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Because I can import webp into Publisher and use it like jpeg aso. there is no major challenge for me – it is a logistical one to remember that modifications inside publisher are not saved into the webp because "Photo" doesn't.

Interesting information – Thank you. To be honest, it does not really bother me – as I said, I have tools solving this. I am only surprised about this ignorance because it is not that hard to implement webp as (additional) export format.

I am not asking for derivatives saving Webp format images: I have several tools supporting this without the need of a batch file. They do it directly. Therefore the question was why does Affinity Photo not support webp.

Please, do not shorten sentences in a meaning changing way. I wrote »From my point of view, […]Designer I think is largely useless.« As you do, I can only speak for myself. Therefore ist absolutely correct. Sure, you can. It supports complex import/development functions, image management, ranking, sorting, organizing, … – things Photo does not have at all. I do not use a hammer because it is so nice and lovely to look at. I want to pound nails into the wall with it without having my hands hurting afterwards. Therefore, I personally put more value on the functionality of a tool than on its appearance. And as I wrote, I am aware of this » Its surface takes a little getting used to, it lacks the elegance of competitors like the Affinity tools.« (Note: The appearance is the result of a one year lasting intensive discussion between "power users" and development that "as is" is the best compromise for productivity. And that functionality is the main focus. If you have an idea how to put the big bunch of tools into a nicer surface, I am sure you're welcome. They are open for that!) But please, don't get me wrong: If I would think that Affinity Photo, Designer, Publisher are scrap I would not spend time in this forum that - at least here in the thread originally - is about improving the products. And I never would have bought them however cheap they may be offered. Depending to personal needs Designer and Photo may be enough. But as far as I understand this part of the forum we talk about improvement, not about being satisfied with things available. "Being satisfied" is destructive for me in this context. Therefore I think it is quite appropriate to compare tools from the same price range. It is also worth considering whether a nicer look can replace missing functionality or whether different target groups possibly are addressed. When I look at the advertising of Affinity, the products should definitely address the professional segment. Then, for my taste, abilities of these products should also be offered, which competitors already had 20 (!) years ago.

I switched from Adobe to Photoline (https://www.pl32.com/) years ago. Its surface takes a little getting used to, it lacks the elegance of competitors like the Affinity tools. But it offers a functionality in the pixel and vector range that is unparalleled. Especially in the functionality of the basic operations a lot can be done directly, for which other programs need "wizards" that convert data so that the goal can be achieved, while Photoline always uses the original data. And yet it remains fast. "Photo" offers some functions that are nicely solved for pixel processing. Because of the current special offer price I bought it - I would never have paid the normal price. With the "Designer", even the special offer price seems too expensive to me, when I compare its capabilities with Photoline. Only "Publisher" is really interesting (for me), because there are some things where Photoline (currently) is still lagging behind. However, what the "Publisher" offers as single functionality (DTP), is at least partially available in Photoline - but it is only advertised as a "skill". The developers don't describe it as "core competence". I have never regretted the step away from Adobe (InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, ...) to Photoline, I could do all tasks and wishes with it so far and at a comparable price to one affinity product. Honestly, I would have even thought about the "Publisher" if I had to pay the normal price. But, to be honest, the "Publisher" is also worth its normal price in any case. From my point of view, the Publisher is a good product, Photo "quite nice", the Designer I think is largely useless.

I personally never ever have written a text formatted afterwards. I always come down from a structure (headlines) into detail. Because of that I never have the need of a single format in a single place of a document – I always define a format for a semantic/structural highlighting with multiple occurrences of a type of information. This ist perfectly supported by Markdown, that leaves it to the writer, how a "##" paragraph or *emphasis* and combinations of it will look like printed or on a web page: it depends on the format connected with it. If »it gets very messy very quickly« this points to a unreflected content and/or structure of a text. I do not believe that this can be improved only by subsequential formatting. Markdown offers a strict focus to structure instead of appearance. "Form follows function" is a very successful principle.

Import/Export of Markdown would be very useful because it does not transport any formatting information as RTF, doc(x), … does. It contains only hierarchical information (plus some general format instructions like bold, italics,…). A plain HTML file (without styles, css) does this, too, but in compare to Markdown it is much more complicated. In this case it is up to the user which editor she/he/it likes to use for huge text if editing within frames is not that comfortable. If there would be an assignment to formating (example: "> > >" for three times comment indent could be a format for box, green) it could be a very stable method of text interchange – which would be helpful in multi-output scenarios (PDF, HTML, EPUB, …), too.

This ist still not the same: 3F4C865F-4F46-4BA6-9671-9C7EE3765730.MP4 It makes a difference if I change the frame or it's contents to perspective. You can see the difference by looking to the frame marks: In the video they are transformed into the perspective while Photo transformed the content into the rectangular frame and changed the content from text to pixel:

This is a completly different operation: You have to start a tool instead of operation within the layers directly with the frame. There is no option for synchronizing corners which is required for parallel shift ("moving edges instead of single points). There is no option for mirroring the move of opposite corner which is necessary to achieve without hasle a perspective modification pointing to a virtual vanishing point. Try to achieve this in Photo with perspective tool with two clicks: 6C90522A-9DE6-4CCE-82B8-074DEE46C45C.MP4

This is not only a Designer lack. It is as well required in Photo and would ease several things in Publisher. From my point of view it is a "basic tool" that should be available in all three products as a extension of the "arrow" (move) tool. By pressing a modifier key (STRG, CMD, SHIFT, combination out of them) it should be possible to move a single point (outer corners) or edges (center points) freely. This allows typical 3D transformations and aligning of objects to others.

Your example is convincing and thank you for the nice explanation. I have now looked at it from another angle: If it were a layout print and the binding was inaccurate, the same problem would arise. However, this should be more noticeable than a (very) bad paper cut of the single sheets that are bound. That is just the way it is.

Images across the bleed are not the problem. If i want to put two different images on a layout page touching the spine it looks nice, if this layout page can be printed as shown. But I need this layout page splitted into single pages. In this case currently the bleed contains for the left page a small strip of the right image and vice versa. Depending on the precision of the paper cut, this strip can be omitted: wonderful, the page looks good. However, if the cut goes into the bleed area, this strip shows up. It would be nicer if the actual picture was in the bleed, because then it ends in the spine of the book instead of at the edge of the picture on the next page. (→ I am German and try to translate the German technical terms into English –not shure wether this is always correct and clear)

this generates single pages with wrong bleed. The single pages are obviously generated from the visual content of the double sided layout instead of the page content that should define the bleed content. Because of that the image of the opposite page is shown in the bleed instead of the image of the printed page that is placed the plane below (or above with the opposite effect). One option could be to produce all pages, change the plane order, produce again and combine pages from these two processes into the required final document. But I can hardly believe that this currently seems to be the only way to achieve the required output for the pint shop.

I want to create a book with a double sided layout and "full page pictures". The print shop expects single pages. I need double sided layout because some pictures will spread over two pages – in this case everything works fine because the cut splits a single image that is tied together at the end – more ore less precise but this is a processing challenge. This is the challenge: Placing two images on the layout pages one of them will overlap the other if I want to have the cutting edge covered with the bleed overlap. All my attempts lead to a useless output: Red: Setup in Publisher Yellow: Output (1) This is the fold that shall be thread binded with single pages. (2) Left: Edge of the "odd page image" that ends with the bleed (3mm). Right: It is covered by the "even page image". (3) Left: Edge of the "even page image" that ends at the bleed, too. Right: It overlaps the "odd page image" Placing the images exactly on the spine the bleed of both pages contain the image of the opposite page. This would be acceptable if all cuts are within the bleed. But if the cut is inside the tolerance area of the page (3mm) a small flashof the image of the opposite page will disturb in the spine area. How can I achieve single page output from a double sided layout with the correct bleed content?

How I am going to proceed: I will buy Designer because it has some very nice features for (small and medium) DTP projects. The current pricing is "unbeatable" for this kind of software and: This price does not hurt. Photo and Designer do not reach the level that I expect (and require) for my projects – regardless to the price. For things to get done regarding to pixel and vector operations I will stick to Photoline that combines this very good but lacks a little bit with DTP functionality (Mac & Win). It behaves different to the usual "Photoshop clones" and other image tools but it supports everything needed for professional results. Even DTP – the only reason for Publisher is the fact that it is adopted explicitly to this type of work. Photoline can do it but it is somehow harder to achieve good results with much text and some functions are missing or not that nice implemented. But respecting to it's price this is no "brocken promise" or something basic that is missing (like in Designer and Photo). On the contrary: The available functions are much more than what you would expect from a graphics tool. And it supports webp very nice – another lack of ability missing in all Affinity tools (→ Publisher Windows can load, display and process them – surprisingly – what makes it usable for me­).

What about perspective by squeezing Trapezoidal (mirrored move of a single point): What about placing an image on an object (moving the edges of a frame indipendently): I find this neither in Photo nor Designer nor Publisher but several other tools I know. Is there something in sight (from now on time horizon of 6 month)? (Samples created with a low budget tool I currently use → screenshots from it)

I am testing the Affinity Suite currently and I am disappointed, too, that there is no webp export. Because of a Windows 10 plugin it seems as if Photo (…) supports loading webp in a quite good quality. But it is impossible to save as webp. After modifications you are always asked for saving as something different. This is "not nice" that chances can not be stored back into webp images without third party tools. Because in this case it might be better to use these tools directly. @Affinity-Development: Is there a solution in sight or will it take another five years (first question for webp in this forum is dated to 2015…) to have it implemented? This is a knockout criteria for my desicions to buy Photo & more or to choose products supporting webp natively. I do accept a implementation horizon of 6 month (from now on…). Is there something in the development queue belonging to webp open/save?

Honestly, I was really shocked about the "frame thing" on trying cross references. This is a technique I know from Quark 1.x and annoyed me. But this is more than 20 Years ago! I thought that meanwhile there was a development regarding to this because visible, content driven cross referencing is something needed in all forms of paper targeted publishing. In a book or magazine it is quite useless to know that in the PDF sent to the printer were hyperlinks. This is even more surprising because of the very good implementation of index – which is just the same thing to do except that all references are collected at the end instead spread over the text. I see the challenge of reformatting if page flow changes i.e. digits of a page reference. But this is much easier to handle as in a typical text processor by breaking the text into several frames that show "overflow" instead of moving relevant content silently on the next page. My initial enthusiasm for the publisher has given way to a certain disillusionment, because a very important aspect for me is unsatisfactorily solved by it - strictly speaking this is not a solution, but a useless construct when living references are required in a text. Despite the extremely attractive prices currently offered by Affinity, I am very undecided whether I should really buy the Publisher. I have bought so many products in the past that have ultimately failed to meet the requirements. And even cheap is to expensive if the product only takes space on the hard disk.

Hm - sometimes it obviously only takes a question from a professional to fix the error: I have no idea how it's different from this morning, but I'm not able to reproduce the freezing now. Same picture, same processing, same hardware, six attempts (as this morning…). Very strange. I apologize but I am unable to rebuilt the circumstances that obviously where a little bit more complicated as described above because of dependencies I did not see. I remember, that I tried around with brush size, appearance (begin, end) triggered by speed – but even this was obviously not the reason. I will have an eye on this.

I can confirm this reproducable: 1. Open PNG file 2. Draw some lines with vector brush 3. Undo upt to first drawn line 4. Designer freezes with last drawn vector brush selected. → Designer .8.3.641

Will you say that it's working on your keyboard (valueuble hint for bug fixing…)?

! Well hidden! Did not expect a submenu on thsi button… – Thank you.

I am currently examine AP and wonder if the properties key (typically left aside right STRG button) is not working. I expected to open the spelling list in a text frame with it but pressing the key has no effect – I have to use the right mouse button. I tried in other circumstances where a right click with mouse opens properties but pressing the properties key does not open the properties menu in any tested situation.

This is it. But a lot of PDF creators are not aware that PDF is a container with different behavior even if they look alike. This is the reason why AP offers a bunch of different setups for PDF export. If the received "container" does not contain the required information for further processing it leads inavitably to an inferior result.

I created with Affinity Designer a file with the text that is used as cross reference text. This can linked multiple times without hassle. Updating it updates the text in Publisher. Problem is as described a changing size of the contents.