PaulEC

Sorry to be dim, but why do you need to restrict the number of hyphens someone can use at all? I don't see why you need to stop people using them if they want to!

Quick work around. Set up a keyboard shortcut for "clip to canvas" (I use Ctrl+Shift+K). Then, when you want to open a stock photo, hit Ctrl+n for a new document (doesn't matter what size), drag the picture you want onto it, hit the "Clip to canvas" shortcut, and it resizes to the picture. It might sound a lot of trouble, but, once it's set up, it's really quick.

Some versions of PDF only support CMYK, so check the version that you're using.

IMHO - This is what happened with the Plus range that Serif used to produce. More and more "bells and whistles", but failing performance!

Affinity Designer is more akin to DrawPlus (which only supported multiple pages in later versions) rather than PagePlus. Affinity Publisher is for DTP, as was PagePlus, and in that you can scroll through pages, much like the multipage view in PP.

No, you need separate downloads/licenses for Windows and MACs.

Although it is still used on road signs. (Probably because it's silhouette is easily recognizable, whereas a modern train tends to look like a block which could be anything!)

Or try using the Lighting filter instead.

The only way I can think to do it in Designer, is to go to the Pixel Persona, use the Flood Select Tool to select the white background, invert the selection (to keep everything else), create a new layer (Control+J) then delete the original layer.

You can do that - just ignore the pre-drawn grid and draw out a new one.

When you "search" in "Help" it doesn't seem to work, nothing happens. Also in the Appendix - "Keyboard Shortcuts", it says the shortcut for "Place" is Ctrl+Shift+M, actually it is Shift+P. Ctrl+Shift+M actually selects a shape (rotating through rectangle, rounded rectangle and ellipse!) I haven't checked them all, but I suspect there are other errors in this list of shortcuts!

If I start a new publication with margins the add pages from the pages tab, the margins appear on the new pages. If I use the keyboard shortcut to add new pages there are no margins on the new page - seems a bit inconsistent.

One other thought - it would be really handy if you could save the positions of the various panels etc. On the last update of Photo all the panels went back to the defaults and it took ages to get them all back how I like them. (I know this this thread is about Publisher, but I think this what we're talking about should apply to all the Affinity apps.)

I do agree with this, but, just playing devil's advocate, what is a "good proposal" to one person may be bad or useless to another. Likewise, people may object to something for what, to them, is a very good reason. Disagreeing with someone is not necessarily being negative, often it's just expressing a different point of view.

Sorry, Roberta, I can't see what the problem is with this particular PDF file. It opens in several other apps, just not in Affinity! I can only think that there's something about the way your scanner creates the PDF that Affinity doesn't like, but there doesn't seem to be anything actually wrong with it. The best I can suggest, if you can't re-scan the drawing, is to install Irfanview or Sage Thumbs (both free) and convert the PDF to another file format. (PNG, TIFF or JPG). (Really like your drawing style, by the way.)

Create a new layer. Paint colour onto the new layer with the paintbrush. Experiment with blend modes (Colour, Multiply, Overlay etc) and opacity. Use a new layer for each colour.

Could you upload the PDF so we could have a look at it?

Not really. There are problems with embedded fonts (Affinity can't use them), but that shouldn't be a problem with a scanned image. If you're scanning a sketch yourself, it might be better to use an image format (tiff or png are probably best) rather than scanning as a PDF.

There are lots of different PDF files, made in lots of different apps. Some import better than others!

I do take your point, but Serif suggest this as the way to open their old/legacy files in the Affinity apps, so it would be nice if they made it work a bit better!

In the Print dialogue you can choose to add crop and printers marks.

I really do hope that Serif come up with some way of opening PDFs to edit them, but keeping them looking right, sooner rather than later. Ideally it would be great if they could use embedded fonts, but, failing that, at least converting the fonts to curves would keep the PDF looking right! PDFs are one of the main ways of exchanging documents, it's a real pity that the Affinity range can't handle them better.

I did emphasis that I was referring to my needs, and speaking personally. I fully accept that other people have other priorities, and more funds available! I do agree about the embeded fonts as well! I'm not being negative, I'm being realistic from my own point of view.

Assuming you're referring to Affinity apps in particular being slow to open etc, I would just say that (with a fairly low spec PC) I find them all much slower than most other software I have. It does seem that having a lot of fonts installed affects the time it takes for them to start up. Having said that, I've learnt to live with it and don't really find it a problem.

Much as I like Publisher, currently there is nothing I need to be able to do, that I can't do in Serif's old PagePlus X9. But there are features in PPX9 (primarily Mail Merge) that aren't available in Publisher. I really like the way all the Affinity products work together and look forward to having them all installed. However, if Publisher is too expensive I would probably just do without it for now. Although the free updates for version 1 (of all three apps) are very welcome, I am keeping in mind that many new features may not be available until version 2, and at that point it will be necessary to purchase all three again. (Still, hopefully, good value and cheaper than Adobe products, but never-the-less a significant outlay for some of us!) So, if the first release version of Publisher is too expensive, taking into account what features it has, I would just leave Publisher for now, and look at it again in (presumably) a few years, when version 2 comes out.