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KipV

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Posts posted by KipV

  1. After doing my first layout project on Affinity I can understand why Serif isn't rushing Publisher out (even though I enjoyed using it for layouts.) There are still a number of basic layout features that need to be added to Designer and Photo to even work well as a basic one page layout software. Why rush out complex layout software before you even have the basics working right? This is the list I have come up with that Affinity should complete before moving to a layout program.

     

    - Visible bleeds in the program, not just after exporting the file. There was too much work trying to set up bleeds at a half an inch when I could see an object after it was dragged out into the bleed area. I basically had to draw a half inch box and then drag the object to the size of the box and then delete the box after I no longer needed it.

     

    - Adding and editing artboards needs to be done in Photo. If Photo let me edit artboards I could have done my entire book cover layout in Photo (I think) and not had to jump back to Designer each time I needed to make a slight revision. For an example the publisher I was working with said that my book spine needed to be .58" rather then what I previously had it set to which was .5". Such a small adjustment should not require me to go to another app.

     

    - I consider text wrap to be a basic tool so this needs to be done without having to rely on a workaround. There is also a feature from InDesign where the text follows along the side an object that I find to be very useful but I can't remember what it is called off the top of my head.

     

    - I should be able to select a shape that I want to import an object into. I know there is masking from the layers panel but with InDesign I have gotten used to selecting a shape, selecting place and then having an object get imported in. This object could then show up in the layers panel as a masked item.

     

    I think Affinity got off to a good start as a basic layout tool but I really believe that all of these basics need to be done before Publisher comes out. Ideally Publisher should be a solid app right from the first version since so much polishing would have been done to layout tools in Designer and Photo. This way the focus for Publisher can be placed entirely on things like long documents and ebooks rather then adding layout tools that have been out for decades now. Another advantage of placing the focus on Designer and Photo is that people will get comfortable using those programs as solid basic editing apps so when Publisher comes out the transition to the more powerful long document tools will feel more natural since it will be so similar to the programs they already use.

     

    PS. I noticed as I was typing this that there is a shortcut for adjusting leading. That is a useful idea. Is anyone else getting this to work? It doesn't work for me. That seems like a much better idea then having to type numbers into a leading box.

  2. Clip canvas is greyed out for me on both designer and photo. I know I did used the feature accidentally at one point so now I just have to figure out how to do it on purpose. Sometimes when I drag an object to the pasteboard it I can see it and other times it disappears. Strange, must be a bug.

     

    @Raymondo

    That is great that you got CS6 to work on Sierra but unfortunately others were not as successful. I will probably get Sierra a few months down the road.

  3. Ok, I see what was happening. I had a solid blue colored foreground that covered a photo with one opening in the center of the foreground to let the photo through. I thought that I could just apply the shadow (technically inner glow) to around the edge of the opening of the foreground and the shadow would show up on the photo. What was actually happening is I can only apply the glow to the outer part of the photo that was being covered up by the foreground. (The border in my attachment has opacity turned down so that you can see what is below it.) The part that is a whitish color shows the area that is usually covered by a solid color.

     

    I was trying to apply it to the black framed edge which I don't think works. In your framed picture it shows the entire painting so selecting the edges works; in my example trying to do the same thing hides the effect under that blue border. I guess this means if I want to do this effect I have to crop that inner photo down to the same size of the border?

    post-871-0-33536200-1476825685_thumb.png

  4. Not quite, it would be more like if the shadow were to run across all four corners of the red border and only show up on the picture. Your example stays inside the frame but isn't on the top red line or the tops of the two red side lines. The effect I am looking for is just a subtle shadow right on the edges of the border; it won't take up so much of the image. I hope I explained that better.

  5. Every time I try to do this with the effects the shadow goes both outside and inside the rectangle. I have a photo inside of the rectangle and I want for there to be a shadow coming from the rectangle onto the photo. I would think that I would go to "inner shadow" under effects to do this but it isn't working for some reason. 

  6. Oh wait, Affinity does have guide snapping features! I forgot about that! I was looking under preferences to turn it on which is I think where you turn it on with InDesign. This is the first time I have used Affinity as a layout tool so I forgot about some of those features. That's great you have that feature. So knowing that now the main basic layout features left to add is bringing artboards editing to Photo and text wrap (I realize there is a work around for text wrap but simplifying how this is done would help.)

  7. The Affinity PDF opens really weird in Apple Preview. There is a football player on the cover of the book and for some reason there are squares around his head and chest and his face is covered with something. When I open the same file in Acrobat everything is fine. I suppose the publisher would use a pro tool like Acrobat instead Preview. I wonder why that happened?

    post-871-0-98472300-1476509960_thumb.png

  8. They said right from the offset that everything had to be 300 DPI. If I have to re-edit the photo isn't not a big deal. It will only take me 10 minutes. The reason I asked if there was a way to change it is because there is another image that took me days to edit and if I had not checked the resolution beforehand this would have been a much bigger problem (that image I know was imported at at 300 DPI.) With InDesign I just click the open in Photoshop button, adjust the image resolution, and then update once I am back in InDesign. Affinity should have something similar it seems.

  9. Yes Mike that is what I am talking about. It looks like the DPI keeps getting larger when you make the photo smaller. At first I couldn't figure out how to check the DPI so that I could change it if need but but changing it in an external program doesn't seem necessary if you can just make the photo smaller. When I scaled this particular photo to get to 300 DPI it came out to an acceptable size so it doesn't look like I have to do any more adjusting.

  10. In the coming weeks I will start working with the publisher and all those details will be known. I just wanted to run it past the Affinity community in case the publisher asks for native files or PSD or what not. In such a case I would have to start thinking about how to best export the file to other formats but I don't think that will be the case. If they are flexible enough to do the interior layout in Word it  seems like they would be flexible enough to handle Affinity.

     

    I don't generally handle most of the print work myself as the print jobs are usually small enough quantity to do on a laser printer. When I have sent files out to offset printers would sometimes want to see the native files (which at that time would have been FreeHand and I think InDesign as well.) Partly I don't want to act like a complete ignoramus when I start talking with my publisher and client.

  11. I have been working on a cover design in Affinity Designer and I was curious as to how publishers like to receive files. Do I send the native Affinity file or a PDF or something else? I ask because the set up is different then it has been in the past. The people writing the book are doing the work in Word instead of a layout program for an example. I would love to know what experiences others have had in this area. When I self published by first book with InDesign (just using a basic laser printer) I would export the interior as a PDF and then print the cover straight out of InDesign. Since the cover is just one page (of course) I figured Affinity could handle that job. 

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