dcrosby

I may need a workflow adjustment. I created 9 cards on separate pages in Publisher. I wanted to take advantage of Master Pages. I then imported each page to a separate Publisher doc, the fronts on one side of a page and the rears on the other with manual crop marks. This allows my printer to print out one 2-sided page and trim a "deck" of cards. Putting the crops on the master page of my cards file worked fine, I just forgot what my process was, lol. Affinity's 3-in-1 software with similar vector, paint, and text tools in each allows and almost demands a different workflow from what I've gotten used to after 30 yrs of "the Adobe way." It's both liberating and confusing. Having to use Adobe apps at work doesn't make it any easier. I hope you picked up at least one tidbit you didn't know while researching my non-problem.

Sorry thomaso and anyone who wasted time contemplating this problem. I'm an idiot. I placed those crops incorrectly on a master page myself and thought they were generated by Affinity. Created a bunch of extra work for myself as well. Sheesh!

So here's a problem I didn't expect to have. I have a multipage Publisher document that bleeds on all 4 sides. The size is 2.5" x 3.5" with .125" bleed all around. You can see from the image the the crop marks do not align with the page size except the first, upper left, marks. Can't figure out why it's doing this or how to fix. The images show the page and the master page. The black outline is the bleed size, the gray outline is the actual page (trim) size. Only the first set of crop marks are correct. Any thoughts on this? Thanks

The original poster never responded. I'm having the same problem all of a sudden. I'm on a Mac M1 Mini running version 2.9.3, don't want to update just yet. I'd been working on it using the Mini for a couple months with no problem. Then it happened once and a relaunch of the program fixed it. Now it's stuck. Edit: I sent the file to Designer, then back to Publisher. Now it works fine. Go figure

My "Authorize Global" button is grayed out. I'm running an M1 Mac Mini.

I had this issue on an earlier version of Affinity (Designer I think). I fixed it by turning off some of the multitude of fonts active on my Mac. Other users have had similar issues in that regard.

I'm replying to this in order to remember it. One thing I keep in mind is when you hover over a value box you can use the scroll wheel on your mouse to increase or decrease the values. If not for that I'd have gone nuts with the leading issue. Further, if you do forget and end up adjusting the leading in the Positioning and Transform area it will break the key command until you set it back to auto. Seriously this has been frustrating the heck out of me for a very long time.

I used a free script that was mentioned somewhere in these forums to convert hundreds of indd docs to idml format that Affinity understands. The process took about 15 minutes. Glad those docs won't go the way of my Freehand, Director and Flash files.

Hi Dan. Thanks for replying. Actually, creating a new artboard did fix the problem. It came in at the size I wanted (surprising because I had three different artboard sizes). When I copied and pasted the art I noticed that the background image had some kind of weird distortion on the left and right edges. You can actually see it in the previous image I posted. I used the same image for each background with a color adjustment to modify them, but only that one appears to have that distortion. I'm assuming it has something to do with how I resized the images. Anyhow, I trashed the borked artboard so the evidence has been destroyed.

OK. Further investigation shows that only 4th artboard, the wide one, exhibits this problem. Don't know why but it was created by duplicating an artboard and resizing it. Strange anomaly? I'll try making a new artboard and pasting the graphics to it.

I'm getting a strange distortion and border around my graphic when exporting from an artboard. If I go to the export persona and create a slice around the artboard all is well. As you can see in the image (Twitter-Nite-Banner 2.png), the graphics are stretched and a transparent border shows up. margins and bleed for the document are set to zero. What's going on here? This is how it should look

I just upgraded to High Sierra last week, lol. No serious issues thus far, I think I'll stay awhile.

I understand what you're saying and agree completely. Everyone's needs are different and Adobe's had 30 years to fine tune it's software, innovate and buy their way to industry standard, and leverage their success in order force customers to do things they really hate doing. Affinity is competing with a 800 lb gorilla in Adobe and many of the "missing features" are only missing because they exist in Adobe software. Are Adobe users complaining that they don't have live previews or that InDesign can't open PS directly in the app? Are they complaining about features that no one has thought of yet? Affinity has to have everything Adobe has and more. That said, Affinity has been well received by consumers, pro-sumers, disgruntled old-timers, and various digital artists who don't need to be "compatible." But they've reached the point where seasoned, working designers have become interested and have certain expectations which have to be met. This is where I see much of the negativity towards the software and these folks are totally correct. Affinity needs to move fast to plug these holes. Publisher is probably the most important part of the trinity. It's also the least mature and undoubtedly the most difficult to get right. I'm holding on to InDesign CS6 as if my life depended on it but what if someone were to gift me a brand new Mac that only ran Catalina. I shudder to think of it, lol.

For me, and a lot of other people I think, it’s not so much about the money. It’s about a single company controlling my ability to earn money or create art. You become more beholden with every project you create. It’s a new reality that craftsmen never faced before, that your tools could be taken away from you for non-payment, or a computer error, or sanctions against your country. They can raise the price, let the bugs fester, deny your right to use an older version of CC You’ll take it and like it You might as well “owe your soul to the company store” like some kind of sharecropper. Pay and pay for decades and when you retire you keep paying just to create a church flyer or a graduation announcement for you grandkid cause you don’t own nothin’. Adobe literally owns “the means of production” So I’ll go out of my way to avoid that, especially as I reach retirement and look forward to creating art for my own enjoyment and not so much for pay. If the sub works for you, beautiful, but it’s about way more than cost for some of us.

I agree, it would be much harder but jpg and mp3 are basic formats without any bells or whistles. I can import an mp3 and convert it to another format in order to add bookmarks for audiobooks for example or a jpg could be used to create a layered PSD or transparent png. A format like IDML (which Adobe will never open up) could just be a very basic page layout format. I haven't experimented with it much but the multilayered, multipage IDML files I opened in Publisher worked well, with colors and fonts intact and minimal cleanup necessary. If we accept the limitations it could be valuable to have something like that.

Standardization is cool. Open standards are better. So mp3, obj, html, jpg, png, css, apache, Linux etc. are great and have probably moved the creative industry forward more than any proprietary formats.

Sounds like a plan. You're probably right about Publisher. It's great to be able to modify assets on the fly.

Your last sentence pretty much sums up why I posted in the first place. I'm glad I'm not the only one trying to figure it out. There are certainly growing pains and I expect that experience and upgrades will sort much of it out. Unfortunately the prefs I set up for Designer are different than the ones I set up for Publisher. For instance in Designer and Photo I like my scroll wheel to adjust the size of the viewing percentage. In Publisher I prefer it to scroll through pages. I can't have both in Publisher even if I change personas as far as i know. There's also the issue of brushes, color palettes, and assets that aren't linked in the three programs as you mentioned. Plus I prefer the Designer interface and the tools it puts in front of you. But I'm starting my projects in Publisher for a while and see how it goes with the knowledge that the file can be "converted" to Designer If I don't like that workflow. Once again, highlighting workflow possibilities could go a long way towards attracting artists who may be judging Affinity by a single package.

Starting in Publisher may be the best solution. It goes against decades of muscle memory to do an image based layout in a page layout app so I hadn't tried that yet. Each of these apps has a lot of functionality that is usually not present in such apps. They're not as separate as I've become accustomed to. Which goes back to my suggestion that workflow between them be highlighted more. It will take some time and experimentation for me to get comfortable with it. Thanks all for responding.

Thanks. I'll poke around int he Character panel till I find it.

I think the biggest issue I'm having with the Affinity Suite is workflow. I've seen a number of reviews and tutes on individual programs but not many of either on how to integrate them into your workflow. The integration between the three apps are their strongest feature at this point, but changing a decades long workflow from distinct programs that work together to what is essentially one program with three (mostly) separate modules is something else. In addition some of the in-house decisions as to what features are present or missing from each app is a source of frustration for me. Case in point: I'm creating single page document with a pixel image, some text and some vector based graphic elements. I started the graphic in Photo, works great. I love the way it handles text and vector elements. Then I wanted to add a stroke to the text. There's no Stroke panel. I can add an outline color to the text but I can't adjust it's width even though I can make those adjustments to a vector object. So I sent the file to Designer just to adjust the stroke. Yes I know I can add an Outline in the effect panel but I wanted an outline and a stroke. A technique I use a lot. Now I have two programs open just to adjust a stroke. Did I miss something? I like the update for PSD smart objects in Photo. I mostly use smart objects to add non destructive Topaz effects to an image though. I still can't do that in Photo. So I thought to myself "what if I linked the PSD file in Photo or Designer?" Then I can go back to Photoshop and adjust the effects if necessary without reimporting like they did in the olden days. But no, neither app supports linked files, only embedded or pixel images. So I sent the file to Publisher, linked the file, and opened it back up in Photo. It appears as a link file and now I have three programs open though the technique appears to work. Did I miss something? I like to make iterations of a layout so I can try different things and still be able to go back to where I was. I like Designer art boards for that. They act like objects that can accept effects, are easily resized and can be sliced and exported for different purposes. The art boards show up as expected in Photo but sending the file to Publisher results in both the boards being on a single page. Hmmn. Something to keep in mind. And let's not even get started on the lack of auto-hyphenation in Designer. I think I understand Serif's challenges with this suite. This modular software approach is unique, in the graphic design space at least, and they're trying to sell single apps while still keeping incentives to buy the other packages. I believe they could easily cram every feature from each program into one huge and complicated app if they chose to. I don't think anyone would want that. So they're picking and choosing which features to add or subtract from each program. I many times disagree with their choices but understand that they're blazing a new trail. Unfortunately I end up with all three apps open and they all look the same and it can get confusing as to which simple feature is in each app or present in Designer's pixel persona or present in Studio Link when using Publisher. I just had to shut it down and walk away for a moment. So I'll end where I started with a suggestion to Serif as well as tutorial creators to try and help us better understand a workflow where the apps can work together and for Serif itself to pay close attention to how artists want to work and their suggestions in that regard. Sorry for the long post. Peace.

Coming back to this topic months later. Rather than removing the option they should just make it functional. it already exists in the program. Publisher should build out its capabilities as a multipage design program with INDD import, grep, footnotes, etc while Designer does the same with image trace, vector distort, blend shapes, etc. Can't see where more robust text handling in Designer would cause confusion in the market or hinder Publisher sales.

Picked up Designer fo $35 a year or so ago. Got Photo for the same price last month. I’ll get Pub at some point after an update or two Regarding the topic. This functionality is sorely needed though I personally don’t miss it much. I’m still pimping CS6 though so not in a hurry... yet. At the risk of sounding like a fanboy I’ll defer to Serif as far as their gameplan. They’ve run a successful graphics software company for 20 or 30 years now which is 20 or 30 years more than I. It’s clear that their goal was to create a graphics suite rather than an “Illustrator killer.” That’s the only reason I’m interested in them. I can’t dump Adobe if I still need 2 or more of their programs. I suspect if they’d spent all their resources making Designer a killer it would still be no more popular than the many programs listed in this thread by critics. If the alternatives were up to snuff I suspect the critics would happily be using them rather than posting on this forum. The Suite is how Adobe captured the market in the first place and is very effective at locking people in now. I actually think their approach to development is brilliant. The workflow between Designer and Photo is a game changer for me and extremely satisfying. The interaction between the apps is revolutionary and can only be understood with all three apps in play. Putting the apps on mobile allows them to compete in a wide open platform that Adobe doesn’t dominate. Look at Adobe announcing vaporware and releasing a half baked Affinity Photo “killer” for the iPad. Look at the reaction from their customers. That’s worth the price of admission all by itself.

I can't speak for all Affinity users but this one is appreciative of your interest and support for our platform of choice.

Thanks Patrick, I'll pass this on.