Clayton King

Thanks dominik. That's helpful for my purposes. Admittedly a bit cumbersome, but it works. Nonprinting layers is a way of competing directly with Adobe. Many designs and mockups include nonprinting layers to hold instructions, specs, etc., without interfering in the printing/export process.

CorelDRAW does a decent job of mail merge, depending on the application. Sadly, until Affinity incorporates MM, I have to rely on Corel. I also use MS Word for more basic merges like address labels and such. But if you need design pieces with variable information, Corel will get it done. Sad we need a lot of redundant software for a few features, though.

More and more I am moving from Adobe Creative Suite to Affinity. I am wondering if there is to disable some of the document presets, particularly in Designer and Publisher. As an American user, I will likely never use the European presets. In terms of workflow, it is cumbersome and often time consuming to scroll through the many (thanks for being thorough!) available presets to find one of a handfull most of us would use. Perhaps a preference setting where various presets could be dis/enabled? Or perhaps preset files that reside in a folder (similar to the way Word handles dotx files)? If it's not possible now, can this be considered as a feature enhancement for future releases?

I have exactly the same issue. I purchased three licenses for three people, but don't know which is which.

Do any of the Affinity product allow for visible but nonprinting layers? I have a number of documents set up in CorelDRAW where placeholders are marked with shaded backgrounds which don't print during output. This is one ov several different ways this could be used. I see I can turn off visibility, and I can lock a layer, but not make it printing or nonprinting. If this is not currently possible, can you tell me when it will be added to the programs? Thanks! Clayton

For reasons passing understanding, this was the only forum in which I could create a post; that's weird all by itself. Is there a place where changelogs are consistently posted? I went to this page but the links supposed to changelogs only took me back to the same place. I'm appreciative that Serif update the software frequently, but would like to actually see what they do. C

Switching back and forth is extremely helpful when developing pieces. This is especially true if you start with frame text and several words, and then cut one word out to format it as a separate object. When you paste, it assume frame text, but in fact, it's more functional (one word) as artistic text.

Apart from a few missing pieces, I love Publisher. I'm wondering, though, if it's possible to edit the presets that are displayed from the New Document dialog. While I appreciate the exhaustive list, I will never use the European standards presented first. I realize it sounds lazy - just trying to customize my system.

Thanks, carl123. That's exactly what I did, but nothing showed on the screen. I rebooted and that seemed to fix it. Is this a common issue?

I think I have a similar issue. I am well-versed in Photoshop and want to switch to AP, but simple things (I think) are confusing me. As you can see in this image, I have a curves adjustment layer to blue up the sky. When I made the selection, I inadvertently included the top portion of the church steeple, thus it blue as well. I tried using the paintbrush tool to "paint away" the blue portion over the steeple, but it has no effect. I'm sure I am missing something simple, but for my life can't figure it out. Any help is appreciated. I'm on Windows 10 pro, 32GB RAM on a very capable laptop.

While I don't necessarily agree with this, perhaps my workflow is curious or different than most? What I was attempting to do was use designer to create a graphic that included text, and that required tabs to align that text. These graphics would be used in a variety of ways and places, so it seems smarter to me to embed the text in the graphics and be done. Then place the graphic in publisher for print matter, but also be able to use the graphic online, in powerpoint presentations, etc. I have not had much success in opening a file in publisher, from there, opening a placed file (which shows embedded) and being able to save the edited version. Clearly I'm missing something, but ultimately, it seems to me that if we're going to have a suite of products that share some features, why not have fundamental features all behave the same way in each app? Just my two cents...

How does one equitably create/modify tabs in Designer. I've used the text ruler in Publisher so I can see the impact of my changes. But in Designer, I seem to be limited to a palette in the Paragraph studio with tabstops in a list. Frankly, this doesn't even seem to work as, when I change the value of a tabstop, it reverts to what it was. Also, are text styles compatible from Publisher to Designer? For example, if I use a style called "Color Recipe" which has specific attributes (i.e., fonts, TABS, etc.) in Publisher and paste text into Designer with the Color Recipe style, should those same attributes be applied? Am I missing something?

Having resumed work on a large manuscript, and continuing to fight this battle, I also noticed something else that gets in the way of easily using separate frames for spanned headings. If the single column frame (for the heading) is less than 1" in height, the arrow at the bottom right to link the frame doesn't show up. So if you have a long document and are dynamically creating frames, you have to drag one for headings that is much too large, link it, go to the next one. Change the size of the first, etc., etc. This is not efficient time use and certainly not effective workflow. I really like Affinity products. There are some quirks which I've begun working through, but overall they are good products. However, having spent a few years obtaining my Adobe Certification, I know the difference between a "nice to have" function and something that fits into a daily workflow. Spanned column text is one such thing. As another user indicated, the other amazing feature the (literally) first version of Ventura had was multi-line hanging indents in the form of a zero line feed paragraph attributes. That's too much, apparently, to ask of anyone because no current application that I know of (Quark, InDesign, MS Publisher, MS Word, etc.) has this ability. But spanned column text? It's fairly standard among the more robust publishing apps.

I realize that everyone has a wish list, but spanning columns is not a wish-it's a requirement. Creating a separate frame for a heading (for example), linking that frame to one that follows creates text flow nightmares. As others have mentioned, much older programs handled this well. I was a beta testers years ago for Ventura and Aldus, both of which had this feature. Requiring additional text frames is not only cumbersome and costs layout time, measurements are infinitely more difficult to calculate with regard to lead, spacing and such.

I have searched and searched and can't find the Photoshop equivalent of CTRL-H to hide a selection. Can someone please tell me how this is done?