AndyQ

It's not really a Publisher job, being 90% illustration work, but does require annotations with data in columns. I likely wouldn't consider Publisher for single-page work (and I'm still using InDesign for all my long-form documents). The work is now done but a tab ruler for paragraph text would have made it easier. Designer came first so hopefully they'll transfer some Publisher code back to Designer at some stage where it can provide improvements. There are a lot of functional discrepancies between Adobe programs (i.e. different ways to do exactly the same thing) and hopefully Affinity can avoid that problem since they've developed everything together from scratch (unlike Adobe, which bought in many of it's applications through acquisitions). Cheers'n'Beers.

Needing to show tab rulers again today and I couldn't remember if Affinity even had this feature. Searching the help system ("paragraph ruler", "tab ruler") didn't get me anything . Searching the forum revealed that I used to know this! But now I have no ideas where the "frame text rulers" button is that I mentioned... I was pulling my hair out until I realised this thread is about publisher and not designer. Does Designer not have frame text rulers at all? Is the only way to set tabs numerically via the "paragraph" panel?

I need this all the time. There are benefits to both text types, frame and single-point ("artistic") and easily converting between them would be a godsend.

A louder reminder might be required! Preferably the tools could be docked anywhere (including at top), and resized to any shaped panel - either horizontal or vertical. That said, all I really need is a vertical version (one column or two) that docks to the RIGHT. I'm sure we're not the only right-handers using the software (and I can't be the only Wacom user). If I ruled the world of Affinity I'd stop development of any new features or tools and spend a year or two on sorting out the whacky UI stuff. The programs do 99% of what I need, that just don't make it easy. By that I mean both ease of learning and efficiency of use. There's a lot that's good, but plenty that could be vastly improved with a bit of thinking (or even just.....copying)

Doh! Thanks for that! There is, however, the side affect is that it'll also snap to hidden geometry if you also have any of the related object snapping options selected, meaning you couldn't have a setup that snaps to hidden grid but only visible objects (not objects on hidden layers). That's something you might want to do if you have a very dense and complicated drawing and need to get some layers out of the way. It seems there are some logical knots in this interface that limit the number of possible snapping scenarios. Replacing "only snap to visible objects" with three options: "snap to hidden grids", "snap to hidden guides" and "snap to hidden objects" would be one way to open this up. That way the drop-down is a list of enabled snapping options, not a mix of enabled and disabled. The alternative (simpler but far less flexible) option is to get rid of the "only snap to visible objects" and assume that all snapping options refer to both visible/hidden objects, and the snap on/off toggle does the work of a global switch. I can see that might be confusing so at the moment I can't think what the best solution might be for both flexibility and ease-of-understanding. Cheers!

When snapping to grids or guides is enabled I'd like it to work, even if the grid or guides are not displayed. It is a bit odd to see the snaps toggle button "enabled" but not have the snapping functionality working. If I have a fine grid (e.g. millimetres) I may not want the grid display confusing my view, but still want any objects created or vertices moved to obey the snap settings. A grid should still exist even if it's not visible; if I don't want snapping then I should turn snapping off. That seems logical to me...and other software UI designers. Cheers!

Yep...I just can't get in the habit of hitting "Spacebar" first, the idea of a modifier key (CTRL/ALT/SHIFT) is to modify the function of another key, not the other way around. I can't think of another application that would do it this way (for obvious reasons, you don't want to "type a character", you want to "perform a shortcut function"). I think this is another example of a general "backwardness" in Affinity apps - e.g. showing "after/before" previews (not before/after left to right), gamma values slider getting darker to the right and so on. I'm sure there are more examples but I forget. I find it hard to imagine this idea being floated at any UI design meeting and not getting slammed immediately, which suggests a lot of these design decisions are a single coder working late shifts to avoid human contact....

Sorry I'm not sure what the right term for this is, but when using the many slider controls in Photo (especially in the Develop Persona) I'd like to see a wider "bounding box" region around the control for registering a "mouse down? or click. When I'm making adjustments I'm wanting to stare intently at the image itself, not the parameter slider, and I find I have to be too accurate in clicking/holding the positional control when making adjustments. If I lift off for a moment then press again I find I've moved away from the control and it doesn't register my input, so I'm constantly having to shift focus between the image and the control panel. I'm using a wacom so maybe that makes it more difficult, but the sliders are generally spaced far enough apart that the could easily have a much larger "active area" for registering a click/mouse-down without accidental selection of an adjacent slider. I apologise for my poor explanation....I can't think how better to explain it.

You also can't "undo" a change to a swatch I've just noticed, amongst a host of other frustrations.

Clever; Thanks (I was replacing a sky but wanted to pull the gradient colours from the original sky, but that was obscured as soon as I made the gradient). You get bonus points for beating this level..

The gradient tool would benefit from being thrown in a fire, doused in acid, stomped on with army boots, hung-drawn-and-quartered then buried in a lye pit and cursed to hell. Maybe it can do what I want but maybe it can't - I don't have a month to figure it out. This might be the single most frustrating challenge I've faced in 30 years of computers graphics and every vector drawing, raster painting, 3D modelling, video editing and FX package I've come across. Well, maybe the unfathomable hierarchical style sheets system in Microsoft Word could rival it.....

like, how do you set the colours of the gradient start and end points BEFORE clicking and dragging? I'm trying to match existing colours on an image and want to pick start and end point colours from that image, but I seem to have to draw the gradient first and it's always white to light-grey, which then obscures the image I'm trying to pick the start/end colours from. I can't fathom the gradient tool at all.... and why default to white and light grey when making gradients on masks? Surely white to black would be the default choice?

I've been working for two days now on a job that i would have finished in an hour on Photoshop, but am forcing myself to stick with Affinity Photo to learn how to achieve the same goals. It's like some kind of cryptic puzzle game, like playing Myst, trying to figure out how to get something supposedly simple done, like opening a door but it doesn't have a handle or swing freely. I've now got a lovely mask that isolates some trees, applied to some layer effects. I just want to get the pixel data out of that mask and paste it into a Live Filter mask. Half an hour later I'm still trying. I can't even figure out how to convert a mask to a pixel layer. It would really help if masks weren't treated as being different to any other pixel layer - they should just be greyscale images that you can move between being masks and visible images based on their positioning in the hierarchy. Also, why the "inbuilt masks" for Live Filters and adjustment layers? Why have a different approach for these to pixel layers? I'd be tearing my hair out if I hadn't just shaved it off.... [UPDATE #1] I didn't figure out how to paste greyscale pixel data into the Live Filter mask, but I did manage to add a mask to it by pulling the Live Filter out of its nested position, dragging a copy of the mask to it (masking the effect), then dragging the Live Filter back to it's original position in the hierarchy. Is there a better way? Am I missing something or do I get bonus points for solving this particular puzzle? The shirty thing is that I won't be using Photo again for a month or so and will have forgotten everything I've learned by the time I get back to it... [UPDATE #2] I also found how to make a greyscale pixel layer from a mask thanks to MEB's post on thread https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/47033-converting-mask-to-pixel-layer/ which says: "Go to the Channels panel, right-click the respective mask channel and select Create Greyscale Layer.". Therefore, with this roundabout way, you can "paste data" into a mask by making a pixel layer copy of it, doing whatever you want with that then converting it to a mask and replacing the original mask.... (again, I might be missing some easier way..)

Don't leave me out!

I think what might be meant here is that adjusting the opacity of the mask should adjust it's influence on the image, akin to Photoshops "Density" control for masks. Assuming white means "unmasked" then reducing the influence would mean effectively bringing the black level up, so at at a 50% opacity level, any black areas of the mask would behave as though they were 50% grey, with all greyscale values adjusted in a linear fashion. This is a super-useful function in Photoshop (as is the mask blur, rather than having to apply separate adjustments layers to achieve the same effect)