Slashee the Cow

I've got something I'm looking at designing and 3D printing some accessories for, but I need to make sure my designs don't get in the way of anything on it. I took a diagram of the layout from the manual and have been working up guides to delineate these areas: The problem is that as far as I'm aware, the only way to see where a guide is is by grabbing it and dragging it a little so its position comes up. I know there's the guides window which displays all of their positions, but it can get a bit crowded and hard to figure out which is which when you have more than a couple. So is there an easier way for me to see where these guides are, like just displaying their positions next to them or something? Or am I mooing up the wrong tree to begin with?

@lacerto I'm running 2.1.1 on Windows 10 (latest updates) Tried replacing my (rather long file) with your basic one on my document, same problem. Tried again from scratch, setting it up basically the same as the one I'd done... worked! Start scratching head. So what's different? Eventually hunt around enough to notice that the picture frame is a child of the data merge layout, but not a child of the table I'm using for the layout. Cut, put cursor in first table cell, paste. Generate. Hooray! It's broken! Did a little more testing. Still broken if the picture frame is in a text frame. Works fine if the picture frame (not in any other container) is in a group. Works fine if it's in a layer. Doesn't work if it's in a text frame in a layer. TL;DR: Problem seems to occur when picture frame is a child of some kind of container (table, text frame) inside data merge layout. Try moving its layer so that it is a direct child of the data merge layout. No idea why this happens... which I guess is why I don't work at Serif.

Heya folks! So as I mentioned in the post for a different question I wrote 15 minutes ago, I'm working on a document I'm going to use with a data merge. There's an image for each item, stored in the input file (JSON, if it matters) using relative paths (in this case images/702366.jpg for example). When I use the preview in the layout document the images show fine, but when I use the data merge manager to generate the output file, all the picture frames are empty. Any thoughts or obvious things I'm missing? Edit: Just noticed in preflight for the generated document, it's full of this error: "img_local_url" is the name of the field in the JSON file that contains the relative path.

Hiya! I hope the title says it all. I'm doing a data merge and the fields are inside table cells. In rare cases the text is long enough that it's overflowing the cell and being cut off. Is there a way to make text automatically scale down to fit a cell when needed?

Hey everyone! So this sort of a two parter, and the first one isn't strictly under the purview of this forum, so I guess you don't have to help with that part if you wanted to (but I'd like if you did!) In case it wasn't obvious (just look at the username) I'm sorta mad about cows. And drinking vessels that can contain milk. So to get to the point, I broke one of my mugs but I love the design on it, I want to have a copy of that (odds it'll be used as a desktop wallpaper: decent). Like most mugs, this one isn't flat, so I'm not really sure how to best photograph it and then how to best warp it. I also have some cylindrical mugs which I'd love to get the designs off (there are a couple of broken ones somewhere around here, but a whole one was a whole lot easier to find. I haven't been trying to work on those particular photos, just a couple of quick snaps with my phone to illustrate the mugs in question. So, with as little further off-topic ado as possible: Question 1: How to get the glamour shot? Don't worry, I'm not one of the people so delusional that they think they know everything about photography just because they bought an ILC. The bad part of that is that I don't know everything about photography. I know a tilt/shift lens may or may not be useful here, but it's a moot point since I don't have one. What I do have is an a7 iii with 18mm, 50mm, 24-105mm lenses and a 105mm macro lens (not macro only; actually a great general purpose lens when I need something that long). Also have flashes (both regular and ring) that I'm not afraid to use. And for what it's worth, a Canon G7X and my phone. Any hints on what's the best lens to use and how to shoot it or anything? Question 2: The one about Affinity Photo (warping, or not, this is why I'm asking for help) I've taken more front-on shots of them (just took the above ones quickly to better illustrate what I'm working with) and played around with the mesh warp tool, and a little bit with the perspective tool, and all I can make are warped pictures which look like they should be in a modern art exhibition. My excuse is somewhat reasonable (very little spatial reasoning ability due to developmental problems) but I don't need an excuse, it's just something I can't figure out, so if anyone could help me, that'd be great

Yep, it fixed it. Thanks everyone for all the help. And double thanks to iuli for the video and illustration.

@iuli I'm sure your video is great, but when I try to watch I just get redirected to a page that says "We could not locate the item you are trying to view.". Don't know much about the Affinity forums myself, so if you (or someone else) could tell me what's up with that, I'd be thankful.

Umm. Sorry if that title isn't great. I couldn't think of a better way to word it. Anyway the problem is I created a picture (in this case, a teddy bear) out of curves: I'd like to be able to colour in individual sections like this (without rasterising it and using the paint bucket like I did for this example): But the whole thing is sort of a mess of curves, e.g. for that part of the face, it uses all of these: Is there an easy (or hard, as long as it works) way I can get just the perimeter for each enclosed area as its own shape, so I can just set the fill for each area? I can't just rasterise a high res version and fill each area, because I need curves, preferably individual ones for each area, I'm intending to use this for 3D printing (which means I'll probably have to export it as an SVG, but that would just be a bunch of closed curves anyway.... I hope). Thanks in advance for the help!

+1

+1 from me!