Lorox

Yeah, absolutely. As a look that's a bit "organic/handdrawn" seems so natural for so many styles of (even vector) graphics I really don’t understand why the Affinity guys have been neglecting this "vein" of doing things for so long now. The things Illustrator had to offer via its "Effects“ and/or "Filters“ (or the kind of corresponding tools) have been such a welcome extension to the basic tools of vector graphics for getting just the right look of "the line" that I, too, have to get back to my old computer with AI on it every once in a while... ("Real“ vector brushes being another)

@David in Mississippi As Carl123 has pointed out, the process that you describe is actually different from masking with a "normal" mask. The process decribed by you does not take into account the color of an object or pixels on that text layer but uses the opacity in that top layer instead. So white text on an otherwise transparent layer will work exactly like black text (or text or other elements of whatever color). In Photoshop there used to be some equivalent since I don't know when – it's called "Masking Group“ or "Clipping Group“ (I don't remember exactly, it's been a while...). It's main advantage over regular masks is that you can use "live" text (which remains editable) this way. With regular masks which are basically greyscale images (working the old "white reveals, black conceals" way) you cannot do this, when you assign one to a layer (as they are strictly pixel based). That being said, I have to confess that Affinity's way of handling the whole masking business has in fact left me (with 25+ years of Photoshop experience) baffled (and looking fo solutions online) more than once. Whereas in PS – after the initial learning phase, or course – it had been 100% clear to me how this works, there always seemed to be something in Affinity's way of doing it which felt strange and sort of counterintuitive. Nevertheless I won't give up and hope I'll finally find out what exactly causes this sort of "friction“...

@Alfred Well, yes – you may be right. I admit that I haven't really used the Find and Replace Panel as I probably should have... But I'm actually trusting your advice and I will try to do so in the future. So thanks a lot for pointing this out to me – just have to break my habit a bit, I guess...!

Yes, but you have to do it manually one by one instance(!) (or maybe a bit more summarily via Find & Replace – but that's a bit of a detour for me). I was thinking of a general way of doing it documentwide in one go for any one font via the "Font Manager". That is, any specific (missing) font weight will need separate attention as specific replacement fonts may not have exactly the same font weights as the missing font. Meaning you cannot globally substitue/replace Helvetica by Futura as the available weights are quite different in each font family.

Maybe – but honestly: this certainly isn't rocket science, is it? Why can't there be an option of alternatively choosing "(Temporarily) Substitute“ or "Replace (and keep replaced font)“ when dealing with missing fonts? To me it just seems to be a question of either saving this particular choice with the document or not. Temporary substitutions then would only be "remembered“ as long as the document is open and will be "forgotten“ once you close it while replacements will be saved just like any other regular changes you make in a document. I'm no software developer, but it seems quite straightforward (not to say easy), anyway.

Indeed – it seems to be such a simple (yet helpful) thing that you really wonder why it is not implemented here. All the more as it works as you'd expect with other selection tools... Maybe they just forgot about it?

Having just done a bit of retouching work in Affinity Photo and using the Selection Brush tool a bit I'm finding myself wondering why there seems too be absolutely no indication – like a little "+" or "–" sign – showing the mode you're in while holding the appropriate modifier key (ALT resp. CTR). I find this really irritating – and for a while even thought you maybe couldn't toggle the mode at all using a mofifier key when using the Selection Brush... Obviously it isn't a problem with the regular Marquee Selection or the Lasso tool to give this reassuring little visual feedback – so why on earth has the Selection Brush have to do without?

Hi Mike, thanks a lot – this actually works! (I treated v2 first, but will extend it to my heritage v1 as well) BTW: as your PDF comprises of just one spread it stops a bit short at the end when dealing with the setting of the ”Base” style... In case anybody wonders how to end the procedure: when you look around a bit in the dropdowns in the Text Styles Studio/Panel, you will find you'll the option to ”Save styles as Default“, which you will have to do eventually.

This seemed to worked at first, but only for the document I've done this in. Also initially when no document is open (like you said/wrote). However, as soon as I create a new document the setting in the Character Panel reverts to „English“ for the Language. I would have thought the (changed) „Defaults“ should apply to any new document created after the fact, but they obviously don't. P.S.: It's the „Edit“ menu where you find the „Defaults“ entry mentioned above, not the „File“ menu – so it took me some time to find it...

I just tried and maybe I have an explanation: If I create a new file of the original via "Save as…“ the Title (or the "Title" field) of the PDF gets updated – just like you wrote. However, if I copy/duplicate a Publisher file in the Finder and then subsequently change its file name in the Finder, the PDF Title (or the content of the "Title" field) of the original file is actually preserved! I guess that my "new" file (as mentionend above in my original post) had been created by just duplicating it in the Finder and I then used it for the new project – most likely the Title will eventually update if I "Save as…" this new file under an even newer name..

I just found the place – but it's so well hidden! WIndow > References > Fields

I just came across something I cannot quite explain (or change): I've exported a flyer design from Publisher v2.4 as a PDF for print and when I check its PDF "Info" in my Mac's Preview app (or in other PDF readers) I find that in the PDF’s "Info" an old file name gets displayed as its "Title" – which is the file name the file originally had (from another project) before I redesigned it and then per „Save as…" gave it its current file name. Is there any place in Publisher where you can actually change the "Title" (as opposed to file name) of a PDF you're going to export? I always thought that title would automatically be taken from the file name of the Publisher file in the Export process. Most people will possibly not even look at a PDF's "title" via its ”Info" (as its file name primarily tells what it is), but for anyone who does, this is actually a bit irritating. And as for privacy reasons of authors/designers I don't really think it's appropriate or desireable that anybody can uncover/see an old Title from some completely different previous context – whatever that may be...

I just happened to be annoyed (again) by the clogged font menus in the Affinity apps (and not only there to be frank), so I once again did some searching the web... 1 If it's to believed what many people say, it boils down to Apple adding all these fonts to the OS and effectively preventing them from being deactivated by any 3rd party font managers in the way you generally activate/deactivate fonts you yourself have added to your mac. 2 However, in Apple's "Font Book" app you have (always?) been able to filter the list of available fonts by choosing "font collections" like "All Fonts", "Favorites", "Recently used“, "English (or whatever OS language you have)" etc. (on the left in Font Book's UI) 3 Only today I've learned that you can actually use these (OS/Font Book related/created) font "collections" in Affinity, too, to slim down your font menu! However, this only seems to work in Affinity's "Character" palette (WIndow > Text > Character). Say you have your Affinity app(s) run in English you should be able to choose "English" in the upper left corner of the Character palette and magically exotic and unwanted fonts like "Al Bayan", "Noto Sans Myanmar" etc. will not longer populate that dropdown menu! For me this is a huge improvement. 4 If you're used to just select/assign your fonts by the dropdown menu on the left side of the Affinity context toolbar, you will not be that happy, though, because this font menu is not affected by choosing "English" as the active font collection (as described in 3) – here all the foreign language fonts you probably will never use are still present... So, at the moment, I see no other way to a more user friendly font menu than to use the dropdown in the Character window/palette with your language chosen as the active collection. If anyone has any information to do it another way, it will be appreciated, but after reading what so many users wrote about the issue I actually doubt that there is a current solution...

Thanks for asking but the issue has been solved by "Return" (see my answer to his post).

Dead on! Thanks a lot – I had actually taken a short look at the diagramm fields (which were "normal") in the Blend Options but hadn't noticed that in that little text input it had indeed been set to 75% there… Looking back I can't say, however, why I had set the opacity there in the first place! Also thanks to GarryP as you pointed in the same direction. I really don't want to blame others for my apparent dumbness, but this thing might nevertheless indicate an issue with the Affinity UI which other users have repeatedly mentioned i.e. that certain more or less closely related settings are sometimes a bit scattered around in various places and you may have a bit of a hard time to remember/visit the all to get a clear view of what's going on with some particular element/object.