woefi

I can confirm this bug.
...although in your use case it could have been a feature rather than a bug... 😆

for Affinity Publisher
Request:
For prepress workflows it would be very helpful to switch to a preflight mode where you can quickly check what objects are on which colour plates (eg. spot colours)
Problem:
Sometimes there are shadow-effects or overlaying colours and multiplying images that change the otherwise clean constructed set of elements in your layout. For example, you know every text has this global colour and every icon has that corporate-design colours, but where things overlap and blend, you need to know "how dark this black really is" to be successfully printed.
Solution:
Of course Indesign has had this feature long ago, and I'm even only using version CS5 from 2010...
But you can also look for Photo's Channel panel: Like Photoshop, you can disable the green and red channels and look how the blue channel looks in isolated mode. in RGB mode this is maybe not as useful but in the prepress-world looking at your isolated CMYK plates is essential!
 

The save window is overlapped by nearby tool palettes, and since this window can't be moved at all, I cannot access the buttons or see part of the window. The export window just before this one cleared the same tool palette no problem.

Hi, I'm trying to migrate from InDesign to Publisher but one major culprit is the lack of ability to export into any format that people could open (and edit) with InDesign - this could be a deal-breaker for some clients if they ever ask me about the source data of anything and I'll be only able to provide them with the AFPUB file.
As much as I love seeing you competing with Adobe (and Publisher itself seems to be a huge contender for InDesign so far), Adobe is still the "industry-standard" (and probably will be in a foreseeable future) so being unable to export into a format that allows one to switch between Publisher and InDesign is a serious problem.
Correct me if I'm wrong but since Publisher can actually import IDML files, it even looks like the lack of functionality in terms of exporting into the very same format is willful and deliberate, rather than actual technical limitation.
Can you please add this much needed option? I understand that you want your customers to stay with your apps rather than going back to Adobe but this limitation really isn't helping your cause...

I think we have exchanged some thoughts earlier about degree of usefulness of IDML serving as a kind of an exchange format between different layout apps (considering how it is currently implemented e.g. in QXP and VivaDesigner), but I certainly agree with you that these kinds of "incompatibility" concerns are silly.
IMO, speculations of "proprietary" or "nondisclosure" issues related to IDML are equally nonsensical. I am not sure how Adobe handles downgrading of features so that "new", post CS4-features get at some level included, but I have understood that IDML specs basically do not get upgraded because the idea is that layouts saved in IDML format, including ones saved in latest CC versions, can be opened also in CS4. If something is not "understood" by earlier versions, it is just skipped/ignored, .
As for reasons of current non-availability of (over a decade old) IDML specs on Adobe dev network (while IDML tools and cookbook are still available), we can only make guesses, but anyone googling IDML File Format specs gets the needed documentation as second and third find entry on Github and CreativePro (not particularly dark internet)... IDML file format itself is nothing more than zipped XML = plain text, so anybody can see how ID features are expressed in mark up. If Serif can convert that to native Affinity objects there is nothing in the technology that stops them doing it in the other direction. 

Well, given how the "Figma-situation" went down, I think this is not a realistic scenario...

Not necessarily. Their acquisition track record actually isn't terrible from what I can see. The only "bad" results are really Zeetings and Smartmockups, which were both integrated into Canva and closed independently within two years...HOWEVER these were both browser-based products like Canva itself, so that integration is not only easier but was likely planned from the start. On the flip side of the coin, their other acquisitions such as Kaleido AI, Floursih, Pexels, and Pixabay did receive Canva integrations, but still seem to also operate their individual products. In the case of Pexels and Pixabay (acquired in 2019), the integration was as simple as making their images available directly within Canva much like they are already in Affinity. Their respective websites and stock images remain free under CC0 5 years down the road. They did create a premium stock library that was integrated into Canva Pro, but that had no real effect on either of the acquired websites. Flourish and Kaleido AI are available in Canva directly, but also seem to operate independently with no real business model change.
With this in mind, Canva seems to mostly respect the boundaries of its children companies. In the case of Serif/Affinity, I now believe we'll see some level of integration but nothing to the point of Serif's closure and complete integration into Canva--the claims about providing Affinity separately do have backing in Canva's acquisition history. I also feel a bit more optimistic about them keeping to the promise of retaining perpetual licenses...after all, it will be hard to "maximize profits" if you take away the product's largest selling point.

Joke or scam, but definitely not real.

the statement reads as "nothing changes regarding v2" (pricing , licensing, updates) ...until the next major version (v3?) is released. So, we are maybe one or two years safe?

the statement reads as "nothing changes regarding v2" (pricing , licensing, updates) ...until the next major version (v3?) is released. So, we are maybe one or two years safe?

Aged like milk. 

Hello 
@woefi Photo 2 is the release build 2301; Beta is 2256, intentionally not updating it until the issue was resolved. No, I had not wiped the preferences. 
 
@Callum Following a suggestion from @Ron B, I reset the app by holding the Control key while launching the app. That took care of the issue, and Photo 2 is now operating properly. Screen shot is attached since you asked. No, I don't use any screen filters. The bigger mystery is why, when upgrading to 2.4, did something funky start occurring? 
Happily all is back to normal!

Coming from Indesign and Quark, initially I didn't get it either:
For whatever reason Publisher has this standard behaviour that when you populate an already coloured rectangle (picture frame) with an image it would "forget" about its background colour/outline.
You just have to click on this tiny and bland icon which is labeled as "clear fill on populate".
However I would suggest this "toggle"-button should get a visual "state", to show whether it's activated or deactivated...

Bildschirmaufnahme 2023-01-07 um 15.08.09.mp4    

Hi @dpt,
Thanks for reporting this.
This is something we already have logged with the Developers to resolve.  I've updated that report with a link back to this thread and you'll get a notification from the Serif Info Bot when this has been resolved  

Hi Pipouille,

Thank you very much for your suggestion, unfortunately this is currently out of the scope for 2.4, however I will pass your suggestion onto development.

Thanks a lot! This will be a very useful feature!

One point to consider is the conservation of origin. I don't know if this is planned. Being able to preserve the origin of the drawing makes it easy to import dxf files between programs so that they fit in the same place. By having a reference point, you can easily make updates, re-import just one object and have it placed directly in the right place between the software. 
This is a basic principle of CAD files and software.  
Unless it's a mistake on my part. When you import a dxf into Affinity designer now, you can't insert the drawing according to its origin. It's an option that's missing and that would save a lot of time. Rather than having to replace the drawing every time you import it. 

Welcome to the forums.
Thanks.We are already aware of this issue.

Hi Paul,

Thanks for letting us know I can reproduce this here on 2 machines (both Sonoma without MS Office installed) using both your document and a new document. Both Italic and Bold Italic TNR are being exported out incorrectly as you're seeing - I did a quick try using Arial and that seemed OK. It does look to be a regression in this build so I will get it logged.

Which version of macOS are you using? I'll check to see if this is ok on earlier versions of macOS too!

It may just be a different way of thinking about it. I made a video where I try to demonstrate why I think about it the way I do, but it is fine if you or others may not like to think about it in this way. In the video, I try to show why I think of query states as smart selections defined according to chosen criteria to which we can apply numerous operations, especially “show all” and “hide all,” but others as well.
If nothing else, I have come to realize what a powerful feature this is. Thanks Serif!

State queries.mp4  

Three Additional Feature Requests
The option to duplicate Queries... Quite often you may have an almost identical set of Query criteria where you only need to change one or two settings so rather than recreate from scratch each time it would be great to be able to duplicate an existing Query, rename it and just change the relevant setting/s...
  The ability to reorder Queries similarly to reordering Asset categories in the Assets Panel via drag and drop...
  The ability to select multiple Queries together using Shift or Cmd (Ctrl) Click so they can be deleted (or dragged) to a new location in the stack... Currently, Queries can only be deleted one at a time...

Apps: Photo and Designer
Platforms: All
In Export Persona Filename is now available as a token variable for building either folder paths or exported filenames of your slices. This is available with two options:
Document Name = the name of the document without the file extension
Document Filename = the name of the document including the file extension
For example if you had a document called "Social Ads.afdesign" which contained artboards named "Version 1", "Version 2", etc.  you could now specify your path to be Document name like below:

And this will automatically create a folder called "Social Ads" with your slices being exported within it:
Social Ads/Version 1.png
Social Ads/Version 2.png
etc.
You can also use these tokens as part of your exported file names, e.g. if you set up as below...

 
That would result in your exported files being named:
Social Ads (Version 1).png
Social Ads (Version 2).png
etc.

Additional note

Worth a reminder when testing these feature you can copy and paste export set ups from one slice to another slice using the copy / paste buttons towards the top of the panel. You can also create your own export set up presets from the burger menu in the slices panel.

Apps: Designer
Platforms: Windows, macOS and iPad

Affinity Designer now supports both DWG and DXF export, available from both File->Export and the Export Persona.
It's important to note that both these file formats are primarily concerned with vector outline data, with limited support for many of the features Affinity offers. However, it's been a heavily requested feature particularly as it means outlines created in Affinity can be easily exported and consumed in various CAD applications as well as utilities for things such as vinyl cutters, plotters and CNC tools.
Because of this, as well as some of the other fundamental differences in the file formats such as layer structure, while both import and export of DWG is now available we do not consider this a format which is suitable to round trip in Affinity. Or put another way we would not recommend collaborating with an AutoCAD user on the same DWG file.
Within export we do offer various options on how to deal with some of the unsupported features / differences in the file format:

 
Layers
All entities in DWG/DXF belong in a layer. There is always a default “Layer 0” in a valid DWG/DXF file. Affinity also has layers. This setting determines how Affinity layers are mapped to DWG layers, and therefore which DWG layer an exported item belong in

Gradient Strokes
Determines what to do with strokes with a gradient fill applied, which DWG does not support.

Gradient Fills
Determines what to do with fills with a gradient fill applied

Bitmap Strokes
Determines what to do with strokes with a bitmap fill applied, which DWG does not support:

Bitmap Fills
Determines what to do with fills with a bitmap fill applied, which DWG does not support:

Pressure Strokes
Determines what to do with strokes with a pressure profile applied, which DWG does not support:

Overweight Strokes
Determines what to do with strokes with a line weight > 2.11mm, which DWG does not support:

Dashes Strokes
Determines what to do with strokes with a dash pattern applied. DWG does support dash patterns; however DWG dashes do not scale automatically with line weight, as they do in Affinity. 

Scale dash patterns
If any line weight adjustment is made to an exported curve (e.g. it is clamped to the 2.11mm maximum), you may expect the dashes to stay the same length, or you may prefer them to scale automatically as they do in Affinity. The former is similar to AutoCAD’s behaviour - when you change an entity’s line weight, it does not recompute the dashes, which is effectively the opposite of Affinity’s behaviour. If “Scale dash patterns” is on, Affinity’s behaviour is used, so dashes will be scaled down if the line weight had to be scaled down.
Apply drawing scale
When enabled, the drawing scale is honoured. If you export an rectangle that is 1 inch wide and your drawing scale is 1:10, the rectangle will be exported 10 inches wides. Note that Affinity documents support multiple drawing scales within the same document, which cannot be honoured in a DWG/DXF file, so only the first/common drawing scale is applied.
 

Apps: Designer and Publisher (+ some changes to the existing feature in Photo)
Platforms: Windows and macOS
We have now added the States panel to Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher which previously only existed in Affinity Photo. Layer states allows you to either:
Capture the current visibility states of your layers across your document Create queries based on various criteria to use to make a selection or toggle visibility of layers This feature is particularly useful to manage different variations of your work. As an example, one of the social ad campaigns for our recent Black Friday promotion was created in Affinity Designer across multiple artboards. Each artboard had 4 variants for English, Japanese, German and French language.

 
Previously if you wanted to toggle between the English and French version for example you would need to toggle the visibility of the appropriate layers on each artboard separately - not particularly workable when you have many artboards / spreads. The new states panel gives you a new way to work with designs like this. 

In this case I could set up a query with criteria which captures all my Japanese layers. From the states panel click "New Query" at the bottom, I called the query "JA" and set up my criteria to be "All Art Text and Frame Text layers that have a layer name which ends in JA" as below:


Because on each artboard we had used the consistent naming convention that all Japanese text has a layer name ending in JA, all English text has a layer name ending in EN, etc. it made it easy to then set up 4 queries for each of the languages. We could alternatively have used a convention like all French variants are tagged yellow, English tagged Red, etc. 
So now to switch from English to Japanese across all artboards I can just turn off everything that fulfils my EN query, and turn on everything which fulfils my JP query using the visibility on/off buttons next to the queries in the states panel - so in two clicks end up with the below:

 
While this example is only including text, of course I may have had different imagery for each locale and could have included those in the same queries to still have one button to toggle text and images of each language on and off. Also, as it's set up a query like this, should I add additional Japanese specific layers to any of the artboards and name them ending in "...JA" my JA query will automatically pick them up.
In Publisher the same principles apply giving the ability to globally toggle different layers on and off across all spreads in your document which match the criteria you have specified. While building complex expressions is easy, you may also find you wish to have a query for something simple like "Layer Type is Images" giving you an instant way to turn all images on and off across your whole document.
Additional Notes
As well as toggling visibility of queries there is an additional button to make a selection of all layers which fulfil the criteria specified in the query. This is also a new function not previously available in Affinity Photo. For those who used the States panel in Affinity Photo you will notice we have changed the name of what were previously called "Smart States" to "Queries". This reason for this is in the future we anticipate adding a new feature to this which would be better described as a Smart State (this will be something you can build from multiple queries). This will be something which we add in a future update. There is other new functionality we plan to bring to this in the future - namely ability to create presets and some level of integration with export options - but again that will be something for a future update.
 

Apps: All
Platforms: Windows, macOS and iPad
While transforming any object with the move tool (whether resizing, rotating, skewing or moving) you can now hold space to temporarily toggle Lock Children on or off (to achieve the opposite behaviour of what you currently have set in the context toolbar).

Apps: All
Platforms: macOS, Windows and iPad
Previously when you cycled your selection box this was only a temporary operation. You can now make this permanent...
From the select menu there are two options:
- Cycle selection box (this was the existing option)
- Set selection box (the new option)

Also note the shortcut for these - [Full Stop] to cycle and [CMD + Full Stop] to set on macOS and iPad or [Ctrl + Full Stop] to set on Windows.
The new feature is that after cycling to the selection box you want you can now permanently set that for your current selection by using the Set Selection Box command.
In the example below, I have two shapes which are rotated by the same amount. Therefore when they are selected by default the selection box is oriented to match the shape's rotation. Now if I want to permanently make those shapes have a selection box which is oriented to my page I can cycle to regular bounds and then Set Selection Box, which will now make that persist every time I select those items in future.

 
A couple of other notes on this feature:
As well as cycling to the base box and regular bounds of an object, if you have a grid set which has a different rotation to your page (or, are working on an isometric plane for example) you will additionally get the option to cycle and set the selection box to be aligned with the the current planar bounds of the selection. If you have a multiple selection which includes objects rotated by different amounts, if you wish to set your selection box for all objects in your selection to match the orientation of one of them you can set the one you want to match to be your key object. Then when you cycle your selection box the "base box" option will match that object's rotation.