GarryP

I don’t think Blend Modes, other than Normal, need to be used here as far as I can tell from the screenshot. If the Blend Mode of both the “ExploringT3” layer and the mountain layer are set back to Normal then the mountain should show behind the text, as long as the “ExploringT3” layer doesn’t have something ‘odd’ in it (which we can’t see in the screenshot), and the mountain layer is below that layer in the stack. If that doesn’t work then we need to know what the “ExploringT3” layer is made of - a screenshot showing the expanded "ExploringT3" layer would be useful.

I don’t understand what your ‘before’ and ‘after’ look like. Can you give us an image which shows what you start with and what you want to end up with?

I’m sure someone else will have a better idea of what’s causing them than I do. I’ve not had this issue myself but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it reported in these forums before. I think it might be a graphics driver thing; maybe it only comes up with Publisher because of the way the Affinity applications use the graphics cards, or something like that. Hopefully someone will come along soon who knows exactly what’s causing them and how to get rid of them.

Welcome to the forums @AlanM04 That icon is not part of Publisher. It’s probably there via some kind of screen recording application, or something similar. Edit: It’s possible that it could be something to do with a graphics driver, I’m not sure. Have you updated/installed anything else recently? I think I’ve seen it before but can’t remember what it’s part of (someone else may know); it’s definitely not got anything to do with Publisher though.

You don’t even need to go that far. If you create a new document, then create a new Frame Text layer, then open the Paragraph Panel and look at the Baseline Grid section, the “Align to Baseline Grid” setting is ON by default. That setting is then part of any paragraph style created from that text. Selecting the “No Style” paragraph style in the Text Styles Panel and setting “Align to Baseline Grid” to OFF, and then using “Save Styles as Default”, does not make a difference to future uses of that paragraph style in new documents. Selecting the “Base” paragraph style in the Text Styles Panel and setting “Align to Baseline Grid” to OFF, and then using “Save Styles as Default”, does change the default for that style, and its child styles, but it makes no difference to the “No Style” paragraph style. This is probably because “No Style” is just a ‘placeholder’ before you apply some ‘proper’ styles. Having the “Align to Baseline Grid” set to ON by default in “No Style” is a way for people to get something nice up-and-running quickly without too much fuss. I.e. Simply switch the Baseline Grid on and your text is all nicely aligned across the pages without you needing to do (or know) anything else; it’s basically a time-saver for people who don’t want to go too far into how styles work. In most non-trivial documents, “No Style” would probably not be used beyond the initial pasting of text into the application, except for the odd one-off piece of text here and there. If you don’t want to use the Baseline Grid then you can simply not switch it on; when it is not switched on, the “Align to Baseline Grid” setting should not come into play and your text should be how you want it.

My video shows which layers are selected before I use the “Insert Artboard from Selection” functionality. In both examples shown, the only layers which are selected are the donut and the square star. In this case I don’t think the method of selection is relevant, it’s more about whether things that aren’t selected should be considered by the functionality as “the selection”. For example, if I have two layers selected and I want to create an Artboard from that selection, should I expect there to possibly be more than two layers in the artboard after it has been created? I’ll try and re-word the question: “When I want to make an Artboard from a Selection of layers, should ‘Selection’ mean only the layers which have been selected, or should it mean the layers that have been selected and any other layers which just happen to overlap (or intersect with, or are contained within) the boundary box which defines the area of the selected layers?” Or, to put it another way: “Does ‘Selection’ mean just the things that are selected, or also the things that overlap the boundary box of the things that are selected?” I know what happens now; I’m wondering if that’s how it should be because it doesn’t seem right to me somehow.

It sounds like you are asking whether you can ‘lasso-select’ layers by dragging a non-rectangular shape around them. If you are asking whether this is possible then the answer is no. You can do that for nodes of a curve by using the Node Tool, or you can do that for pixels of a pixel layer via the Freehand Selection Tool in the Photo Persona (when available, if you also have Photo installed), but you can’t do it for layers. This is something which has been requested before, e.g.: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/175191-please-add-a-freehand-lasso-selection-tool-for-vector-objects-in-designer-and-publisher/

Oops, yeah, I missed that detail. Thanks for pointing it out. I’ve amended my earlier post.

Unless I’m mistaken, the greyscale in the OP’s last screenshot comes from the Black & White Adjustment being applied to the image. Simply ‘open’ the image layer in the Layer Panel (press the little round arrow icon) and delete the Adjustment layer. And the greyscale in the OP’s first screenshot comes from, as thomaso said above, the layer having been given an almost black fill. Edit: This isn’t correct in this case because of the difference between Image layer and Pixel layers, as mentioned below. To remove that just select the fill colour well in the Colour Panel and press the ‘no entry’ icon to the left of it. See attached video where I apply and remove both types of greyscale. 2023-08-06 13-43-48.mp4

If you use the Gradient Tool on a Pixel Layer then the gradient becomes ‘baked in’ to the layer when you select another layer and ther’re no way to modify the gradient later (except for creating it from scratch again). You might like to try using a Fill Layer, or adding the gradient fill to a shape, instead. (You might also, in some cases, need to re-select the Gradient Tool to get the handles back.) Alternatively, you can create an Asset from the vignette and then just drag it into the document whenever you need it, or a version of it. You’ve made your request; all we need to do is wait and see what (if anything) happens.

This only concerns documents where there is no existing artboard. See my attached video where the red star layer isn’t moved into the new artboard if it doesn’t overlap the selection boundary – what I would expect – but is moved into the new artboard if it overlaps the selection boundary – not what I would expect. Is my expectation wrong, in either case? 2023-08-06 09-34-46.mp4

Welcome to the forums @Craos An alternative to the Knife Tool, as mentioned above, would be the Shape Builder Tool as shown in my attached video (where the film strip is a very quick mock-up). During the video I click to select the parts I don’t want and, at/near the end, I press the Delete key to delete those parts. For more information about using the software with an engraving machine, search the forums for engraving and see what you can find. 2023-08-06 08-11-15.mp4

If you – or anyone else – want to use borders, of any kind, for your photos then that’s absolutely fine; they’re your photos and you can make them look however you want them to look. I can see why some people might want to have some extra ‘border functionality’ and I don’t have any problem with that but, in the meantime, while we are waiting, and that could be a very long wait, all we can do is suggest alternative techniques. As I said in my first reply in this thread, if you can supply an example of something you want to make then we can probably help you to find a way to get what you want, somehow.

I’m pretty sure that you can’t do that in Publisher with a single table. We can add a gradient fill to the background of the whole table – via the Frame properties – but not a single cell or ranges of cells. When you try to add an existing gradient fill (e.g. from a swatch) to a single cell, the software only uses the last gradient stop colour as the cell background fill. I’m not sure of the best way to get what you want but I think you will need many layers – of different kinds, maybe using some different Blend Modes – to create your example exactly, with some careful planning to make sure everything is sized/positioned properly. See my (quickly-made and crudely-done) attached mock-up where I have used some rectangles with a gradient fill to create the ‘shadows’ on the left of the columns.

My first guess is that you could have the “Rasterise” setting for your export set to “Nothing”. This happens because adding any Effect forces the result to be a raster upon export. Setting “Rasterise” to “Nothing” tells the software to ignore Effects, because they are all raster effects, so you will not see the Effect upon export. The preview will still show the Outline Effect but the PDF will not contain it, which I think is wrong.

When I look at the built-in application Help I see this: When I look at the online Help on Windows via Chrome or Firefox I see this: All very readable either way. This suggests that the problem is with your machine/set-up. If you can tell us exactly how you are accessing the Help then we can see if we can replicate the problem and possibly suggest a way to make things better for you.

The OP already added a feature request here in June: And they’ve now added another one here: This is on top of existing requests for the same thing, for example: ...which could easily have been found by searching the forums for export grid .

I like the idea of having a setting in Preferences (or elsewhere) that gives the user the choice to have “Scale with object” set to ON or OFF by default as they choose; that seems like a good and useful thing to have. What I don’t particularly like is people saying that they want the software to change to how they want it work and to heck with everyone else, which is how I interpreted the OP’s words. This is why I was questioning the relevancy of this request, as it was written.

Interestingly, since I closed Publisher after looking at the package, I couldn’t re-launch the application. Designer and Photo launched okay, but Publisher stayed as a Background Task. Ending the background task got me the application launched again. I opened the package again and the spread is ‘broken’ again. After using Save As to create a copy of the document and closing the document, Publisher became non-responsive until I had to end the task. I think there may be some ‘internal’ issues with that document which we users can’t look at.

Is it still relevant and/or wanted? The OP seems to have a workflow where “Scale with object” set to ON would be their preferred situation – so they don’t have to keep setting it to ON. But they also seem to dismissing outright that the people who might want the opposite would have to go through the same ‘pain’ that the OP has to currently go through, without considering whether the OP is in the majority or the minority (they just assume that they are in the majority). No mention of an option that the user can change as they need it, just a request for change that ignores other people’s workflows. It’s basically, as I read it: “I want it changed and I don’t care about the people who don’t want it changed.”

Possibly but not necessarily. The linked document layer may have a Text Wrap applied which simply isn’t being shown to the user in the dialog. I think only Serif can say exactly what’s happened by peering into the document’s ‘guts’. ----------------------------------- I’ve just opened the package and it looks okay to me – see attached image – however I don’t know if that was a package of the ‘broken’ document or the ‘fixed’ document.

I wouldn’t expect the Text Wrap in a linked/embedded document to ‘bleed out’ to affect the parent document. While that might be useful in some unusual cases (none of any real usefulness come to mind), I don’t think it would be useful or wanted in most cases. I don’t know if this happens, or is happening in this case, as I haven’t done any testing of it in V1 or V2. I think we would need a packaged document – one containing the linked document – to be able to see what is actually happening. It may be that if the linked document is simply deleted from the parent document and then placed in again then everything might be good and well – just one of those weird things that happens once in a while.

In addition to the advice above, the tab names – Colour, Brushes, Layers, Channels, etc. – are at the top of their respective Panels; there’s nothing in those panels above the tab name which is related to that panel. In other words, the stuff in a panel is always underneath the name of that panel. This can be seen more clearly if you – temporarily – drag a panel out of a studio – see attached image.

Just out of interest, for people who don’t want to go into these ‘scary folders' and start deleting things that they don’t understand, will there be a point in time when the user can be sure that clicking on the Update button will do the update to 2.2, and how can they know when that time has come, without checking the forums for announcements?

As far as I know there isn’t a one-step solution for this but I’d be happy to be proven wrong and learn something new.