Mark Oehlschlager

@James Ritson Very grateful for your excellent tutorial videos. Having just watched the episode on Zoom Blur, I'm reminded to request that a layer icon be applied to those layers with Blend Options applied. Either that, or that the Blend Options be made part of the Layer Effects group so that an "fx" layer icon gets applied when Blend Options are applied. It would be helpful to the user (especially when a file is shared in a group workflow) to identify which layers are being affected by Blend Options. Thanks.

Affinity Designer does not offer support for true vector brushes where the brush tips are actual vector shapes. However, you can create a greyscale PNG file with a circle shape, and import that into a custom brush that can be colored. See the attached image showing how to configure a custom Textured Intensity Brush based upon your own custom greyscale PNG. I guess the other alternative, if your just after regular dotted lines, is to work with the dash settings for Strokes. See the attached image below.

What happened to the ability to import or place .docx text files?

I don't know. Maybe it is insensitive to market tools to Venezuelan designers who've been cut off from their tools and their means of expression while the U.S. Government is actively working to foment a regime change in that county. Maybe it is "unsportsmanlike" or "impolite" to draw a contrast with Adobe here. Nevertheless, I'll bet Venezuelan designers who are suddenly without tools and without access to their work would be pleased to know there's a solution.

@Jowday What's significant here is the difference in business models: Adobe forces one to rent tools, which is problematic for a number of reasons, arbitrary political developments being just one glaring example of how artists can be cut off from their work product and tools. Serif offers a perpetual license to a toolset. This is the point that needs to be hammered home in marketing material.

To my knowledge, Publisher is not yet available for iPad, only for Mac OS and Windows desktop machines. This may explain the unusual message you are receiving, although it would be clearer if the message accurately explained that Publisher is not available for the iPad currently. By the way, remember that the file format for all three Affinity apps is the same, and a document started in one app can be opened in either of the other two. So, you could begin a document in Publisher on your iMac, save it to a cloud storage service like iCloud or DropBox, and then open it up in Designer or Photo on the iPad.

@VectorCat I did not download the package of filters from the link above. Instead, I launched Photo, created a new document, created a layer group containing a placeholder shape, applied the Perspective live filter to the group, then copied that layer group and then pasted it into a Designer document. Lo and behold, the Perspective live filter came across in Designer and was functioning. I was even able to distort live text. The display rendering, however, can show some blurry anti-aliasing. In addition to using copy and paste to move a layer group from Photo to Designer, you can also save your Photo document and then open it in Designer. As another alternative, from within Photo, you can also select the menu command File > Edit in Designer... (Remember that the file format for all three Affinity apps is the same.) One crucial live filter that is missing, however, is the Mesh Warp. This is the filter you would need to convincingly warp art and text around cylindrical forms like bottles and cans.

If you're working strictly with Affinity apps, probably the best workflow would be to use the Perspective and Mesh Warp tools in Photo, then manually trace the results in Designer for a vector shape. Not ideal.

Color Space is explicit and clear. Neither Pixel Format nor Vector Format would indicate anything about color to the user.

Vector distortion is not a feature presently. Hopefully it's a high priority for the developers.

Good question. The nomenclature here is obscure / confusing. I would suggest a label that is consistent across all export dialog boxes and across all Affinity applications – something like "Export Color Space".

You'll probably have to save a duplicate document, then in the duplicate doc, go to Document Setup to convert the color space to RGB.

@PixelPest Ah. Right. I missed that. It appears that the OP wants to construct a non-standard text or image frame. In that case, it a job for the pen tool.

@th_studio In the contextual tools of the toolbar you'll find the Corner settings. With the Single Radius option checked, you can change all four corners uniformly. With the Single Radius option un-checked, you can change the four corners independently.

@Lagarto Place a greyscale image in Publisher. You'll see the "K Only" contextual button in the toolbar. I believe this must be toggled on in order to apply a spot color. No? I was interested to learn from you that Serif's layer effects including the very useful gradient map automatically converts everything to CMYK equivalents. Unfortunate that spots are not honored there. I also tried experimenting with the Blend Options in the Layers panel to see if I could make use of the curves there for a duotone effect. Unfortunately this approach also converts everything to CMYK equivalents. Not the end of the world, but gets in the way of creative two-color jobs, and other special effects in an otherwise standard CMYK job.

@Lagarto I see now. If you place a Greyscale image, and you have the "K Only" contextual button selected, you can apply a spot color to the grey values in the image. I suppose one could place a positive and a negative version of an image in greyscale (perfectly aligned), and then apply a different spot color to each version of the image to manufacture a duotone effect between any two spot colors. Pretty kludgy though. Would be better if Photo handled spot color channels and allowed users to produce duotone, tritone and quad tone images for placement in Publisher.

@Lagarto BTW, can you please explain how to assign a spot color to a Grayscale image?

@Lagarto Thanks for that. It shouldn't be such a mystery for users to produce duotones. The software should make it dead simple for designers and layout artists. Moreover, there should be a Studio Panel within the Affinity software that accurately previews color separation plates.

On the Mac, it's easy enough to press Command + P (⌘ P) with one hand. There is a Command key to the right of the space bar. Is it any different for Windows keyboards?

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20904030/adobe-venezuela-photoshop-behance-us-sanctions Use this as ammo in your marketing.

@Squaredancer As your document is already designed, if you did not use paragraph and character styles, you will have to manually select all instances of text and apply a pure black (C-0, M-0, Y-0, K-100). If you did use paragraph and character styles, it will be much easier to apply a pure black globally by updating the color specified for those styles.

@Callum Yes. Please do add this to the requests page. I would appreciate this feature. Additionally, could you clarify for me the intention behind the "Spread" and "Page" options under the pop-up menu for "Set Dimensions of:" in the Spread Setup dialog box? To me it implies that one should be able to adjust the dimensions of an entire spread, or an individual page. Thanks.

Mmmmm. Appears to be an issue that needs to be addressed by the dev team.

@walt.farrell Mmmm. If not a bug, what then is the significance of the "Set Dimensions of:" pop-up where the options are either Spread or Page?

I'm wanting to specify a half-width page within a facing pages Publisher document. So, for example, if the trim-size of the book is 8.5 x 11, I would like for the leaf containing pages 5 & 6 to be 4.25 x 11, and then for the remaining pages to resume at 8.5 x 11. However, when I go into the Spread Setup dialog, and target a particular page for resizing, say the left or verso page, both pages in a facing page spread resize – that is to say that both the left and right, or verso and recto pages resize. Not what I'm trying to achieve. This appears to be a bug in the current version of Publisher. Am I overlooking something? Is there a way to achieve a short dimension for an internal page within a facing pages document?