Image/Object Styles in Publisher

[osarusan]

Hi, I'm brand new to Affinity, trying to see if I can move to it from InDesign.

I'm having trouble with image styles in my document.

I am making a book with a large number of illustrations. When using InDesign, I made object styles that defined the position and scale of each image within the object frame. This let me easily place links and automatically set them to the right scale and position I need them.

With Affinity Publisher, I am able to place an image in a frame, but I don't see a way to quickly apply a position/scale to it. I can use the Transform box to manually input the X, Y and W, H sizes, but do I have to do this manually for every single image? Is there no way to create an object style that includes that information and apply it to each image?

Thanks for your help!

[stokerg]

Hi @osarusan and Welcome to the Forums,

I've edited your Forum name so it doesn't get picked up a spam bots that scan forms looking for email addresses.

I'm not aware of a way to do this.  Our Picture Frame settings aren't defined as a style.  I have seen requests for this posted before, so it may come in a future update. 

I'm sure if anyone is aware of a method to do this, they post shortly.

 

[h_d]

The closest thing I can see is to draw an empty image frame, click the Properties button in the Contextual Toolbar, and choose scaling and Anchor options:

Click Done, give the frame a stroke if required and save it as an asset.

You can now drag the asset onto the page, Place an image inside, and the scaling and positioning of the image will match the settings you gave the original frame.

Not sure if it's a complete solution, hope it helps.

H

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, stokerg said:

I'm not aware of a way to do this. 

41 minutes ago, h_d said:

choose scaling and Anchor options

To me also the asset doesn't respect a certain setting of size + position within a picture frame.

It rather appears to me as a bug that even replacing the image with itself appears to ignore the current image setting within its frame but replaces the image instead with "None" ("not scaling") into the frame, which causes the image to get placed related to its size + .afpub / image DPI. Possibly there is an option missing in Picture Frame "Properties" like "maintain current".

[osarusan]

10 hours ago, stokerg said:

I've edited your Forum name so it doesn't get picked up a spam bots that scan forms looking for email addresses.

Thank you so much! I tried to do that myself after I saw the post, but the system wouldn't allow me to until I had more contributions! 😯

Thanks to everyone for your replies! I was able to find a workaround that worked for my particular case. I used Master Pages and added image frames to those, setting them to the exact size, shape, and position, then setting them to "maximum scale." After that it was just a matter of setting the pages to the master style, and placing the images in the frame.

It wasn't as elegant as using an object style. However, it was sufficient as a workaround. Hopefully object styles are something that gets added in the future. Anyway, I'm enjoying the program so far. It looks like I can finally drop InDesign.