commands

[Helen Flores]

Hello,

Why am I not able to use all commands within my affinity?

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

The commands you can use would depend on your document structure and its layers and what layer you have selected. Or on what you have in the clipboard. Etc.

So we would need more information. 

A screenshot showing the complete application window, including the Layers panel, would help.

Also, your OS will take screenshots for you, which will be much better than using a camera. Depending on your Windows keyboard that might be done with Alt+PrtScrn, or Fn+PrtScrn, or possibly some other combination. Or on Windows 10/11 the Windows Snipping Tool will do it for cases that don't involve pulldowns in the menus, etc.

[thomaso]

7 hours ago, Helen Flores said:

Why am I not able to use all commands within my affinity?

Isn't it like this in any app on your computer, its operating system (explorer / finder) included? If menu commands are greyed-out they require certain conditions to get accessible, for instance you can't use "Copy" if no object or text is selected and you can't "Paste" if nothing was copied before.

[Alfred]

9 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Also, your OS will take screenshots for you, which will be much better than using a camera. Depending on your Windows keyboard that might be done with Alt+PrtScrn, or Fn+PrtScrn, or possibly some other combination. Or on Windows 10/11 the Windows Snipping Tool will do it for cases that don't involve pulldowns in the menus, etc.

The Snipping Tool was combined with Screen Sketch in the October 2018 update for Windows 10. The result is Snip & Sketch, which makes it easy to annotate your screenshots.

[R C-R]

11 hours ago, thomaso said:

... for instance you can't use "Copy" if no object or text is selected and you can't "Paste" if nothing was copied before.

Likewise, you cannot ungroup an object that is not a group to begin with, release a mask from an object if there is no mask to release, mask to below if there is nothing below the selected layer, & so on.

[Helen Flores]

walt.farrell,

Is this what you're needing to see?

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, Helen Flores said:

Is this what you're needing to see?

There is no document open in AD in your screenshot, so there is nothing in the Layers panel or in the workspace window. So among other things, there is nothing to paste anything into (you need to have a document open to paste anything into it), nothing to ungroup, no mask to release, & nothing to delete or duplicate, etc.

[walt.farrell]

41 minutes ago, Helen Flores said:

Is this what you're needing to see?

That's a much better screenshot, yes.

Still, though, the answer to your original question of why items are grayed out stands. It's because they aren't applicable to whatever situation or document you have. In fact, there are cases where items that are not applicable are not grayed out, and that generates complaints, too

For your case, as @R C-R just beat me to saying, without an active document many menu items won't be usable.

[Helen Flores]

This is an SVG that I am trying to change to a png so I can edit it. It said on a tutorial that I should be able to release it, but the release is grayed out.

 

 

[Helen Flores]

This is the tutorial

 

[walt.farrell]

Just now, Helen Flores said:

It said on a tutorial

What tutorial, and at what time-code in the tutorial? Thanks for providing the tutorial.

That "Release" item is used when you have a Mask selected, I think. You don't have a Mask (or Mask layer) selected, you have an Embedded Document layer. If you double-click on that layer in the Layers panel, or click the Edit Document button in the Context Toolbar when you have that layer selected, you'll get another document tab where you can operate on the contents of that SVG file. In there, Release might work (depending on the contents of the SVG, or not).

But Release isn't related to turning an SVG into a PNG, as far as I know. For that, just Open the SVG directly (File > Open, select the SVG, click Open). Then use File > Export and choose PNG format.

[Helen Flores]

[v_kyr]

9 minutes ago, Helen Flores said:

This is the tutorial

Well the overall problem nowadays is, that every dully makes Youtube videos even they are no Affinity pros who know what they are talking about.

The first false is to place that SVG into Designer here in your case, since then it's an embedded file which can't be directly manipulated easily. It's much better in your case to "Open..." that SVG file instead, so get immeadiately the parsed in curve layers of that, which you can manipulate directly.

[walt.farrell]

20 minutes ago, Helen Flores said:

It said on a tutorial that I should be able to release it, but the release is grayed out.

The tutorial also showed how to "release" them: Select them in the Layers panel and drag them out of the Layer layer they were in. It said nothing about using an action named "Release".

And for what it was showing, they didn't need to be "released". They just needed to be selected and copied. Or, as @v_kyr and I mentioned, you could probably simply Open the document, rather than using the more complicated process of Placing, Editing, Copying, Pasting, and finally Exporting. Just Open, and Export.

[Alfred]

26 minutes ago, Helen Flores said:

This is an SVG that I am trying to change to a png so I can edit it.

What editing are you planning to do to the PNG? Is there something you want to achieve that specifically requires a raster format?

[R C-R]

6 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

The tutorial also showed how to "release" them: Select them in the Layers panel and drag them out of the Layer layer they were in. It said nothing about using an action named "Release".

Actually, at about 2:02 it does suggest using "Release" from the right-click popup menu. In this case, it releases the selected children of the "Layer 1" capital L type of container layer. The same thing applies to releasing children of Group layers. It is just an alternative to dragging selected child layers out of whatever kind of container layer they are in.

Also, in her last screenshot above, @Helen Flores shows she has already opened the embedded file (note that the tab says "<Embedded>" so if she wants to, just like in the video tutorial beginning at around 2:07 she could copy those 7 curve layers & paste them back into the original document as un-imbedded  layers.

From the looks of that screenshot, 5 of the 7 layers are text characters converted to curves, so they may not be needed.

Anyway, there is nothing wrong with the techniques used in the video. It is just an alternative to opening the file directly, useful if you already have opened a file with embedded content.

[Helen Flores]

v_kyr,

I'm sorry, please excuse me, but I'm not understanding what you're saying. The screen shot I included is of the svg opened up in my affinity, So what do you mean by "get immediately the parsed in curve layers of that"?

[Helen Flores]

walt.farrell,

Yes the tutorial states to do control + A to select all the layers then hit release and then it will allow me to edit it. Is it possible for one of you to do a quick vid to show me what you mean or do you have a youtube I can refer to?

[Helen Flores]

Alfred,

It is a template for a basketball so that I can make a personalized basketball. So I am trying to put a picture within the template area. I've been able to do that, but it goes beyond the template.

[walt.farrell]

13 minutes ago, Helen Flores said:

Yes the tutorial states to do control + A to select all the layers then hit release and then it will allow me to edit it. Is it possible for one of you to do a quick vid to show me what you mean or do you have a youtube I can refer to?

Sorry, I missed the use of Release. The important part, I think, was to then Copy the layers and Paste them into a separate document.

But all of that should be unnecessary if you simply Open the SVG document rather than Placing it, I think. But without having your template I can't say for sure.

[Alfred]

26 minutes ago, Helen Flores said:

I've been able to [put a picture within the template area], but it goes beyond the template.

It sounds as though you’re missing the simple step of clipping the picture to the template outline so that anything outside of that outline becomes hidden from view.

[v_kyr]

3 hours ago, Helen Flores said:

I'm sorry, please excuse me, but I'm not understanding what you're saying. The screen shot I included is of the svg opened up in my affinity, So what do you mean by "get immediately the parsed in curve layers of that"?

What that means is, that when you just open the SVG file (via the "File > Open ..." menu) then the SVG file will open in a direct editable layers manner. Which in turn means that the layers panel then shows all layer curves in an immediately/directly editable layers fashion, so you can select a curve layer and start manipulating/change/edit it!

In contrast to the above file open, a SVG place (via the "File > Place ..." menu) into an document will embbed the SVG file (... the layer in the layer panel will indicate you that it is now an embedded file). This in turn means you can't immediately/directly select it and start to edit manipulating/change/edit it. Instead you have to double click the embedded file layer's icon in order to open an editable representation of that embbded SVG file and in order to get the curves layer(s) here in some editable fashion. - Afterwards you will have to save that editable embedded file representation (what you or that video called release or the like) in order to appear updated in the initial document.

So all in all when working with vector files, opening them just via "File > Open ..." is the much better and faster way to deal with them instead as embedding them via "File > Place..." here. - The only situations where "File > Place ..." is usually a practical way is, if you want to explicitely make reusable & adaptable mockups/templates then (like shown here in this sample).

However, here's a fast made & short screen recording, where you can see the difference between "File > Open ..." and "File > Place..." with some used SVG file like your above shown sample. - Just opening the SVG file is shown first, afterwards a new document is created and then the SVG is placed into that document instead ...

 

[Old Bruce]

18 hours ago, v_kyr said:

So all in all when working with vector files, opening them just via "File > Open ..." is the much better and faster way to deal with them ...

I place vector files quite frequently. Quite often I have no need to edit them but sometimes I do need to. I can Embed a vector file and then edit the contents inside my own Designer/Photo/Publisher file with out changing the original. I can Link a vector file and then later on edit that file and the edits will show up in all my Designer/Photo/Publisher files which have that file linked.

Many different work methods available.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

Many different work methods available.

But if you had an SVG file, and your purpose was to edit it, would you create a new document, Place the SVG file in it, and then double-click on it to open a second document tab, and extract the data from the SVG, and put it back into the first document tab?

Or would you simply Open the SVG file and edit it? What puzzles me a bit is that the creator of that Youtube video seems to be saying that Opening seldom works, so instead here's this trick to extract the data a different way, and never seems to say which cases won't work, and why the trick might be needed.

[Helen Flores]

Thanks everyone, with your help and a couple of other vids, I was able to accomplish what I needed. I now have another question. Can you tell me how I change the sizing to inches instead of px? I usually don't have a problem changing it, but not this time.