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Too Many Layers!


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This week, I viewed nearly all the videos about Publisher and Designer on the Affinity website. My overall impression was favorable. The apps appear to include nearly all the functions of InDesign and Illustrator, and then some. My biggest criticism, however, is how Affinity has set up the Layers panel. There are too many! Every item in the document has its own unique layer. This is crazy! I like my layers to be few, and to be able to have multiple items on a single layer. If I recall correctly, it is possible to "group" items and essentially place them on a single layer, but this should be the default.

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On 12/7/2019 at 12:24 PM, LRStrand said:

This week, I viewed nearly all the videos about Publisher and Designer on the Affinity website. My overall impression was favorable. The apps appear to include nearly all the functions of InDesign and Illustrator, and then some. My biggest criticism, however, is how Affinity has set up the Layers panel. There are too many! Every item in the document has its own unique layer. This is crazy! I like my layers to be few, and to be able to have multiple items on a single layer. If I recall correctly, it is possible to "group" items and essentially place them on a single layer, but this should be the default.

It’s not that other software doesn’t also create all of those layers, or sub layers for every single item.  They definitely do.  The difference is in how they’re managed and presented.  Illustrator for example is making all of those sub layers, one for every single line you draw, but it’s not automatically showing them in it’s default settings.  You could optionally let Illustrator behave exactly like AD.  Coreldraw on the other hand does behave exactly like AD and has the same problem of the layer stack becoming quickly unmanageable.  At least, for me it’s unmanageable. I can’t speak for everybody else.  I suppose it is working fine for lots of people because I never see people making this complaint.

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5 minutes ago, Kuttyjoe said:

It’s not that other software doesn’t also create all of those layers, or sub layers for every single item.  They definitely do.  The difference is in how they’re managed and presented.  Illustrator for example is making all of those sub layers, one for every single line you draw, but it’s not automatically showing them in it’s default settings.  You could optionally let Illustrator behave exactly like AD.  Coreldraw on the other hand does behave exactly like AD and has the same problem of the layer stack becoming quickly unmanageable.  At least, for me it’s unmanageable. I can’t speak for everybody else.  I suppose it is working fine for lots of people because I never see people making this complaint.

I have some time ago. The difference between AI & CD to AD is that the former have a Layer 1 as a default layer and everything is automatically placed in that layer unless a second layer is created and is the active layer. AD has no starting layer, just the artboard container unless one creates a layer at the start or subsequently and then move items to it.

In the grand scheme of things, it is just a single step to do and so isn't a big deal. But I have always thought it would be nice to just always have it when a new document is created. 

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On 12/7/2019 at 5:24 PM, LRStrand said:

Every item in the document has its own unique layer. This is crazy!

Why should this be crazy. I think it's very logical and clean.

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I'm not saying it's not logical. What I am saying is that I much prefer the way InDesign handles layers, where you can have many items on one layer. Say, all the text or all the photos, and you can hide or lock all those items simultaneously, or close the layer when you don't need to see every single item that's in that layer. It seems that in Affinity Publisher and Designer, the list of Layers has the potential to get ridiculously long.

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59 minutes ago, LRStrand said:

where you can have many items on one layer.

You can do that in Publisher and Designer, too. Layer > New Layer (or the shortcut key, or the icon at the bottom of the Layers panel) will give you a Layer (capital L) that can contain other layers (objects, or Layers (capital L). You can hide the Layer to hide everything in it.

This is similar to, but different from, Grouping (which also exists).

 

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