Mark Oehlschlager

@Eddie Aguirre Is there a solution for converting Affinity Publisher documents to IDML and/or INDD?

@Old Bruce I understand the utility of setting up and naming text frame layers for each language on the master pages, but what is the utility of setting up multiple image frames for each language?

@notna, unfortunately the cold hard truth of the world is this: Adobe tools are entrenched as the industry standard despite grumblings over their subscription policy. Unless one works alone, one must continue to use the Adobe products. It would take a massive shift in cultural and technological trends to unseat Adobe from their current position. The best that Serif can do is to match Adobe tools, feature for feature, offer more attractive pricing, survive with a niche market of solo users, and wait for some cultural or technological shift that would give them an opening to challenge Adobe for leadership.

@Old Bruce You could be right, and deleting a line segment directly is useful, but I really thought there was a way to directly split a curve at a node or point. My memory could be faulty, but if anyone recalls such a modifier key for the node tool, I'd appreciate being reminded of which key or keys that would be.

I thought that Serif recently introduced a keyboard modifier key for the Node tool that would allow one to split a curve directly at a node point. And yet I can't remember what the modifier key is. Nor can I find any documentation of this. Was this option removed? Am I overlooking a tooltip or other helpful documentation?

It's not simply a matter of an extra feature in Publisher that doesn't exist in other page layout applications. It's that it a) subverts the established UI standards of character and paragraph panels seen in other major page layout applications, repurposing the standard leading attribute to become a leading override attribute without calling attention to it's new function, causing confusion; and b) departs from logic of a typesetter thinking in terms of paragraph attributes – face, weight, point size and leading – and not only sets a trap by redefining the leading field in the character panel to become a leading override field, but introduces workflow inefficiencies by forcing the typesetter to flip back and forth between panels to set the basic attributes of a paragraph. Working quickly to build paragraph styles one is accustomed to setting these properties up in a single panel. Any way, I realize that Affinity have much bigger fish to fry – including a total rethink of the Color Swatch panel, which is a clunky mess. This will likely not change. It seems baked in at this point.

Correct. I assumed your hypothetical of introducing a larger point size to selected words within a paragraph for emphasis. And in that hypothetical, the leading for the paragraph is set to accommodate that design choice. To apply a local leading override for a selected 14 point word within an 11/13 paragraph would mean forcing that one line in the paragraph to separate the upper half of the paragraph from the lower half. (The application adds leading above.) I'm not sure why one would want to intentionally separate two halves of a logical block of text (a paragraph) for the sake of emphasizing a word or phrase with a larger point size.

However many paragraph styles you need for your document and whether or not you set "paragraph next-style" as a property for each of your paragraph styles is entirely up to you the designer and the needs of your document. Not true. As a typesetter, if your design calls for using 14 point italic for emphasis within a text that is otherwise set in 11 point roman, you set your paragraph leading to accommodate the 14 point words being emphasized within the paragraph. So you might decide to set your paragraphs at 11/16. Your character style for emphasized words or phrases would then change the local character properties to 14 point italic. The trouble with Affinity's inclusion of a "Leading Override" attribute in the Character Panel is that it is both an unnecessary break with UI convention, and is a cause for confusion. To extend the absurdity of the situation, why not advocate for including a "Font Family Override" attribute in the Paragraph Panel? One sets type styles in logical blocks (paragraphs) separated by hard breaks (titles, subtitles, deck paragraphs, body first paragraphs, body paragraphs, list item first paragraphs, list item paragraphs, block quote paragraphs, caption paragraphs, etc.). Leading and any space before or after is a paragraph attribute. Any unusual point-size change to words or phrases for emphasis within a paragraph would be accounted for in the leading one's paragraph style.

@thomaso If you need space before or after a paragraph, there is a paragraph attribute for that. If you are setting a paragraph and want to set a word or phrase within at a larger point size (for whatever reason that a contrasting face, a bold, italic, or color change doesn't offer you enough contrast), you would account for the extra leading required by incorporating that into your paragraph styles. If you have a very unusual case for applying a different leading value to a word or phrase within a paragraph, you can record the leading change as a character style that you can then apply directly to that word or phrase. The very presence of a "Leading Override" attribute field in the Character panel is misleading and just adds confusion.

@NNN Significantly, no one can describe or illustrate a reason for the "leading override" attribute to exist. It just invites confusion. It ought to be withdrawn.

@Chris B I'm bumping this bug report because it remains a problem in Affinity Photo 1.10.1. Thanks.

@Old Bruce You make a good point. That may be a good pitch to some. But in this case, if the question is whether or not to invest time and money into competing but equivalent tools, my guess is that most busy people would probably elect to keep things simple and go with one version of each type of application, and then choose the dominant tools of the industry.

@tallrob Because any IDML export (from InDesign to APub, or from APub to InDesign) is not likely to be interpreted 100% correctly by the target application, and because certain proprietary features of both applications will get dropped in translation, the primary utility of an export to IDML feature in APub is simply to make it possible to deliver an APub document to an InDesign user with 95-98% of the design and layout in tact, saving a ton of time that would otherwise be spent recreating the document from scratch. Because the translation can never hope to be 100% accurate in any but the simplest of documents, the IDML export feature that many people here, including myself, are requesting should probably be thought of as a one-time, one-way export function. For obvious reasons, continuous round-tripping a document between InDesign and APub would introduce translation errors with each exchange and require time to repair the translation errors. That could get tedious and discouraging, adding unwanted friction to a collaborative workflow. Having said that, I still think there's a strong case to be made for Serif building or licensing an IDML export feature for APub. It means that APub users (and prospective APub users) can feel more confident in committing to using APub and the rest of the Affinity Suite for publishing and design, knowing that if they must hand off an APub file to an InDesign user, there is a compatible exchange file format in IDML that will keep at least 95-98% of the document design in tact, if not 100%, and thus being able to share one's work while minimizing any necessary format corrections in InDesign as a result of the translation. The alternative scenario, not having an IDML export feature in APub, means one must either commit to the cost and the time spent learning two applications (not something most people would choose), or committing to the cost of just one application – and for most, that means reluctantly abandoning APub for InDesign because it has the advantage of being more mature tool and an industry standard.

@Mithferion I get by by a similar method from Apple Numbers, but the types of graphs and the formatting options are pretty basic. The Datylon tool above looks quite good by comparison. One could use a number of workarounds and alternative tools I suppose, but equally, here's an opportunity for Serif to either develop a superior set of tools for designing data graphs and visualizations, or to partner with third parties like Datylon to make plug-ins possible.

For those who work with organizations and are often required to design attractive data graphs, it would be great to have a data graph design feature within Affinity Designer. Building the feature into Designer would be ideal, but I've discovered an interesting solution from Datylon that integrates with Adobe Illustrator. Could Serif partner with Datylon to bring their plug-in functionality to Affinity Designer? See this YouTube tutorial for reference: And here is the URL for Datylon: www.datylon.com Thanks for your consideration.

Okay. I was just playing with the settings for the soft round brush and found that the spacing for the default round brushes was greater than 0%. This, it seems, was the problem. When I set the brush spacing to 0%, the smudging effect was smooth like pushing wet paint around. I suppose there are circumstances where one might want the blocky effect of a spaced out smudge tool brush, but it seems counterintuitive. The general expectation of selecting the smudge tool is to blend and blur. Should there not be a default setting to the Smudge Tool that automatically sets spacing to 0%? Otherwise, I would suggest adding a contextual toolbar button for editing the properties of the smudge tool brush like the one we have for the regular paint brush tool – as a matter of convenience.

@walt.farrell I get the same blocky result with a hard round brush, only the effect is worse insofar as the hard edge of the brush is echoed. See screen grab below.

@SPaceBar I've attached a short video below. I start with a single pixel layer with black text on white ground. Select the Smudge Tool. Select a soft round brush from the Basic collection of brushes. And then my smudging effort has blocky results. Blocky Smudge.mov

I was following along with a YouTube tutorial on creating a text blur effect, trying to recreate the effect in Affinity Photo, when I discovered that Affinity Photo's Smudge Tool yields unexpectedly blocky results – not the smooth smudging effect one would expect. Have I got a setting wrong, or is there a bug with the Smudge Tool in Photo? (BTW, the same problem exists in Designer's Pixel Persona.) See my screen grab below And here is the referenced YouTube Tutorial:

Giving a bump to this feature request, having just watched the most recent Affinity Creative Sessions demo/tutorial with Chris Rathbone ( Although Chris expertly uses a path tracing technique with the pen tool, I must say that jobs like this one just scream out for a "blob brush" and a complementary "vector erase brush" tool. It would make the painting and illustration work like this so much faster and more intuitive.

@GarryPSetting good type is just as relevant to the digital ad designer and to the poster or packaging designer as it is to the book or magazine designer. It makes no sense to arbitrarily restrict the tools for setting good type to Publisher. The compelling use case for purchasing Publisher is it's ability to design book forms: multi-page documents with title pages, TOCs and other front matter, chapters/sections, running heads and folios, multiple master pages, indexes and other back matter. It would be a strange form of punishment for Affinity to restrict hyphenation control to Publisher to encourage sales of that app.

Please add hyphenation controls to the Paragraph Panel in Designer and Photo. Presently both Designer and Photo (like Publisher) have justification and optical alignment controls to improve the evenness of letter- and word-spacing in justified text, but (unlike Publisher) neither Designer nor Photo offer the related control of hyphenation to further improve on the even setting of justified text. It seems like an app design oversight. Please consider adding hyphenation controls.

Often enough, I am frustrated by accidental changes to values in Studio Panel fields when my mouse cursor hovers over a panel field and my finger moves slightly over the surface of my Apple mouse. For example, I often move my mouse cursor over the Leading field in the Paragraph Panel to inspect the Leading value and to consider changing it by a point or two, and just when I've hovered over the Leading field, a slight twitch of the finger on the surface of my mouse causes the leading value to zoom off in a positive or negative direction without control or intention. It's maddening. I would like to know if it's possible to switch this scrubbing behavior off in preferences, so that any change to a value in a panel field can only happen as the result of a deliberate keystroke or menu item selection.

@HockingHippy The thing that is tripping you up is the annoying little trap that Affinity has set for you: the fact that they have included a "Leading Override" attribute in the Character Panel, which is not the same thing as the "Leading" attribute in the Paragraph Panel. This is what you've set up: Headings: Face, Arial Bold; Size, 15pt; Leading, 3x; Leading Override, 12pt; Space After Paragraph, 8pt List Item: Face Arial; Size 12 pt; Leading, 3x; Leading Override, 12pt; Space After Paragraph, 3pt This is what it would look like with the Leading Override cleared, and the Leading set to exact point measurements in the Paragraph Panel: Heading: Face, Arial Bold; Size, 15pt; Leading, 15pt; Leading Override, Auto; Space Before Paragraph, 10pt; Space After Paragraph, 5pt; Use Space Before, "Only Between Paragraphs" List Item: Face Arial; Size 12pt; Leading, 12pt; Leading Override, Auto; Space After Paragraph, 3pt I'm assuming that you want the list items that wrap to maintain 12pts of leading, and that you want an additional 3pt of leading between list items. By setting the Leading Override attribute to "Auto" you let the true Leading value in the Paragraph Panel to apply. Use the Space Before and the Space After attributes in the Paragraph Panel to add lead before and after each paragraph if desired. I've recreated your list with two paragraph styles: Heading, and List Item. Study the attachment below. linecard19.afpub

Presently, Affinity Photo uses different levels of indentation to distinguish between Child Layers and Clipping Mask Layers. The level of indentation is not always clear, and neither is the relation of the layers to one another. Please consider adding a symbol to the layers to more clearly and directly indicate the role a layer plays, either as a Child Layer, or as a Clipping Mask Layer.