PaulEC

I've never used it myself but it might help, (it has nothing to do with Affinity!): https://www.amnh.org/research/center-for-biodiversity-conservation/research-and-conservation/biodiversity-informatics/software-counting-images-open-source

Margins are just guides, you can ignore them if you want to. However it does tend to look better if there is some white space around the page content, like your map, and obviously it shouldn't be so close to the page edges, especially the binding edge, that it could get cut off when printed. Bleed should be extra space around the page, to allow for trimming when the book is printed and bound. If you want an image to go right to the page edge it should extend into the bleed area, but with something like your map it should not extend into the actual bleed area, as this will normally be trimmed off.

It's an interesting idea, it would be useful if it was also possible to draw an accurate, true, circle, rather than the slightly deformed one that you get with the ellipse tool.

If the scale is set to 100% and the document you are printing is the same size as the paper you are printing on, (or the same size as set for a PDF,) the bleed area, and any printers marks will be outside the area that is printed. If you use "scale to fit", the page size will be reduced so that the bleed etc fits on the paper. If you want to keep the page at the correct size, and show the bleed/ printers marks, then you need to print on a larger size of paper. (Which is what commercial printers do, and then trim the paper to size.) N.B. You can't set "scale 100%" and "scale to fit" at the same time, if you set "scale to fit" then "scale 100%" is greyed out.) Borderless printing is fine when you are printing on a domestic printer, to put something in a frame or in an album, but you would not normally use it when you are including a bleed area for professional use.

Hold Shift when you open the shapes.

They are similar, but the Quick Petal Shape seemed to be more versatile, especially as you could adjust the "petals" to overlap each other to make "pretty patterns"!

If you save as an afdesign file it will keep the guide lines. However, if you want bleed areas and cutting marks etc, that is usually done by exporting as PDF and including these in your design.

It was quite versatile, you could also use the Petal QS for more complex designs, (here, with a couple of circles behind to fill in the "holes" in the "petals"). I doubt if you could do this with any of the Affinity Quick Shape Tools. (Of course, you probably wouldn't want to, but that's beside the point 😄)

If you are applying the style to something with a hole it can help! I'd agree that it would be nice to be able to choose the icon, but, whatever it is, you're never sure exactly what a style will look like until you apply it to the actual shape that you're using!

I'd rather have a Cat than a Cog any day!

Draw the gradient, change the colours to the specific ones you want - can't get much simpler! ice_video_20250613-021507.mp4

As far as I can see, the lack of information about how Affinity software may develop in the future does not affect how it works now. I use the Affinity suite because I like it and enjoy using it. Yes, I'd like a few new features, some changes and some bug fixes, but, on balance, I still prefer it to any comparable software. If I don't like v3, when it comes, I'll stick with v2, that's my choice, (just like some people chose to stay with v1). I really don't understand why not knowing how Affinity may develop in the future should impact on using it now!

This sounds like a similar problem to that in your previous post. It certainly sounds like you've opened a PDF rather than an APub file, also, as mentioned there, you probably don't need to be using the "Book" feature. I would suggest looking at MikeTO's APub Guide, which was linked to in that thread.

Personally I'm hoping that many of these issues will be solved in v2, rather than having to pay for v3 before they get sorted! That was the problem with Serif's old "Plus" range: lots of bugs, their answer was "buy the new version"; so you pay for the new version, get a few "bells and whistles" added on and the old bugs are still there!

Sorry, I just realised that the OP is talking about erasing, not painting. In that case I think the only solution is to be careful about placing the Erase Brush in the centre of a square on the pixel grid, so that you select a whole pixel.