benged123

Just want to thank you Mike, for this. I was asking in a different post for exactly this ... dumb me ... not remembering you had already responded in an earlier post. I've used exactly this and am finally sending the document to LuLu.com. I'll report back if they have anything to say that doesn't dovetail with your recommendations above. And thank you again!!

I apologize to Mike Loader. I just read the appropriate page in his Expert Guide to Affinity Publisher. Very helpful. I think a lot of my questions above answered. But it would still be comforting to hear any other suggestions from the enlightened.

So much to learn. I think I've got the document prepped right, using the one-pager template from Lulu.com. I'm outputting the final PDF. I see Affinity is giving me LOTS of choices in the output. Here is a screenshot of my choices, and the ones I've ticked off (some were already ticked off by Affinity, left them as they were) ... the one key choice was 'Area', default setting being 'All Spreads'; I changed this to 'All Pages' coz I think that's what Lulu wants. (Would like to know if it makes a difference, because I've see other POD sites requesting 'pages' rather than 'spreads'.) I set the 'Rasterize' to 'Nothing'. There is only text and black and white photos in the document. I had set the document itself at 300 dpi. Some of the photos in the document were 400 or 600 dpi. Do I want to downsample the photos that are higher than 300 dpi? Or just leave them as is. I think I added dpi (in Preview) to some of the archival photos in the hope of getting more of, or holding, the resolution. This is a book of short stories with archival photographs. Printed on their best paper stock, but wanting to keep the text like what one would find in a good quality hardcover novel (but not glossy like a tabletop photo book). Any advantage to making the document more than 300 dpi? Or outputting it at more than 300 dpi to PDF? All ears ... Ben

Your English syntax seems to be pretty much impeccable Oufti. Si je pourais écire en Français comme ça, je serais pas mal content. Thank you for this, especially the reference to Acrobat Reader ... I stopped using Adobe awhile back and wouldn't have thought to use the Reader to analyze what I'm sending out as a PDF. I'm about to explore your suggestion at this very moment. Merci milles fois...

Oufti, fantabulous!! It would have taken me forever to find that. Very much appreciated. I will be using it tonight.

Wonderful responses gang! Very helpful. I'm thinking I might just find some symbol-like text from the Times New Roman of the main body. These are just markers for the chapter ends. But if I use these ... which I probably got in 'symbols' and I SEE them in the output PDF ... any chance they might disappear on the way to the printer? I'm planning to embed all fonts/symbols in the PDF. I think it's already happening automatically as that's the way I set up the document (everything embedded).

There is only one thing coming up when I check the preflight before outputting. It says there are missing characters ... only the characters are there in the document, I can see them. What might this mean? What should I do?

Thank you Alfred, I'm going to study this for a bit. Very thorough ... and very much appreciated.

Just wondering -- if I want to keep the final file/format as a vector format ... is there a particular format that doesn't rasterize the image, but that can be brought into MS Word?

Love it! Thank you David. 'understand the difference between Masking (raster) and Clipping (vector)' ... this was the clue I needed, ha, and what I've been trying to understand this last day or so. Distinctions. Very much appreciated. I'm going to take a break to unfry my brain, then I'll try it.

Thank you David in Ruislip. Intriguing. Will contemplate. This may be a bit beyond my skillset (eg. 'nest the shape into the clipping position' is like a foreign language to me). I think I'll have to do some Googling to be able to follow your directions. But I will....

Aha!! Thank you kindly thomaso. I've got it now. Do you know if there is a way to keep a record of the colours chosen? E.g. in Pages, or even in Affinity Photo I think, wherever one selects a colour there is an included drop down that allows one to save a colour. So, in this case, when I'm trying to match the fill with the stroke gradients ... I don't have to copy down numbers, but can just choose with a click a previously chosen colour?

Hey Thomaso, I'm trying to use your 'assign gradient to fill and to stroke' method. I can easily get the gradient to fill on the text ... but I don't know how to 'assign' the gradient to the 'stroke'. I can't quite figure it out by your graphics. My setup seems slightly different, or I'm not understanding how you did your graphic? See attached for my setup.

I used Affinity Photo to select object in image and then remove background ... that's where i'm getting the jagged edges (on the object). I don't know how to NOT get those jagged edges. Or how to smooth them after-the-fact. In Affinity Design I can automatically work in Vector Mode ... but I've never done any editing (or selecting or removing backgrounds). Don't know if one can edit photos in Vector Mode.

I don't know if this is possible, but I selected an object in a photo, removed the background, and want to bring the object into another photo... and want to be able to do it so I don't have jagged edges? Is this possible? I'm also working with AfDesign ... so I could ostensibly work with that too. See attached example. This is the object I want to move into another photo ... but without jagged edges.

Yo thomaso, Okay. I'm just starting to try this now. Two things: would your way allow me to export without rasterizing? And ... can I output some format (that is not rasterized) that can be read by MS Word? Or PowerPoint? I think they are working in Word and mastering out as a PDF. Ben

Lovely movie anto. Zing zing zing! Terrific. Am using the technique this morning. With thomaso's suggestion I now have 3 ways to do something I thought would be impossible to do. I'm a really happy camper. Thank you anto and thomaso!!

carl123 ... got it ... this will be a totally new file. Thank you. So all is cool. And my first try with the Designer. I use the other two apps quite a bit, more so as time goes by.

I'm up in Canada. $94 CDN I think. Totally worth it. Going to get it now. Thank you for your help RC-R, really very much appreciated. Going to follow up now.

Hey Alfred, I checked that page. But I already have the other two apps, so I don't need a 'universal license'. I think the Afdesign V2 is only $100 by itself. Which is terrific actually. I love owning an app. I hate subscriptions. But was just wondering if, somewhere obscure, there was a price for 'upgrading'. Ha. Actually, I think I'll just get it. I'm becoming a big fan of Affinity.

Fantastic firstdefence! As soon as I upgrade I'll do what you suggest. Quickie question. When one upgrades to V2 does one just pay the full price (about $100)? Or is there a 'special' upgrade price? It's not clear on the website. I sent in a support ticket ... but am ready to do this tonight. RC-R, I'm working with others. Is there a format like PNG (et al) that would work easily with their 'MS Word' or 'Powerpoint'? Or could they pull an SVG file into their project and be able to use it? A non-raster format that would stay really crisp? I don't know much about graphic formats. I think for this project they are putting things together in Word and making a PDF for final output.

firstdefence ... i couldn't open your file coz the Designer I had was the previous version. I'm going to update it to V2 when I get back later in the afternoon ... I'm very curious to see what you've done. Will report back.

Absolutely amazing thomaso ... thank you thank you!! I'm rushing out the door to a meeting, but the first thing I'm going to do when I get back is follow your instructions. I'm a happy camper. This is an important project and I was grinding my teeth thinking I couldn't do this. Will report back once done.

I can do that? I'll have to figure it out. But if you say it's doable, that's a big inspiration to try, thank you. Any hints on how one might do that? I Googled it for half an hour last night and couldn't find instructions or a tutorial.

Hey firstdefence ... I'll check it out. I'm updating my Affinity Design at the moment. Very curious to see what afdesign is like. Getting nominally fluent with Affinity Publisher was a bit of a teeth grinder. Will report back ...