iconoclast

You mean "spartanic", right? Derived from "Sparta", the ancient greek state, well known from the movie "300".

Hi! I'm not sure at the moment, but try TAB.

Did you possibly change Publisher's language-setting in the meantime? Or do you use Type-1-Fonts? Type 1 is no longer supported since some years. I don't know what happens if you use it anyway. Or did you change something with the installed fonts on your computer? I had big problems some years ago, because I installed too many fonts. Finally I had to reinstall Windows because of that. To prevent such problems I recommend a Font Manager like FontBase.

It's only a supect, I don't really know what happened. But it seems obvious that there are ligatures substituted by other Glyphs: "tt" was substituted by "É", "ti" by "Ē" and whatever by "Ğ". Possibly those ligatures were inserted automatically as you created that document, because you had the Typography-function activated. But I can't really say that. Walt's suggestion sounds promising to me.

Hi! It seems that you inserted the "ti"-ligature where it is substituted now, right? Is this the same font you initially created the text with? Possibly this font, the text actually is written with, doesn't offer this ligature and substitutes it?

Yes, of course. It was not clear to me if really only the right side disappeared. Often shortkeys are the reason for such problems. But you are right, probably it was the shortkey for only the panels on the right side.

My suspect is, that the clipart is in greyscales. So if you open it and insert a photo into that document, the photo will be in greyscales too, because it is in a greyscale document. Simply convert the document to RGB before you insert the photo, and it should keep its colours.

Possibly to hit the TAB-key would solve the problem. Maybe you pressed it by accident.

What about drawing the line with the pen tool, set the thickness of the stroke and add an arrowhead to it, then "Expand Stroke" (menu "Layer") and then add an outline?

Seems to look better, but I can't say that by seeing only that excerpt. And, of course, there is still that wrong lighting angle. By the way, there is of course, also a psychological problem, because I know that it is a composing. So I'm searching for evidences. In such cases, it might possibly help to get statements from people who don't know that. If they see that there is something wrong, then you definetly know that you should change something. And an additional annotation. In these times of HDR and oversharpening, photos often look somehow irritating and unnatural, at least in my opinion. Probably they are often intended to look that way. So possibly the problem with this image isn't as big as it seems to me.

OK, if you look at the nose of the boy on the base image, you can see, that it has a shadow on the right side (from our point of view), corresponding to the lighting on the neck of the mother. The lighting on the face of the boy comes from the front left side too. The lighting on the face you inserted comes from the front right side. And it has a harder contrast. I would at least lower the contrast.

But what was on that image before you replaced the boy? And how was it lighted? The lighting is one of the most important things in image compositing. If the lighting of the images you assemble together, doesn't match, it will always look strange, even the viewers often can't exactly put the finger on what ist wrong. It's somehow similar to assemble images with different perspectives. That would look strange too. It is often difficult to find the right images you need for that. And it is even more difficult to adapt images with a wrong lighting angle to another one. As I heard some time ago, Artificial Intelligence can do such things. Photoshop or a plugin for Photoshop can eventually do it. But I'm not sure about that. Think of, that the whole lights and shadows of the image fragment you insert, must be replaced, so that would mean, that you would need to overpaint the main parts of the image. You must be very experienced in perspective and lighting for that, to create a persuasive illusion. And in painting too. For that, in fact a graphics tablet would be helpful. But it will not do the whole job. In my experience, the best way to do such things ist to find images that fit to each other.

For me, the lighting looks a bit confusing. Bedause there is a light on the face of the child, that comes from the front rigth, while the face of the mother - and even her arm and the teddy - has a shadow on that side. The same with the linen behind the child. And the childs face has a very dark shadow on the left side (from our perspective). You inserted the child there, right? If nobody perceives it, it might be OK.

That will not be easy, I think, because the forehead and parts of the hair of the man (and even on the face and neck of the woman and in the background) on the photo are so overexposed that there is just a white area with no details and colour informations in it that could be restored by darkening this area. I'm afraid the only way to manage that is to retouch it by hand. That means by repainting that area.

No. It's the same for example with GIMPs XCF-file-format. Most image editing apps have their own native file format that gives the user the option to save the document with all the content he uses while he is working on it: guidelines, selections, layers, masks etc. That's why there is a difference between Save and Export. "Save" is for what I described, "Export" is meant to save your work as a final result. Exported documents usually can't contain guidelined, selections etc.., but sometimes they are able to save even layers. Image Viewers usually can't read this native file formats except they have plugins for it. E.g. for IrfanView, you can download a plugin to make GIMPs XCF-files readable in IrfanView. Photoshops PSD-format may be an exception to this rule, because Photoshop is the market leader.

If the mouse has sharp enough teeth... 😄 OK, your right, in that case probably the fingers or the stylus will do the job. Right?

Select the Move tool. Click on the Text layer in the Layers panel, so that it is active and highlighted. Drag the Text with the mouse. Alternatively you could also move the text precisely to certain coordinates by entering the values in the fields of the Transform panel. To prevent the map from being moved accidentially, you can lock it. Click on the Layer of the Background and then on the Lock-symbol on the top right of the Layers panel (if I remember it well).

Yes, I always forget to say that. Sorry!

Hi! The free G'MIC-Plugin has a Camouflage-Filter in its Pattern category. There are also about 560 or so other filters, so you can manipulate the pattern afterwards if it is not good enough for your needs.

I'm not sure if I understand what you want, but you can add adjustment layers to single layers and also to the group they are in. So you can adjust the single layers separately and also the group they are placed in. I can't imagine another, easier way at the moment.

Just for the case that is not clear to you: There are two important values for printing: the resolution/size of the image in pixels and the relative resolution in Pixels per Inch (PPI or DPI). The relative resolution for print should usually be ppi/dpi. You can change the relative resolution by resizing the document without Resampling. In that case, the amount of pixels of the image will not change. But if the image has not enough pixels, you will possibly not get the image size in centimeters you want or need for printing. For this you would need to resize the image with activated Resampling. But in that case the amount of pixels will change and that will affect the quality of the image. That's simply physics. Think of that pixels are only tiny squares that contain only one colour per pixel. So a pixel image is in fact a kind of mosaic. The most images you can download from the internet are too small for printing, and it is not recommendable to increase them to a print size, because they will get a bad quality this way in the most cases. Also think of that printing is expensive and irreversible. So if you want to print something, take care that it has a good enough quality and a size that is big enough, right from the start. I'm not sure if this helps for this certain case. But, by the way, if it is a Getty Image, you should remove the file from this forum, to prevent legal trouble.

Did you also try to apply the HSL-filter to a group with that several objects or groups of objects in it?

Simply place the image as a separate layer and then drag it's layer onto the text layer in the layers panel to nest it in that layer. I'm not sure at the moment if you should drag it to the thumb nail or to the right side of the layer. Just test it.

Wacom tablets and equipments are relative expensive in general, as far as I see. I purchased mine from a special offer. But Wacom has some advantages. As far as I know their tablets support the most hard- and softwares, even Linux and open source apps. And yes, I already heard about Wacom Mobile tablets. I simply forgot. I can't say if they are recommendable.

As I noticed during the last days, the start up times seem to vary. As I tested it on the 20th (see above), it took between 17 and 21 seconds for each app. But in the last days it sometimes took much more. I can't see a cause for it.