Choose another app at the bottom of the menu; then select the program you wish to use (or locate it on your hard disk) and check the box marked Always use this app to open .pdf files.

Yes, you can create a circular crop of an image in Affinity Designer. The crop is really a mask and it is non-destructive in the sense that you can save the AD file and you could later remove the mask and it will reveal the whole of the original image. The image could be a bitmap (pixel image) or a vector design. The mask is a vector image. The whole image is stored in the AD file along with the circle (ellipse) profile for the mask. Depending on your downstream use of the cropped or masked image you may need to follow the same process of conversion to a PNG. It is hard to comment more on this without knowing more about how you use the cropped images. The performance issue is common with large bitmaps. This shouldn't be an issue within AD if you don't need to enlarge the images as you currently do. Why not download a trial version and see if it fits your workflow.

As an aside, what would be a lot better here is to add another "variable" - artboard. (Maybe filename as well?). Also, not having Page Information decided for me would also be useful. If another variable editor could be used to define what goes into the Page Information I think that would be a great addition to the Export Persona.

Hi @Dan C thanks for the response. Given I've over a hundred of these files to export now I was hoping this wouldn't be the case. Am I right in thinking that the only fix here for my situation (ATM) is to manually type the name into each slice?

Hi everyone, I'm struggling with something I think probably can't be done. I've four projects, each with 28 artboards for a set of products. All artboards are "well named" and they work well with Publisher to create client presentations. I've now been asked to send some of these to be printed. Easy - I thought! Because of the number of documents involved the printer is asking if I can include the filename of each variation in the bleed border - i.e. in Page Information. I'm struggling to get a combination of Artboard name, Slice Name and Page Information that makes sense. After lots of experimentation I'm coming to the conclusion that it is broken. Here's my setup: Each artboard is named using the product name and the "role" for the design: I've then set up a slice, prefixing each name with a brand name, with default settings with my export preset: This then creates the following header in the output PDF: No matter what I do I cannot prevent the name being printed twice in the Page Information area. Can anyone suggest a way around what's happening?

@stokerg An addition to the above, I'm now getting strange results with 1.10.5.1342 It appears that when there is a saved change to the Designer document Publisher detects the modification but doesn't update the linked document. I see the Linked Resource Changed popup message but no automatic update occurs as it did in the previous build of Designer/Publisher. When the next edit happens it pulls through the previous version. It appears to always be one edit behind. I have to do a null update (e.g. insert a space into a string and then delete it followed by a save) to force the update to catch up. Update: After restarting the program it has stopped happening. Another update: I spoke too soon. It is happening again. It seems to be a little unpredictable although earlier it was happening on every save.

Hi @stokerg Thanks for the update. The g938 file was a trace from InkScape. And, yes, it is large. I did rasterise the image once the client had decided on the size we were working to, prior to that was when the issues occurred and the version I sent to you. I think this was an exceptional case so probably not something that is likely to happen very often although well written code would not surface the errors in the way that Publisher did - in my opinion. Hopefully your dev team can see a better way to implement the test that checks that the file is closed before trying to open it for reading.

From my experiments this only works with the first character in the text frame.

Hi @joe_l Yes, the Select same ... feature is likely to be useful in reconstructing any spot colour assignments. I'm curious about what other problems you've encountered might be. The only enhancement that I'd like to see is for the Select same ... to allow for a Sub-select same ... At the moment if I have grey text on one artboard and do a Select same fill it selects all the grey text across all the artboards. It would be good if I could select same from a layer, group or an already selected set of objects.

Hi @walt.farrell sorry, I should have mentioned that I was using File | Open The full story is that I've been given a print PDF to update and I'm worried that the way that Designer imports the data means that some important aspects of it are lost. This would be less of a problem in my case if I could detect the spot colours and recreate them but even that doesn't appear to be an option. Place and passthrough might have been an option if I didn't need to modify the content.

@stokerg Files uploaded.

That's what I was worried about! I no longer have access to Acrobat to see separations where this would be obvious. I have copy which I would have expected to be spot but it appears as process which makes me think there may be other elements lurking which will print poorly compared to the previous version.

I've been given a print-ready PDF as a starting point for an update. Can I assume that if spot colours were used in the original document that they will appears as spot colours after importing to Designer?

In addition to the above I think it would be great to have some visual indication of how the brush is currently set. I've often gone into erase and found that it is set to the first Acrylic brush rather than a basic one. Maybe a persistent panel at the top of the Brushes panel above the dropdown that shows how the brush looks (along the lines of the brush "avatars" below it) and the name of the brush that was last selected, perhaps with a + added if it has been modified since selection? Although this discussion started with Photo I think that this applies to Designer too.

OK, great on both points. Thanks Dan.

Hi @Dan C thanks for the prompt reply. I would agree that the underlying document is the same in both apps. I was able to create a similar image as you. However, from the UX perspective this set me off on a weird path this morning because the viewport display is misleading. I can see what's happening: the original image is 2000x2000px @406dpi you divide by the 406 and multiply by 96 to get 472 (rounded). So my 2000px image is resampled down to a 472px square. Plus, the difference between how the apps work when displaying the image means that the extra resolution available in the source image is hidden from view in Photo because of the resampling. Where does the idea or the design decision come from that says that users must have a 96 dpi document when pasting from the clipboard into a new document? If I was pasting into an existing open document that was set to 96ddpi then maybe that's not unreasonable - however this is a new document. My expectation was that I'd see a 1:1 pixel image i.e. a new document of 2000x2000px - at any dpi as it makes no difference. If anything, because you are taking note of the source DPI, why isn't it set to 406dpi in my example? After New from Clipboard I saw a resampled image using the 96dpi formula above and document dimensions of 472x472px. The pixelation and blurriness was due to resampling the image twice (once to scale for the document and a second time to scale for the viewport zoom) not antialiasing. I think this has caused several problems for me in the past and is only starting to become clear now that I'm experimenting with this today. I would love a Preferences parameter that says something along the lines of ignore source DPI when pasting images. Additionally, a New from Clipboard as a pixel layer document menu option would be great too, assuming that would create a 1:1 pixel document from the source irrespective of either DPI and without resampling i.e. not an Image layer. Alternatively - paste as Pixels in addition to the existing paste as Image might also be helpful.

Here's a sample which appears to reproduce it. Just a bit of background: the original file was a print-ready PDF from elsewhere - sorry I don't know which software package was used to produce it. That imported fine into Publisher and then each page was extracted and then layout changed in Designer. I was then asked to "brand" the swatches with some styled graphics and hence needed to take each swatch in turn into Photo which is when the problem was noticed. To reproduce it here: import the PDF into Designer; select the swatch and copy; open Photo; File | Create from Clipboard Page 5.pdf

Any chance of that link please? @stokerg

I've just encountered a similar issue today which may be related. I'm working on a catalogue page from a PDF that contains material swatches. The PDF is 400dpi. Each swatch image is 2000px square. I open the PDF in Designer, select the graphic and CTRL+C top copy it to the clipboard. If I then switch to Photo and File | New from Clipboard I end up with a 472.4px square image in a document of the same size at 96dpi. On-screen the result is a pixelated low resolution image and at first glance it looks like the image has been resampled to a lower quality, however the original full resolution image is still there. Document | Resize document and setting the DPI back to 400 appears to solve the issue as does pasting the image directly into a new document. It is frustrating to have these extra steps. File | New from Clipboard in Designer doesn't cause this to happen.

Hi @stokerg I've now had permission from the client to share the contents however the link above has expired. Please would you send me a new one? Thanks.

Hi @stokerg Please let me get permission from the client first. It might be a few days before I can send you the files but I think it will be OK.

It does sound like the same problem. I've experienced this in the past in other software and it can be difficult to resolve. In this case, however, it is Affinity apps not playing nicely with each other which I would have expected to be an issue that would have been picked up in testing and "not let out of the kitchen"! I think that the main issue is the file write latency. It is not an atomic operation on a computer as other tasks may interrupt it before it is complete. My solution was to write it as a temporary file and rename it into position as the very last step. This then ensures that the shell notification isn't premature. From what I can see Affinity apps write in-situ i.e. they overwrite the original file.