AndyQ

Linked Layers sounds sweet, although aren't these really instances or references with selective inheritance? The term "linked" makes me think of layers being independent but connected for transform operations, whereas the sample video shows adjustment layers being instanced (so would it be clearer to call them instances?). This is a great feature, but you also need to be able to link non-contiguous layers for transform operations - I'd be calling that "linked" and calling this new system "instanced".

Yes, but it's just catch-up on what other apps have had for decades. My question is why the Resource Manager is not a dockable window/palette since this is something I'd be using very frequently in production (as I do in Illustrator/InDesign). I'm certainly glad linked image management exists (although I'm yet to test the implementation)

Hi all - how does one divide a line segment or curve, or many line segments/curves, to create multiple evenly-spaced nodes along the that segment(s)? I've been looking for some kind of divide command (there's something called "Divide" but seems to perform a different task) - either something that places a vertex in the centre of a segment (so you can do this multiple times for multiple divisions of two) or that asks how many points you want to add. - cheers, AQ

A lot of talk about mouse buttons here, please don't forget not everyone uses a mouse, and I never have in 30+ years. Digitisers have been around longer than mice and I think Wacom have sold more than a few.... ...plus, can we please have a symmetrical node type after all these years? just add a button in the context toolbar next to the existing ones (sharp, smooth, smart, symmetrical),.

Add that to colour swatches/palettes and perhaps the layer grouping and masking schemes; there are some simple things in this app that have been made incomprehensible. I don't recall getting frustrated or confounded with a brush or palette interface before in my 37 years in the computer graphics industry, this is basic UI stuff.

That's one of those things you'd naturally expect to be there but isn't. At least this thread has stopped me wasting time searching....

"applies local override to selected text to increase the leading with regard to the paragraph’s leading.". Ja. Now tested and I see that if you select some text and add set a value here it adds/subtracts leading above whatever line or lines contain the text to which the override is applied, whilst other consecutive lines retain the leading as specified in the paragraph settings.

DOH! Problem found..... text was set to SUPERSCRIPT.

Hi BofG, They were already soft returns, but on "Artistic Text". I've now also tested Paragraph text, with both soft returns and paragraph returns and get the same result either way. I don't have any spacing above/below paragraphs in the paragraph settings, nor any baseline shifts. I take it from your answer that the behaviour I'm describing is not what you get in Designer? cheers, AQ

I'm not sure I understand the leading values in Designer (I've not checked if this is the same in Publisher or Photo). I'm used to leading values being the distance between baselines, but it appears leading in Designers is the extra space between lines, although I'm not sure how that's being measured (from baseline to cap height?). It's Freakin' Confusing. I'm used to specifying text with values like 10/12 pt (text height 10pt, leading 12pt) but if I enter 12pt leading on 10 pt text I get a massive gap between lines . I can't find any specification on how leading is calculated in the documentation. Am I missing some other switch/setting that is causing leading to be so weird? Also...can someone explain why there's a leading setting in both the Character and Paragraph panels? UPDATE: I've just checked Publisher, and it works as I would expect, with leading being the space between baselines. Surely that means I've got some other setting screwing things up? - I can't imagine Affinity would use different definitions of "leading" in the two apps. UPDATE: fixed - a dopey

It'd certainly be nice to have this in object/move mode or whatever it's called. I really like the snapping system approach in Autodesk 3DS MAX (although it's not perfect). It brings up a dialogue with a list of snap candidates, each with a checkbox, letting you snap to grid-points, pivot points, vertex, grid lines, bounding box, edges/segments and all manner of stuff (obviously some 3D stuff that's not relevant), but basically you can fine-tune your snapping so you can drill down to the exact snap type you need for an operation without other snaps overriding the one you want (e.g. Affinity's "snap to geometry" is too broad - it'd be nice to be able to snap specifically to things like centre points of lines, vertexes, various angles and tangents without other snaps taking precedence)

I've just tested holding "CTRL" whilst both moving a node and moving a node handle and can't see any difference in behaviour from doing the same thing without "CTRL" held down.

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..)