Patrick Gilmour

@SwissEngineer I'm able to open that file without issues. Sounds like it's not the same issue as this thread is addressing. Have you tried force-quitting Publisher rebooting your Mac and trying again?

Problem persists with Big Sur 11.1 (Mac Intel)

Just to add, non-MAS version on Intel Mac (3.1 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 | 16GB RAM) is showing the same problem on my Mac running Big Sur 11.0.1 Publisher, Photo and Designer are all taking 25-30 second to launch. Previously it was less than half this.

Thanks @GarryP and @Lagarto Good to see all the different ways to achieve this. I've been using Publisher and Photo a lot (as part of a transition from CC) but haven't dabbled too deeply in Designer yet. Ultimately, @GarryP's first suggestion is probably the best use of time though!

Thanks @Chris26 Appreciate the answer and video!

Hi, I'm trying to create an old school ornamental stroke on a text frame for a book cover like, I think, used to be available back in the QuarkXPress world. I've attached an image of the type of thing I need (please excuse the lousy quality). I have all three Affinity apps on Mac. Ideally the frame would be in Publisher, but I'd be happy enough with a vector object brought over from Designer. I'm wondering what the best/easiset way of approaching such a need would be in the Affinity Apps. Any suggestions? Create a single vector and add multiple strokes in the Appearance panel? Another way? Thanks for any suggestions. Pat

Thanks for the considered responses. Yes, @fde101, an option to assign a shortcut to a “Show” method for Studio Panels is what I think is required.

Hi, While I appreciate the Affinity apps aren't clones of the Adobe apps, I don think the approach to customizable keyboard shortcuts and menu toggling visibility is wrong for professional users. I taught Adobe CS/CC for many years as a Certified Expert/Instructor and the approach used in those apps is more intuitive and productive. As an example, let's say F5 has been assigned to the Swatches panel in InDesign and Publisher. - Press F5 in InDesign and the Swatch panel will become active regardless of whether the Swatch panel is currently visible and/or active (frontmost). - Press F5 in Publisher and the Swatch panel will show/become active only if it is not visible in the Studio. If the Swatch Panel is visible but not active, for example, it will be hidden and will require a second keyboard press to make it visible and active. This behavior in Publisher is counter-intuitive and slower than the Adobe approach. Moreover, Publisher does have the right approach in some default keyboard shortcuts such as Cmd+T to bring up the Characters panel. In Publisher, if you press Cmd+T, it will always make the Character panel visible and frontmost, which is the behavior I strongly suspect most professional users will expect and want for all panels. My suggestion then: >> Make the assignable keyboard shortcuts for the Studio panels function in the same way as Cmd+T does in Publisher. Or, at least, make this a Preference so users can choose. Thanks, Pat PS - I previously brought this up in this discussion thread for Publisher.

Yeah, there's definitely something to learned—and hopefully adopted—from the Adobe panel approach. The way it works right now is far too mouse centric for power users and/or keyboard junkies, of which there are a lot in the layout world. That said, I'm midway through my first "real" Publisher/Photo project here, and I have to say I am *really* impressed and almost certain I won't be going back to CC, so kudos to Affinity/Serif!

What's strange is that the Studio Panels that have a second menu item (think 'Cmd/Ctrl+T' for Character Panel, which is in the Text Menu and Studio ) do not toggle a panel's visibility. If it's active, they do nothing. If it's hidden or not active, they make it active, which is the behavior you expect coming from Adobe's Apps.

Thanks Walt—not what I wanted to hear obviously, but good to know. I'll get used to it.

(I suspect this has been asked before but I can't find the topic after searching, so...) I've assigned shortcuts to various Panels: Layers, Swatches, etc. When I hit, for example F5, I want it to make the Swatches Panel active. However, if the panel is already open and not active then Affinity (Publisher) closes the panel and I need to hit F5 again to make it visible and active. My question: is there a way of assigning a keyboard shortcut that will toggle whether a panel is active without closing it? Thanks for any help!

Thanks @carl123 - appreciate the reply. That solution would work if all the images were the same size, but I was really focusing on a quick object style to set frame sizes irrespective of content. I suspect this isn't available in Affinity Publisher (yet?).

Thanks @v_kyr - appreciate your taking the time to reply! Wondering if any Publisher users have managed to dive deeper?

On a sheet I have 6 picture frame boxes that are all slightly different, irregular sizes and I want to transform them *all* to a single value, say, 3cm by 3cm. I can select the boxes all with the Move Tool and change the values for width/height to 3cm in the Transform panel, but this affects the collection of frames as a single entity, not the individual frames. I noticed there is an option in the toolbar to "Transform Objects Separately" but with this option enabled I can drag the size of a frame and have the other previously selected frames scale proportionally, but I still can't get all frames to 3cm by 3cm with a single action. I looked at Styles but didn't see a way to get Styles to apply box dimensions. My questions: is there a way to resize multiple objects to a single w/h value? And is there an "Object Style" feature to store this for future use in the document? Thanks for any insights, Patrick

Very true. I'm just in the habit of having the artwork size correspond to the document frame rulers. I'm sure I could get used to this, and if not I have options using the larger spread. As regards getting the dimensions of the selected PDF Page Box, the Transform panel displays all the dimensions of the currently selected Page Box, so that gives me what I need. I also noticed that there is a menu option to select which Spread to display in the content container—cool feature!

@thomaso - I think that may be exactly what I need. I can just place onto a spread size larger than the PDF in order to get the full-sized view. Will tinker tomorrow and post back results. Thanks, Patrick

One of the things I need to do after outputting to PDF is check the PDF page boxes are correct before sending to a printer. (The boxes are: Media, Trim and Crop, and occasionally Bleed and Art.) I don't need to edit the boxes, just quickly visualize them and check the numbers (dimensions). This can be done with Acrobat Pro (or PitStop Pro in Acrobat) but I'm trying to dump my Adobe subscription and move to Affinity-only. My question then: is there any way in any of the Affinity tools to display existing page box layout and dimensions for a PDF? Opening PDFs in both Designer and Publisher, I feel like the information is probably there, but I can't locate it. Any suggestions? Thanks for you time!