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Brad Brighton

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Everything posted by Brad Brighton

  1. Have you looked at Keynote (free, app on macOS/iOS/iPadOS, web on iCloud.com with your Apple ID login)? I read through the thread and it's not clear how explicit the offline+Windows requirement is.
  2. After Effects and Premiere == Final Cut Pro and Motion. Resolve may indeed have added motion graphics lately (it's been a while since I was in that space) but it does far more. The world of cinema editing is moving quite fast and IMHO, I'd rather Serif continue to focus on doing a few things really well (and occasionally adding to that list) than offering a mediocre (or even just average) solution to "everything".
  3. BlueGriffon (http://bluegriffon.org) is another alternative to consider, depending on your level of expertise.
  4. One thing about this that's certain to cause you to pull some hair out... if your print shop is using a different printer, print process, and/or paper than your manufacturer, your test proofs from the print shop will be of limited (but not zero) value. The process you're going through now, learning how to know what factors are negatively impacting the results is invaluable, especially being able to learn it on the small-scale. However, the manufacturer's print mechanism will have its own profiles, paper, inks, etc. and while you'll have a much stronger understanding of the process when you start working with them in detail, you'll still have to go through the process. Make certain that your manufacturer has "proof creation and acceptance" as a milestone before the mass print run.
  5. @MikeW If I'm understanding your statement correctly, it's incorrect: Affinity applications will allow either set or convert when it comes to document profiles. I do believe it's a manual operation though; you make the choice at profile modify time. Of course, I may learn something new here as well.
  6. @Merlin, on the quality of the assets and their representation in CMYK, depending on your relationship with the artist that created them, either revisit the issue as to print-safe gamuts or failing that (for a variety of potential reasons), find a local professional print-centric graphic designer to help you out. It may be fairly straightforward to adapt what you have to properly represent the desired result. You can also, of course, continue to ask questions here and gain significant insight along the way. The only real problem there is that you're having an issue with physical output and the only way to convey those issues here is to create a screen-based representation. That might work well-enough after several iterations but will be more cumbersome and time consuming than face-to-face interactions. Now, once you have those "change this this way" instructions from your design mentor (assuming s/he doesn't do the actual work for you), you can much more effectively peruse the tutorials or ask for help on how to apply "this way" to your images.
  7. Tried and tested. The level of detail at which each of the suggestions needs to be applied will vary depending on a variety of factors, including but not limited to: the range of colors in your original images how far off from "true" your monitor is (that is, what you see) vs the mathematical representation of the underlying actual colors used the type and quality of the output substrate (glossy labels will present colors differently than matte fine art paper, etc) how critical color reproduction is for your end result ("different from the screen" and "not an acceptable result" _may_ be different levels of judgement) You expressed a frustration at the detail being thrown at you; that's understandable. The world of color management is obtuse and only made worse by the relative ease with which high-gamut material (photos, designs) can be created these days that look spectacular on a light-based display but will wash out on pigment-based output. Still, if you're doing any sort of non-trivial print, learning the basics (and beyond if you choose) will make your print-creation-life if not easier, at least a little more predictable.
  8. @ClarityDynamic Where did someone say that? That seems an unfortunate response. Unless you're referring to me and my link to the tutorials (I couldn't quickly find a shortcut to the RAW-specific ones), in which case I have to apologize because that wasn't my intent at all -- my intent was to point you to a resource that could far more completely explain what was there than I could in a single post.
  9. Affinity Photo has many of the things you mention but not all of them. See the tutorial videos about RAW editing to get a feel for some of it. On the other side of the coin, since you talk already about a blended workflow, your camera manufacturer very likely has a RAW management/editing tool specifically designed for the type of RAW you're generating. One workflow would be to use Affinity Photo for everything it can do and fall back to the manufacturer's tools (for example, Digital Photo Professional from Canon if you shoot that gear) for the times when Affinity Photo is insufficient.
  10. Apparently something to do with snapping... The attached video shows me moving a selection of text a little, saving (successfully), then moving the same text a little more, incurring various snapping lines, saving and crashing. Two of the several crash logs attached as well as the original file. Affinity Designer_2019-09-03-101402_SpamBook2018.crash Affinity Designer_2019-09-03-101740_SpamBook2018.crash Screen Recording 2019-09-03 at 10.18.21 AM.mov bockanalia_1.afdesign
  11. Check this video out: "Creating Photo Collages" from the Affinity Tutorials – https://player.vimeo.com/video/205010393/
  12. So I added a gradient, was working on its opacity, and changed my mind. A CMD-Z later and this is what I was left with. The slider is still live, however and impacting the results of the gradient being applied. It does go away if I manually select the action prior to adding the gradient. This is reproducible -- see the attached screen capture. (Photo 1.7.2, Mac OS Mojave) Screen Recording 2019-09-01 at 4.27.14 PM.mov
  13. Are you sure there is enough overlap in the source images? Maybe post the first two or three of the images?
  14. As was pointed out elsewhere, it will take a bit of technical knowledge to decipher what (if anything) Spindump or Sample Process output gives you but if you're not versed in the geekery, that's what the forum and Serif support are for. :-D When you watch AD start up, if it gets stuck "Not Responding", use Spindump to capture the app state. It may be doing stuff (looping) or it may be waiting on something (blocked). Similarly, in the case where AD is responding but taking forever (which seems to be your "usual;" case), use Sample Process from the same menu to capture a snapshot of what the app is doing (or not doing). You'll get a bunch of technical information about the underlying code that you can then peruse on your own or ask for help with. You'd be looking for signs of looping (some reference to font loading over and over and over and over... for example) or of blocking (semaphore_wait for example) where AD asked for something and the system is taking its time to deliver it. Assuming the issue *is* identifiable in the logs, it will probably take some interpretation to find it. That is, the smoking gun is unlikely to stand up and shout, "Hi! This is what's broken!" As far as the recommended clean install, that's the ultimate weapon but it's also the most destructive. I'd be hesitant to do that unless/until you've run out of time because until the source of the problem is reasonably identified, whatever happened to cause this in the first place could very well return and the "nuke from orbit" approach is only effective when the problem is a genuine gremlin (a one-off/random error) and not something systemic. The absolute worst case is that the problem returns after spending all the time and effort to rebuild your environment and that would be rage-inducing indeed.
  15. This could be interesting. Are you familiar with the SpinDump, Sample Process, and other options of Activity Monitor? If so, that (or Instruments if you're a developer) could give some interesting insight into what the app is doing (or waiting for) during the delay. As a data-point, I also am in the 5ish second camp for launching Designer on Mojave.
  16. This appears to be reproducible for me. Attached are the afdesign file and two back-to-back crash reports. Context: I was taking an existing file as the base for a new file and scrubbing through history (using the slider) to get back near the beginning of the process so I could shortcut to reuse of assets and some of the previous work. The twitchy nature of using that slider means that I probably went back and forth a couple of times; I haven't identified a specific cheat-code that triggers the crash but it didn't take much movement. EDIT: Apparently I don't have to do much back and forth scrubbing at all. I just moved the slider from latest to earliest without any intentional hesitation and *BOOM*. ("There's always a boom." - Ivanova) Environment: macOS Mojave 10.14.6, MBP2018, 32GB, Radeon Vega Pro 20, 2.9GHz i9, external display: Cinema Display HD 30 through OWC Dock/Mini DisplayPort to DualLink DVI Apple adapter. Affinity Designer_2019-08-25-145121_SpamBook2018.crash Affinity Designer_2019-08-25-145416_SpamBook2018.crash fading_daylight_2019_1.afdesign
  17. An additional (possibly unhelpful due to lack of specificity) data point -- I also have been seeing glitches like the ones described here. The external monitor doesn't seem to show the flash; the built-in display on the MBP2018 does. I have all the graphics performance stuff turned on and primarily work with the Affinity windows on the external (except when I need the greatest color fidelity and move back to the laptop display). I can't yet tie the flash to any specific behavior or repro case (like closing the apps). macOS 10.14.6 / Radeon Pro Vega 20 4GB.
  18. If I had to guess, I'd lean toward that meaning there's a key-combo-override in place somewhere on your Mac Pro. Maybe set the key sequence to something else at the System Preferences level? If that works, then you have the choice of tracking down what is overriding or not. EDIT: Also, maybe check out some of the ideas in this thread to identify possible conflicts: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/13410/global-keyboard-shortcut-conflicts
  19. That's a good point about PDF preview (with or without transparency) being mail client dependent. Thank you. I may have to go to HTML then... at least the expectation of basic HTML support is broad enough to believe recipients will have it.
  20. I wonder if there's a difference between Publisher and Photo? I realized after I posted that I tested on Photo -- but I never use Separated Mode.
  21. My apologies for missing that. Fighting with PDFs in this way isn't among my common activities. I'm still looking for someone on the Mac side to hopefully chime in with some insight as well.
  22. Are you sure you didn't open the PNG I attached for reference? I opened the PDF using Adobe Reader and it still shows the undesired white background.
  23. I'm not sure I follow -- which is probably why I'm posting this in the first place. :-D Every version I look at has the white showing up outside the rounded rect. I've used it inside the signature box and as an attachment both (and compared to the PNG equivalent) and don't see the effect I'm looking for (that is, the PDF presentation equivalent to the PNG presentation when it comes to 'background' outside the rounded rect). Could you elaborate further please?
  24. Good thought, thank you -- but when I open in Preview, the background isn't transparent either. Preview preferences under Mojave seem not to have any settings for turning on/off display of background "Show document background" makes no visible change in presentation; it does have a "background color" and it's black and does not show though the result.
  25. EDIT: This is all on macOS I've seen several threads on the topic of exporting PDFs containing transparent backgrounds during my research trying to resolve this on my own and all of them suggest that I should be able to do what I'm trying to do and yet, I fail. Can anyone spot the error of my ways here? Given: The attached .afdesign file Purpose: Apple Mail email signature image Challenge: I want the background to be transparent, rounded corners and all -- equivalent to a PNG export -- not the white background that shows up in Finder Preview, QuickLook, when dropped into email directly or as a predefined signature, or as when reopened by Affinity Designer (both production and latest 1.7.2 beta) I do NOT need: "use a PNG" as a suggested workaround unless you can show me how to have the signature image not be impacted by the Apple Mail message image size setting and still have that image size setting apply to all the "normal" attachments. The signature degradation that occurs in each of the different ways I've approached it under "small" images (which will be common in this use case) is unacceptable. I've tried "PDF for web", "PDF for export", "PDF/X-4", "PDF for Print", and "PDF (flatten)". What am I missing? Thank you! sample_for_support.afdesign Sample Sig.pdf
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