Cineman

Posting this in AE threads: A real After Effects competitor is now being developed and in open beta, and everyone who is interested should check it out and encourage both developers to make sure the native file formats for Designer and Photo are interoperable with this new app. https://cavalry.scenegroup.co/ Going to be a modern design, hardware-accelerated from the ground up like Affinity apps. Pricing will be a free version and a sub version (unfortunately), about the same cost as AE or a little cheaper if you pay annually. In any case AE's major flaw is it's performance today, so I plan to use this new app instead, possibly the free version at first and then if the paid features are worth it, the sub. Would rather pay a small developer a sub than pay Adobe for single app license. Less of a clear choice if you pay more to get the suite, or if Adobe drops their single app price well below $20, but at least there will be a choice now. For those saying Resolve (or Apple Motion) are AE alternatives, they're really not. Only for certain things like design of lower thirds, keying, text animation stuff, etc. Animation and FX wise there's not much comparison, especially if one considers 3rd party plugins. TBD what plugins will be supported in Cavalry but hopefully Red Giant and others will be involved.

Posting this in AE threads: A true After Effects competitor is finally being developed and in open beta, and everyone who is interested should check it out and encourage both developers to make sure the native file formats for Designer and Photo are interoperable with this new app. https://cavalry.scenegroup.co/ Going to be a modern design, hardware-accelerated from the ground up like Affinity apps. Pricing will be a free version and a sub version (unfortunately), about the same cost as AE or a little cheaper if you pay annually. In any case AE's major flaw is it's performance today, so I plan to use this new app instead, possibly the free version at first and then if the paid features are worth it, the sub. Would rather pay a small developer a sub than pay Adobe for single app license. Less of a clear choice if you pay more to get the suite, or if Adobe drops their single app price well below $20, but at least there will be a choice now. For those saying Resolve (or Apple Motion) are AE alternatives, they're really not. Only for certain things like design of lower thirds, keying, text animation stuff, etc. Animation and FX wise there's not much comparison, especially if one considers 3rd party plugins. TBD what plugins will be supported in Cavalry but hopefully Red Giant and others will be involved.

This is one of the few areas in creative design that are best served by learning from books, IMO, more so than other types of apps like video editors, audio, 3D, animation, etc. Often the book itself will have interesting layout features that demonstrate the concepts being shown. Which books you need depend on what you're doing. I would go to Amazon and type a few simple searches like "page layout and design books" "logo design books" etc. Seek out the ones with the highest number of verified, non-one-line reviews. You should find some good stuff.

This is not an area where Affinity should try to break new ground / fix what isn't broken. Master pages should work like this: 1. When you create a new master page it isn't based on anything other than a blank page that matches the current document settings. Currently it seems any new master is built on the active non-master page. If someone wants to derive a master from a non-master page they should simply generate the empty master then copy all the objects from the other page, and paste them into the master. 2. You should be able to specify newly created pages ineherit their look and structure: from the active master page; from the last master used; from the document settings only (i.e. blank page that follows margins, color settings, etc). These could be a global setting from the panel fly-out menu, and/or per document settings. I would default to last master used and if none was used, then the standard document setings. 3. Changing anything on a non-master page, which was originally generated from a master... should NOT change the master page or any other pages that use the master. 4. Changing a master page after non-masters have been generated from same, should change ALL of said generated pages. Basically any page created from a master should be considered a one-off, moldable "instance" of that page, affecting no others unless that's explicitly set somewhere. The whole point of master pages is to control the look of all the pages generated from it, not the other way around or some permutation where you can change all master-drive pages from any other master-driven page.

Yes. Create a new master page (it will take its initial settings from the active page so make sure it's blank — sort of a weird setup IMO), then draw out a text box on the master and in the options bar, set the number of columns you want and customize. Now any page you create from the master should have that columnar setup. What I can't seem to find is the gutter controls. They're not available in the places you'd expect to find them like context menus or Text menu, AFAICT.

1. Field where we can add the number of pages. This should be grouped with the Facing Pages controls. 2. Bleed settings. I know we can get at them through the Document Setup feature after the document is created but why not give people the option to set them from the first step? If you have to add a tab to the New Document dialog to include Bleeds that would be OK by me, you could actually make it the "Margins and Bleeds" tab and group those sets of functions together. That would be a logical ordering and make the vertical height of the dialog smaller too. Either way, it needs to be there somewhere. That said, thank you for adding the Margin sync lock; I believe that was missing in the first beta.

As a former photo editor I'm going to suggest you pull back the green saturation on those leaves unless it's some kind of color matching issue? First example looks normal / believable. Second example looks like a leprechaun relieved himself on the leaves in the foreground and far background. Or possibly they were fertilized with plutonium? <g>

Everyone feel free to post your own ideas here. Good place for a catch-all thread. Here's one I was reminded of today: when it comes to editing objects set inside of table cells InDesign SUCKS. Example: If I have two columns that are 20 rows tall, each cell housing a color-coded vector object that has the same shape and scale as every other object in the other 39 cells... can I quickly click-drag (with modifier key or not) those two columns and select 40 items if I want ot change their scale or color or position all at once? No. If I select a column? No. If I select a row? No. Can I shift-selection two items in the same row but different columns? No. I literally have to make 40 individual selections and make those changes 40 effing times because InDesign's flaw was never fixed to allow rapid object updating inside of tables. And anchored or unachored shouldn't matter. Now imagine it's not two columns but 50 spread across 25 pages. What takes me 3 hours should be doable in 3 minutes! I have searched everywhere for workarounds to this but the frustation is common. There is no workaround. I haven't tried this in Publisher but for the love of the old Gods and the new, Affinity, DO NOT follow this example! I will literally never use anything other than small 5x5 type tables in InDesign again. Their workflow and refusal to fix this limitation is inexcusable in 2018. There should always be an easy way to (at a minimum) shift-click a bunch of objects in individual cells to make the change one time. Ideally you could also select entire columns or rows worth of objects.

Found it. Man that is really easy to miss / not obvious enough. They need to brighten that field outline or something. Or do what most devs do: make room at the top of the panel for it. I think that's where most people look first. I do, anyway. That matters less than making it easier to see though. Right now its boundaries are way too subtle / blend in too much.

Libre Office works pretty well. Google Docs can be OK too as long as you're not talking about long-form documents. As for Microsoft, at least on the Mac side, it seems with each new version their installers become more and more complex and less reliable. And often the initial releases are buggy as sin, despite MS having years between versions to test and stabilize things. I understand sometimes it's unavoidable (we're moving to 365 where I work) but I encourage anyone who can get away from MS office to do so.

Agreed. This is a "don't fix what isn't broken" area. To the extent they legally can, they should mimic the different panel types and behaviors in InDesign, when it comes to working with Pantone swatches and the like. Not talking about the Cloud stuff, just the basic panel types (one for books, one for the custom set you're using in the current document, etc). Also would be nice if in the book panel or wherever we have to choose from, a text search field that auto-completes so we can just type in the number of the swatch instead of scrolling and scanning.

Agree with Sandra's option 2. Flexible text selection is a big efficiency thing with layout apps.

InDesign isn't any less confusing, it just confuses in a different way. It's "global" in what it tracks but then doesn't present a UI that is consistent with a global layer list. By default, if you set up a new document and begin adding dozens of objects to the document (regardless of which page), and then go back later you will see the entire document has 1 layer. In effect, instead of giving each new object you place onto or drag across the canvas its own layer ID, it makes them all sub-layers of the default — Layer 1. You have to explicily go into the Layers panel and create a new layer and then with that active the next object you add (and the next) goes into that layer. But then the same thing continues to happen. If you don't add new layers, every page will list Page "X, 2 Layers" (in this example), regardless of what is placed on any given page. It you explicitly set up 1 layer at the start of each new page, and then jump around, the layers panel will show you only the contents of the active page's layers, but also show all the other layers as empty even when they're not (which is a little weird / not a good UI practice IMO). In terms of visual layer management, at the panel level I prefer Affinity's method because it's more intuitive in the sense that it doesn't show me all the other layers that are not applicable to the active page. The only thing that might be nice is a search field, but that requires you to name each layer in a memorable way as you go along. But yeah. I don't think InDesign's layer implementation is anything special. Kind of reminds me of Illustrator's layers which I find to be overly complicated and counterintuitive, depending on what you're trying to do. Spoiled by years of using Photoshop's layers I guess.

I saw something similar to this when I was trying to delete a text frame that had multiple columns in it. Not sure what caused it but if I just make a new frame and add type and hit delete, it does delete the most recent character. At the same time the actual frame disappears and then reappears a second later so they've got some screen refresh bugs to work out. That might be part of what's happening here.

When those controls appear in the wrong place, do they remain there even after you close the panel? If so this is not specific to the TOC and is a known UI problem that has been reported several times. They're working on a fix AFAIK.