GarryP

I like this idea as it could be very useful - the drag nodes are often not where I want them to be - but I would like to suggest a slightly different technique. Instead of allowing the user to be able to drag anywhere on the Left, Right, Top, Bottom (LRTB) bounds of the crop box, the drag handles on those extents could be moved to always be in the centre of the visible portion of those extents. That would give the user the extra functionality – or, to put it another way, would not have the user losing functionality – while also not making the entire crop bounding box a ‘live’ draggable item. If this was done, it might also make sense to extend this functionality to bounding box dragging in general for all layers. See my attached crude mock-up where the drag handles (red circles) on the right and bottom of the layer always stay at the centre of their bounding lines within the canvas (light-blue rectangle) no matter the zoom extent. This could be the default way of handling LRTB drag nodes on all objects with a bounding box on all Affinity applications giving a more consistent UI. I believe this would give the user a better experience overall as they would never have to go searching for a drag node while not also having a ‘totally-live-and-draggable’ bounding box. Alex_M: Does this suggestion meet with your approval, or is there a reason why it wouldn’t work for you?

Welcome to the forums JenV. My first guess, and I’m not an expert in this area, is that it looks like what happens when you have the wrong colour management set-up. Go to Edit → Preferences, then click on the “Colour” icon, and have a look at the settings (what you need can only be determined by you as we don’t know your set-up). I have attached an image which - I think - shows the default values. Also, this procedure https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/55149-factory-reset/ shows how to reset Photo back to the factory defaults. If this isn’t the problem then please say so.

Nicely done. In the brochure, the text is nice and clear. Sometimes people can go overboard with effects or just “something cool that they found they could do” and the text becomes obscured but everything here seems to be easy to read, even on-screen at a small size. The choice of colours also seems to be friendly and in-keeping with the adverts. I have some comments which might be useful: 1. There are no page numbers on the pages. For example, on page 15 there’s a note to say the text is continued on page 17 but the reader doesn’t know which page they are on – without counting – so they might not know where to go next. 2. In the body text, you seem to have used different fonts/font-widths and line spacings, e.g. pages 4&5, amongst others. Was this deliberate to be able to fit the text on the pages? (It’s usual to stick to the same font for body text but that’s not a hard and fast law.) 3. It’s usual to use a baseline grid to get text lined-up across the pages but this can be restrictive in some cases and may not be what you wanted. Do you know about baseline grid? 4. On pages 24&25 there is quite a difference between the gaps around the two images. That’s not a major problem but it’s worth checking for. It’s usually better to have gaps that are reasonably consistent in size but sometimes it’s just not possible. 5. On page 19 the spacing of the text in the dark green boxes is a little bit ‘off’. Not by much but my eye caught it pretty quickly. Having said all of that, these are only minor issues which I picked up on because I am still teaching myself this sort of thing. I’m not trying to be deliberately picky, I just thought I’d mention them in case you hadn’t noticed.

Thanks for the replies. Your methods are, if I have read them correctly, what I used to create the first image. This works - and it's not too much hassle - but, if the numbering style changes in the text – from 1.1 to 1.a, for example – the styles in the TOC will also have to be manually changed, something which might be forgotten “in the heat of battle”. Having thought about it a bit more, I’m starting to come around to the idea that this way of doing it might be better than having the numbering automatically passed through to the TOC. If the numbering was automatically picked up by the TOC then we would have one of (at least) two scenarios: 1. The numbers in the TOC would have to be formatted in exactly the same way as the TOC items (doesn’t allow for much user choice); 2. Or, there would have to be some special way of specifically handling the formatting of the numbers (which might be more complicated than this way of doing things). For the moment I think I will continue as I have been doing and see if there are any complications along the road. I’ve got a long way to go with this document so I’m sure I’ll see over time whether it works nicely or not.

Is it possible for the TOC entries to automatically include the paragraph numbering of the referenced paragraphs? For example, in my second attached image I have the paragraphs numbered as I want them and it would be nice if those numbers are automatically brought across into the TOC, as in my first attached image. I made the first attached image by manually adding the numbering to the TOC styles but I am wondering if there is a simpler way.

Thanks for the reply. I’m going to have to experiment with this for a while.

Nah, it’s just me getting my worms wrong today. (One for “The Two Ronnies” fans there.) To be clearer (I hope), the icons get temporarily made non-monochromatic in the area that is being customised. I.e. Customise Tools → Tool Icons are non-monochromatic, Customise Toolbar → Toolbar Icons are non-monochromatic, as you say. I have no idea if it’s intentional or useful. I don’t use monochromatic mode normally; I was looking for an answer to something else and came across this.

Damn, yeah, you’re right, it’s a trapezium. I wasn’t thinking too much there. (Mistake above has been edited.) Sometimes I start off with a rectangle and want to make it into a trapezium so this is a good tip to put in my back pocket; it’s probably got other uses too. Ah, the Fill Tool. I wonder why it looks so different between OSes. A bit confusing when watching videos, especially those of low image quality and in a different language. That still doesn’t tell me how they achieved the ‘darkening’ effect though. The video shoots by so quickly that I can’t tell what’s going on. (Arrow keys go by 5-second intervals whereas I want to go frame-by-frame.) When I try it, all of the selected objects are given a new ‘combined fill’ rather than having some kind of ‘overlay’ applied as it seems in the video. Does the iPad version differ in this way too or am I missing a step? I’ve accidentally watched a few tutorial videos on mute without realising that someone was talking so I generally only mute now if it doesn’t seem like there’s going to be anything useful to listen to.

Windows Home 1903, Designer 1.7.2.471. When I have Monochromatic Iconography set to ON in Preferences, and then go to Customise Tools, the Toolbar icons get temporarily set back to non-monochromatic until I close the customisation panel. Not a problem particularly but I thought I’d mention it. I don’t know if this is a bug or just the way it’s supposed to work. Also, on a related note, when Monochromatic Iconography is set to ON, the icons in the Colour, Swatches, and Stroke panels (along with the context toolbar, in places) are not monochromatic. Again, not a big problem but worth pointing out.

Thanks for posting the video. The technique you used to make the rhombus trapezium shape (around 0:24) is a great tip that I had never though of, thanks for that. What is the tool (between ‘Pen’ and ‘Transparency’) that you use to ‘darken’ everything (around 1:49)? The video isn’t very clear and I can’t find any tool in the Desktop version which looks like it. P.S. I had to watch the video with the sound off. In my opinion, the music doesn’t do it any favours.

You’re welcome. It will be nice to see your Affinity collection grow.

That’s really nice work. As for it being your first attempt to draw with Designer I’ll just say that I’m looking forward to seeing what happens when your skills with Designer catch up to your obvious talent as an illustrator. If your first work is this good, the future looks bright indeed.

Great video Jen. All totally understandable with no missing steps. Nicely paced too. I have two very small issues which I think might need to be taken into account: 1. At about 6:45, when the “dark” layer is clipped inside the “main” layer, we can see at the top-right of the “r” that there is a gap between the text and the shadow (see first attached image). Not a major problem but, once you notice it, it spoils the effect a little. 2. The border (“stroke” layer) of the final text is larger than the ‘extrusion’ so the border has a kind of ‘lip’ on it (see second attached image). This may be what was wanted but it looks a little strange to me. However, both of these issues are easily fixed using only the techniques shown in the video so it might be nice to append some ‘viewer exercises’ to the end of the video pointing these issues out and giving hints as to how they can be done. These are very minor issues though and shouldn’t detract from the video at all. I’m sure lots of people will learn something from watching it. Good stuff.

Excellent and inspiring work. Very nice indeed.

...or Fields -> Document Statistics -> Total Pages. All you need to do is double-click the name of the field to add it to the text.