loukash

Thinking of some more: With this possibility, Affinity's Master Pages are in fact something like "master layers on stereoids"! For me, this now solves all issues I was still having while thinking about a bunch of upcoming layout jobs to transfer from my InDesign templates.

That's news even to me, being "well hidden" as an obscure context menu entry when right-clicking on a page thumbnail in the Pages panel…

Wenn es MB Air M1 sein soll, dann mit 512 GB. Keine Frage. Da du nachträglich keine Möglichkeit zum "Upgrade" hast, würdest du später höchtens bereuen, dass du nicht die paar hundert Euro mehr investiert hast. Ein Freund von mir – auch Grafiker – ärgert sich bereits seit ein paar Jahren, dass er "sparen" wollte und in ein MacBook mit nur 128 GB SSD investierte. Immerhin, für sein altes Modell gibt es offenbar grössere SSD zum Nachrüsten, aber er kann es nicht selber machen. (Und ich kann ihm aktuell nicht mal helfen, weil ich in CH, er in CZ, und die Grenzen aus "aktuellem Anlass" immer noch teilweise "dicht"…) Also muss er womöglich noch mehr für den Einbau ausgeben, als er damals "gespart" hat.

If you have Designer, you can convert any object, incl. pixel/image/adjustment/etc. layers to a symbol. Switch back to Photo, duplicate the Symbol container as many times you need and adjust its linking options as you see fit. The symbol's child layers are automatically linked to "transform", so you can edit one with the Move tool or the Transform panel and the other ones will follow. Move any other layer/object into the Symbol container and it will be automatically duplicated in all other linked symbols. Example from an earlier thread: ade_aph_apu_linked_symbols.mp4

The largest you can afford! Depending on what you're working on, it will fill up quickly. And you won't be able to upgrade it. I'm using a MacBook Pro mid-2012 that originally came with a 750 GB spinning drive. That was still a model with user replaceable components, so meanwhile it has a high quality 2 TB SSD drive inside. And I also have a vast collection of external drives for backups and "outsourced" file archives that don't require immediate access. One archive USB disc being attached to my Time Capsule, so it's always accessible in my LAN. Beside design work, I also occasionally do audio editing and mastering for a living, so free drive space vanishes very fast… The "guys from <insert your local Mac dealer>" usually don't have a clue.

That would require scripting support in Affinity. There's none. On Mac, all you can do is scripting via AppleScript's System Events a.k.a. MacOS accessibility features. Or an external macro utility like Keyboard Maestro. That works to a certain degree, as long you're only executing menu commands and UI mouse clicks. Example: Automator and AppleScript workflows can be saved as "droplets", i.e. as small apps. So whichever Affinity function can be accessed via System Events, it can also be in a droplet. In theory and on a quick check with the Accessibility Inspector utility, it seems to be possible to launch an APh macro by scripting a click into the floating Library panel. So it could even work via a droplet.

We're all eagerly waiting for this feature to be added! The hopes are on the "mythical" but eventually-to-happen Affinity v2.0, but you better don't hold your breath. Meanwhile, I'm still using Illustrator CS5 for such tasks, then copying the vector paths to Designer/Publisher for further editing. As long as AI runs on my Mac, no problem with that workflow.

Of course. Usually you would want to go with 1200 ppi. Hence the downsampling problem on PDF export: you may need to downsample all regular composite images to ±300 ppi in advance before placing them in your layout, or rasterize them in place to match the document's 300 ppi setting as the last step before exporting. Also, we can't work around the default "JPEG compression" on PDF export. It must be disabled, else trouble. These are all workarounds. If you have many 1-bit images in many documents to handle, it will be a p.i.t.a. (pain in the arm). But if you just need to use the 1-bit workflow occasionally, it's manageable. Also, sometimes it's worth to convert a 1-bit image to vector straight away; all problems solved. You can't automate that in Affinity yet – only by redrawing it manually – but there's a plenty of affordable 3rd party solutions to vectorize bitmap.

No veď čeština je len volaké západoslovenské nárečie…

A quick example for illustration: Also keep an eye on the resolution and on the XY positions of both the picture frame and the placed image. Make sure they are integer pixel values to avoid antialiasing on PDF export. But that's another (sad) story…

Export as palettized b/w PNG instead. It will be a true 1-bit image. You can then place and colorize it as if it were a 1-bit TIFF. On Mac, you can also use the built-in Preview app to convert the PNG to 1-bit TIFF if you wish, but it will often only increase the file size without much benefit. For Affinity apps, it doesn't make a difference anyway, they are fine with placed PNG. More on that in the following thread, starting here and continuing on the next pages: In fact, you can colorize any placed image by using the "K Only" option button in the context toolbar. Works nicely with CMYK images if you use just the K channel. Works even with RGB images: the K channel will be converted on the fly, albeit just as a "rich black" approximation, so you'll end up with a paler tint of the applied color. So, to create a "pseudo-1-bit" TIFF in Photo: convert RGB image to CMYK add an adjustment to make it grayscale, e.g. Levels in "Gray" mode add Threshold adjustment, adjust the "1-bit" look flatten all layers; you will now have a C100 M100 Y100 K100 pixel layer in Channels panel, clear the CMY channels content, they are now just duplicates of K export as CMYK TIFF, optionally check "resample: nearest neighbor" to be on the safe side, avoiding any antialiasing glitches You have now a "de facto 1-bit" TIFF, with the CMY channels being blank. Place in APu/ADe/APh, colorize with K Only active, behaves exactly the same as "de iure" 1-bit TIFF. ^ Edit: Forgot to mention that PDF export still remains a problem, however. Unfortunately Affinity lacks the export options how to handle 1-bit images separately, so you must disable downsampling and JPEG compression on PDF export to keep the 1-bit appearance intact. There's no way to work around that, as far as I can tell, without resorting e.g. to Acrobat to downsample any placed regular images in an extra step.

+1! +2! Unless it's a workflow you'd be using unchanged like 20 times a day, every day, more often than not it's not really worth the hassle to even record a macro because too many variables can change from task to task. To me this whole "macro" feature still feels more like a marketing gimmick, just to have "✓ Macros" in the Full Feature List.

Po pravdě řečeno jsem Čech. Slovenčinu znam skôr pasívne… To jsem tak nějak tušil, že v tomto asi bude ten rozdíl.

@lightlin, recommended reading from forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/52-feature-requests-suggestions: Emphasis in red mine.

For example, create a vector shape object of your choice, assign an opaque fill of your choice, and place it at the position in your Layers panel stack you need.

That's a limitation of the standard EPS format. This is probably because AI was saving some proprietary code with the file to keep in natively editable. Keep in mind that until some 20 years ago, AI's native file format was more or less based on EPS (PostScript) which is also Adobe's invention. They could be injecting custom code inside and get away with it just fine. That doesn't mean that other developers can easily reverse engineer it. Same as with native *.ai files: Designer can only read them if you save them in AI with the PDF stream. It's the PDF within that Designer can read, not the native *.ai format. Apparently the SVG format can preserve layers then. Good to know! I don't have Vectornator (only on my iPhone I think…) but I checked with VectorStyler which is aready positioning itself as the upcoming jackofalltrades in the vector arena: Well, no luck. And no wonder. It's just not in there in plain text for other apps to read. Yes, standard EPS is plain text. Open an EPS file in a text editor and read for yourself. When the actual EPS human readable plain text data part ends, there's this "epilog": Emphasis mine: There's obviously the layer data in binary code which only Illustrator can read.

Likely because bitmap editing is not necessarily the main focus of Affinity Designer. Before anything else, we're all eagerly waiting for more advanced vector tools and features. (And bug fixes to the boolean operations, of course.)

To je čudné. Pre mňa to funguje v pohode: ade_refine_brush_shortcut_sk.mp4

Good catch! This option can quite break clipboard exchange with other apps that would happily accept PDF clipboard otherwise. It should be smart enough to have both clipboard formats ready. Oh, been there too, some time ago…

Yep. Change any one other brush tool resizer shortcut to what you need *) while having "Apply to all" active. That's should do it until the next relaunch of the app. That said, I've never even use Refine in Designer yet. For pixel pushing, I'm always switching either to APu's Photo persona or to APh directly via File > Edit In. *) Me using Ö Ä which are at the same position on Swiss keyboard layout as [ ] on the US/UK keyboard.

Please post an example afdesign document.

This may be the first time I've used it as well. Just to test if it makes a difference.

Speaking of which, I've already noticed some weird behavior with this numerical input before in different context. Sometimes the values don't stick or round up or down weirdly; I don't remember.

OK, going by your 2nd video with the extra scaling steps, now it's "worked". But only when scaling was done numerically from the context toolbar, not when using the blue picture frame slider. An obscure bug, but a bug is a bug.

Are you using any layer effects or adjustments that would rasterize the content? Also check out Preferences > General > Clipboard > "Copy items as SVG". Some apps don't handle Affinity's SVG from clipboard well. Disabling this option will put PDF to the clipboard instead which Preview and Keynote should handle just fine.