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BLKay

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Everything posted by BLKay

  1. So having to type in a percent % in what is usually a size number. Great tip is right. But, not very intuitive. "Read the book". haha.. Reminds me of this retired military guy in a mechanics class I took in the 70's. When someone had a dumb.. or not so dumb question.. he'd say in his accent. "Reeead the book". So we all used that when we were answering questions anyone had. "reeead the boooook". So true here.
  2. So there is no scaling box with numbers you can type in to make an object(s) go down a certain percentage? I knew about the scaling with the nodes, which is in all apps I'd think. In Ready,Set,Go I think you'd double click an item and all the numbers and settings would be in a box. Which was a simple way of doing it. Yes nodes are better but at times you just want numbers in a box. As for the 'dragging' a text box back from the pasteboard to the print area, this was done with the arrow tool and just one click. I agree you'd have to see it. It is 100% a glitch that may only be in my file because it is from an ,idml file conversion perhaps. It is really bothering me that it's just not good enough for me. As you say there are some better things in Publisher than InDesign but for me there are just too many things that are better in InDesign so far. I do wonder what laws or reasons keep Affinity to much more closely matching InDesigns UI. Even if they made Publisher more customizable so you can just make it yourself. Adobe did much of this copycat with Quark and won the battle. In my opinion good advice for Affinity. .. bearing in mind lawyers and crap. There are so many things that no lawyer can touch I'm sure. Docking the tool pallet to the right side... resource panel docking and character pallet on top row like InDesign. I get that it's my opinion and preference but if they want to take over the world like Adobe then this transition has to be much easier. I do love the way Publisher can open a PDF. Why InDesign cannot do this is baffling. Using Illustrator to do so loses so much and is not my workflow. I've used my purchased Publisher v1 to open a few PDFs with great success. In some ways it was better than the idml route. I forget why but it is a great feature. I have my fingers crossed that Affinity can somehow copy InDesign like Adobe did with Quark, to make the big shift to affordable and simple software. I guess I should be trying out Photos or Designer v2 as I use Sketchbook to do my cartoons and illustrator to trace. The thing I love about Sketchbook is the ability to have more than one pen/pencil/brush and different size erasers on the tool pallet at the same time. So changing back and forth is very easy. I am worried that Sketchbook may be discontinued one day and I'll be stuck like I was without SuperPaint and Typetwister. Which again was axed by Adobe. bums Just ticks me off I am giving them all this moola now. Way too much moola for once a week work. But, hey, it's my living so there ya go. Also ticks me off that Apple raised their pricing for Apple +. Record profits and tough times with so much inflation and these big companies know they got us. So I am routing big time for Affinity !!!!!
  3. As for the resource manager. I found it again. It cannot be docked and it cannot even be made small enough to stay open. The scissor tool. Oh yes.. thanks... that makes good sense. Designer. It also has the text warping tools correct? I like that. I've been suggesting that in InDesign for .. well.. before InDesign. There was an Aldus software called TypeTwister. Which truly was a kids software. So tight and small yet so powerful. It only made it to version 1.01 I think. Then Adobe bought Aldus and killed that. It was such a tiny program I'm sure it could have easily fit into InDesign. The best part is it had presets and save your own. Ugly as heck but amazingly powerful and simple. TypeStyler was another amazing program that went away, then came back but now only works with Mojave and older. Truly powerful. Which reminds me of a new software that blows me away. In my opinion it's the best software designed since those great days of simplicity. It's a web designer called Sparkle. Not a great name but wow, it could nearly be a DTP software. No reading a manual (or much) on this one. I haven't looked at it for a while but it's truly simple and powerful if you're into that. Would work well with Affinity Software users I'm sure. ok.. enough from me. Thanks for the help fde101
  4. clip to canvas made all the items in the pasteboard disappear. Perhaps I was not clear, sorry. If I select the arrow and go select an item on the pasteboard (off the print area) I cannot move the object because it selects the text. There must be another setting I'm missing. NOTE: this is a file I idml and imported into Publisher. Perhaps it's just a glitch. Perhaps best if I started over, which of course means yet another strike for Affinity since I have probably ..... over 10,000 files or more in InDesign. I guess hoping this would work is a dream. I did switch from Ready,Set,Go to InDesign by PDF ing all my RSG files and pasting them into InDesign. Then when someone had an ad change I'd remake the file in InDesign. This allowed me time to get it done through time instead of every ad in one week. So it's not impossible. I have to say that's obviously Publisher is far better than Ready,Set,Go. Or at least much more powerful obviously. MacPublisher from 1984 was very powerful. Must have been made by print people for sure. Yet version 1,2 and 3 crashed on our 512k Mac and was useless. Same as Pagemaker. Ready,Set,Go was the first to work perfectly and did a few things that InDesign still doesn't do. Long gone now. I managed to avoid Quark all together. The $800 price tag was just too much back then and I didn't like it or Pagemaker. I am really routing for Affinity. It seems they have some great ideas and I hope they are reading some of these simple problems. Whether it is just me and my opinion and I'm way off? I'm not sure.
  5. oh please tell me where scale is? I must have found it in version 1. I can find it in the tools in InDesign and even if I right click an item it's on the list. I can search in help in InDesign and it shows me where. So at least 3 places to find it. A simple simple tool like this should be easily found. Not in Publisher. Yes, I know it's there... but I can't find it with 5 minutes looking. Yes I know I could google it or watch some videos. Reminds me of the first Macintosh commercials though. IBM learn this.. a pile of manuals. MacIntosh... a thin book falls to the table. Which, none of us needed because Macintosh was that simple. No manual needed, intuitive is the key. And ya I know InDesign is not that intuitive either, but seems to be much more than APublisher. That said, I find Illustrator very frustrating for simple tasks that should be easy. It's always been a big pain since I first looked at Illustrator 88. I used SuperPaint which was very powerful yet...... amazingly... it was a Childs program. Adobe bought it and killed it so we had to use photoshop which was.... not bad and very good now. Still not that intuitive of course. I know powerful software is difficult to make simple. There's Photoshop Elements for that. I was shocked to find about a decade ago or more that Photoshop Elements had an 'auto level' or 'auto square' setting when you scanned things in, yet the full version of Photoshop did not... at 7 times the price. Things like that make no sense. It seems to me that software engineers don't talk much to the actual people that use the software. Nor try it out on .... KIDS? haha. .. or me... lol .. the non instruction book reader that I am. Yes, I do read the instructions when I put my BBQ together !!! PS- I'd also like to add the tool pallet is not dockable to the right side which is where I put it in InDesign. Personal preference. I did find how to undock in Publisher and made it into one column. So, yes, I can find things. lol
  6. Some feedback for next edition. Just a quick list that probably scratches the surface because I just can't go any further. 1. Scaling is not called scaling - small thing - This is from version one and I didn't spend long looking again in Version 2. Nevermind.. small thing but.. call it scaling ? no? 2 BIG THING - NO links panel. From version 1 I found it was called resource manager and is a window you have to open… not a panel. But having trouble finding that in version 2. Just make a links panel. A real pain. Double clicking on a placed ad opens it inside the document but that takes up space in the document if it's embedded. There must be a way to just link it and I can't figure that one out quickly either. 3 I can’t find a scissor tool to cut a border or line. Must be there somewhere? 4. Selecting a text box outside the print area… it’s turning into a type tool. Holy CRAP 5. Some items outside the print area don’t even show up. 6. Right click on an indesign placed file and you have choices to edit in.. add a hyperlink etc. A much easier way to figure things out. 7. InDesign tools don't waste space in the tools pallets and upper areas like Publisher does. I wish I had more time to look deeper and look at some videos but this is just not going to work for me. I give up. I really wanted this to be a great software that was simpler than InDesign and it's not even close. I know there is a learning curve to anything you pick up. Also took a quick look at the iPad version. Cool but it's just another learning curve different from Publisher desktop. At least try to make the tools in the similar locations. Again.. I haven't spent the time to compare so perhaps I'm not being fair to iPad version. I’m sure there are some things that are better than InDesign, like many of the shapes and even the speech bubble tool … but that's just a bit of toying around and the only thing I can think of that's better. Something I'll use twice a year if that. I have speech bubbles all made up in InDesign anyway. I am so sorry that I cannot work in Publisher. I have been a DTP since 1985 and I just can't get anywhere. So.. it is far easier to stick to InDesign and pay the bucks. OUCH !!!!!!
  7. MISSING for me. Designer - Trace tool is key. 99% of my Illustrator work and a big reason why I'm still in Adobe land is Tracing my bitmapped art drawn in Sketchbook on iPad. Photos - High res when you make a photo higher res. In other words smoothing like Photoshop. Smart select is about 50% useful in Photoshop. Sky selector I've used once for a cover of a magazine and it was good. Publisher - What can I say. It still reminds me of SwiftPublisher or some other $9 app. YES it's way way better than those. But it's just not as refined as InDesign. I'd like to move some pallets around and make it more like my InDesign placements. I use the character pallet a lot with horizontal scale for text so things fit easily and this feature in InDesign is up top, Publisher is on a side pallet. Not bad.. I feel like I'm whining and could get used to it. I've just started looking at it and forget what other things I didn't like in Publisher 1 that made me stick to Adobe.
  8. I second the motion. I have my tools to the right where most of my other tools are so not to have to move the mouse across the screen. Please allow docking the tool pallet like InDesign. √
  9. BEAUTY!!! Thanks! Okay, new to the wish list then. 1. make it easier to find in these forums, cuz I searched for a bit. But now, maybe it is. 2. Put the new from clipboard in the "new document' dialog box. But this is great! Thanks walt.farrell
  10. NIce!! The last Adobe forum post from someone said, "Adobe, do you moderate your forums." Because it's been happening there for years. I think Catalina was the first complaint. I will post there that you are on it.
  11. I've looked for this feature in A/Photo but it seems you do not have the option to open in the 'clipboard' size like in photoshop. This is ALL I use in photoshop and would be another great reason to switch to A/Photo. Another wish is a bit better smoothing when upping the size of a photo file. At least the option to up the resolution in a simple way. Yes, I know photo does this. But for some reason photoshop does it quite a bit better without fooling with settings. To be clear, I mean especially when dealing with line art or illustrations. Photoshop just naturally does a bit better job making it look high res. without fiddling. Perhaps a button that just snaps to high res. Call it the high res button. Snap.. done.. tweak if need be. In photoshop if I really wanted to high res an image, I did a double size - reduce noise - double again - stylize,defuse,anostropic - half the size - sharpen,unsharpen mask, 60%,2 radius, 2 Threshold. This works great on some images. I've tried to do the same in A/photo. If anyone has the trick up their sleeve please share.
  12. Yes, exactly as "nwhit" has explained above. Adobe's site is full of complaints and I noted Affinity does the same. Only Affinity I noticed a split second of the highlighted "untitled". Every other app I've tried does the highlight.
  13. I first noticed this on InDesign and went to Adobe's forums. Everyone ripping Adobe. So I tried Apple preview and the 'untitled' text is highlighted s you can type in the name of the file your saving. I thought I'd try this with APublisher and same thing. No highlight. So it's not just an adobe problem. However I did notice the highlight flashed for a split second with Publisher. I'm on Monterey 12.01 and 1.10.4. However the highlight problem with InDesign was also there with Big Sur. Not sure about Publisher.
  14. I have my pages Pallet doc'd to the right with swatches and strokes below. I noticed today the pages pallet on top was gone. I checked to see if it was checked off. Yes. I turned it off then on.. still didn't work. Rebooted and tried again... pages pallet worked.... dragged it back into it's spot and then started sorting out the strokes and swatches pallet... then pages disappeared again. iMac Pro, 11.6 Big Sur, 1.10.1 Publisher
  15. Photoshop CC now has an automated feature where in your low res image is smoothed (amazingly) when upping the resolution. Paste a 72 dpi and make it 300 dpi and magic happens. Please add this feature along with bitmap to vector image tracing like Illustrator.
  16. I know all this and tried it all. Photoshop simply does a "high-res" which is amazing, by upping the res from 72 to 300 and resampling. Done. It's like magic. Everything I have tried in APhoto, even upping the resolution to 1200, wasn't near as good. (as shown in my image). So I guess my point is either I am still missing some setting somewhere, or much more likely that Affinity has yet to perfect this type of thing. So truly this is a feature request, along with tracing edges to vector in either photo to designer. I'm not complaining at all... I love what Affinity has done so far. GO Affinity!!!
  17. Hey, trying to switch to Affinity from Adobe and have a question. I noticed that Photoshop has really upped their game when raising the DPI in an image by simply making the image larger. Older CS4 I had to do some tricky settings to adjust the quality, now in CC amazingly does it all for you. So I thought I would test APhoto and see if it did similar. Here are the results. Yet I had to make the APhoto 1200 dpi to get these results. Still not as good as 300 dpi in Photoshop CC. Please tell me if there is a setting in APhoto to do the same. APhoto top left - Photoshop CC bottom right. Also - Does ADesigner have anything like "Image Trace... make and expand" ? Like Illustrator?
  18. I love the idea of getting rid of adobe and Publisher is amazing, but when I've tried to switch, I have had nothing but frustration. I completely understand they are different tools and there will be learning curves and habits that need to adjust. Plus I understand that Affinity does not want to be sued by Adobe for being too much the same - perhaps. I am no expert in what these laws are but there are so many things that are difficult to find in ... well... both Indesign and Publisher. Going back in time, I didn't have nearly the difficulty learning Indesign when compared to Publisher. An example it the Character panel in Publisher. Why can it not be part of the top tool bar as it is in InDesign? (I hope I'm missing something) I use the horizontal percentage on text quite often to fix the look of paragraphs or display ads. Just a percentage mark or two can really make a difference and yet go undetected. Having fat side panels taking up so much space is just not great. If in fact there are laws against making Publisher look and feel too much like InDesign then why not make Publisher so customizable we can make it look and feel like close ourselves? I'm sure Adobe has no patent on having the horizontal scale text tool in the top tool bar, among many other things. Yes, I realize this is asking a lot of Publisher coders and designers. It's just a simply a suggestion to make the switch easier. Same goes for Photoshop/Affinity Photos. On a positive note, I do find some features in publisher to be better than InDesign. It's pretty amazing.
  19. I know. I'm talking about idml files not indd. Did I mess up? Let me know if I need and edit. Thanks Walt.
  20. Walt, because if you still own a CS product you just keep on exporting your CS files to idml as you go. No rush (and) no need to join CC every time you need one of your CC files exported to idml. OR, export all of your CC files in one very long day/week/month of opening CC and exporting. Until or unless there is software that can batch them. Which is another way to go for Serif. Perhaps a plug in or script for CC and voila. So I'm not saying there is any difference in a CC or CS export to idml. It's just that you need to 'rent' again to get to your files. Unless the day comes where you have upgraded your OS to a point where your CS doesn't work. Then again you will be stuck with batching or sitting there for a month exporting CS's to idml. to some all of this is not worth it. Just pay your 20 u.s per month and use CC forever. Who knows what the future brings. I've always asked Adobe to make "InDesign Elements" for us that simply want to PRINT things. Yeah I know they aren't listening to one guy. It would at least be nice if InDesign was $5 or even $10 mth. Would they not have more than twice the users and thus make more money? I guess they know better than I do. I have done the math. I bought CS4 standard for $1500 canadian. Which is about 2 years of $60 per month. If upgrades were $600 for another 2 years thats 10 months. So it is more to rent than it is to buy. Especially if you still use CS4 which is still great. The only thing missing is custom Font menus which drives me nuts. Although - as with so many things these days - I did have "You Control Fonts" back on my old pre? leopard days... Apple spoiled that one with system protection. OS9 had Now Utilities. WOW that was nice. Colour your fonts.. sort them into categories. Some things sure go backwards I tell ya.
  21. For the few here that have not read all the posts. If you own a CS version and have never saved any files in a CC version the idml conversion that is coming for APublisher will be excellent. For those that have CC files, you will have to 'rent' CC until you die, OR transfer all your files to idml from indd before shutting down your CC rental. I am one of the lucky ones, yet lately I have realized that this old dog doesn't do well learning new habits (APub) and may one day go CC. It truly is great software. BUT... as we all feel.... hate the rental at $28 canadian at this point. Also I received an email from Adobe yesterday stating 50% off. My first thought was wow, maybe they have made note of Affinity? (even though after a year the price always goes back to hell) But after clicking on the deal.. it's NO DEAL. well.. $1 off U.S. price per month on InDesign when you buy Photoshop for the 9.99. Where is the 50% off? I believe it read, 50% off Photoshop when purchasing another single app. That would have meant 20.99 for one app and $4.98 for Photoshop. Anyway.... I wasn't too interested and maybe I've missed something. When Adobe sent out a survey many years ago just before CC. I checked off the YES to rental... but only at a reasonable price. The 9.99 a month is doable for me. But that is only Photoshop so far. why? not sure. I know it is by far their most used software so like everything in life, demand. Yet... supply isn't part of this. No packaging, no CD, DVD, no manuals, no shipping, no retail store to pay. The perfect good ol' software billionaire business plan. (that I wish I was part of) As time goes on APublisher will just get better and better. I hope. Because some things these days just get worse. Like turning on the TV and flicking. gone. Although I just bought Alexa and returned it because she's too dumb. Got a google, not bad. Hey Google - Breaking Bad. It turns ON the tv and goes to netflix and starts where i left off. MAGIC HEY GOOGLE - OPEN PUBLISHER, OPEN IDMLS, LAYOUT NEW ADS, PRINT, FOLD AND DELIVER MY PUBLICATION!!
  22. For some, opening a PDF made from InDesign will be fantastic. An example are advertisements. Some simple adjustments and re-link photos and done. For others, not. But I must say it's better than nothing. InDesign (CS4) does not open PDF's. I wish it didn't. I don't get many clients sending me much more than a logo, photo and ad copy. But when they do send me PDF's I wish InDesign opened them like APub does. Note that I haven't truly used any PDF's I've opened in APub... I've only opened them and looked. So? That said the idml support will be better. I've open Quark files with InDesign every week as I receive content for publication. It's not perfect but it is better than a PDF screwing up text boxes. I know it's not very possible for Affinity to keep up to supporting indd files like InDesign does with Quark files. But I must say that was a key killer in regards to Adobe nearly killing Quark. Perhaps a third party will work on this and keep up with Adobes fixes. Especially being able to batch. On another note after using InDesign for so many years now and trying APub (which is amazing), my habits are hard to change. When the flow is happening and your mind is on the job, it's a bit difficult to focus on a new software. I've done this before going from Ready,Set,Go! (which was great). Going back now and trying it, IT SUCKS BAD. So.... this too can happen to APub users once you get used to it. Like the rest of life.
  23. Look up TYPE STYLER. It's amazing. Far more powerful than any other warp tool and fairly easy to learn. Reasonable price.
  24. I tried doing maps in illustrator and as I have found in the past it’s very frustrating. Since trying illustrator 88 back long ago it’s not intuitive at all and hasn’t improved much. Books, classes, training? That’s why I bought a Mac. I’m sure Designer would be much better. Redoing a two sided city map that took months to do is out of the question, so i am stuck now with InDesign on this file. I must mention though that Indesign does work great for a detailed map.
  25. Wow, now that is not very intuitive. But it works. How'd you figure that one out? I am not used to working with layers in that way. Not that I've worked much with Publisher yet but it looks as though each object is a layer? hmm What other advantages are there to this? I'm asking sincerely, no sarcasm intended. I've alway hated layers unless I truly had to use them, especially in maps and perhaps two or three layers in a publication. Master pages of course. But each object as a layer? Wouldn't this end up being a mess doing a large Map with hundreds of streets? I guess though each street would be one sub layer. OKAY, I am a layer novice for sure. In my large city maps I have about 14 layers. It must be done but ARGGGG I hate working in too many layers and having to lock and unlock to touch things up. I noticed Publisher has no "links' panel. So the links are in the layers panel, correct? Like I say, I haven't worked much yet in Publisher, nor Designer, Photo. Nor much of a pro in Photoshop really. 35 years DTP with page layout and still a lot to learn. thanks
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