jmwellborn

Strikes me that we cannot get out of virus distance policing fast enough so that we can all find lots of useful things to do besides reorganize Serif. Also, just to be an additional pain in the neck, it strikes me that the people most likely to be confused by all of this proposed dividing and conquering — the very new users of one, two, or all three of the apps — will be the least likely to have a clue about how to find what they are looking for. If they know that they want “Mask to below” (just an example) to sort out a problem, they can search for it in HELP. When they are stuck with something and have no idea that they need to use “mask to below” how are they supposed to find help? Even more to the point, how are they to be expected to maneuver through a bunch of tags, buttons, or whatever to post a question?

Welcome, @Terry94! If you will go to the LEARN AND SHARE section of these forums, then Resources , look for the topic “Curated List of Free for Commercial Use Fonts.” You could also enter that topic in the Search box at the top of this screen. You will find a great deal of useful information about available fonts there. Once you download what you would like from the various sites, you just install them on your computer per your operating system. On MAC, I use Font Book. Hope this will get you started!

@Eddie Aguirre Thank you so much! Working — for the most part — like a charm! I have discovered one little glitch. I have books done in InDesign that require specific lines of type on each page (to authentically replicate very old and rare books from the early 1800’s) when indexes were not generally included, but where modern historians may wish to quote from specific pages in the original volume. I have now indexed the books. In the process of creating an authentic replica, I have consistently needed to use a ragged right last line or special tracking settings to make a last paragraph fit on the page to match the original. IDMarkz does an excellent job at keeping the ragged last lines, but does not seem to be able to translate line tracking from InDesign to Publisher. Consequently when I have used special line tracking to make a last paragraph fit on one page in InDesign, I am now finding part of that last paragraph and a ragged right line showing up on the following page in Publisher. This means that over the course of a 302 page book, the index becomes increasingly more incorrect as more and more of the content shifts farther to subsequent pages. Solution, of course, is to manually correct tracking on each Publisher page. 😳 Nevertheless, IDMarkz is really smooooooooth!!

@Trinkerbell24 I am so glad that it worked!!!

@Freddy33 welcome! And so you should feel proud. If you can accomplish that with your first creation, your subsequent ones will surely be stunners! And as @GarryP notes, you will undoubtedly see more and more tiny details as you become more and more familiar with Designer. Wish I could do what you have done right now!!🥴

@Trinkerbell24 Welcome! Is this what you are looking for? I made two rough rectangles (two layers), one to simulate your border and the other smaller one than the other, to simulate your block of either image or text. If you go to your Layers Panel and select your smaller layer, you should find the edges highlighted in blue on your canvas. Use your Move Tool (black arrow) to touch any one of the four corner blue circles, and drag the rectangle either in or out to make that layer smaller or larger. If the layer with the larger rectangle (the border) is on top of the layer with the smaller rectangle, highlight it, and go up to your Toolbar and choose one of your Arrange settings, such as "Send to Back." (If your icons on your toolbar do not show the text, you can go to VIEW>Customize Toolbar and then down at left side, bottom of the panel, choose "Icons and Text.") Does this help?

@Graphix_Guy82 welcome! I am most definitely not an expert at Photo, but I have found that if I use a very large brush, when using the Inpainting Brush Tool, in areas such as the edge between the sky and the building in your image, since the brush picks up the colors of the pixels under the brush I also get some undesired results. So for your question 1, have you tried using a smaller brush, inpainting first over the sky portion you wish to clean up, then changing to a smaller size brush and working along the edge of the building? Regarding question 2, I couldn’t see anything in your video to show the problem? Hopefully, others will come to your rescue!

Just before the coronavirus wreaked havoc with the world, I was experimenting with puzzles, and had started this as an Easter card for family. Subsequently I have been sewing face masks until today, when I have run out of cloth that is suitable. After my initial attempt, I saw that the image needs a bit of horizontal stretching to be correct, but I simply didn't have time to go back and replace it in each puzzle piece. So I decided to just send this as is to everybody on the Forums, and especially for the wonderful people at Serif, in hopes for the happiest Easter possible in difficult times for us all. Strictly amateur, but thanks to @GarryP and @Graphic&Design I made it as far as I did, using both Designer and Photo.

@Lusus welcome! Could you try this: Go to the Forum section NEWS AND INFORMATION then scroll down to the topic “We Want To Help” then in the first entry by Ash, click on the “90-day free trial” words underlined in blue. That will send you to the Affinity web page where you should be able to download the trial version of Publisher. Hope this works for you!!

@thomaso! It feels like 1001 (actually almost 1002) years of experience these days! My son's early childhood motto was "Mothers don't cry. They do things for people!" And yes, all documents would have been affected. But I have been sewing medically-approved anti-virus masks instead of working at the computer for the past few days and had just started a new document to create a single page instruction sheet. Placed some Guides, wrote the stuff, printed it, closed down Publisher, wrote my "bug report" and went back to the sewing machine. Are we having fun yet?🙃

Welcome, @Bobanian! Just in case somebody else doesn't help first, there are a few things to do first before you can cease being a "giant B." Affinity waits until a new forum member has at least 3 or more posts, and 3 or 4 days before this is permitted. That was established to prevent spammers from taking advantage of the Forums and new members. Once you have passed that stage, you can then sign in and click on your giant B at the top right of any forum page, and you will arrive at your own page. Then click on the little square icon inside your giant burgundy B on the left, (see picture below) and you will open up the area where you can upload a photo, resize it, etc. Hope this helps! !

Thanks @thomaso! Problem solved. My attorney son was fiddling with Publisher while visiting during stay-at-home-coronavirus time. Evidently he unchecked VIEW>Show Margins, which I have never unchecked since August 30, 1018 with the first Publisher Beta. Since I have never changed the setting, it never occurred to me to look there. In fact, I must confess that I didn't even know that there WAS an option to turn the margins off. Anyway, you are a trooper and thank you again. Got to see what else he turned off!!

Well, @thomaso and @walt.farrell if I were stupid enough to have Preview Mode on I would eventually figure it out.😖 I may be the village idiot, but I am not that stupid. The process works perfectly with Photo. It does not work with Publisher. Just tried it again. Here, for your delectation are screen shots from Publisher. Not from Photo. The perfectly blank canvas (second screen shot) is NOT in preview mode. It is after clicking on the Preset "basic letter with margins" which I created to demonstrate the problem. In my humble opinion, this is a bug in Publisher. That is why I posted it here. Cheers!

If you use FILE>NEW and under the section "Document units" choose inches, and save it, then the next time you open FILE>NEW your document should still be in inches. At least that is what I have done on my MAC. Also, if after you have established your setting for the new document and click on Custom you will get a preset box outlined in blue in "My Presets" which you could then rename to something such as "Default document" and then test it out. Should work. Hope this helps.

I have tried several times to create a new template with specific margins. All settings appear to be fine, I click on Create, then click to open the new document. Blank canvas. No margins. When I try using the Preset the same thing happens. Every other setting is there. No margins.

@AJW. Welcome!! An excellent place to start is with the very thorough article in affinityspotlight.com, “Jump Into Affinity Photo.” It has the advantage of being able to be read as slowly or quickly as you would wish wish as you work your way around. Hope this helps.

@SPMH if you spend $20.00 for the two iPad apps, then you will have the superb qualities of the Apple pencil, plus you can seamlessly move your work to your laptop to use all the extra bells and whistles those versions provide. I have both the Apple pencil and an XP Pen Deco 03 which does a very nice job. But I am not an artist. I just fiddle for fun.

Checked the patterns. Very sophisticated!

I am a rank amateur at brushes, but I have made some image brushes and found that they could be created and worked properly when I made them from a PNG which had been Saved Without Background. Perhaps you could try that?

@firstdefence Great minds on the same path! In the meantime, having downloaded a medical school pattern for making face masks, I shall "improve the shining moments" (to quote a Victorian-era and very smarmy book) by sewing same with sheeting fabric. Lots of them. To donate to the nearest hospital. Under the circumstances, probably a better plan than sitting here, fiddling with fabrics Styles!! Stay well!

I did, and they work perfectly.

@Hanko Welcome! Tap on the word Affinity Photo (or Designer, or Publisher) then click on Preferences then click on the arrow beside the little box with the tiny black squares, and choose User Interface. Then you can not only change your interface to light gray, but also by using the sliders at the top, choose just how much gray you wish. Below are my settings. I use the light gray interface. I am using a Mac but hopefully this is the same for Windows!

Since all of the Affinity personnel are working from home, they may be a bit slow to get to all of the questions on these Forums. Perhaps you could email them, and ask for help sorting this out. Here is what they say re Customer Support: "To contact our Customer Service Team online, Affinity customers can email affinity@serif.com." Hope this helps. I am sure your remote friend would be really delighted with the gift!!

@Maphco perhaps the biggest difference is that artistic text can be manipulated in ways that frame text cannot.

Thank you @Old Bruce and @R C-R. Looks as though I might be well advised to upgrade first to High Sierra, go through the aches and pains, and then move to Mojave when I am stuck with another Safari deadline. I think Apple usually supports Safari for at least one OS before the current one. The dreaded INTERFACE looms for my 2017 iMAC. As for loading time, the Affinity apps are already taking some time to load, because they are up to their necks in fonts, palettes, assets, styles, brushes, and goodness knows what other goodies. (Goodies dutifully backed up on a flash drive.). Never mind. They are still tons times faster than I am!! I have a 2013 MAC currently on Yosemite which might be a good candidate to check the trials and tribulations of Mojave first. H’m’m’m. Decisions, decisions.