Mark Oehlschlager

@Bri-Toon Another interesting work-around, thanks. But it still requires two copies of the live text: one to cut out the black bar using the Erase blend mode, and another to render the transparent white text.

Well, that's one work around. Thanks. Here's another: I created duplicate versions of a live text phrase; selected one copy of the live Text with the black bar layer below and made a compound object via the Layer > Create Compound menu item, setting the compound mode to subtract (this knocked out the black bar); and finally selected the top copy of my live Text and filled it with 60% transparent white. I just wondered whether or not there is a more direct route like the "Knockout Group" feature within Adobe Illustrator's Transparency panel. You can see in the Illustrator screen shot that one can select the grouping of a single Text object and an underlying black shape (2 layers), and then check the "Knockout Group" feature in the Transparency panel to achieve the same effect. Fewer layers. Fewer moves.

Working with Designer 1.7.0.7 on Mac OS X 10.13.16. How can one achieve knockouts within groups? For example how can one achieve the effect illustrated in the sample below, where the semi-transparent white text is knocking out the black bar to reveal the blurred photo background?

Are you running Time Machine on your Mac? Hopefully so, because at the very least you should be able to recover the last saved version of the file.

@Ben I understand better now what you've intended. I can appreciate the usefulness of toggling back and forth between a User-Defined Center Point and a default Geometric Center Point. Still, the point of confusion for the user could be resolved by making a clear distinction between the two different center points. In this case the Center Point visibility toggle button in the Contextual Toolbar really controls the visibility of the User-Defined Center Point, not the fixed Geometric Center Point. Perhaps the simple correction here, for the purpose of clarity, is to alter the tool-tip label for the visibility toggle button from "Show Rotation Center" to something like "Show User Rotation Center", or "Show Custom Rotation Center", or "Show User-Defined Center Point".

@wigglepixel @Ben I'm sympathetic to Wiggle's point here. The current behavior is counterintuitive and confusing. Each object should have one Rotation Center Point, either the default geometric center point, or the user defined center point, not both. If I move the Rotation Center Point for an object, I expect it to remain where I've placed it, regardless of whether or not it's visible. The Show Rotation Center button should simply show or hide the Rotation Center Point. If you wish to offer the user two alternative Rotation Points, they should be uniquely named, and separately addressable through clear and unambiguous interface elements.

@fde101 Yes. Where InDesign files are concerned, saving a copy as an IDML file in addition to a PDF would be smart (hoping, anticipating, that Serif will eventually add an IDML import feature into Publisher).

@Jan Prague @Moon12 It's not just the total spend (sending Adobe $50+ every month indefinitely) that is of concern. The other major concern is that you lose control of all of your own work product once you decide to drop the subscription. If you drop your subscription, for whatever reason, the Adobe apps that remain installed on your computer prevent you from editing, printing and exporting your own work product. Your files become read-only files. The only solution to this major problem is to proactively save all of your Adobe produced work as a PDF (which can be opened and edited with many 3rd party apps, including the Affinity suite), or to be willing to resubscribe to the Adobe suite for a month just to regain access to your old work product. This is perhaps the most onerous part of having to rent one's tools from Adobe, rather than owning a permanent license to one's tools.

Jim, Go to View > Guides Manager ... In the resulting dialog box, you'll see the Horizontal Guides and Vertical Guides list windows. Click on the icons in the lower left of each window to add guides. Double-click on the new items in those windows to edit the default position. See attached images below.

@Sean P Not an app developer, so always surprised when fixed or stable features are "broken" by updates. Does this happen because the lines of code for the various features and tools within the app are interdependent – intersecting with code for newly introduced features?

@Dazmondo77 Ah. Thanks for the reply. I was wondering whether or not you had discovered the equivalent of Illustrator's Blob Brush in Affinity Designer. That would be ideal and the most direct route. Anyhow, great work!

@Old Bruce Ah! Yes, I see that now. Thank you.

@Dazmondo77 Nice illustration. How are you getting the woodcut look? Is there a brush option that produces vector shapes, or are you simply expanding strokes and then merging them into unified vector shapes?

I would like to request a vector brush like that of the so-called "Blob Brush" found in Adobe Illustrator. Brush strokes with such a brush would result in merged vector shapes rather than stroked paths. For some illustration tasks, this would save the trouble of expanding and then merging the current vector brush stroked paths.

Just got the auto-update for Designer 1.7.0.7. Love the Arrowhead additions to the strokes, and love the Appearance Panel with the ability to build vector objects with multiple fills and strokes. I noticed the ability to apply transparency to the fills and strokes of multi-fill/stroke objects, but could not find the ability to apply blend modes on an individual fill or stroke. Have I overlooked something? If not, would you consider adding this capability to a future release?

@petriknz What Serif have in Designer is the equivalent of Adobe Illustrator's "Art Brush". What's missing is the equivalent of Adobe Illustrator's "Scatter Brush" and "Pattern Brush". Essentially, what I'm requesting above is for the equivalent of Illustrator's Scatter Brush.

@fde101 Interesting. It looks like Affinity's original architecture has created a cul-de-sac here. Solving the problem would appear to require rethinking both the definition of artboards across the suite (as interchangeable units of composition) as well as the definition of spreads in Publisher.

@fde101 I concede that I have no expertise in coding or app development, but if artboards can be defined as pages (which seems logical and self-evident: a page/canvas upon which to compose), and this conceit is implemented across all three apps in the Affinity suite, then the definition of what constitutes a page in all three apps would be consistent, and Publisher could then define a master-page spread as a special grouping of independently sizable "artboard/pages", and multi-panel fold-outs on either side of the spine could be constructed of grouped "artboard/pages".

@fde101 It may be that the solution lies in the way that Serif define artboards in Designer. Designer makes it possible to group separate artboards in order to create a multi-panel document. Not really sure about that from a coding point of view, but from a laymen's point of view it seems that treating the facing pages of a master-page spread as independently sized artboards, with the ability to group two or more artboards on either side of the spine would be the way forward. CC: @MattP @AdamW

@Old Bruce Not sure I follow your dimensions there. A typo perhaps? At any rate, Publisher forces perfect symmetry in its facing-pages documents. I don't know how one could achieve the asymmetry required to specify a fold-out. If you've got a work-around in mind, could you illustrate it with a screen shot or video?

@Seneca Currently, how would you set up a gate-fold in a book/magazine in Publisher? Going in, one has the asymmetry of a 1 vs 2 page spread; then a 2 vs 2 page spread; and finally a 2 vs 1 page spread. I haven't yet figured it out how to accomplish this in Publisher. As for an internal half-page, I suppose one could draw a dashed line on either side of a leaf to indicate the narrower trim size for the page.

Unless I've overlooked something, I don't see that it is yet possible to define a vector brush with the same jitter and scatter dynamics available to pixel brushes. Have you considered adding the ability to define a vector brush from vector art with the same jitter and scatter dynamic parameters of the pixel brushes? If not, I would like to formally request this as a feature in the next available upgrade to Affinity Designer.

Under what circumstance would one want to shift the alignment of an arrowhead away from the stroke it's meant to finish?

@Patrick Connor Thank you for your honest reply. Naturally, Serif would like for their product to be successful. But you can also imagine how desperate many people are for there to be an affordable alternative to the Adobe suite of apps and their onerous subscription pay model. This, in concert with Apple forcing migration to all 64-bit apps in the next 6-9 months, has many freelance designers and small creative agencies, who have been clinging to the last available perpetual license to the Adobe suite (CS6) for as long as possible, in a mild state of panic. It may be more than Serif can deliver on within the year, but I, and I suspect many creatives, are desperately clinging to the hope that Serif will provide the escape route from having one's work and finances trapped by Adobe and their subscription model for "renting" tools. It's no mean feat, but means achieving feature parity with the Adobe suite, and breaking through Adobe's virtual monopoly enforced by an "industry standard" proprietary file format. All of my hopes and best wishes are with Serif and their ability to pull this off.

@fde101 I've just checked the box for "Ignore Baseline Grid" under the General section of the Text Frame Panel. Unfortunately, there is no change to the weird behavior. BTW, I've also checked to make sure that there is no document-based baseline grid set up. Feel free to download the file in question and take a look. (Attached above.)