Peter Werner

Thanks, that's pretty cool, I must have totally missed that feature! Though this of course doesn't fix the problems when it comes to images that have been opened, pasted etc. as well as user created raster layers that have been transformed. But it's still a great improvement for many of the page layout-related use cases.

This is also an issue in Photo where you can non-destructively scale a raster layer. Since there is no "Reset Layer Transform" command other than "Rasterize", which kills your resolution, you may end up painting/cloning etc. on a layer that has vastly different resolution than the rest of your document. Being able to see the scale of a layer may be crucial information in that case. Or you may have opened a raster image, transformed it slightly for a quick test, and now when you create raster layers, they won't match up with the resolution of your base image so you want to reset that base layer to its original size to match up 1:1 with the document pixel grid without losing all your undo stack. I recently had the case where I was quickly throwing together a comp for a client and then had to do more retouching work to an image in the comp stage in context of the final design than I had anticipated. However, the image was transformed non-uniformly to fit a design and now I was required to move everything into a clean 1:1 retouch of that image, but there was no easy way to find the scale factors and/or reset them so I could transform everything back so I could do further work on the image in 1:1 resolution. The only solution I found was to select the base image with the transform tool where it displays the DPI and then work out the inverse scale factor, but that only works for non-uniform scale, not for rotations and the like. In other cases, where I can't just re-import the base image, I'm also worried that this will lead to rounding errors since DPI is only displayed rounded to whole numbers, so I might end up with an image that's half a pixel or so off from 1:1, which is definitely not ideal since then every single pixel will be resampled if I export to a file at my document resolution. And when it comes to Publisher or Designer: In some cases, being able to use exact percentages like 50% or sqrt(2) times the original size is also important, for instance if a design was created for A3 and has to be resized to A4. With the current implementation, I often find myself re-importing the original image in such cases to get it to a guaranteed 100% and then multiply the values accordingly. That's obviously not a good workflow. The only option would be to look up the exact target dimensions in mm for A4 or know them (which I admittedly do, but there are other more exotic formats). Same thing again when I then need to check that the size is correct, where otherwise I could just look at the scale factor in a panel and know it's accurate at first glance. I'd therefore vote for the Transform panel to show the exact layer transform of image and raster layers and also to allow the user to edit, copy and reset them. Moreover, being able to Copy&Paste transform and inverse transform would come in handy in many cases.

I can assign F1 through F16 for paragraph styles, but pressing the corresponding key with a text cursor in a text frame has no effect. Assigning other shortcuts, say, Ctrl+Y, works as expected. Tested with German keyboard layout on English language setting of Publisher, USB keyboard connected to MacBook. OS is 10.11.6 (El Capitan). Curiously, pressing any F-keys hides the transform controls and frame/column outlines temporarily until the mouse pointer is moved. If this has to do with certain F-keys being taken over by OS shortcuts like launching Dashboard etc., I would expect Publisher to check for that and display a corresponding warning when assigning the shortcut.

I'm using an external (Apple) keyboard that does not have an Fn key. Pressing the Fn key on the built-in laptop keyboard does not change the behaviour I described, neither in conjunction with the F-keys on the external USB keyboard, nor using the F-keys on the built-in laptop keyboard. Further investigation shows that furthermore, the shortcut input control in the text style editor dialog box doesn't accept F14 and F15 since these seem to automatically be tied to adjusting screen brightness on the laptop screen. Holding the Fn keys has no effect on this behaviour. I think if all of this was a case of system shortcuts taking precedence, they would just carry out their system function when pressed instead of nothing happening, as they do in case of F14 and F15. By the way, I've come across another oddity: Assigning F16 shows a warning that the shortcut is already mapped to "Zoom Out". Turns out this shortcut actually works for zooming out the document, but in the keyboard shortcuts editor in preferences, only Cmd+- is listed for Zoom Out. Maybe this has to do with the shortcut editor only allowing being able to handle one (probably the first) shortcut per command.

Just did a quick test, and It would seem you are correct. You may want to post this in the Affinity Photo bug reports section.

The "Restart Numbering" setting currently allows resetting the counter per-document, per paragraph sequence, or manually only. Sometimes it would be useful to have a numbering sequence specific to a text frame or sequence of linked text frames, i.e. per story. This small handy setting would eliminate the need to manually reset numbering at the start of each story and therefore also one source of potential errors since it's quite easy to forget.

Your comment makes me suspect I'm actually dealing with a bug. I thought I had mixed something up, but checking an older proof PDF I sent out to the client, actually I think the numbering re-started with each story at first and then something caused it to suddenly continue across stories without me linking the text frames. Removing the "Restart Numbering Now" attribute from the first paragraph of the second story causes numbering to continue from the previous story. The text styles were all created from scratch. Maybe it's just a really obvious setting I am missing. I'm afraid I can't share the document in question publicly since it was created for a client, but I would be able to send a copy to the development team if necessary. Still, even if it's a bug, it would actually be really useful to have both options.

I think it is worth mentioning that now with that Publisher has shipped with Studio Link enabled, you can just go to the Photo persona and use the Channels panel to check your separations. For some reason, page/spread borders disappear, but it's still a viable workaround. You need Affinity Photo installed in order for this to work.

Works fine for me, I only had "Allow JPEG Compression" deactivated on the PDF/X-3 preset, otherwise my settings should be identical to yours. The screenshot shows the PDF re-imported into Affinity and as you can see it consists of a raster image with a clipping path. I made the file by simply creating the S as an ArtText object and dragged the placed image inside in the layers panel. If you are seeing different results, I'd say it is definitely a bug and not a design limitation of the Affinity backend or the PDF library.

Not 100% sure about early versions of InDesign, but I at least don't remember running into any issues in that respect. But you may well be correct since around InDesign 1.5 and shortly thereafter 2.0.X when I started using the software, printers here always still asked for native files and not PDF so back then it wouldn't have been something I would have to worry about. That being said, if I create a shape in any of the Affinity apps, import an image and drag it inside to clip it, it exports to PDF as an image clipped inside a path (tested with the PDF/X-3 setting). The edges are sharp and not pixelated no matter how much I zoom in (tested in Apple Preview and by placing the PDF into an InDesign document, can't try Acrobat Pro right now because the updater corrupted my installation once again). Re-Importing the PDF into Affinity retains that path as a clipping mask for the raster image. Ergo the Affinity backend as well as the PDF library it is using (apparently PDFlib + PDI) are perfectly capable of outputting bitmaps with clipping paths, they are just not doing so in the case of the effects in the original poster's case for whatever reason. One possible explanation is that the partially transparent raster image on the left that is overlapping the lines somehow triggers rasterization of the objects below if any effects are applied, which to me looks like a bug.

I cannot possibly imagine that the Serif team would choose a PDF library that cannot clip a pre-rendered raster image into a path, that's pretty much as basic as it gets.

I have a document with a few two-column text frames. On the left pages of two double spreads, the column resizing double arrow mouse cursor appears in the wrong spot, either two the left or to the right of the column gutter. On the right pages of the spreads, the hotspot is centered on the right column gutter guide (rather than the center of the gutter as one would expect). The feature can still be used since the offset remains constant if the user clicks and drags. One just has to find the right spot inside the text where the phantom handle appears. In that area, clicking to place the text caret is not possible since the column resize behaviour "steals" the mouse events. I have not tested if this is related to that particular document or not, but just in case, I have made a copy of the file where I encountered the bug that I can provide staff with if the issue cannot be reproduced otherwise.

My apologies, I must have used different wording when searching for existing threads. Thanks for the replies!

These effects should still export as raster images clipped inside of the corresponding paths and not raster images only, so there is clearly something wrong here beyond just the resolution of the effects. Whether this is by design or a bug I cannot say.

Affinity currently lacks a lot of options required for full professional CJK typesetting, including things like Furigana and Warichu, dedicated composition/line break options etc., it's not just vertical text. My understanding is that they are going to get the basic features for roman typesetting done first to make Publisher and the rest of the Affinity range as usable as possible as a layout software for the roman languages and only then add features for full CJK and RTL language support a later point in time, which is completely understandable. At least IME for CJK languages seems to work fine now in Affinity 1.7 after being completely broken in earlier releases. That's already a good indication that this topic isn't ignored by the development team. I hope that one day we will have full CJK and RTL script support in Publisher. The last thing we could hope for is a messy and fragmented situation like with InDesign where you have to install multiple versions of InDesign in parallel, all of them developed by third party companies where you can only hope they don't mess each other's files up.

I'd love to have an "all lowercase" setting in addition to "All Caps" and "Small Caps". It is not uncommon for designs to use only lowercase text, so it would be a handy feature. I have had to do this manually in InDesign so often I lost count years ago, only to occasionally then manually restore all the uppercase letters when someone changed their mind.

Running a web server for an API (or a web browser or Flash Player for dialog boxes) is exactly the same type of bloat that we all criticize Adobe for. They, too, are running at least one local node.js web server in the background even if none of their applications are active. You may have noticed it because it occasionally hangs, crashes or blocks system shutdown. Scripting isn't that performant in the first place, and running single command through a full-blown set of script interpreter, API in that scripting language wrapping and parsing the HTTP communication, HTTP server, system TCP/IP stack and what not is such a colossal waste of resources, not to mention it opens up the entire system to security vulnerabilities. If you really have a compelling case why you absolutely must automate Affinity applications over an HTTP API, you could easily implement the relevant parts of such an API yourself, either via a native C++ plugin, or even easier, with a Python script and Flask (a combination which by the way could probably replace InDesign Server with a desktop version of Publisher for quite a few use cases). This is by no means about what is trending, but what makes the moste sense in terms of providing an efficient, robust, powerful, extensible and future-proof scripting workflow. Besides, Python has been a staple of application scripting in the VFX industry (among others) for decades, and for a reason. This is by no means just a "trend" and there is no indication whatsoever that it will go away any time soon. As an established solution, there are a lot of companies invested in it so continued development is pretty much guaranteed for the foreseeable future. Lua is indeed great for smaller quick and easy scripts and easy to integrate in a C++ program, but not that suitable for more complex solutions (hello, Adobe Lightroom Classic mess) and its object-oriented language features are lacking compared to Python. C is not even a scripting language and does not scale too well, which is why it has been replaced by C++ as the language of choice for larger native software projects decades ago. It is also not true that the complexity of implementing one solution in different languages is always the same – it is true for very, very simple code, but as solutions become more complex, some languages, and their ecosystems, are significantly more powerful than others. As someone who has worked with both Python and VBScript I can tell you that there are some things that would be a nightmare to write in VBScript and a five minute exercise in Python. We don't need a hundred haphazardly integrated scripting solutions so everyone can avoid spending 30 minutes to learn a few basic new syntax rules, but one great scripting solution that is well thought-out, seamlessly integrated, simple and easy for basic tasks but powerful enough for the most complex requirements that arise, and interfaces well with the outside world (AppleScript/COM, network/HTTP APIs, third party libraries and applications, native code etc.).

I just came across a workflow stumbling block while working on letterheads with Publisher and delivering them as MS Word templates. There were multiple variations of the letterheads for different departments, which were created as different pages in Publisher in a single document based on common Master Pages My workflow was as following: Design everything in Publisher Create slices of header and footer for export to PDF Iterate on the design in Publisher until approved by client Place PDF graphics of header and footer in Word, recreate text that needs to be editable and text styles in Word, make color Palettes via PowerPoint (due to Microsoft logic) Last minute fixes: Make changes in Publisher, re-export the slices and replace the images in Word Deliver MS Word templates and color palette files To my knowledge, this is a pretty standard workflow for doing branding projects where MS Office templates are required. Since Publisher has no Export persona, I created my slices for my letter header and footer by opening the Publisher document inside Photo. Trouble is, Designer and Photo only support one page. When opening a document, they always just display Page 1. This can be circumvented by opening the file via the File menu in Publisher. In that case they will open the page that is currently active in Publisher. For me that meant that I had to go my target page in Publisher, use the menu to open that page in Photo, create my slices, save, close, re-open in Publisher, go to the next page, create my slices and so on. This is not only very cumbersome, but it also makes it really difficult to copy slices, settings or dimensions to keep them consistent across pages. Imagine that I find that I want my footer slice to be a bit larger after all because one version has some extra elements and I want them to be a consistent size – I'd have to close, re-open the document in Photo via Publisher for every single page and make my edits while remembering the dimensions to type in. The same applies to exporting the slices after a design change – when not using continuous export (haven't tested if that works from Publisher), this workflow also requires closing and re-opening the file for each page I want to re-export slices from. Imagine a change on a master page with slices on a 15 page document. That's a waste of time and unnecessarily frustrating. I guess the limit on page navigation was imposed onto Designer and Photo to prevent people from just downloading blank files with multiple pages and using those instead of buying Designer or Photo. My proposed solution would be to offer page navigation in the Export persona in both Designer and Photo. Then just always return to the default page 1 when going back to the main Photo or Vector persona if Publisher is not installed. Another possibility would be to take it further and globally enable page navigation in Photo and Designer if Publisher is installed, similar to the Vector and Photo personas in Publisher. The last option would be to add the Export persona to Publisher, but I'd say that's probably overkill.

I'd love to have a command that splits a multi-column text frame into individual linked text frames, one for each column, so that individual columns can then be manipulated individually. It's usually a process of "create guide at column edges – resize frame to one column – set column count to one – create text frame for all additional columns – link all columns", but doing it the manual way gets even more complicated if the original text frame was, say, rotated a few degrees.

By default, all images are set to fit to the viewport when they are opened. For images that are smaller than the viewport, this leads to a zoom percentage greater than 100%. Personally, I usually prefer images not to be enlarged as it gives a wrong impression about the pixel-level quality. It prevents checking if the file is sharp, while not giving any real benefit since enlarging them does not provide any additional information, unlike in the case of larger-than-screen images. So fitting larger files by default is fine, but I find myself routinely pressing Cmd+1 every time I open a low-res file in Photo.

The ability to dock panels, toolbars, and the main window toolbar, in Separated Mode just like in the Mac version of Adobe products, Macromedia FreeHand, or older versions of Microsoft Office, would allow for much neater workspace organization. It would also make everything cleaner when placing panels on secondary monitors in Non-Separated Mode. A setting to have these screen-edge docks collapsed and only open up when moving the mouse to the screen edge (just like the OS X Dock with "Hide Dock" activated or the menu/toolbar sliding in on regular OS X applications like Safari in full screen mode) would further improve usability on small screens such as smaller laptops. The ability to arrange documents next to each other in all modes would be very useful. The nicest implementation of this is probably in Microsoft Visual Studio, where it is very easy to arrange documents in a variety of different ways just by dragging the tabs. Adobe products can sort-of do this, but not when using floating windows because it cannot dock two views in one window, it only works when activating their Application Frame. Currently, Affinity Photo has a very useful option "View > New View" that opens up a new document tab for the same document, but this is utterly useless in non-separated mode since there is no way to actually put the two views next to each other to work on detail while looking at the whole document. In separated mode, it would be useful to be able to split the tool options from the main window toolbar so one doesn't have to drag the bulky main window toolbar around with it In separated mode, currently the status bar completely disappears, and in non-separated mode on the other hand, there seems to be no way to hide it The Character/Paragraph buttons in the text tool options bar only show these panels, but they don't open them if they are collapsed. Chances are that a user wants to actually use them, so un-collapsing them would make sense. It might also be confusing if these are already on the screen in collapsed state since it will then appear to the user as if nothing happens when they press the button.

This one is probably more for the photo team, but since I've found this in Publisher and haven't had a chance to test the new Photo beta yet I'm posting this here in case it's Publisher specific. Option+dragging a slider in the Levels dialog in the RGB setting always shows a completely black image for me when dragging the black point and a white image for the white point instead of accurately showing the usual clipping preview image with a threshold effect. In LAB mode, Option+dragging the Luminosity slider shows a black image with some of the chrominance information on top. Dragging the slider does not change the clipping preview image at all. Double-clicking a slider to reset it also doesn't work, but I'm not sure if that feature was ever there in the past. Moreover, there seems to be no way to use precise 8-bit/16-bit or floating point values in the numeric input fields, only a percentage. This might be required when images need to comply to a precise standard such as broadcast limits, old-school screen printing processes that don't work with ICC profiles, or when performing operations that need to be reversed exactly by a layer on top (say, when trying to preserve detail when using a third-party 3D LUT that has an excessive linear contrast operation built in) and so on.

Testing with an image dragged into a picture frame object dragged from the Stock panel into a rectangular Picture Frame object. Double-clicking the horizontal and vertical resize handles will snap the Picture Frame bounding box to incorrect positions outside or inside the picture instead of fitting it to its edge, irrespective of the scaling option chosen for the Picture Frame object. Also, double-clicking corner handles currently does not fit the frame to its contents, only horizontal and vertical handles offer that behaviour – I don't really see a reason why fitting a frame to its contents should require two separate actions for cases where the user wants to do this on both axes.

@Chris_K: Oh I see, that explains it – thanks! Got confused by how this works in InDesign. In that case, is there a way to fit a frame to contents? And why does double clicking the handles in text frames fit those to the text, at least vertically? I'm not getting a square frame. I have to say in it's current form, it's a bit confusing with this behave differently between text and picture frames. @PaulEC: Try clicking the "Properties" button in the tool options bar with the Select Tool or one of the Picture Frame tools selected and selecting one of the scaling options. If this doesn't work as expected, it's probably a bug. Works fine for me.

This is a really handy special space character that exists in InDesign. It's a great way for instance to place "End of Story" characters or generally align things to the left and right in the same line of text really quickly without messing with tab stops. Unlike tab stops, it also adapts to the width of the text frame and can thus be used regardless of the column width without having to maintain a whole set of paragraph styles.