MichaelG

Thanks Carl, Yes that does indeed work in Publisher, thank you. But as you say I can't use that in Designer or Photo. Mike.

Photo V2.1.0, Designer V2.1.0, Publisher V2.1.0 on Windows 11 Professional. If I place a raster graphic (JPEG, PNG or TIFF) in any of the desktop apps, then the stroke options are available in the control panel at the top of the screen, and I can apply a stroke. But if I place a vector graphic (EPS, PDF or SVG) then the stroke options are not available in the control panel. I also cannot apply a stroke using the stroke panel. I did discover that I can add a stroke by using the Outline Layer Effect, and this works in each app. However the Outline control lacks a Mitre setting, so I can't have a stroke with sharp corners using this approach. I'm not sure of this is the intended behaviour, but it seems counter intuitive. Surely it should be possible to stroke any placed graphic in the same way regardless of the file format? I have attached three files to illustrate the problem. All graphics are embedded. Thanks, Mike. Stroke Vector Problem.afdesign Stroke Vector Problem.afphoto Stroke Vector Problem.afpub

I had a similar problem which is now resolved but I'm not sure why. Windows 10 Pro V21H1 with all current updates at time of writing. Started with Designer, Photo and Publisher V1.9.2 all installed and working. Downloaded and installed V1.10 for all apps. After updating, Designer and Publisher would launch. However Photo would show the splash screen for a second or two and then crash as described in other posts. Tried a repair of Photo but did not fix the problem. Uninstalled Photo and reinstalled V1.9.2. This worked OK as before. Downloaded Photo V1.10 again and updated. This time it launched OK and worked perfectly. So I did encounter a the same problem as others here. but after the above steps I now have all three apps working at V1.10. Not much help but other may get be able Photo working with the same approach. Mike.

Affinity Publisher V1.7.2.471 on Windows 10. I am hesitant to call this a bug as I'm not sure what the expected behaviour should be. However the attached file should illustrate the point. This example is a replica of a project I'm working on. However I have replaced the text and graphics for the purposes of the example. Here we have: A three column text frame. In each column there is a section title followed by some text. Each paragraph is aligned to a baseline grid. The section title paragraph has the "Keep With Next" parameter set to 1. This is to ensure that it always stays with the paragraph below. There are three embedded graphics pinned to the title paragraphs. The native size and proportions of the graphics are different in each case. In the real-world example, these graphics are logos. The graphics are set to "Float". Each graphic has the text wrap attribute set to "Jump" The vertical align parameter in the Pinning panel is set to "Outside Above" of "Line". Where possible I like to have the section titles line up across the columns. With InDesign I would place these graphics as "above line" frames. In AP, I have pinned the graphics and set text wrap. In order to get things to line up, I would normally use the arrow keys to "nudge" the graphic down the column. As I move the graphic down, the text to which it is pinned would move down the column. However if I nudge the graphic down in AP, then eventually the section title jumps "above" the graphic. The requirement here is that the graphic always sits above the text to which it is pinned. In the example, I want to move Graphic 2 & Graphic 3 down the column until all three section titles line up horizontally. But as soon as there is enough room above the graphic, the section title jumps above the graphic. Try nudging graphic 2 down and see what happens. I have been able to get some control over this by: Adjusting the "Distance from Text Bottom" setting in Text Wrap. Setting the "Use Space Before" the paragraph attribute to "Anywhere" and dialling in some space before. But this gets very time consuming with over 50 sections to play with, each with a different size graphic. I just want to force the graphic to stay above the line below. It is possible that the secret lies in the pinning panel options. However it is not clear what the various options for vertical alignment mean, and the "help" doesn't really explain. For example, for Vertical Align I have options for "Outside Above", "Inside Top", "Inside Centre" & "Outside Below". But what do they mean? The tutorial on pinning does not explain the details. So am I missing something here? Is it possible to anchor or pin a graphic and ensure that is always stays above the line to which it is pinned? Thanks. Mike. Pinning Problem.afpub

Hi Jon, I have had another play with this, and I am now unable to reproduce the problem whereby the picture frame disappears when I place an EPS or PDF graphic in it. I tried with five different EPS files and one PDF and it worked perfectly. So I cannot explain what was happening previously. I will continue with the project I was working on when I tripped over this and see what happens, and let you know if the problem returns. Thank you for escalating the "Convert to Picture Frame issue, and for your support on this matter. Kind Regards, Mike.

Thank you Jon. I have attached a sample Publisher file with four embedded graphics, which you may recognise. From top to bottom the file formats are PDF, EPS, JPEG and PNG, and they are all embedded. On my system if I right-click on the PDF or the EPS graphic, the Convert to Picture Frame option is not available. On the two raster formats it is available. Hope this helps, Mike. Convert to Picture Frame.afpub

For my workflow, I usually want my graphics to be in a picture frame. However I do not always know the size or proportion of the graphic before I place it. So I use File > Place first to import the graphic, and then I use Layer > Convert to Picture Frame to place a frame around it. Then I resize it and pin it as required. This approach works fine with raster formats such as JPEG or PNG. However if I place a vector format such as EPS or PDF, the Convert to Picture Frame option is not available. Furthermore if I create a picture frame first and then try and place an EPS graphic inside it, the frame seems to disappear. Am I missing something, or is this a bug? Thanks, Mike G.

I have also stumbled over this issue when trying to re-create a publication in Publisher that was previously done with InDesign. As previously noted, with ID when an image is placed, it always creates an image frame. These two objects can be manipulated separately, and this can be done in Publisher too. My publication is a conference guide, and consists of a number of exhibitor profiles. Each profile consists of a logo and some text. The logo goes at the start of the profile and the text follows. Therefore the logo image has to be anchored (in ID) or pinned (in Publisher). The logos are supplied to me in many different formats; some JPEG, some PNG, some PDF and some EPS and even some AI, and the native size and resolution may vary considerably. Also, some supplied logos come with varying amounts of white space, either above or below the logo, or sometimes all round. With the "image inside a frame" model, I can resize the frame to eliminate the white space very easily. I may have upwards of 50 logos in a publication, and therefore a streamlined workflow is highly desirable. With ID, my procedure is: Use File > Place to import the graphic into the layout. The graphic is imported and a frame is automatically created. (With ID, a graphic object cannot exist without a frame). Check the "Auto Fit" option on the toolbar, and then transform the graphic to have a width of 160 points, which is the width of my columns. (The "Auto Fit" option ensures that the image is transformed with the frame). Finally, I make the graphic an anchored object to ensure that the graphic moves with the text, and set the options to be "Above line" and "Centred". I can also set the "Space Before" and "Space After" at the same time if necessary. With Publisher I think I can achieve the same result, but it seems to take more steps and clicks, and is therefore more cumbersome. So far I've tried this approach: Use File > Place to import the graphic. The graphic is placed in the layout without a picture frame, and I therefore cannot use the frame to "crop out" any white space. I then use Layer > Convert to Picture Frame to place the graphic in a frame. (Note I can't easily create the picture frame first because I don't know the proportions of the graphic until I place it. I guess I could create a picture frame first, then place the graphic inside it, and then use the "Size frame to content" button on the context toolbar, but that's even more steps). Now I can use the transform panel to make the picture frame 160 points wide. I can now adjust the frame height to crop out any white space. Then I use the pinning panel to anchor the graphic to the text. Finally I have to open the Text Wrap panel and set the wrapping attributes to "Jump". This is quite a quite more effort to achieve the same result, and with a large number of graphics to place and limited time, it can be frustrating. Now it may be I am missing a trick with Publisher and there is a more efficient technique, but if there is I haven't found it yet. (We really need that workbook). So here's something to consider. When the File > Place dialog is presented, how about a check box at the bottom that says "Create Picture Frame". Make this setting persistent so that next time an image is placed, it remembers the setting from last time. Perhaps there could be a second check box to set the text wrapping options at the same time. Finally, something in Preferences that allows me to "Always create a picture frame when placing graphics" might also be useful. I believe that something like this would streamline the process, especially when placing multiple images with a single operation. Such an arrangement would satisfy those like me who always want their graphics in a frame, and also those who don't. With Kind Regards, Mike G.

Ooops! Thank you Carl123. I didn't notice the Swatches or Gradient tabs. (Should've gone to Specsavers!) Thanks for sorting this out for me. Kind Regards, Mike.

Affinity Photo for Windows V1.7.2.471 on Windows 10. From time to time I am given a print-ready PDF and asked to turn it into an HTML email. The PDF is usually an A4 or A5 flyer. My usual approach to this is: Open the PDF in Photoshop. PS rasterizes the PDF as part of the import process. All the type is rasterised too. Save the document as a JPEG. Create an HTML "wrapper" and upload to a bulk email service such as MailChimp or Provoke. I realize this is not ideal, and certainly not as good a solution as creating an HTML document from scratch. However, that is what the client wants sometimes, and it works. And of course, it is always a "rush job". I do not ned to change the content in any way, and I certainly don't need to edit the type. I just want a "snapshot" of the PDF at 72 DPI. So as part of my migration from Photoshop to Affinity Photo, I need to perform this simple task. The problem is that, when Affinity Photo opens the PDF, it insists on keeping the type editable. Furthermore, if the PDF is created using proprietary corporate fonts, they are converted to another font, usually Arial. As you can imagine, the original look of the document is lost. I have attached three files: The original print-ready PDF as supplied. A JPEG created after opening the PDF in Photoshop CS6. A JPEG created after opening the PDF from Affinity Photo. Just have a look at the type on the Affinity version. I think you will agree that this is unusable. So, how can I open a PDF with Affinity Photo and have everything rasterized? Thank you, Mike G. A4 Flyer Original.pdf

Affinity Publisher for Windows V1.7.2.471 on Windows 10. When creating a new document with Publisher, I start by creating a few Global Colours, some process colours and some spot colours. I now create a text frame, and I want to fill it with a colour from my swatches. But when I open the Text Frame studio and click either the fill or stroke, I am not offered "swatches" as a option. I only get the various sliders, HSL colour wheel etc. This is a quite serious omission, as many projects need the text frame fill and/or stroke to be one of the "corporate" spot colours, or a tint thereof. As a workaround, I found that I can create a rectangle with the rectangle tool, fill it with the required spot colour, and then convert it to a text frame. However even when I do that, the colour is converted from a genuine spot colour to a CMYK mix. Therefore if I was creating a document with a view to printing with just two plates, say a spot colour and black, then I've just blown it. This of course, will increase the cost of the job when printing litho. I suppose one way around this would be to create a rectangle with the required spot colour fill, and then lay a transparent text frame on top of it. But this would be very tedious. So, it would be great if the team would consider allowing anything in the document swatch list to be used as a fill/stroke for a text frame. Thank you, Mike G. P.S. I think that the text frame studio would make a very useful addition to Designer.

Update: 20th August 2019. Same hardware as above — Core i7, 6 cores, 12 logical processors, 16Gb, SSD. Windows 10 Version 1903 Build 18362.295. Affinity Publisher for Windows V1.7.2.471. Number of fonts Installed: 4693. I have some additional information on this issue if it helps the developers. Since my initial post I have had another font culling exercise and further reduced the number of installed fonts. The good news is that the "missing fonts" issue does seem to be fixed, so thanks to the team for that. Although I am reporting this as a Publisher issue, exactly the same problem affects Designer and Photo too. All Affinity apps are at version 1.7.2.471 at the time of writing. The key times recorded for all apps is roughly the same to within a few seconds. I will therefore only give the timings for Publisher. (Time format is mm:ss). For the purposes of this post, I have broken down the launch process into phases. Phase 1: The application splash screen appears and displays the "Loading fonts..." message. Phase 2: The application splash screen disappears after 01:10. The main app windows pops up at this point. However the splash screen is still underneath the main window, but it does not show "Loading fonts…" message. The main window is not responsive at this time. Phase 3: The Welcome screen appears after 04:20. That is considerably longer that I recorded in my initial post with an earlier version of Publisher. Phase 4: Now it gets interesting. In my initial post I reported that the app uses approximately 12% of the CPU for several minutes after the welcome screen appears. In fact it uses 100% of one virtual processor. This PC has 6 cores and 12 virtual processors, so there is one compute bound thread taking 100% of one VCPU. This CPU usage continues for 19:20 after launch, so that's about 15 minutes of a maxed out VCPU after the Welcome screen is displayed. There is no significant disk I/O going on, and Microsoft Process Monitor doesn't show any registry activity. What on earth is going on here? Just as before, if I create a new document as soon as the Welcome screen appears, then create a text frame, and then try and lay down some type, I initially have no font previews rendered in the font dropdown list. If I am patient and wait, I can see the font previews slowly appear in front of my eyes. If I scroll down a little way, the font previews gradually trickle down through the list of fonts from A to Z. After approximately 20 minutes after launch, all font previews are visible. I have only observed this behaviour with the three Affinity apps. If I close the app and launch it again, the same thing happens. Mighty tedious. So much for the facts, now for the guesswork... This is an issue with FreeType, correct? Once the app is launched, FreeType gets to work to generate the font previews. Furthermore, FreeType is not multi-threaded. Nothing else I use makes use of FreeType, and that's why I only see it with Affinity apps. I hope this helps to identify the problem, if indeed the developers consider it a problem? Please let me know if you need any further information. Kind Regards, Mike G.

Affinity Publisher for Windows V1.7.2.471. Windows 10 Version 1903 Build 18362.295. Having installed the latest Publisher build, I have started working on a "real" project. One of my first steps when starting a new project, after setting the document size etc, is to create the swatches I will need. These will generally consist of some PANTONE spot colours, some process colours, and maybe some tints. So far I have some across the following issues... Adding Global Colours: When creating Global Colours... Having opened the "Add Global Colour" dialog, selected a PANTONE colour and clicked "Add", it would be very useful if the "Global Colour" dialog remained open so several colours could be added without having open the dialog again. At the moment the dialog disappears when "Add" is clicked. When adding PANTONE spot colours, it would be great of the name of the colour was taken directly from the PANTONE colour name by default. This will save much typing, and the colour naming in the Swatches panel will be clear and unambiguous. It would also save time if, once the PANTONE library was open in the Add Global Colour dialog, that I could select more than one colour by holding down the control key. They could then be added all together. Taking care of the previous point and automatically using the PANTONE name would facilitate this. Having selected some PANTONE colours to start with, I may want to add some more during the project. It would therefore be great if, when I return to the "Add Global Colour" dialog, it kept the settings from last time instead of always reverting to the HSL Colour Wheel each time it is opened. When choosing from any of the PANTONE swatches, with the exception of the CMYK libraries, surely the "Spot" attribute should be applied by default? For anything from the "PANTONE Solid Coated-V2" swatch library is by definition a Spot colour. Working with Tints: I usually create a few tints, usually of black, and add these to my set of swatches. I'm still finding my way around Publisher, so my methodology may not be correct. However in ID, I would select the BLACK swatch, and then choose New Tint Swatch from the fly out menu. With Publisher I have tried the following approach: Add Global Colour and choose "C:0 M:0 Y:0 K:90" using the CMYK sliders. In the swatches panel, I then "Rename Global Colour..." and then change the name to "Black 90%" (I find this much easier to read in the Swatches panel than the colour recipe). Right-click my new swatch and choose "Make Copy". Problem: The duplicate swatch has the same name as the original. Perhaps there should be a "(Copy n)" suffix? I now have two swatches called "Black 90%". I click select the lower of the two, and then right-click and choose "Rename Global Colour...", and then type in my new name of "Black 80%". Problem: It is not my selected swatch that gets renamed, but the one above it. Surely a bug? So I drag the renamed swatch below the copy, and the finally I can use "Edit Fill..." to change the tint to "Black 80%" I'm guessing that these issues apply to Designer and Photo too. I think that streamlining these swatch management issues will accelerate something that people may do several times every day. Thanks, Mike.

Affinity Photo V1.7.1.404 on Windows 10. This problem was reported in another thread against Affinity Photo V1.6. However that thread is now locked, and I have encountered the problem with the current version. In the Affinity Photo Workbook section 7 of Chapter 3, entitled "Mother of Millions", describes how to create a focus merge. I have encountered the problem using the sample images supplied to accompany this section. There are a total of 41 sample JPEG images supplied for this exercise. Each image is 6000 x 4000 pixels at 240dpi. This would give a print size of 25.0" x 16.7" without resampling. If I go through the steps in the workbook and create a focus merge, the resulting image is 6000 x 4000 pixels at 96dpi. Therefore the native resolution of the source images has been changed. In fact, the same problem occurs when merging any two of the source images. If just one of the JPEG images is opened, then the native resolution of 240dpi is maintained as expected. In addition, the supplied file mother_of_millions.afphoto has a resolution of 96dpi. I realize that I can change the resolution back to 240dpi by using Document > Resize Document... option and switch Resample off. However my expectation is that, when merging a number of images with identical dimensions and resolution, then the original resolution of the images is maintained. (This is what happens when creating a merged images with Photoshop CS6). Is this expectation reasonable? Of course I don't know if this is the expected behaviour or not. However the earlier thread implied that on versions of Affinity Photo prior to 1.6, this did not happen. I won't bother uploading any supporting images as I'm assuming that the development team has all the material required to reproduce this problem. Please let me know if you need any further information. Thanks, Mike.

Dear Affinity Team, First of all, congratulations on the release of Affinity Publisher V1. Great job! I am now running the official release and I'm looking forward to using it. I did post a topic on this subject on the Affinity Publisher Beta forum. Things have improved somewhat since then, and my understanding of what is going on has improved too. However, I do feel there is still an underlying problem. I have done a considerable amount of research and testing, and I am sharing the results here. I have gone into as much detail as I can, and as a result this is quite a long post. Problem Summary: With a large number of fonts installed on my computer, Affinity Publisher, and other Affinity apps too, take significantly longer to launch than other design apps. System Details: Fujitsu Celsius workstation. Core i7, 6 Cores, 16Gb, SSD, Windows 10 Pro Version 1903, OS Build: 18362.207. Fonts Installed: 4862. Prior to performing any tests, the following actions were performed: I performed a major cull of installed fonts, and removed several hundred since I performed this test on the beta release. After the cull, the Windows font cache file was deleted. (C:\Windows\System32\FNTCACHE.DAT) The Windows font management service was stopped. The contents of the folder C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\Appdata\Local\FontCache were deleted. All Adobe font cache files were deleted. (AdobeFntnn.Lst) The computer was restarted. Each application used in the test was launched once to allow any caches to be rebuilt. The application launch times recorded were as follows: Adobe InDesign CS6: 0:25 Serif PagePlus X9: 0:08 Affinity Designer V1.7.1.404: 3:00 Affinity Photo V1.7.1.404: 3:20 Affinity Publisher V1.7.1.404: 3:10 In each case, I deemed the application launch to be complete when the welcome screen appeared. Each app was launched separately to avoid any risk of the apps interfering with each other. No other foreground apps were running other than Windows performance monitor and the stop watch app. It can be seen that the Affinity apps have similar launch times to each other, and these are significantly longer than either PagePlus X9 or InDesign CS6. I believe the prolonged launch times for the Affinity apps is due to a font enumeration and/or font caching issue. Application Readiness: As stated, when the welcome screen appeared I consider the application to be ready for use. However this is not the case with all apps. For InDesign and PagePlus, as soon as the welcome screen appears I can create a new document, then create a text frame, and then select a font from the font selection drop down. In both cases, the font list was fully populated with font previews, and there was no perceptible delay in scrolling trough the font list. However with Affinity Publisher (and Designer and Photo too) when the welcome screen appeared I could create a new document and create a text frame, but when I went to the font selection drop down, the font previews were not yet rendered. If I waited with the font drop down open, I could see the font previews slowly appear. (The apps opened with Arial as the default font, so the font list open with the fonts beginning with "A" visible). Now if I tried to scroll through the font list, Publisher became unresponsive. However patience pays, and eventually the font previews progressed downwards through the list. Eventually all the previews were visible, and at that point I could scroll back and forth through the font list without any further problems. However, to completely render the font previews takes in the order of 12 minutes. If I launched another app, such as MS Word, whilst the font selection drop down was open and the font previews were being rendered, then the font selection list would always be on top of MS Word. This continued until the font previews had been rendered. Conclusion: Affinity Publisher (and other Affinity apps) is not fully ready to use when the welcome screen appears. Background CPU Usage: After Affinity Publisher (and other Affinity apps) displays the welcome screen, it continues to consume approximately 4% to 6% of the CPU for a period of approximately 12 minutes. After this time, the background CPU usage drops off. If I launch Affinity Publisher and then wait for the CPU to become quiescent, I can then create a new document, create a text frame, and open the font selection list. Now all the font previews are present, and I can scroll back and forth through the list without any delay and without the app becoming unresponsive. Conclusion: Only when the app gets to the welcome screen does it begin rendering font previews. On this machine with this number of fonts, this operation takes approximately 12 minutes. Only when this is done is the app fully ready for use. It is my belief that after Affinity Publisher is launched and the welcome screen is displayed, it then gets to work rendering the font previews. Moreover, it does this each time it is launched. There would not appear to be a persistent font cache. Adobe Font Caches: The Adobe suite creates and maintains a number of font cache files in various locations. They usually have a names like AdobeFntnn.lst. As part of the preparation for this test I deleted all these files, and after a system restart they were all rebuilt. What builds them I don't know, but I believe these files play a key role in how fonts are managed with Adobe apps. However this does not explain why PagerPlus X9 doesn't suffer from any of these issues. It launches like lightning, and is ready to go as soon as the welcome screen appears, font previews and all. Go figure. Summary: OK, that's about all I can tell you. This issue is an annoyance rather than a show stopper. It doesn't appear to prevent me from using the app, it just takes a while before it is fully ready to go. But if I were using this app every day, I think it would quickly become tiresome. The fact remains that InDesign CS6 is ready to go in 25 seconds, but Affinity Publisher takes just over three minutes to give me a start screen, and a further 12 minutes before it is fully ready to go. Therefore there is some work to do with font management and optimization I think. PagePlus manages very well however, and this is a Serif app. What is its secret I wonder? If the development team would like any further information or clarification, please do not hesitate to ask. Thanks again for a great value design suite. Please keep up the good work. With Kind Regards, Mike G.