Grouping objects in Affinity Publisher

[MarioM]

I have a document with photos and captions. I want to group the captions with their respective photos so i can move them around the document together, but it doesn't seem to work. I select the photo and the caption, but when I try to group them by going to layers>group, the option is greyed out and therefore not available. I must be doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what. Can anyone help?

[GarryP]

Is there any chance you could post a screen-cast showing your actions with the Layers Panel clearly shown?
It’s probably something basic but it’s difficult to tell without seeing what you are doing?
If that’s not possible, could you post the document (or a cut-down version of it if it contains sensitive material)?
Or both?

[dutchshader]

the only time i have items greyed out is when they are masterpage items.

[MarioM]

GarryP: Here's a screen shot. 

dutchshader: I'm pretty sure the photo and caption are not masterpage items.

[walt.farrell]

The two layers would have to be adjacent in the Layers panel in order to group them, I believe.

Also, I'm not sure why you seem to have the photo nested under/into a text layer.

 

[mac_heibu]

You are trying to group an inline image (= image floating within the text) and a (not inline) text box. This can’t work.

• You can’t group „standard“ elements with elements, which are placed into a text frame.
• You can’t group elements, which are both placed inline within a text frame (2 images, a text frame within a text frame with an image …) If you need this (for whatever reason), you have to group these elements before pasting them into a text frame.

[MarioM]

walt.farrell & mac_heibu:

I'm afraid I don't understand what you are saying. All I did was place the image into the document, then make a new text box for the caption and try to group them. Do I have to place the image into a new layer? If so, I don't know how to do this. Do I need to learn about layers?

How do I move the image out of the text frame? I didn't even know I had put it in the text frame.

Excuse my ignorance.

Thanks for your help.

 

[GarryP]

Walt: You can group layers that aren’t adjacent in the Layers Panel. I just tried it as I wasn’t sure myself.

MarioM: Thanks for the screenshot. That helps a lot.
What I think mac_heibu is saying is that you can’t group a text frame and an image that is ‘inside’ that text frame – either placed within the text frame layer or Pinned (Inline or Float) – because they are already ‘linked’. You can’t group Item A with Item B if Item A is ‘inside’ or linked to Item B, or the other way round. You can see that the image is pinned to the text frame because the image layer has a little Pin icon to the right of it in the Layers Panel. To Unpin the image, select it and press the Pin icon on the Toolbar or go to menu “View → Studio → Pinning” and press the “Unpin” button. There’s no way for us to know you got your image pinned in the first place.

As for Pinning an image to some text for a caption, my attached afpub file and GIF should give you an idea of what’s possible at a basic level. You will need to experiment to get used to it.

pinned-caption.afpub

[mac_heibu]

7 hours ago, MarioM said:

walt.farrell & mac_heibu:

I'm afraid I don't understand what you are saying. All I did was place the image into the document, then make a new text box for the caption and try to group them. Do I have to place the image into a new layer? If so, I don't know how to do this. Do I need to learn about layers?

How do I move the image out of the text frame? I didn't even know I had put it in the text frame.

Excuse my ignorance.

Thanks for your help.

 

It is quite simple:

When you placed the image, most likely a text cursor within a text frame was active. Therefore, the image was placed into the text – just like a character or a word. It now flows together with the text.

Your second text frame simply was placed onto the canvas, not „inline“ into the text frame.

You can’t group images, which flow with the text, with elements which don’t – just like you can’t group a single word, which is placed in a text frame, with a rectangle, which is placed elsewhere on your page.

To remove the image from the text: Select it with the arrow tool, choose Cmd X („cut“), deselect the textframe and choose Cmd V („paste“).

[MarioM]

Thanks everyone for your replies. I am at work and will look at this later and let you all know what I figured out.

 

 

[MarioM]

Thank you all again. I am now able to group the images with their captions. You all were very helpful.