postmadesign

Yes, I am aware of this, and this is quite useful in itself. But my problem is there is not much visual hierarchy in the tabs, so it can be hard to find what I am looking for in these long list. See attached the screenshot where I have character & paragraph panels on top of each other: it becomes quite hard to find what I need, let alone, where the one panel begins or ends. This has to do with the low contrast as a whole (be it dark or light ui). So as it is now, i prefer to put character & paragraph tabbed together, and pick whatever on I need. I hope you can address the issue with the low contrast UI (which is a separate topic) as I think this is an area Affinity can still improve a lot.

This is not so much an issue in Designer and Photo, as the panels there usually have less options and take up less space. But in Publisher, the character and paragraph panel take up almost a complete column, or I have to scroll very much, which is not great for me.

I am really liking publisher so far, and can imagine working with it professionally in the future. I am using indesign cs5.5 at the moment and one thing I would like to see in publisher which is in this program is collapsible panels. I like to have some panels open all the time, like character, paragraph, pages and color. This already fills my workspace pretty much, but I would like other options quickly available too, but not take up space all the time, f.i. the text frame option, the text styles and stroke options. Having some way to group a couple and minimize them would be very helpful.

This is great! Thanks for adding Bleed to document setup! Many great improvements all around, look forward to testing it.

No one is interested in replying to this?

Hi, I have a problem with the brush cursor in Affinity on Mac: When I have brushes with some kind rotation function applied, like brush direction, the brush cursor does not respect this and stays the same all the time. Although I appreciate the refined brush cursor in some use cases, this is quite annoying, as this makes it hard to judge how the strokes will come out. Applications like Paintstorm do have a rotating brush cursor, and its very helpful. Either the brush cursor should rotate, or I need a neutral brush cursor like a crosshair. More options in the respect would be helpful.

OK, thanks for the comment, good to know!

auto-update works well, by the way!

Does this mean I could acquire a license for Mac in your own store, besides the app store? If so, why is this the case? I would happily buy directly from you instead of doing it via the app-store. Will programs run differently when not being sandboxed?

Yes, probably, but this is not what you want, would you? Ideally Affinity should update the appearance of the fonts when the are activated by a font manager. Auto-activation would be great, but I can work around this. But having to close and reopen a document is not great, especially when the font properties shows the font as OK, even when the appearance of the document is not. This could be a big problem when I receive documents where some fonts are replaced, but you don't see this at first, as it shows no error in the fonts panel... I hope they fix this behaviour!

Yes, it kind of does, but it does not automatically update the preview of the font on the page. I activated a font in FEX, then used it in a AFPUB document, saved it, then quit Publisher. I then deactivated the font in FEX and reopened Publisher and the file I saved: The font preview shown is wrong and has a question mark in the font list. When I look into font properties, it is shown as OK and the font is indeed activated in FEX. But to be able to show a correct preview, I need to change the font, then change it back again for it to show, which is a shame. I hope for better integration or even better a plugin for auto-activation

Hi, Thanks for all the great work you have done to designer on the ipad. I think it is a very nice app, and the vector tools work very well with the gestures. What I use my ipad pro for mostly though is drawing (mostly pixel), as I still can work faster with vectors on the desktop. In this respect I think Designer is not quite there yet, if compared to Clip Studio and especially Procreate. The brush engine has many options, so this is no problem. What holds it back in my opinion is the inability to set my own global pressure curve for the app. I am used to Wacom on the desktop, and for me to work comfortably and controlled, I need to tweak the pressure curve. In procreate and clip studio on the ipad I can do the same, and it makes a world of difference: it is much less tiresome to draw, and feels more natural. The standard curve is just to stiff for me, and this makes drawing in affinity designer (and photo) on ipad not as nice as it could be... Would you add this in the future?

It seems there are some more issues when customizing the toolbar: twice I had the issue of the toolbar simply disappearing when I made a change to it. After a restart the toolbar was there again.

In the latest publisher build .133 there is the option "Rotate anticlockwise in plane". This option is always greyed out, and in fact it is neither in the standard toolbar, not can I drag it into it... It seems like some Designer Beta code got mixed up, somehow.

I do agree with this point that I would happily pay the price of quark xpress if the application fulfills my professional needs, as it would still be much cheaper than Adobe. But the expectation is probably that the retail price for publisher will be around the same as designer/photo. Perhaps the ability to buy this function if neccesary (in-app purchase) could be a solution?

Embedded fonts seem to be the biggest issue. The only reliable way to place a pdf in publisher would be to outline every typeface in the document, which is not really what you want. When EDITING the PDF the embedded should not be accessible, as this would mean a breach of the fonts URL (in almost all cases). I know it sounds simple but it is difficult to implement, but basically what you would want is a "read only" mode, which keeps fonts and everything intact, and "read and write" mode, which will only have the fonts available if the user has these installed. As long as this is implemented, we need a better dialog to see if fonts need are replaced, to make sure no changes occur. In addition to this, i wonder how publisher will handle Photo or Designer files with included fonts? Can they be embedded so that even when I don't have the fonts activated or installed, Publisher will show a correct version?

I have the same issue, if my picture sits nicely in the frame i sometimes need to rescale it to fit. In indesign i use a modifier key to do so. This would be my preferred option. Or the lock children checkbox could be used, as at the moment this has no effect.

Yes, we definately need pdf-passthrough, which is reliable and does not create the problems shown above. Perhaps publisher should simply distinguish between opening a pdf, which makes it editable, or place it into an existing file as is, without the ability to edit.

I love the way Affinity designer can open and edit PDFs much much better than Illustrator, it actually produces something I can work from. I hope they mantain this as it is a strong point of the software. However, I do think there should be more advanced options when placing images, like indesign offers. It should enable me to pick a page or an artboard, give me cropping option and also give me options to edit the pdf or place only a preview which will remain as is.

Also I tried out the other options to rescale picture frames but they are also not working like they should: - Lock Children does not have any effect when I have one of the auto-resize options enabled. In my view this should enable me to resize the box without the image inside it. If it cannot, get rid of it. - I had a situation where I switched from custom scale to auto-scale. sometimes this put the image oddly off-center in the frame, and every time I rescale it. - I still need "fit image to frame" and "fit frame to image" options: these are essential especially if I want to make sure no parts of the image are cut off Picture frames are still pretty buggy and unpredictable: I hope you can fix this soon, as it is pretty essential. I love the work you have done on publisher. it still needs work, but it looks good, thanks!

Does not make much sense to me. . . it seems more like a bug to me

In the latest Beta, the problem that the custom scaled picture in a frame loses its customized scale, which is good, however, there does not seem to be a way to scale the box with the content together. In indesign you use a modifier to scale the frame with the content, but publisher does not seem to have this option? I tried the option to "lock children" but this has no effect. The best option would be the solution used for text boxes, where I can either reframe just the frame, or the frame with the text. (see image)

Thanks, I kind of found out right now too. I just though there would be a quicker way, but it will do

Something I cannot find in Publisher is a right Indent Tab (Shortcut in indesign Shift-Tab) Which I use quite often in indesign. Why is this missing, and will you be adding this?

Sorry, perhaps I misunderstood, if I put my tabs on the top part of the ruler, it is reversed, if I put the at the bottom it is normal. Is this by design and if so, what is the purpose of this?