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14 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Would it help if, while dragging with the Offset Tool (maybe with a modifier key) the Radius automatically increased along with an increasing Offset distance?
That might make it easier to create a ‘lifelike’ drop shadow without having to modify any settings manually.
Just a thought.

It would help if Serif just restored the Drop Shadow effect to its original, instead of all the fluffing around we now have to achieve it. 

Pageplus effects were much better and much faster. 

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1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

Not true. It's a shadow of the complete object, but the parts under the object are hidden by the object. To demonstrate, create an object that's partly transparent, and uncheck the "fill knocks out shadow" option.

It is still defined by the edges of the object & therefore it is an edge effect.

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23 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Would it help if, while dragging with the Offset Tool (maybe with a modifier key) the Radius automatically increased along with an increasing Offset distance?
 

FYI this is offered in the Effects panel by clicking the Offset Tool, but not in the Layer Effects panel.  Why it's missing from the Layer Effects panel I questioned a few years ago and never got an answer.

2107195190_ScreenShot2019-11-03at6_36_38AM.png.311f678a71f25bccce6e665e47637faf.png

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As well as the effects in Publisher being a pile of tat, shapes in Pageplus were far better with the multi sliding handles they had that allowed the user to quickly and very easily alter a shape. 

Publisher is trying to be indesign and with its advertising, indesign users are its prime target. No subscription only £49.99 being the marketing blurb against the Adobe monthly subscription plan. In doing so they have forgot their primary users, who used Pageplus for years, users that wanted powerful software that was above all else very easy to use. 

Unfortunately I don't see myself dumping my Adobe Indesign subscription anytime soon and I have to use both programs. 

The other annoying omission is the lack of being able to import Pageplus files into Publisher. I have thousands of files that I either continue to use in Pageplus or import as PDFs into Publisher. Not ideal considering all the listed file formats that Serif are advertising that Publisher can support, even including their competitors Adobe. They should have concentrated on an import filter for their own products first. 

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5 minutes ago, Cailean said:

It would help if Serif just restored the Drop Shadow effect to its original, instead of all the fluffing around we now have to achieve it. 

All that "fluffing around" makes possible a wide range of effects, many of which neither resemble a drop shadow nor for that matter a shadow effect of any type.

And even if it was "restored" (a curious term for something that has always been as it is now in the Affinity apps), there would still be a need for a minimal number of "fluffing around" options to set the offset distance, position, & angle.

The effect is, as the saying goes, not the one trick pony you seem to want it to be.

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9 minutes ago, Gear maker said:

FYI this is offered in the Effects panel by clicking the Offset Tool, but not in the Layer Effects panel.  Why it's missing from the Layer Effects panel I questioned a few years ago and never got an answer.

It would be nice if the Offset Tool was available in the Layer Effects panel ... & if the Outer Shadow help topic at least made it clearer that as it is now some but not all of what it calls the "advanced settings" are in fact available in the Layer Effects panel. >:(

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9 minutes ago, R C-R said:

All that "fluffing around" makes possible a wide range of effects, many of which neither resemble a drop shadow nor for that matter a shadow effect of any type.

And even if it was "restored" (a curious term for something that has always been as it is now in the Affinity apps), there would still be a need for a minimal number of "fluffing around" options to set the offset distance, position, & angle.

The effect is, as the saying goes, not the one trick pony you seem to want it to be.

I managed perfectly fine in Pageplus and again in Indesign with drop shadow. Occasionally all I have to alter is the opacity settings. The effects in Publisher are pants and there's no live preview until you move a slider. 

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7 minutes ago, Cailean said:

there's no live preview until you move a slider

For me, on Windows, the Effects and the changes I make to them are always immediately shown on the layer. What else are you expecting to be previewed? You won’t see a change unless you make a change, and then you see it immediately and automatically.

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11 minutes ago, MikeW said:

If one could save a DS as a default setting for the outer shadow effect, this maybe wouldn't be an issue of discussion.

What I would like to see instead is the ability to save presets for any of the layer effects, in much the same way we can for Styles.

 

10 minutes ago, GarryP said:

For me, on Windows, the Effects and the changes I make to them are always immediately shown on the layer.

It is the same for me on my Mac. There is no preview because the effects are applied in real time, or at least as close to that as my old iMac's hardware can manage.

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There is nothing wrong with the presets for the effects in Pageplus and in indesign. Click on the effect and you immediately see how it looks. Quick and simple, and the presets are there for use in any document. 

There will be a great many Pageplus users, myself included who have bought Affinity and miss the pre set templates and ease of use. 

Too much fluffing about now in effects and the end result is not as good either. 

How do I change the measurements from pixels to millimetres in effects? 

Edited by Cailean
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5 minutes ago, Cailean said:

Too much fluffing about now in effects and the end result is not as good either

How so? Can you provide an example pair of screenshots that show this?

6 minutes ago, Cailean said:

How do I change the measurements from pixels to millimetres in effects? 

Select all of the field's text. Enter a new value with the "mm" suffix. It will be converted to the equivalent pixel (px) value when you leave that field.

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19 minutes ago, haakoo said:

You know that the styles are made with the fx panel

Unfortunately, styles also contain such things as Fill & Stroke so they are not ideal to be used as presets for FX effects. 

Even though you can just extract the FX part of a style and use that on a new object, if all you have is the style

Edit > Copy and Edit > Paste FX in conjunction with your favorite FX's stored in the Assets panel is another alternative to FX presets until we actually have them.

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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32 minutes ago, haakoo said:

You know that the styles are made with the fx panel

I do, but unless I am missing something there is no way to create or apply a style that sets only the effect(s) applied to an object without changing any of the object's other properties, much less one that changes only one of its effects like Outer Shadow. 

An exception is applying a vector object style with effects to a pixel layer, but that is too limited for general use & can make a mess if applied to a text object.

Edit: @carl123 beat me to it! xD

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2 hours ago, Cailean said:

The effects in Publisher are pants and there's no live preview until you move a slider

That's because there is no effect until you set the sliders. Until then, you haven't said exactly what you want.

You're just wanting different defaults, I think. But no one else will necessarily want the same defaults as you, so defaulting to "no effect" is perhaps the best default.

-- Walt
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Here are 3 examples of a drop shadow effect, two are presets in Adobe Indesign cc 2019 and Serif PagePlus X9, and the third example is the outer shadow effect after I manipulated the settings.

Both the Indesign and PagePlus presets are excellent and all I had to do was select the preset and it was applied to the text instantly. The same preset could be used in any future document without having to save it. With the Affinity Publisher outer shadow effect, I had to play around with the settings, and these settings could not be saved as a preset for future use. I also had to zoom in and enlarge the text to complete the task.

The only example I didn't include was the one from CorelDRAW, which was very poor compared to the others. At a push, I'd say that Pageplus X9 gave the most pleasing effect and there were lots of additional options available if I wanted to tweak the settings further. In any case the presets were far quicker and easier to use.

Be aware that these examples are screenshots and are not of the same quality that they would appear in the software that created them.

Indesign drop shadow preset.JPG

Pageplus X9 drop shadow preset.JPG

Affinity Publisher outer shadow.JPG

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46 minutes ago, Cailean said:

The same preset could be used in any future document without having to save it. With the Affinity Publisher outer shadow effect, I had to play around with the settings, and these settings could not be saved as a preset for future use.

You can probably overcome missing Effects presets functionality here, by creating your own individual setup of Styles types in a custom Styles category. So FX settings are remembered and also can be faster reused via Styles then (import/export of Styles for keeping persistency) between different docs. - Further you can also copy and then just paste over (reuse) the effect from an already applied shadow in a document, so you don't have to setup again used values, see the paste variations on the Edit top menu.

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39 minutes ago, Cailean said:

...

The only example I didn't include was the one from CorelDRAW, which was very poor compared to the others.

Well, here's one from CD. CD does a fine job and can save the effect.

Capture_000296.png.bda2e896b939d5561f1a0bcafe6e1361.png

Is as automatic without saving a preset as per ID, QXP, PP and ... ? Nope. 

But in the time that has been used in posting arguments in this thread, I could have set, consistently, 1000 drop shadows in an APub document how I want them all to appear--which are as well done as any applications including the aforementioned one.

Do Serif applications need to be able to set defaults? Sure thing. But until such time as it does/can do so the present means are how it's done.

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2 minutes ago, ErrkaPetti said:

If you now have PPX9 and Indesign, why coming here vining about Affinity Publisher?

You already have an working setup of program, so, why buy a third (Apub) that is not what you need?

Sometime a user here show up and complain about nothing, and you seems to be that kind of person...

If Apub not is enough, don’t use it...

Your comments are aggressive and quite honestly uncalled for. I asked where to find the drop shadow tool in Publisher, a very valid question. 

This thread has become a discussion too and it's welcome to get everyone's comments and feedback. This is what forums are for. 

As to the software I have, that is my business. I also have a very large kit of tools as I couldn't do a job using only a hammer. 

I suggest you go and take 5 minutes out and retrieve the toys you've thrown out of your pram. 

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