Mark Oehlschlager

Not sure to whom I should address this matter. I've just received a spam message on this Affinity Support Forums site. Message resembles that of a porn operator trolling for customers. Here's a copy of the message from @suswill: Is there a way for me to block this and other such spam? Is there a way for the admins to block or delete the spammer account?

@Old Bruce You may be correct, although I began with a fresh document immediately after installing 1.7.0.249, and I did not actively set a baseline grid. I've tried to reproduce the problem and I cannot. It may have been a one-time occurrence related to the installation of the new beta software. It may be an intermittent bug. I'll monitor the issue with more tests over the next few days to see if it crops up again. Strike all that above. I have reproduced the problem. This time an unexpected jump occurs when the top inset is over 1.83 inches. (See attached screen shots.) The break point in this instance occurs between the top inset values of 1.83 inches and 1.84 inches. By incrementing the top inset from 1.83 inches to 1.84 inches, the typeset paragraph jumps downward a distance that appears to be equal to the leading (linespacing), roughly 48 points. The font I'm using is a licensed Opentype Postscript file for the face DIN Next LT Pro Bold. A baseline grid has not been set or activated. I'll attach the Publisher file below. P.S. If I change the font from DIN Next LT Pro Bold to Arial Bold, the problem remains, but this time the breakpoint for the unexpected jump occurs between 1.81 inches and 1.82 inches. It's a mystery. TextFrameInsetv01.afpub

Currently working with Publisher 1.7.0.249. When I attempt to apply a text frame inset value of 0.25 inches in the Text Frame Panel, my text is unexpectedly offset from the top of the text frame by what appears to be 1.25 inches. Stepping the offset value down incrementally, I find a behavior break point between 0.13 inches and 0.14 inches. (See attached screen shots.) Any idea about what's going on here?

Would you guys be targeting an official launch date on or about the Apple WWDC event this year? And would you be planning to have an iPad version of Publisher ready to go by then?

I've just looked at each of your sample SVG files in Designer 1.7.0.4 on Mac OS 10.13.6. All four examples display upright, both on the canvass and on the layer thumbnail. Perhaps you or one of your colleagues have rotated the canvass while working on the file in Designer?

@robinp Well, unless you're producing scale drawing for your A3 document pages, you would need to scale your drawing down to fit the A3, and then do the math to compute your compounded scale, and record that in a caption to your placed drawing. Are you unable to place your drawing at 100% and then use the Transform panel in Publisher to reduce that placed image by an appropriate percentage? If your 1:50 drawing needs to be scaled down 50% to fit a document page such that the new scale is 1:100, why not place the image at 100%, go to the Transform panel, link the Width & Height fields, and add the expression * 50% after the actual image Width and then hit the return key?

I'm not sure I understand the expectation here. Publisher is a page layout application for books, magazines and other long documents. It is not a drafting program for the production of construction drawings. Presumably your office outputs scale working drawing from a drafting program onto large sheets. If you need to print books with detail drawing at 1/4"- or 1/8"-scale, or even a very small-scale plan drawing, why not export a properly scaled, 300-ppi raster image with dimensions appropriate for the page size of the book you are trying to produce?

Working with Publisher 1.7.0.227 I've placed a greyscale image in Publisher. I've used a Gradient Map filter to map two Pantone spot colors to the image (one spot for the dark tones, one spot for the light tones). I've also drawn two rectangles on the page and filled each with the respective spot colors used to recolor the greyscale image. Having exported the document as a PDF with "Honor spot colors" selected, I get a PDF document where the colored image separates out onto the four standard process color plates (CMYK) rather than onto the expected spot color plates. The spot color filled rectangles do however separate correctly onto their respective spot color plates. This appears to be an ongoing bug in Publisher. Generally, I see nothing in the help files for any of the three Affinity apps (Photo, Designer, Publisher) that clearly explains how to apply spot colors in such a way that the colors will correctly separate out onto the correct spot color plates for offset printing. Please give special focus to spot color handling and control in the Affinity apps prior to releasing the official 1.7 versions. Test 02.pdf

@RM10 CC: @Jowday If you own Affinity Photo, and are willing to work with a rasterized copy of the artwork, you might consider building the composited mock-up image of the bottle with the logo bending round the form by using both the Mesh Warp tool and the Perspective tool. (See example screenshot below.) Working with a duplicate of your AF Designer source file, go to the File > Edit in Photo ... menu command to take the art into AF Photo. Use the Mesh Warp tool to apply a bend to your logo that matches the perspective of your bottle's form. Use the Perspective tool (Dual Plane mode) to foreshorten the ends of the logo a bit to try to fake the natural compression of the image you'd see if it were actually wrapping around a bottle. It requires some manual manipulation and a good sense for thinking in 3D, but it's better than nothing. Short of working with a real 3D rendering application, this is probably your best shot. Good luck.

@fde101 @Sean P fde101, Thanks for the linked discussion. Still questions about the distinctions between Canvass and Artboard remain for me. First, if every AF Designer document displays a Pasteboard on which there can be one or more Artboards (even of varying sizes), and, working with real-world analogies, a digital Artboard is like a sheet of paper or board onto which one draws and paints, then I must ask: Why doesn't an Artboard get created automatically upon document creation? Why isn't it just assumed that a designer is going to be creating a composition on an Artboard? Why would you want to compose without a defined Artboard? What special purpose does a "Canvass" have without a defined Artboard? Second, I note that within AF Designer it is possible to group Artboards of various sizes into a multi-panel "canvass" for projects like tri-fold brochures, or book/magazine covers for perfect bound publications, or for dust-jackets for hard bound books. It occurs to me that this capability should be incorporated into AF Publisher to allow for the creation of these same items plus the creation of fold-out pages in magazines and books. @Sean P could you please raise this idea of adapting AF Designer's capability of building multi-panel pages to the problem of creating multi-panel fold-out pages for books in AF Publisher with your colleagues?

So, Canvass and Artboard are separate concepts in the Affinity app? Seems a bit confusing as the terms are so similar in meaning for me. Is that something that could be cleared up with terms that are conceptually more distinct from one another, or is that pair of closely related terms something that users will need to learn to keep straight? Apart from serving as a kind of layer group, what purpose does the Artboard serve? How is it meaningfully distinguished from the Canvass?

@rnbutler87 Actually, as a follow up to my first reply, I've conducted a simple test of my own. I placed a big red square on an artboard and allowed it to bleed on three sides (left, top, right). On screen, the artwork is clipped to the canvass/artboard. The menu command that controls this is greyed out and not selectable, but in this beta the default choice is fixed: Clip to Canvass is permanently switched on. Interestingly, even though the art that extends into the bleed is clipped from view on screen, when I export the document as a PDF with the "Include Printers Marks" options switched on, the exported PDF accurately shows the bleeds along with the printers marks. So, I guess the question now is whether or not Affinity plans to unfreeze the "Clip to Canvass" menu command to enable users to see their bleeding artwork on screen, not just in PDF output. Bleed Test.afdesign Bleed Test.pdf

I believe this is a bug with the current beta, 1.7.0.4. For some reason, anything drawn on an artboard layer will not display in the bleed area. Perhaps that's by design. I don't know what Affinity are thinking here. However, if you draw/place art that is meant to bleed on layers outside of the artboard layer, you will see the art extend to the bleed margins. (See attached. I didn't have your fonts.) cc_a5-flyer-rev.01.pdf cc_a5-flyer-rev.01.afdesign

I don't think the linear nature of book design and an application designed for laying out long documents (books and magazines) is the best match for someone whose job it is to prototype the hierarchical and interactive tree structure of a hyperlinked website or a phone app. For sure, it may be nice to be able export individual pages from a successful book design in the form of AF Designer artboards as starting points for the purpose of prototyping interactive screen designs for web or for mobile apps, but AF Publisher (IMHO) is not the tool for interactive design prototyping, rather AF Designer is better suited, assuming that Affinity does not plan to develop a separate dedicated prototyping tool. If AF Designer were to incorporate an Interactive Prototyping Persona, then they might extend the app to be able to wire up the artboards to reflect page hierarchy and linking behavior. Otherwise, they should develop a fourth, dedicated app in the existing suite of apps.

As part of a test to learn about the behavior of spot colors in Publisher, I just tried to use the Gradient Map adjustment layer to recolor a Greyscale image in Publisher, and then to export a press-ready PDF. I uncovered a number of issues that need immediate attention: Pantone spot colors do not display accurately in a CMYK Publisher document. Appearance seems to be fine in either CIE Lab space or in RGB spaces. Working with the Swatches Panel is a very tedious and fiddly experience. The number of clicks required to add a spot color to one's document palette should be reduced. Although I applied Pantone 173 to my Greyscale image, Pantone 021 got added to my document palette. Spot colors added to the document palette are identified generically as "Global Colour x" rather than by their proper name. When one highlights the generically named spot color in the swatches palette and then selects the Pantone swatch book from which the color came, the color chip is not highlighted or identified in any way among the thousands of other Pantone color chips. The only indication of the spot colors actual name comes if/when one switches to the Colour Panel. There doesn't appear to be a Channels Panel or a Separation Preview Panel that would enable one to check color separations prior to exporting to a press-ready PDF. And FINALLY, I exported my test document (wherein I applied a spot color to a Gradient Map to recolor a greyscale image) as a press-ready PDF, opened the PDF in Adobe Acrobat, used Acrobat's tools to inspect the color separations and found that an empty frame filled with Pantone 021 separated onto a spot color plate for Pantone 021, but the spot color applied to the greyscale image using the Gradient Map adjustment got separated into the four process color plates, CMYK. All of this needs immediate attention prior to the official release of Publisher. Please rethink the behavior of the Swatches Panel in terms of efficient workflows, accurate spot color labels, highlighting selected document spot color swatches within corresponding spot color swatch book. Correct the display of the spot colors on screen, regardless of the color space of the document. Make sure that spot colors separate to a corresponding spot color color plate. Give the designer the means to determine within the document swatch palette whether or not a used spot color should be preserved as a spot upon color separation or should be converted to 4-color process plates. Please provide a set of print preview tools within a Print Preview Panel that would allow a designer to check things like color separations prior to sending press-ready PDFs to a professional offset printer. Please ensure that spot colors applied to greyscale images using the Gradient Map adjustment separate properly onto the corresponding spot color plates. Thank you. Spot Seperations.mov

I haven't tested this, but, if one applies a Pantone color to one of the stops in the Gradient Map adjustment layer applied to a greyscale image, does the art get separated out onto a single Pantone color plate, or does Publisher separate the image onto the four process color plates? EDIT: I just tried to use the Gradient Map adjustment layer to recolor a Greyscale image in Publisher. Uncovered a number of issues: Pantone spot colors do not display accurately in a CMYK Publisher document. Appearance seems to be fine in either CIE Lab space or in RGB spaces. Working with the Swatches Panel is a very tedious and fiddly experience. The number of clicks required to add a spot color to one's document palette should be reduced. Although I applied Pantone 173 to my Greyscale image, Pantone 021 got added to my document palette. Spot colors added to the document palette are identified generically as "Global Colour x" rather than by their proper name. When one highlights the generically named spot color in the swatches palette and then selects the Pantone swatch book from which the color came, the color chip is not highlighted or identified in any way among the thousands of other Pantone color chips. The only indication of the spot colors actual name comes if/when one switches to the Colour Panel. There doesn't appear to be a Channels Panel or a Separation Preview Panel that would enable one to check color separations prior to exporting to a press-ready PDF. And FINALLY, I exported my test document (wherein I applied a spot color to a Gradient Map to recolor a greyscale image) as a press-ready PDF, opened the PDF in Adobe Acrobat, used Acrobat's tools to inspect the color separations and found that an empty frame filled with Pantone 021 separated onto a spot color plate for Pantone 021, but the spot color applied to the greyscale image using the Gradient Map adjustment got separated into the four process color plates, CMYK. These issues needs immediate attention. I think I'll repost this as a separate discussion thread item. Spot Seperations.mov

@bbwd @dominik The only solution I can find is to do the following: Place your Greyscale JPG or TIFF into the Publisher document. Select the placed image in your layers panel. Apply a Gradient Map effect from the Layer Adjustment button at the bottom of the Layers panel. Edit the gradient within the dialogue box for the Gradient Map so that it has two stops: color in place of black, and white for white. Apparently applying a color directly to the image itself just fills the image frame with a solid color.

@Chris B I would characterize the current Affinity “displacement” filter as more of a noise filter. Rather than bending, pinching, and bloating, the Affinity filter seems to primarily eat away at the edges of the target art layer. Perhaps the current Affinity “Displacement” filter should be renamed to more accurately describe the dithered, frayed, eaten-away-edges effect that it produces. Then a new Affinity displacement filter be designed to warp, pinch and bloat the target art layer according to the luminance or greyscale values of the Displacement Map art. There is an interesting tutorial video on the use of Adobe Photoshop’s displacement filter here: https://youtu.be/OlQj-EyyDhg In the first nine minutes of that video, the host attempts to explain in layman’s terms how the Adobe filter makes use of the greyscale channel information from the Displacement Map art to bend and warp the target art. You may find this of interest. I conducted another displacement filter comparison between Adobe and Affinity using a flag superimposed over a rock face. The source files and comparative screenshots are attached below. For each degree of intensity I applied to the Adobe filter, I tried to match the intensity in the Affinity filter (though the two filters seem to use different scales/units). Generally, I would say that the Adobe filter does a better job of bending and warping the target art layer (the flag) according to the tonal map of the Displacement Map art (derived from the background image of the rock face). You can see from the screenshots that the Affinity filter behaves more like a noise filter. Below find the following: source art (rock face, and flag) Greyscale displacement map art (B/W version of the background image with 1px Gaussian Blur) a series of side-by-side comparisons of the Adobe and Affinity filters at comparable levels of intensity

Here is another example, showing the mapping of a logo onto a t-shirt – first in Adobe Photoshop, and then in Affinity Photo. You'll notice the noise effect that is produced by the Affinity filter. T-shirt_PSD.mov T-shirt_AF_Photo.mov

@Chris B Chris, I've attached two movies to illustrate what I'm seeing. In the first movie, I'm using Affinity Photo's displacement filter to access a displacement map layer below. As I push the displacement filter slider to the left or to the right, what I get on the target art layer is a dithered effect – a kind of digital noise. In the second movie, I'm recreating the displacement effect in Adobe Photoshop. Notice that the Adobe Photoshop filter uses the radial displacement map to smoothly warp the target art layer. This is the effect I expected from the Affinity Photo filter. So, questions follow: • Is the Affinity displacement filter designed to behave differently than the Adobe displacement filter, or is there a flaw in the Affinity filter? • Am I using the Affinity filter incorrectly? What I'm expecting from the displacement filter is to be able to warp target art layers to follow the contours of a greyscale tonal map. AFPHOTO.mov PSD.mov

I've just tried using the Affinity Photo displacement filter and was surprised/disappointed to find that the displacement results are not smooth. Where a spherical black-to-white gradient should produce a smooth pinching distortion to the target image layer, instead I get dithered distortion that bears no resemblance the expected warping of the image. Am I missing something about how to use the displacement filter, or does this filter need to be redesigned?

See the movie below for accessing the application color palette that's built in. Consult the help files for how to create your own custom palettes – either as document or application palettes. Chosing the Colors Palette.mov

Yes. This would be very nice to have. Though to punctuate the final paragraph in a long story, as you've illustrated above, it might be just as easy to apply a character style. Nevertheless, for short, repetitively structured paragraphs like one regularly sees in product catalogs, dictionary entries, contract terms, etc., being able to program nested character styles with associated start/stop characters within a single paragraph style would be a great time-saving device for those typesetting documents with short, repetitively structured paragraphs. It would save the time required to select words/characters and then apply character styles manually for hundreds of paragraph entries. Let me also take this opportunity to reiterate my request that the "Initial Words" feature within paragraph styles dialogue box (and throw in the proposed "Last Words" feature) be able to apply a sequence of nested character styles, as one can do in InDesign. It's not uncommon for catalog entries, for example, to begin with a bold entry, followed by an italicized phrase, followed by a sentence or two set in roman, and then punctuated by a bold price. See the screenshot below illustrating the way Adobe accommodates multiple nested character styles within a single paragraph style. One adds nested character styles in a sequenced list, then via pop-up selectors and fields indicates the parameters of the nested style. (BTW, they also accommodate nested line styles, which could be useful for regular chapter opening paragraphs where the designer specifies that the opening x lines be set in small caps, for example.)

@mac_heibu I understand the utility of Document-wide Layers to be the organization of alternate logical groupings of content or layout elements that can be toggled on or off across the entire document (e.g., toggling off an English text layer, and toggling on a French text layer; or toggling off a blue themed background treatment, and toggling on a green themed background treatment). In the case of alternate languages for a document, the texts would be placed on their respective document-wide layers in the body of the document. In the case of alternate background theme treatments, a set of master pages would be set up for typical page layouts within the publication (TOC, Chapter Title, etc.), but the alternate color theme treatments for the set of master pages would be set up on their respective document-wide layers (e.g., Blue Theme layer, Green Theme layer). Do you see it differently? If so, how so?

Here's what I've just done: Created a 4-page document with facing pages. Double-clicked on the default Master-A master page spread. Invoked the Guides Manager from the View > Guides Manager ... menu item. Used the Guides Manager dialog box to set up 1-inch page margins and 4-column column guides (shown in light grey). Double-clicked on page 1 (which has Master A applied by default) and drew out a text frame, which snapped to the 4-column grid. Try that out and see if it works.