[end of affinity]

15 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I know of not one person claiming that. How about a few examples to support your claim?

I’m sorry but I’m not going take this bait and waste my time. In a similar vein, I could ask you what value is in the fact, that you personally don’t know of any such person and how many people do you know of, in general? This really goes nowhere.

19 minutes ago, R C-R said:

BTW, no one can credibly claim what "experienced users" want, not in Affinity, Adobe, or any other app. Experiences, expectations, needs, wants & desires, workflows, etc. are far too diverse for any one person to speak for anyone other than themselves.

I believe you’re quite wrong here. Maybe you can’t define these needs, that’s ok. But no professional dabbles in any of the software of their choice just for the sheer sake of of dabbling in it. They may, if they choose to, but at the end of the day this software is not in a vacuum. There’s a quite well defined set of core features for professional programs like this suite to produce e.g. a reliable print-ready output file, or a solid design that can be quickly adapted when the project changes its scope as it often happens, etc. They are tools of the trade after all, and neither graphic design, nor printing, nor photography were invented ten years ago. So what these trades need has been known for quite a while and Affinity still don’t deliver a full package. One person can be an expert in illustration, another one in newspaper design, and so on. But if Affinity call their product line “professional” then the majority of professionals should be able to make effective use of it.

Meanwhile, until now I have known literally one person using Designer professionally (Tomasz Biernat) and quite many professionals, whom I look up to, that remain with the big A – because it simply delivers and makes earning your living as a creative much easier, unlike Affinity. Then again, it’s only my words, right?

[Creating horizontal "guide" lines on a taplist menu?]

8 minutes ago, dozens said:

I was hoping to find a way to set up some kind of auto-filling, auto-expanding/contracting solution, so when I add/update rows it automatically adjusted.

Look into the Paragraph Tab settings in the help file.

[end of affinity]

I did not say that, @R C-R. But there’s a great deal of people claiming Affinity has it all, and you can ditch Adobe just like that. Heck, even their marketing does that, albeit not that explicitly. Or people defending or turning a blind eye on obvious faults because “Affinity are doing their thing and are not Adobe copycats!”. Well guess what, Adobe were here first (sure not just them, but let’s keep that aside) and they have set a great deal of standards, whether you like it or not. So, yes, experienced users do want industry standard features, not Adobe features. It’s the framing of such issues that makes these people look like fanboys.

[end of affinity]

4 hours ago, wonderings said:

It is pretty funny how salty people get when they don't get what they perceive to be what they are owed. Serif makes good apps, if you don't like them you don't have to use them. They do what they do now, you can see this in a demo. So buy it based on what it does now and be happy.

I’ll tell you what they get salty about. The promise of getting a professional package on par with competing applications, which remains unfulfilled, and likely will never be. This software offers some professional features sprinkled around the fundamentally lacking base and it has been like this for way too long.

When I bought V1, I was aware of the limitations (certainly not about each and every one) but bought several licenses not even looking for return on the investment, but still happy to fund what I then regarded as the Adobe competition. Oh, and Affinity still try to position their product line like this, but nobody in their right mind and enough experience (it’s important to stress this, because if you’re looking to up your game starting somewhere from an office suite level, certainly Affinity will feel a different league and perhaps tick all your boxes) treat it so anymore. V1 definitely felt refreshing but also a lot was missing.

When V2 was launched, I had a lot of doubts and eventually passed, because it no longer seemed as if it could keep the momentum. New features and improvements were there, but still too many things were still missing (and are to this day). I bought it only after it got discounted because then it seemed like fair value compared to the original price and feature set. My gut feeling was right though and it still turned out to be the same terrible mixture, only with a handful of additions. Some implemented so badly they are more crutches than features.

So if I spent the money I feel I have every right to voice my expectations of what professional suite should offer – I simply expect Affinity to walk the talk.

If someone else’s choice is to be a fanboy and claim Affinity is the Holy Graal of creative software, so be it. But neither it’s my right to try to silence them, nor it’s their right to silence those of us who don’t join the cheering, but expect our definition of “professional” and genuine “focus on customer experience and community” instead – which attempts I have seen too many times here. 🤮

[Linking Text Frames to Newly Added Pages]

On 6/24/2025 at 3:51 PM, snackdaddygaming said:

Welp, that's unfortunate.

Isn’t it? That’s what you get when using quasi-professional software marketed as professional. The excerpt below comes from InDesign documentation:

You can use the Smart Text Reflow feature to add or remove pages when you’re typing or editing text. This feature is useful when you’re using InDesign as a text editor and you want a new page to be added whenever you type more text than can fit on the current page.

Having said that, @hatGuy’s suggestion is also a very good workaround – thanks! – and it can take just a few moments if you use shortcuts. But that’s the whole thing with using Affinity – you constantly have to find workarounds for a great deal of things that can be done in other apps in a jiffy. Monies saved. Your time? Not so much.

 

[Printing black text on colour produces unwanted white stroke/noise]

Yeah, no overprint was pretty much obvious here (if you know how printing works, that is). Incidentally, it was also a very nice illustration why exactly overprinting is needed – you could get away without it only if printers are aligned perfectly, which hardly ever happens, and I’m not even starting on paper issues. 😉 Besides, pure black will look somewhat bland without it.

One more check that could have also been tried to troubleshoot this – kind of bypassing proper overprint – would be to simply add the underlying ink values to the text ink that sits on top of these backgrounds. Effectively this means manually doing what the software does while handling overprinted inks. So as an example in this case, assuming the tan at the top is CMYK 0/0/24/42, the text would have to be CMYK 0/0/24/100 (Y:24 is what gets added, black is already there at 100, other channels are empty). Or, more in general, assuming the text is K:100 on top of any solid colour, you add whatever CMY values are underneath to it. It’s not a proper way of preparing production-ready files, but could also serve as a test where the problem is, without worrying whether the export / print pipeline handles the overprint settings or not.

[Procedural texture voiko värikanavan kaavan tuloksen tallettaa johonkin jota voisi muiden kanavien arvojen laskuun käyttää?]

5 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

it is not possible to store values in one formula and use it later in […] a different line of the same filter

Whoa! If this is in the help file? I must have missed this. Either way, thanks a lot for that.

[Is Auto Trace not available? This program look awesome other wise...]

@kathy-Upnorth there’s still no auto-trace in Affinity.

@GarryP:

 

[When will we have 'expand appearance' and 'transfer' brush functionalities?]

So-called vector brushes in Affinity have just a vector spine but the actual stroke is bitmap based. So the answer to your question at this point is “never” – unless they rewrite brushes significantly. I feel bad for you having fallen for this. Maybe you still have time to get a refund.

Just recently Figma announced true vector brushes in their Draw and you can define custom ones as well. So you might use Figma for that as well, but in general this sucks big, doesn’t it?

[Why is photo 'lighter' when I bring it into Affinity Publisher?]

1 hour ago, lacerto said:

I am not sure what you mean, but I referred on using dot gain profiles in adjusting grayscale images knowing what kind of stock they will be printed on.

Copy that. I should have watched your yesterday’s video, but it was late when I read that thread somewhat diagonally.

1 hour ago, lacerto said:

This is manual work and based on qualities of individual images and partly also on subjective preferences (sometimes including the client), though can at times (and especially on request) be made a batch job when there are lots of images and the project is not too critical.

By ‘manual work’, you mean deciding which dot gain profile to apply to each of said images, is that right? Or is there something more to it? Thanks.

[Why is photo 'lighter' when I bring it into Affinity Publisher?]

I digressed quite a bit there. Bottom line, by all means use professional, industry standard ICC profiles, and if they include dot gain, so be it! They are tailored to provide the best possible reproduction. Of course, talk to the printer or whoever handles the technical side as well. They should know the best how to prepare the output files.

Whenever I ask about colour management and get a response such as ‘oh we don’t do profiles, just send us a plain CMYK PDF with no profiles embedded’ I look elsewhere, or make it absolutely sure that whoever is paying for a print run, understands the consequences (including me not responsible for whatever comes out of the press, colour wise).

[Why is photo 'lighter' when I bring it into Affinity Publisher?]

3 hours ago, lacerto said:

Dot gain profiles (by Adobe) might be somewhat obsolete because I suppose they date from the time when film was used in printing press, and I think that dot gain is generally less when printing digital dot directly on plates […]

You are providing insanely useful and detailed information, but I think you are wrong here. Dot gain happens primarily (for CTP process, exclusively) during printing, when ink is absorbed by paper and it slightly spreads at the inked area edges (for anyone who needs to picture this, imagine making a dotted line with a fountain pen on a napkin – you will end up with a vastly different result than using the same pen and a quality notebook). This ink spread, expressed as additional area coverage in print (averaged, see the Wikipedia link for details), is what dot gain value actually means. E.g. 40% K in the digital file ends up in print with dot gain of 20% as 60% K, if not addressed. Now, that gain depends on several printing conditions, paper stock being the primary factor. On a side note, Matthew Carter’s Bell Centennial typeface is a prime example of taking these factors (namely high speed printing on low-quality paper) into account in type design, even though we’re talking about something far bigger than a halftone dot.

Come to think of it – in CTF (computer-to-film, as opposed to direct computer-to-plate) days, if there was any distortion of halftone dots, it would have been inherent to the photographic process regardless of printing, which happens further down the pipeline. So, even assuming this needed to be accounted for, I suppose it would be handled by RIP rather than an ICC profile.

Dot gain on Wikipedia.

Last but certainly not least… I believe know my way around these issues pretty well, but I still feel I have to carefully read what you’ve posted in this thread, @lacerto and @Ldina. Very resourceful input there. Chapeau bas!

[Why is photo 'lighter' when I bring it into Affinity Publisher?]

20 hours ago, lacerto said:

[It could also be processed with initially ICC-based grays and be resolved ICC-less to specific target color space with methods like PDF/X-1a, or left ICC-based by using methods like PDF/X-3, but Affinity apps have many restrictions that makes these kinds of production methods risky and not satisfactory.]

You appear to be dropping some real gold nuggets there. Thanks! Could you please elaborate a little more on the restrictions you mentioned, @lacerto?

[Publisher export of spread to single pages ignores background image]

19 minutes ago, Stadicus said:

This specific update made me realized how much I appreciate software vendors that keep older versions available online. I'm lucky that I can still export on my laptop, where I never updated, but on desktop, there's no easy way back. That makes updating quite risky. 

Or maybe old versions are still available somewhere for download, but I just didn't find them?

@Stadicus, actually, Affinity is among these vendors. The installers for the previous versions can be found here (the last accordion on the page). It doesn’t apply to Microsoft Store purchases though.

[Publisher export of spread to single pages ignores background image]

@NathanC, is there somewhere a list of all known issues that have been logged? It would be pretty helpful to have that readily available when running into an obstacle

[Auto flow records from column to column on single page]

There’s a nice hack to work around this awkward Data Merge layout limitation (I’m talking about overflown text being cropped) – you can use separate DM layouts being simply 1×1 containers. If you make several copies (which of course you can resize independently), each consecutive one gets filled from another record upon merge, starting from the bottom one in the layer stack.

With this, you could get creative with just a simple text frame with two columns and a bit of carefully adjusted decorations and paragraph spacing. My example is a single text frame. So each “faux table” could fetch data from a separate record (you’d have to work on the source documents first, I guess), and if you work with 2.6.3 then it can properly handle line breaks in the merged data if I recall correctly. 2.5.7 has it broken and needs workarounds, don’t know about other versions. Things that would need to be to ironed out is manually adding line breaks so paragraph line decorations in two columns line up. Also middle vertical alignment in the 1st column would require a bit of tinkering.

Just a quick-ish idea to explore

[More options with baselines and guides]

On 5/19/2025 at 1:06 AM, MikeTO said:

For guides, I think the only difference between ID and Affinity is that the same gutter value is used for columns and rows whereas ID has separate gutter values. Is this what you're referring to?

It kind of baffles me to see this described as “the only difference”, as if it was a minor, insignificant one. It’s quite huge, actually. Columns and rows are a backbone of a well designed document. While we’re at it – InDesign additionally lets you modify individual columns' width – by default they are uniformly distributed, but there‘s a “Lock column guides” setting which can be unchecked and then you are free to alter them individually. Really powerful. 💪 But I digress.

For anyone who wants to lay out a more advanced grid, Affinity offers the following choice: pick either automated rows or columns and do the other part of your grid manually, using ruler guides (for clarity, I'm referring to a ‘grid’ as a layout of columns and rows, not about the document grid, which is a separate feature). This is a nightmare when you're trying to build a more serious layout, want to explore various possible options etc, or simply the specification has to be changed mid-project. This feature in its current implementation is really a crutch. Attempting to solve this with nested masters (i.e. using a parent master applied to child masters) doesn’t work either – altering the column guides on the child master overrides the ones inherited from the parent one, they aren’t applied independently (as I hoped).

So:

1. Since you can also specify multiple rows for column guides (it's quite a misnomer, isn’t it), independent gutters for columns and rows are a must. But this horse has been beaten for quite long (see this thread: Independent gutter sizes for rows and column guides) and nothing has yet been done about it – that I know of, at least. 😔
    
2. Then there is a whole separate ability to automatically set up ruler guides in a custom layout. You still might need additional guides layout on top of your basic column(-and-row) guides. (If you can’t wrap your head around this concept, I wholeheartedly recommend reading Grid systems in graphic design by Josef Müller-Brockmann. It’s canonical if you’re serious about design.) Affinity offers no way of setting up such a layout automatically. You have to tediously do it by hand, guide by guide, and in case you want to change things – you‘re forced to do it all over again.
    
3. Closely related is another issue with ruler guides – the ones already on a page or artboard can't be selected like regular objects. So they can’t be edited, duplicated numerically and / or in bulk (nor rotated). The only way to edit or copy them is to either drag them, again, one by one by hand or via Guides window. Yes, snapping and displaying delta values somewhat alleviate the pain but only to a degree. However, this is far less critical than #1 and #2.

I saw @NathanC quite active today, which is great. 👍 It would be great if you, or someone else from the staff could say whether Serif looks into these areas in any way. They feel really neglected.

[User interface Text contrast has only partial effect]

Repeat after me:

• For creatives, by creatives

• Pro-grade tools

• Embedded in our ethos is a focus on customer experience and community (this even sits on the front-page)

🤡

 

[Affinity Designer Snapping Feature]

24 minutes ago, stek said:

Can a Staff member join this thread please and respond.

Good luck with that request. All the people responding on this forum are really doing Serif’s support, for free… It seems to be working for Serif so except for new announcements or very occasional “will pass that to the development” there’s hardly any involvement from them at this point. 😠

[User interface Text contrast has only partial effect]

That’s because the good people at Serif decided that for some reason default named layers would have their names displayed as “inactive” (or whatever their internal token is called). Now, if you rename a layer manually its name is then displayed with more prominence and follows the contrast setting…

But hey, we’re told it’s a professional tool, right? 🙄
 

[GREP. It's absolutely vital.]

On 5/1/2025 at 9:59 AM, Beemo8Bit said:

It stumps me why Affinity doesn't have GREP for paragraph styles yet. I really want to switch from InDesign, but that's impossible without GREP. I lay out complex books, and it's not practical to manually style paragraphs on every page of a 200,300,400 page book.

It’s impossible without a whole number of other, often really fundamental features and you will find out the hard way (pray you don’t). My personal advice, if you’ve got a good Adobe deal (their subscriptions are negotiable to a degree, unless you’ve got an old perpetual licence then that’s even better), stick to InDesign, especially since you mention you work is complex. Sadly, and I really mean it, Publisher is still nowhere near the same league. If you add InDesign scripting capability (which is still in development in Affinity and no one knows when it’s going to be available), the number of quality scripts for it that can be found, free and paid, its value increases even more.

Yes, you can get professional-looking results in Publisher (I’m curious though, if anyone has used it for such big documents as yours). But this will cost you a lot lot more elbow grease and frustration working around its inexplicable limitations. And there go your savings.

[A better way to manage LUT in Affinity Photo]

Well, @NotMyFault, that was a side note, really. The most important thing was it seems that Serif choose the approach based on the feature delivery (or removal, like here) rather than the customer value (who, in this particular case, needs a better performance when more LUTs have to be previewed).

<disappointed rant>
I remember being quite on the fence about upgrading to V2. At that time I wasn’t using it for my day to day work, I bit the bullet later, when it was discounted again, treating it as a donation for the cause that, I hoped, would keep Adobe in check in a foreseeable future (and hopefully be a worthy contender at some point).

Currently I am in the middle of the project – using AfPub – which is quite similar to the one I was doing ten years ago in InDesign. The degree to which some features are heavy handedly implemented or missing altogether has been a rude awakening for me. Frankly, I wish I could go back in time and buy a perpetual license for Adobe CS6.
</disappointed rant>

[A better way to manage LUT in Affinity Photo]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

So, to "fix" that performance problem, the Developers removed the preview capability.

“Fix” is a good euphemism – without beating around the bush, it’s a downgrade.

In case there’s a ton of LUTs loaded, you could paginate these previews (primitive but works) or implement some sort of delayed lazy load. Simple solutions, likely there are others. All it takes is focusing on outcome for the user, rather than closing a ticket.

— Hey, we’ve got cases when this feature causes performance issues.

— Remove it altogether, solved. Just look at that burndown chart!

Since we know nothing about how Serif handles stuff internally, I can only guess, but in the other companies it’s not devs that make a final call, but a PM. So to attribute this to the development team alone might be amiss.

[Color space for CYMK printing]

11 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Nobody can tell you.

Actually, the print company by all means should tell you. If they have decent colour management knowledge, that is. Ask them about their default colour profile, if it’s specific to their machines they should provide it for you, and if all they say is “we just want CMYK, no profiles” stay away if the job is important colour wise. Because that’s a telltale sign they know jack about colour management. 

There’s a lot more to colour than just CMYK vs RGB.

Basically, when it comes to embedded images, if you leave it unchecked they will remain in whatever colour space they were in your document. Now, if it differs from the output (printer) colour space, either

a) they will be converted to the output colour space, or
b) the company will come back to you and say they have a problem with that, see above.

If you want to convert, you need to know what CMYK profile you should have as a working space. Euroscale? FOGRA? Coated, uncoated, etc.? Depending on the machine, paper stock, these will differ and the company should know this. If not, it’s the question who’s paying if the colours end up not as expected.

[Car motion blur]

@Steve G, there’s a much better (as in “convincing”) way of doing it, I believe.

The guidelines show – more or less – the vanishing point of the motion blur. To be referred later. 👇

1. Separate your car.
2. Inpaint the area “behind“ the car – otherwise there will be red in the blurred background, which will be a dead giveaway.
3. Duplicate your background without the car a few times. I made four copies.
4. Apply Zoom Blur to each background copy, clicking the vanishing point as the centre of the filter each time. Each consecutive layers will have a smaller blur value than the previous one (or larger, doesn’t matter, it’s about the progression). The maximum value I did with this picture was 30 px, the next one was about 20 px, I guess, last ones, 15 and 6, give or take. Use your best judgement.
5. Next, you need to mask your zoomed layers, so that there’s this illusion, that the farther from the camera things are, the less blur they get (the line of trees just at the left edge, far behind the trees by the road should not receive so much blur, but that would require a lot more work). I put the most blurred layer at the bottom, then the less blurred ones were stacked on it. Use a big soft brush for your masks. This is how my layer stacked looked like, I also grouped them and added an extra mask to the entire group:
   
   
    
6. For added realism – you will notice that the foliage behind the windshield will likely be still (unless you separated the car without the transparent parts of the windshield), so you might work on this a bit, too. My result could use some more love there, it’s complicated as there are some reflections in that windshield as well.

Enjoy!

1.