music2bmade

You have outdone yourself! I have been using the beta for some time now but I had no idea the worlds of creativity that would be opened by your Studio Link feature! Even by itself, I have really enjoyed Publisher but the Studio link is jaw-dropping and seamless. I am now an Affinity fan for life!

It has been fun watching this program develop. At this time (Beta version 1.7.0.140) this program is already miles ahead of other programs I use. It is faster, more responsive and the font tools are second to none. Desktop Publishing is so complicated, and to take your Designer idea and translate it into a Publishing app is just brilliant. The separate layers for each page is not something I have ever seen. I am waiting with bated breath for the final version. This last beta seems to be awfully close to being ready for Primetime. Kurt Weber

The problem that I have always had with Word or other Word Publishing programs when doing graphic design layouts is that they use objects poorly. Instead of long strings of text, a graphic design uses objects, including text blocks to be place attractively on the page. Programs for weddings, flyers, brochures can certainly be done in Word Processing programs but they are awkward. Apple's Pages is probably the only exception I have seen. It can easily be changed into an object-oriented graphic design program. Design programs Like Affinity Design can certainly be used to create a multi-page book or program, but they are awkward in handling multiple pages. Creating one page at a time and then printing them one at a time is pretty painful. Enter Publisher. It has the ability like Designer to create cool pages but it has multiple pages and each page has its own layers. (A feature I am extremely excited about.) At the end you print out a 10-200 page booklet or wedding program with ease. For me Publisher completes the trilogy.

Still trying to wrap my head around the assets section in Designer.

I haven't seen a program that had anything OTHER than Global layers. I am very excited about this feature in Publisher.

It took me awhile to find this window as well, because it wasn't activated in the button I put on the toolbar. I had chosen the customize toolbar and added the the center button to the toolbar. Again, my concern to the developers is that the default setting, or at least I think so, should be be set to "page".

I am suggesting to the designers that they start with it on. Most text programs have some sort of easy access to a ruler with tabs. I found it eventually and like how it works.

Interesting. Until you said this I couldn't think of reason we NEED global layers. They could be very useful in multi language docs, especially large ones. (Eg. Turn the English text layer off, turn the Spanish text layer on and print.... etc.)

I love the page specific layers. It allows a lot more creativity on each page without elements getting lost. Each page is like a new Designer file Global layers sounds like a master page to me and master pages are easy to create and apply in Publisher.

Great! The alignment options you suggest are quite cool. Not seen this feature in other programs. I am more impressed by the center object tool now. My goal was to see how intuitive the interface was. I am sure the under the hood settings will be as fun to discover as Designer was . Ran into another time saver by accident: With the main selection tool selected, double click on a text box . The boundaries of the text box shrink to the text entered.

I did my normal method for walking through software: Opened a doc from scratch and worked to create a finished document without looking at a manual. Disclaimer: I have worked a lot in Designer and Photo so I am familiar with the programs. Here are my two cents: 1. Creating a new doc, margins, master pages: All very easy and intuitive except Page numbers. While I was able to get page numbers to appear in the master pages, to get the numbering to offset by a particular number of pages was daunting. 2. Performance: Not a single task slowed and every movement such as dragging around objects and text blocks was VERY smooth. Nice! 3. Did quite a few text blocks before I realized I was using the wrong text tool. I like the artistic text tool but it is WAY too similar in look on the toolbar. 4. Tabs (once I used the correct text tool) were very easy and intuitive and I love the text ruler. Could it be the default to have the ruler showing? I had to choose it in the view menu to see it. 5. Center objects tool: Extremely helpful but if you are in facing pages it puts the object in the center of two pages joined, not in the middle of the page you are working on. The ruler also displays the entire two facing pages instead of starting from zero for the next page. I had to get rid of facing pages to get the ruler and center tool to behave as I wished. 5. Layers that are not document wide but change from page to page: Brilliant! This is a huge time saver. Each page felt like its own separate designer file. Love it! 6. Printing: The scale pull down menu is strange. Why would you not want print to fit as the default? Also colors printed poorly compared to printing the same file in Swift Publisher. My designer created tiff files looked gorgeous on the screen, even close up, but printed in low resolution. This problem would be a deal killer for me. Hope it is just a Beta glitch. 7. Love how text is handled, especially the typography window, and styles seem intuitive. Never found the "create style from selection" part of the program. Great job! Looking forward to seeing the final product.

I was a bit daunted by this problem as well. Once I learned how to use artboards the final cropping problem disappears. Using the artboard tool you can resize the complete image, with all layers and edits intact, to the exact right size. Then export the artboard in the export persona. Using the artboard tool you can quickly trim off unwanted transparent areas. You can do the same thing by going to the export persona and use the slice tool to tell affinity photo what part of the doc to export as a slice. Affinity Designer has taken some getting used to, but i am really enjoying it. With artboards and slices you can have many sizes and versions of a file in one document, and control exactly what you wish to export.