Vaaish

Ok, thanks for checking on that.

@Sean P Here you go Jokers-2.afdesign

I'd disagree unless the piece is finished art. I can expand the stroke if I have to too, but since this piece is still in production, it gives you less flexibility and fine control of the gaps especially for on the fly adjustments.... and none of that negates that there appears to be a bug in the PDF export of them, hence my original post.

It looks wrong on Chrome too, like it's splitting the stroke but it's close together. The setting I have in Designer for those are a single dashed line with 60, 3, 1, 0 phase -6 which is the same as the colored one that shows up correctly.

For clarification, it's the bit circled in red here that's different. The shot in Designer shows these to be identical, but the PDF attached above displays and prints the dash terminus on the back version much shorter than it should.

I have two duplicated pages with identical stroke settings and geometry for the long rays around the balloon that display identically in Designer. The problem occurs when I export a PDF and the dash at the end of the rays on the all black version are shorter than the color version. The screenshot shows how it looks in Designer and the PDF shows what happens when I export it. Jokers_RD01a.pdf

I didn't realize applying multiple masters was possible. It's really hidden away there. It still seems a really really odd way. Totally alien to the InDesign workflow of one master per page but allowing masters to be based on other versions. That does create some nice options for masters and COULD be a functional alternative to nested ones, but the interface for this needs a major overhaul. Why not allow us to select multiple masters initially instead of one at a time? Why not let us select multiple masters in the master page studio and drop them on at one time? anyway... I digress a bit here. Regardless of multiple masters, there still needs to be a way to identify them visually on each page. This could be as simple as adding an extra line under the page name that says which masters are on there. Maybe it we could set master page colors and have a swatch for each master applied next to the page. This is critical information to know at a glance for complex documents.

@Jobalou The terminology affinity is using seems to be different but the effect is the same as the forced line break you're looking for. Maybe the menu option could get updated to clarify it's a forced line break?

The new beta adds in linked values for the bleed and margin settings and bleed preview which is very nice but we need to have bleed settings on the new doc screen too. I'm still really not sure what master pages are good for here either. Other than very basic use setting design elements and header/footer stuff they seem really awkward. I'd love to hear what the dev's goals are for these.

Has anyone found nested styles in the beta? If not, these would be great to have. Very useful.

@walt.farrell Sorry, yes the picture frame tool. I was going off memory and defaulted to Image Frame. Edited

Thanks walt, but that's not really what I'm talking about here at all. The current function of the place image tool that you're referencing creates an image that has limited options compared to an image placed using the image frame. For example: Place Image only allows you to scale and replace the image or file that's been selected. (I should note that IMAGES selected will still give fill and stroke options though no corner options, but files, like a PDF will not give any options.) Picture Frame allows you to specify how the image scales within the frame, scale the image, replace the image, add frame fill colors, add frame strokes, and adjust frame corner options. That creates two objects that look the same but have different properties and no really clear benefit to this distinction. I'm suggesting that instead, the place image tool create an object in a way that is consistant with the object created Picture Frame tool so that either route provides consistant handling of the images. I'm not asking for workarounds or potential extra steps to get the effect, I'm pointing out what to me is an inconsistency that's at odds with how I (the user here) would expect the tools to function. I'd expect that regardless of using Place Image or Picture Frame, I'd have the same options available. Example.afpub

I've been messing around with the beta to see how it holds up and there's a lot to like, but one thing that frustrates me to no end is the Place Image and Picture Frame tools. Initially I used place image to, well, place an image only to find that I couldn't access any of the controls for the image and was limited to just replace doc/edit doc which is useless for most things compared to the controls you get with the Picture Frame tool. I Immediately did the same thing with the Image Frame tool and effectively had an identical result, but with the embedded doc as the child of the Image Frame which allows for adding all the expected properties. I'd like to suggest that the Place Image tool just go ahead and create the image frame wrapper around the selected image. I believe the appearance and function would be identical to what's here now with the added benefits that the structure and properties are uniform for all image elements in the doc.

Then apparently I wasn't as clear as I thought. My apologies. I'm calling bull on this. We SAY that's the case because the industry DOES revolve on Adobe's globe due to Adobe's near monopoly. Adobe is the standard because they've provided the most widely available integrated toolset and shut down any potential competition for the last what 30+ years. To pretend that is the case simply because everyone keeps saying Adobe's the standard, well, that's just... naïve. It's only been in the last 5 years or so there's even been a crack in the empire with the UI design segment exploding.

You're setting up a straw man here because AI -> PS isn't an appropriate comparison and isn't at all what I'm arguing for. Take 3d formats for example. Obviously you won't get a 1:1 of all proprietary features with different formats, but you can still be reasonably sure that if you are sent an OBJ, 3ds, or DAE that you'll be able to import the model and edit it if necessary. That's the kind of thing I'm looking for. Adobe owns the design industry and is THE standard for any kind of professional design workflow. It's 20 years of lockdown and unless you find a way to work with CC, the cost of entry is too high for most agencies to even think about switching so I have to either use Adobe or use something that can integrate with it when other team members need to touch files. That's why this kind of interchange is necessary and why talking about interchange with other alternative apps is much less relavant here. Because Serif has done such a great job with the PSD import/export it almost functions as a seamless interchange with Adobe... just that tiny issue of no editable text can be exported kills it. I can sort of work around it if no text is needed on the document, but there's a surprising amount of it that ends up on anything from social images to banners and other graphics. Outside of PSD's there really isn't many options on the raster front. I hope that one day Serif can get the export figured out, but it's a bit naïve assume it'll ever change and jump platforms entirely hoping it does. Vector is a much, much sticker issue. Despite having SVG and EPS to send back and forth, I've been having difficulty getting consistent results from Affinity. Case in point, I did a simple test illustration with some strokes, clipping paths, and gradients. With EPS I ended up getting the gradients rasterized and with SVG I got the strokes expanded if they weren't set to centered. Sometimes the illustration came in with strokes massively thicker than Designer too. Combine that with limited information as to WHAT will change when exported, it makes it impossible to do an illustration expect it'll look right when it's opened vs just doing it in illustrator. TL/DR: Photo -> Photoshop is ok, but could be practically indistinguishable if text worked on export. Designer -> Illustrator seems very hit or miss with limited indication of what is or isn't supported and uncertain results opening EPS and SVG in Illustrator.