h_d

Code-a-lay-hee-hoo!
 

Code-a-lay-hee-hoo!
 

Thanks for your help but after a lot of trial and error ( and wasted time) I have found that despite Affinity's claim of being OK for Mac OS10.9 this is not strictly accurate.
I have been working with an iMac 10.9.5 (because I still need access to Adobe CS6 and like the bigger screen) and am finding Affinity items that this mac cannot handle. Much of it seems to work OK but so far all para indents are a no go and it seems to be likewise with trying to get double digits with the drop down facility.  Possibly other things will emerge in future.
I have installed Af Pub on another laptop with OS 10.11.6 and Drop Downs and Para indents operate correctly. Sorry for having wasted your time guys

You're viewing the image at 18% (approx one-fifth its actual size). Press Ctrl-1 (for Windows) and then increase the noise as required:
This is 18% with your noise settings:

And this is 100% with the same settings.

 
 
 
 

Code-a-lay-hee-hoo!
 

Hi @unformedehb and welcome!
Enabling auto-hyphenation in the Paragraph panel will help the spacing in the second example.

You can also use the Justification settings in the same panel to adjust word and character spacing.
To align the upper-case "I", you can use the Optical Alignment settings in the Character panel. Set to manual, add the letter, increase the left alignment gradually:

As far as I'm aware, the only way to close up the space to the right of the "A" drop cap would be to place an invisible (no fill, no stroke) graphic object with a run-around and then overlay a separate letter A with Ignore Text Wraps set in the Text Frame panel:

        
 
This of course makes the text slightly less amenable to editing. 
Plus a bit of free proof-reading: it's "colour palette", not "pallet".  
 
Hope this helps!
H
 
 
 
 

Works fine for me @R C-R (Photo 1.9.0 & 1.9.1.219, macOS 11.2, MacBook Pro 2018). 
That is until I enable 

Cheers,
H

If you use the Data Merge Layout tool to draw up the layout, you can set the flow order using the buttons in the Context Toolbar:

 

 
Cheers,
H
EDIT:
Just realised that @sweethoss was asking how to create an 'unbalanced' layout with eight cells down the left and four down the right. This appears to be possible by creating two single-column data layouts on the layout page, setting up the text frames, images and fields in the first one, and then duplicating the text and image elements to the right-hand data layout. On a very brief test, this flowed the info as required.
One page, two data layouts, five rows on the left, two on the right:

My data is in numeric and alphabetical order, so is the generated document:

Not sure if this is a documented feature but it's pretty damn clever 
 
 

Publisher's data merge needs a structured/delimited data file such as .csv, .tsv, .xsxl. It doesn't read tagged text. You would need to construct a structured data file from the documents that people send to you before you can import it as a data merge into Affinity Publisher.

Hi,
Many thanks for the guidance. Now loaded successfully.

Hi @PaulWall and welcome!
You have to have a document open before you can drag in a stock image - either a new blank one or an existing image of your own. Dragging from the Stock panel into an empty workspace doesn't create a new document.
Hope this helps,
H

I think what you're asking for isn't actually a data merge (which is typically used with structured data from a spreadsheet or database to create bulk mailings/form letters/labels etc etc). What you actually want is the ability to embed inline graphics (horses, planes, harps etc) in the text flow?
If so then I'm pretty certain the answer is that there is not really any way of automating this: Affinity Publisher doesn't have any straightforward way of importing or modifying tagged text .  It is possible to embed graphic documents into the text flow, but as far as I can see this would only work as a manual one-by-one cut-and-paste process. If on the other hand the graphics were characters in a specialised font, it might be possible to code them.up as character styles, but you'd need to use some mind-bogglingly complex search and replace routines to process the imported text.
(And you're not at all annoying...)
Cheers,
H

Hi h_d,

This is not intentional - it is an issue we're aware off and with development to be fixed. I'll get your comments passed over.

Thanks h_d, that's pretty annoying. I'll pass this over to dev—cheers!

Hi,
I export an image,  I show the Export Preview, I press Cmd+ or Cmd- to zoom. The default system alert sounds every time I press, although the preview image does zoom in and out as it should. Sounds a bit weird...
Cheers!
H

Hey h_d,
Thanks for your feedback.
The Export Preview was pulled from Windows as it will be undergoing some improvements and I suspect this will happen on macOS too. Thank you for the feedback.

Hi,
A few niggles (and a bug) with the new export preview.
1) It is overlapped by floating Studio panels:

(They can of course be dragged out of the way, but it would be neater if the export dialog and preview were modal.)
 
2) The preview overlaps the export dialog:

(I think that may have been mentioned before, but I'd also point out that it's made more awkward by the fact that it's not possible to reposition or resize the export dialog itself. On a 15" laptop screen I can't get any decent magnification on the preview window without completely obscuring the export dialog.)
3) While displaying the export preview, keyboard shortcuts affect the image that is being edited. For example, if I display the export preview and press Cmd + in the hope of enlarging it, the image I'm editing is enlarged but not the export preview. Worse still, if I press Cmd-w in the hope of closing the export preview, the main image closes (with a save dialog if there have been edits since the last save). This leaves me with the export preview and export dialog active, but no image open:

If I then click the Export button in the export dialog, I get a save dialog for an Untitled image. If I click Save, Photo Beta crashes immediately. This is repeatable behaviour.
With apologies if I'm going over old ground...
H
 
 

Hi,
A few niggles (and a bug) with the new export preview.
1) It is overlapped by floating Studio panels:

(They can of course be dragged out of the way, but it would be neater if the export dialog and preview were modal.)
 
2) The preview overlaps the export dialog:

(I think that may have been mentioned before, but I'd also point out that it's made more awkward by the fact that it's not possible to reposition or resize the export dialog itself. On a 15" laptop screen I can't get any decent magnification on the preview window without completely obscuring the export dialog.)
3) While displaying the export preview, keyboard shortcuts affect the image that is being edited. For example, if I display the export preview and press Cmd + in the hope of enlarging it, the image I'm editing is enlarged but not the export preview. Worse still, if I press Cmd-w in the hope of closing the export preview, the main image closes (with a save dialog if there have been edits since the last save). This leaves me with the export preview and export dialog active, but no image open:

If I then click the Export button in the export dialog, I get a save dialog for an Untitled image. If I click Save, Photo Beta crashes immediately. This is repeatable behaviour.
With apologies if I'm going over old ground...
H
 
 

I watched the video you referred and the process of setting up an Excel data file described there seems almost identical to what you do with Affinity Publisher. It requires a .csv or tab-delimited text file with a header row. The only major difference I can see is that you don't have to go through the shenanigans of typing an @ character in the header for linked images. If the data file is in the same directory as the images, then just the image name seems to work. Otherwise, as hinted at but not really explained in the video, you can include full paths, which could be quite cumbersome.
This is a grab of a dummy .csv file I've been using to try it out, created in a text editor but the principle is the same as in Excel:

(I would stress that this is dummy data, not real names and passwords )
I wouldn't want to add more about the data merge process here as it's still in beta and it may change/improve before release. But generally speaking I've been pretty impressed.

Here's one way of approximating a graduated ND filter. I'm sure there are others.
 
1) Create a new pixel layer above the background layer. I renamed mine to Gradient.

 
2) With the Gradient layer active, select the Gradient tool and drag it from the bottom to the top (hold down the Shift key to keep it vertical). This will give a white-to-gray gradient on the upper layer, and your boat will be temporarily obscured.

 
3) Change the blend mode of the upper layer to Colour Burn .

4) With the gradient tool still selected you can now start refining the effect with various settings. For example, you can move the top and bottom handles of the gradient slider up and down to make the gradation more or less defined. You can even drag the handles outside the image, although if you bring them too close together you will get a noticeable line. If you click once on either of the gradient handles you can then change its colour in the Colour panel. Changing the grey to black will give a very strong result. Other colours may get you some pretty nightmarish results:
 

 
You can tone the results down by adjusting the Opacity of your Gradient layer:

 
You can also experiment with different blend modes, and you can refer back to the original image by temporarily hiding the Gradient layer:

Once you're happy, save this file in .aphoto format (so you can edit it later) and then export to your preferred final image format (.jpg etc).
Hope some of this helps!
 

I suspect it may be a question of creating a circular logo and then importing it into the 3D Vista 360 panorama image. But as for size, image file format, colour profile, transparency - I'm in the dark and 3D Vista isn't very forthcoming about the details in their tutorial.

It wasn't fixed for this build (1.9.0.206) yet.

Not easy if you want to edit the text afterwards, but if it's a short phrase you could:
Create each letter of the phrase as a separate layer of artistic text and adjust alignment and spacing as required'

 
Place the images in the document and then clip them to the individual letters:

(Cats from Unsplash).
IMO this makes it slightly easier to adjust the images to fit the letterforms, while retaining the ability to edit the individual letters of the text.
 

Hi @K Marie and welcome! It may depend a bit on where you bought your software from, but generally the procedure is pretty seamless. When you start up your new Mac you'll be stepped through the transfer process which will include options to duplicate application files, user settings and files, passwords etc. It's all handled by macOS Migration Assistant. Your Affinity licences should cover multiple Macs (as long as they're for personal use). 
The only thing I've found is that the migration process can be quite slow - two or three hours seems common, especially if it's running over wifi, which it will need to if you're moving to a laptop, as they don't have built-in ethernet. So give yourself plenty of time 
Cheers,
H

It sounds as though the paragraph style is set to align to the baseline grid. Try unchecking this setting:
 

Cheers,
H