Fixx

Affinity personnel said (at least in one case) that it is antialising artifact and is visible in exported image too. My experience is varied when exporting to PDF, sometimes it is visible, sometimes not. Any case it is a problem when it happens.

Affinity very much prefers to dither colours, even when it could optimize used colours to a palette. Thus I have found gif/png export to be quite unreliable. There seem to be no way to turn dithering off.

If "music graphics" is notation images ♫ I would prefer to stay with vector graphics. Pixel images (excluding 1-bit graphics) tend to print halftoned which may be fuzzier when printed than pixel images.

Those more forgiving programs may replace font with similar name but slightly different kerning or encoding causing problems in layout..

You are right, it behaves a little weird. You can have a stroke if you convert image to have picture frame, but altering crop after that becomes complicated (actually I could not find a way to alter). So you can crop first and frame and stroke after, but altering/cropping after does not seem to be possible. Crop tool does not work on picture frame but the whole element and thus crops stroke away too. Maybe someone has figured this out? Seems quite basic to me...

Yes, transform each is a feature I miss from other A-software. Transform each/in place/separately would be very useful. It should regard groups as objects.

Is Preferences, Tools section and Enable Canvas Rotation with Trackpad of any help?

You are welcome. Try not to take dpi too low, using higher compression should be the main tool for optimization.

Check the images. Are they 16-bit or 8-bit? CMYK or RGB? 8-bit RGB it should be. Check resolution. Consider if it is unnecessarily high and use downsample feature in export window to take it down. Add compression. If all above things are taken care of it is the only tool that can affect filesize (unless you use some more effective compression app for PDF compression - may be too exotic..)

FRV can read the composite image in layered TIFF and you can open the image from FRV to Affinity Photo (found out FRV assigns automatically a handy key command when you add Affinity to editor list). No problem here, but using Affinity layered TIFFs as work format may not be ideal.

Possibly View > View Mode > Clip to View, but actually it does show bleed content either way, clip mode just clips objects outside bleed. If you use artboards all extending outside artboard is hidden always, it seems.

Now if we could also toggle the behaviour with a simple modifier key when using marquee ... *wish*

Probably just that devs think you should use a dedicated tool (crop tool) for the job as it does usually better as it is adjustable the way selection marquee is not.

Make your text frame and use the text frame palette to adjust amount of columns, gutter and column widths. You can also just drag gutters to desired positions once you have enough columns.

I think Lulu should handle vector content in its printing service just ok. No need to go pixel images.

I is just too easy to get Publisher to halftone the image if you use greyscale, RGB or CMYK image. Halftoning will make edges look soft. I have heard it is possible to make Publisher honour sharp edges without halftoning but it looks risky technique. In adobeland using 1-bit TIFF would solve this problem but Publisher does not support 1-bit graphics.

TIFF is not going to give best quality if end product is printed matter. If end product is meant to be used as digital only, it does not matter, TIFF is good as long as resolution is right (we use about 140 dpi in our online products). This assuming the graphics are notations etc black&white graphics. You can shave a few megabytes using greyscale images instead of RGB. Normally I would export PDF from music app, open that in Designer and copy paste items to Publisher (if items are smallish). If they are larger (page size) I would check them in Designer and import either as Designer of PDF files o Publisher. It is though known that Affinity has had problems with PDFs produced from certain notation apps.

If scans are text only best printable version would be 600 or 1200 dpi 1-bit bitmap. Unfortunately Affinity does not support 1-bit files.

If OP was referring to ProPhoto RGB colour space which is indeed selectable in Affinity. Should be no problem. PS CS6 works much better with Mojave than CS5.

As said, do not use screenshots but save/print webpages as PDF and use them.

Draw them manually (easy if stickers are same size) or export each to PDF with trim marks and import hem to a new document (you may have to select page box to show bleeds).

If Affinitys are from Mac App Store and you have same Apple ID in both machines, just go to MAS and download apps. If you bought from Affinity shop, go to your account at https://store.serif.com/en-gb/sign-in/?r=%2Fen-gb%2Faccount and download apps and use the product keys you have.

Have you tried saving as PDF from solidworks if it gives better results?

OK yes... it is possible. Most of the time I end moving the crop are though, not drawing a new one. I cannot quite pinpoint how to select behaviour.

Crop tool behaves very similarly in PS and AP. Both start with full area (no crop). In PS you can draw a new crop area, in AP you have to adjust he one you have onscreen. PS adjusts view when adjusting crop, AP stays as it is. PS crop is destructive, in AP you can regain cropped pixels by readjusting the crop later. I guess there is something else going on if crop tool does not behave as expected.