Where is the text?

[AlanPC]

I'm trying to create a garden plan, messed around with some online software to get a scaled plan, now I want to add some text to the image I created. So I open the image in Affinity Photo...

Where the heck is the text?

I have a text menu, with heaps of options, but how do I actually insert some text onto the picture? I'd expect to see like a T or something, but I see no T? 

??

[RM f/g]

Make sure you have 'Show Tools' checked in View menu.

In the Tool Box choose the 'A' button.

[AlanPC]

Tools were showing but I had to 'customize' to show the A. Cheers!

Can't believe there's no way to draw an arrow, without manually creating one? Maybe Publisher would be better for this? Mmm.

[joe_l]

11 minutes ago, AlanPC said:

Can't believe there's no way to draw an arrow, without manually creating one?

?

 

[AlanPC]

Aha!

OK, that works... lord it's complicated just to point a red arrow at something. OK, thanks for the help, have got it working. 😊

[Alfred]

18 minutes ago, AlanPC said:

lord it's complicated just to point a red arrow at something

What would make it simpler without losing the flexibility afforded by the current options? 

[AlanPC]

To just click the image, dragging my mouse to the thing I want to point to, using a nice, simple, solid, visible, arrow, and then edit the arrow from there, should I want to.

Most screengrab or similar software have such a setup. In Affinity I find it creates an invisible, hollow, double-ended white arrow pointing straight left and right. Yes, I CAN adjust it to absolutely anything from there, but it's hard work - which is why I'm now using Libre Office Draw for this project...   

[Ron P.]

Are you wanting something like the Arrow Shape Tool?

 

[Alfred]

40 minutes ago, AlanPC said:

To just click the image, dragging my mouse to the thing I want to point to, using a nice, simple, solid, visible, arrow, and then edit the arrow from there, should I want to.

You just need to draw a straight line and add an arrow head.

41 minutes ago, AlanPC said:

In Affinity I find it creates an invisible, hollow, double-ended white arrow pointing straight left and right.

The Arrow Tool, like the other Shape Tools, uses the current fill and stroke colours.

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, AlanPC said:

Most screengrab or similar software have such a setup.

Of course - they are applications that are intended for these specific purposes. I myself use FastStone Capture (super easy and fast capture and annotation tool) to my full satisfaction. But I really wouldn't want to edit photos like in APhoto in it - that would be a pain.

[AlanPC]

Sure, it just feel awkward that when I want to do some simple image editing I end up giving up on APhoto and opening an office app instead. Publisher would perhaps be a better option - but this whole thing, and my wasted morning, come down to the difficulty of what should have been an incredibly simple task - create a scaled plan of my garden.

Somehow that has involved 2 different online softwares, APhoto, an office app AND a screen grabber. At one point I tried Google Earth, but the resolution was pants...

Oh yeah, and all that's after giving up on Edraw Max, which is supposed to be good at this.

Why, in 2022, is it so hard to turn on my PC and create a 50ft by 40ft garden as a canvas, with gridlines in 1ft increments, and add items, with labels and arrows? I wasted my entire morning on which I presumed was going to be a really simple task, but wasn't. 

At this point I've decided to just take photos of the garden, print them and then draw on the photos with a marker pen. I would LIKE a neatly-labeled scale plan but it's more hassle than it's worth.

It's not APhoto's fault, my fault for trying to edit an image with it.

[GarryP]

This thread seems to have gone off on various tangents and I’m not sure which direction it’s going in now – e.g. where did ‘screen grabbers’ come into it?

You seem to have some kind of image of your garden, and you want to put some kind of grid over that image, and then mark some areas somehow, and then add arrows pointing to those areas.
Is that correct?

[AlanPC]

The thread is going nowhere; my problems were solved by RM f/g and joe_l 

Along the way I came to the conclusion Affinity Photo was an inappropriate tool for my project's needs.

 

[GarryP]

Depending on what you want to do you may be able to do it all in Photo but I don’t think we have enough information to say so or not.

If you already have a solution to your problem that’s good enough for what you want then that’s fine and we can ‘call it a day’.

However, if you want to know if it’s possible in Photo then if you can give us more information about what you want to do and share what you already have then I’m sure someone will be able to help further.

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, AlanPC said:

Tools were showing but I had to 'customize' to show the A. Cheers!

By default, the two text tools, the Frame Text Tool (icon: T) & the Artistic Text Tool (icon:A) share the same slot in the Tools panel. Whichever one was used last is the one shown; to access the other either click on the small triangle at the bottom corner of the icon to show both. (This same arrangement can be sen in some other tools -- just look for the small triangle.)

This is done to save space in the Tools panel, but as you have discovered, you can customize the panel to show more tools & even to use more than one column of tools in the panel.

8 hours ago, AlanPC said:

Can't believe there's no way to draw an arrow, without manually creating one?

The Affinity apps give you a lot of choices for the kind of arrows you can add to your documents. This Some arrows.afphoto file shows a few of them. If you regularly use one or more types of arrow shapes you can add them to the Assets panel so you can just drag them into your document from there.

Note that Assets can be imported & exported, so for example you could import this Arrows.afassets category into your copy of AP.

[AlanPC]

Lol, the contrast with Affinity compared to some others is delightful ☺️

It's far more firepower than I needed to simply add a measurement (such as '12ft') and then a couple of arrows up and down to show which edge that measurement related to. But the quick, detailed and helpful responses, and seeing how powerful AP can be, remind me why I made the right choice buying it - even though it's not really appropriate for such a simple task.

Thanks again guys  

[thomaso]

33 minutes ago, AlanPC said:

I needed to simply add a measurement (such as '12ft') and then a couple of arrows up and down to show which edge that measurement related to.

For objects you need frequently it's worth to put them to your Asset Panel. This way you might not need to set stroke width, colour and arrow each time.

Since you mentioned measurement, here an example with an Asset which was setup in the Constraint Panel to scale as wanted without increasing font or stroke/arrow size. By far not as perfect and comfortable as a measurement tool would be but possible helpful for quick usage.