Pixelplucker

Right click on the object and choose Separate Curves and you will have 2 separate shapes OR choose Fill Holes and it will remove the inner shape.

Pacific Pixel has a set of macros to do spot process separations in Affinity Photo. Works fairly well but is limited in screen frequencies as it has presets for hafltone work. Another option is to use Graphic Tracer that can generate separations as well as trace files and identify fonts. GT has an excellent auto tracer that keeps matched edges and can directly send a file to Designer.

PDF, eps and ai files all support spot colors as well as overprint information. Unfortunately it seems that Affinity Publisher and Designer convert the colors from those files when they are either imported or opened. This just adds more work as we are forced to search and replace the rgb or cmyk values and swap them out with the proper spot color names. It would be incredibly helpful to be able to add spot colors as they are in the files to the documents pallet. It would also be good to support object level overprinting of fills/strokes so that traps and chokes can be preserved on export. Please add spot color export to eps files. No reason not to have that.

I can't seem to be able to open a pdf in corel that has been generated from publisher. Says file is corrupt. Opening those pdfs in Draw Plus lose the spot color info if it had any. Did a search in the code for Pantone or Spot in the pdf and it doesn't exist. example file.zip

Much of my work is spot color. If I create anything in Affinity I am unable to export the files out with pantone spot colors. All exports from PDF or EPS are converted to cmyk and pms colors are lost. I use Corel for separations but despise the softwares instability in newer versions. Am I missing something here on my file exporting? Thanks

Not sure why we are limited to warp and envelope effects to bitmaps only but it is more useful for vector art.

More often when using the contour tool I need to keep the original path as well and currently I have to copy and paste the original path to have both. Should work as Corel Draw has and Canvas has.

PDF 1.7 does support layers on export and I use that often as I put die lines etc on one layer and finish art on the layer to be printed. These layers are preserved when opening in other programs ie Canvas, Corel Draw etc. If you are losing layers in Illustrator then it is probably a setting in Illustrator or a bug. I do wish Affinity Publisher could print Spot Color separations. I have pretty much disbanded using PagePlus for any separation work as it does not support postscript level 3 and was hoping Affinity suite would pick up where that was left off. Instead we are missing many features that are essential for the print industry. Seems the software is intended for making pretty pictures rather than production. Adobe Suite is CRAP, many many years ago Adobe was a half descent company but that is not the case so I have resorted to using Corel Draw that I had used since version 1.0. I do use Affinity Photo for retouching and Designer for Illustration work and certain effects but Designer lacks envelope and other tools that are often used in designs. So are there plans on putting in Spot Color separation ability in the suite?

With fonts not being found that have same names this could be a number of things, ttf font used and system has otf or visa versa. Also fonts from different platforms such as Mac and PC. Though the font may have same or nearly similar name there may be a difference code wise. I had this issue with PagePlus, PageMaker, Quark and Corel so it isn't unique and usually resolves itself with updating Panose substitution tables over time as you come across them. I have had major issues converting pdfs that were Printed from InDesign rather than Exported where tracking and leading are all screwed up. My solution on those files is I simply delete them and tell the customer to supply them with export and include fonts that may not be embedded.

Thanks, may want to change default options so new users don't get confused.

Is there a setting to be able to see items placed on the pasteboard?

You may have problems with pdf's generated from InDesign if they are Printed as pdf vrs Exported. Recently I had a slew of InDesign generated pdf files that were not editable in any program because the font's did not embed in a way they could be edited. Characters missing, leading issues, character spacing errors, text blocks scrambled and not continuous. Adobe seems to be blocking many new fonts from Typekit from being fully embedded. I any case I highly recommend testing first before you retire the old files. There is a good chance that some may need to be recreated anyways. As far as Affinity having the import option for InDesign it is highly unlikely, Affinity is not going to even import PagePlus files which leaves many of us stuck. I wish they would reconsider and come up with a converter or import option. Marketing wise it would make the transition to Affinity line or products more enticing but with the lack of legacy support they will simply lose a good portion of their customer base that have legacy files they need to access.

Thanks that helps but hides all panels not the side ones so you lose access to the tool bars.....

I meant horizontally, can't seem to expand the work space.

Creating the styles in advance is less intuitive and awkward. In PagePlus and Quark you can simply create a headline, body copy, captions specimens and simply update an entire document by updating the style sheet from the selection. This makes approvals and revisions far less cumbersome. The way it exists now you have to go to the menu options on the style sheet and make the revision there. This is time consuming and old school reminiscent of Pagemaker. I couldn't even fathom doing a menu with the old way anymore, would drive me nuts.