Medical Officer Bones

PS InDesign's Create Guides function is quite nice, but there are much better ones as well: https://www.designersbookshop.com/grid-calculator-pro-edition.html Also, guides ought to have an option to be formulaic: for example, the guides builder in PhotoLine not only allows for guides to be built on the basis of a layer's object size and on selections, but also includes the option to create formula-based guides which automatically update if the scale of the document is changed. For example: (2 * (h)) / 5 - 0.5 cm where h is height. Now, that IS handy, I can tell you.

The "Create Guides" function in InDesign is one of my favourite and most-used features in that app. I create a lot of column/row based basic grids, sub-grids, and after installing Publisher and running it one of the very first few things I expected to find was a similar guide column builder, but to my astonishment it wasn't there. However, Publisher falls utterly flat on its face due to how the handling of guides is integrated. The reason why InDesign's guides work so wonderfully well is very simple, yet effective: guides are treated just like any other object, and are attached to the selected layer you happen to be working in. This effectively means an entire system of grids and sub-grids and helper guides may be built, organized, and maintained through multiple layers. And the colours of individual guides can be changed as well allowing for very intricate and useful nested layout grids to be built. Publisher's guides are treated like "special" things that do not "live" on any particular layer, but instead are always put in an invisible guides layer over which the user has little or no control. All guides are on or off, and cannot have individual colours, or be managed in groups/layers at all. In short, nigh on absolutely useless for more complex layout grids. Having access to only one hidden guides layer is SO ill-conceived that I wonder if the developers actually discussed basic layout techniques and workflows with magazine and book designers and creators. Only allowing for one singular fixed guides "layer" is a fundamental short-coming of many layout apps. Not offering a good column/row generator either is a second unforgivable mistake from the perspective of anyone laying out semi-complex layouts on a daily basis. The combination of these two missing options in a new young DTP contender on the market is very, very unfortunate, automatically ruling it out for me or anyone even remotely interested in elaborate grid-based layouting. And even if Publisher received the best grid builder in the world, the lack of layer-based guides in this version would make it rather of limited use anyway. The two go together hand in hand. Seeing how the guides are implemented on a rather low level in the apps architecture, I don't expect the Affinity developers to re-code this any time soon. At least, I really, REALLY want to be proved wrong here. If these fundamental shortcomings aren't taken care of at some point, Publisher will remain of quite limited attraction to myself and fellow complex layout grid "layouters". What a shame this would be.

@FixxThat's what I was wondering myself.

To be fair, the reason why ClipStudio's Western text handling is left wanting, is of course because the software's text engine was developed with Japanese text in mind. Not to say that's an excuse, because CS is widely used in the West as well nowadays, and I never do my lettering in CS myself either. To amend @CartoonMike's answer, ideally for best print quality, the line art should be a minimum of 800ppi pure monochrome bitmap (black), but better would be 1200ppi. Then put the colour work at 300ppi layered under the line art layer, with the balloons and lettering vector work on top of it all. It is also possible to work with a vector line art layer. Depends on your workflow. Of course, if your artwork has no sharp line art, and it's pure colour/digitally or traditionally scanned in painted work, it should be 300ppi. I haven't tested yet whether Publisher supports this workflow. I have no idea if it is able to produce a correctly layered PDF file with 1200ppi line art and 300ppi colour work combined. I'll test this week, and report back here.

Unfortunately that is the case, true. The OP mentioned CorelDraw, so I assumed the OP works in Windows.

Or use the Erase White Paper option in the Filters/Colors menu to quickly remove the white background (second video).

...or just add Ghostscript support. PhotoLine uses the Ghostscript DLL to load PDF files with an option to convert fonts to outlines. That's what I use to convert a troublesome PDF to outlines only.

Securing PDF files is a feature that belongs in a PDF editor, I think; although it would be handy if we could export secured PDF files directly from the Affinity apps themselves. I use the free version of PDF-XChange Editor to read, comment on and secure PDF files. The free version is quite capable, and placing security on PDF files is simple. https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor Open your Affinity generated PDF file in the XChange Editor, open the document properties (under FILE or use CTRL-D), and select the Security tab. Click the "Apply Security Policy" button, and add a new policy "Add New-->Password Security". In the dialog select a PDF compatibility (version 9 or later is best), and tick the "Restrict editing and printing..." checkbox. You must set a password. Then adjust the document's permissions as you require at the bottom of the dialog. Finally, name your new security policy setting, and click OK. Select the new policy in the list, and hit "Apply to Document". You must then save the document. The next time you just have to open the document settings, and click the "Apply Security Policy" dropdown button to select the security setting, and save your pdf. Simple, and completely free! No Adobe rubbish! PS I LOATHE the Adobe Reader: it's one piece of garbage software. The free version of XChange Editor is far faster, leaner, and even the free version allows the user to add annotations/custom stamps, save these and change the security which we have to pay for to be able to do with Adobe Acrobat. Don't get me started how atrociously bad the Adobe Reader is.

Free alternatives to create text on curves are Gravit Designer and Inkscape. Create your text on a curve objects in either application, and export as SVG for import into Photo. Here's a quick tutorial for Gravit Designer:

No need to hold on to Photoshop for this kind of work. Photoshop is pretty terrible for indexed colour work, not even supporting layers when working in indexed mode, for example. Excellent alternatives are ProMotion NG or Asesprite. I prefer PM myself. https://www.cosmigo.com/ And if you just need to convert to indexed colour mode with full control over the conversion with custom fixed palettes and superb control of colours, download the free Color Quantizer - Photoshop can't hold a candle to it. http://x128.ho.ua/color-quantizer.html Windows only, I'm afraid. But both work without issues in Wine on Mac and Linux.

Sigh. That's rather short-sighted. Simple solution that caters for all, and it is not even considered.

I always wanted to get a copy of Designer Pro X, but the price ($299) was a bit too much for me. I've been testing the waters in DPX, and it is a surprisingly powerful layout app. It has its own approach which I like (such as a combined page and layers panel, which is a novel idea), and as far as a illustration tool goes compared to Designer, it provides those tools which a lot of Designer users have been asking for (simple 3d tool, blend tool, contour tool), yet missing others. As a layout tool it has some very powerful features which are still missing in Publisher, yet many odd omissions as well. For example, web export is more than excellent: layouts can be exported as responsive websites, with pages exported separately as regular html/css/js pages, or as a super-single page site with parallax and animation effects. It has most of the essentials of a decent layout app, but curiously falls flat on its face in regards to basic stuff like a baseline grid, optical margin alignment, and a number of other things we have in both InDesign and even this first version of Publisher. And no master pages, it seems. Objects may be repeated over all pages instead. So not the InDesign alternative I was hoping for either. The 3d tool is the (by far!) simplest to use 3d tool I have ever used in a graphics design app. So simple, yet quite effective (yes, I am quite an experience 3d generalist, but sometimes you just want simple extruded shapes in an illustration or presentation). And just for that and the web export it's worth the $25 - no questions asked. Also, some of the live shapes are more usable than the ones in Designer. For example, the demo presentations include live graphs which are again super simple to adjust. And true arrows Anyway, quite powerful companion tool. Fun to work with.

Yesterday I purchased Xara Designer Pro X through the latest Magix Humble Bundle deal, and the way it handles units is exemplary. (If you're a Windows user looking for a great graphics design/layout app to add to your library of tools, this deal is bordering on the verge of too much value for a ridiculously low price) ANY custom unit is definable. How nice is that? May it serve as an example of how Publisher and the other Affinity products ought to solve the issue of missing unit types support. Why not make these unit types user definable in the first place? Problem solved. Simple and effective.

Absolutely impossible (well, as good as), unfortunately. Quixel is completely integrated in Photoshop's scripting API and built-in 3d functionality. It is far more than a mere simple classic plugin. To make this happen for Affinity Photo would require: scripting support, which none of the Affinity products have; built-in native 3d and texturing functionality, which Photo lacks; an API with deeply integrated GUI options (no scripting, let alone a highly functional API in Photo); smart objects, which Photo lacks; and a complete rewrite of a version of Quixel for Affinity Photo. Not happening, I'd say. Or at least, not in the upcoming decade. We are lucky to get smart object functionality by 1.7, but more probably this will be added sometime next year (hopefully before the end of 2019). And to be sure, Quixel looks a bit old in the teeth when compared with Allegorithmic's Substance products. And those will work without the bloated Photoshop requirement.

Uhm... Why aren't you using text styles? Create a couple of text comic text styles, done. Just apply whenever needed, and text styles make your lettering much more consistent. Decorations such as colour outlines are also supported.

I agree, and please add proper Japanese language support as well.

Unfortunately I don't think it is possible to ignore column division of a line at this time with a paragraph rule. You will have to use a separate text frame with text wrap, for example.

The column gap / gutter size is adjustable in the Text Frame panel - I am unsure if a visual method exists to control the gutter size with the mouse. To achieve hanging punctuation, select the entire text, open the character panel, and look for "Optical Alignment". Change to "Font", or use your own custom settings. I would create a text style instead of selecting large swathes of text, though.

From a typographer's point of view one of the worst personal insults in text processing software functionality was the introduction of "fake" bold and italic text formatting. And there's a simple reason to avoid doing this: it looks terrible. That is why specifically designed bold and italics font family members have always been the way to go. InDesign, top of the crop in layout software, can't use bold formatting or italics either if the corresponding type family members aren't present. It is possible to skew text and/or scale it vertically and horizontally, but the end result generally looks horrendous, and is unusable for anyone looking for quality type. Layout software such as PagePlus never aimed to please professional type setters, and oriented itself towards Word users wishing to gain more layout control, and who were familiar with instant fake bold and italics. Like it or not, no self-respecting layout app ought to have a fake bold and italics facility to wrangle regular type members into ugly distorted versions. At least, that's the answer which you would get from a typographer and/or from many a professional layout designer. Publisher aims at becoming a high-level layout app, aimed at creating professional looking print work. Therefore, there's no place for typographic aberrations like generated bold and italics, or terms such as "line spacing". Disclaimer: this is not necessarily my own opinion. While I understand the typographical purist's view that I presented here, I think generated bold and italics can be useful under circumstances, even if one has to forego type quality.

Use the frame text tool, and hover over the column gap. As for the optical margin alignment, in Publisher this is a character attribute (Yes! Awesome!): look for it under the Character properties and in the Edit Text Style dialog under "Character".

What do you know? You are right, Jutoh does support fixed epubs nowadays. That's interesting. Apologies, I hadn't bothered to check, relying on outdated knowledge, and my assumption was wrong. Seems it even supports CBZ comic book files: http://www.jutoh.com/bookv2/html/section-0022.html

Jutoh doesn't support fixed epub and only a tiny subset of epub 3. Instead of Jutoh, Sigil is comparable and completely free for flowing epub ebooks. https://sigil-ebook.com/ Although I understand the technical reasons why the Publisher developers decided to forego html and epub export, the fact remains that without this option Publisher will be unable to compete with the current crop of DTP layout software. Which is why I hope scripting and a decent plugin API/GUI will be at the top of the list: this will empower users to build their own solutions. Because export to a fixed html page (which fixed epub 3 basically is) isn't that hard to develop, to be honest. Pretty much direct conversion from frame containers to absolutely positioned div elements, with content converted to bitmap and svg files.

Sphinx is not quite as straightforward because it is not a visual tool, and is actually Python based. The document structure is basically the file structure, and files are written using reStructuredText . It's a command line based environment. But for manuals and in particular (online) help systems it rules in my book. Versioning is very simple too with GIT. Publishes to pretty much any format you want. However, Sphinx is not for anyone. If you're afraid of any kind of coding, Sphinx will not be for you. http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/contents.html A more readable starter's guide (Blender manual is built using Sphinx): https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/about/contribute/index.html#getting-started

Yeah, I wasn't certain whether I dared to mention Word's book function. Long time ago I did some book work in Word, and it made me swear out loud All. The. Time. That's when I decided to switch to Framemaker two decades ago (or so?). Nowadays InDesign's structured document features are good enough for the technical manual and long document stuff I still work on once or twice a year. Although I've been using quite a lot of Sphinx as well lately for documentation. Really like it.

A 300 page book? As long as Publisher lacks a good book function (like InDesign, Quark, Framemaker, and even Word(!)), I wouldn't touch Publisher for this type of work myself. I'm sure it will be added at some point though. It should, otherwise it can't hold a candle to the competition out there. Simple as that.