What's the most elegant way to turn one page in your book black?

[AlleyDukakis]

E.g. if I have one page in the middle of my book that calls for all black (with white text on top), then whats the best way to do that?

Currently, i'm just drawing a rectangle and placing it below the white text.

[carl123]

You could also use the Text Frame panel to add a black fill to the text frame

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, AlleyDukakis said:

most elegant … the best way

What aspects? – speedy creation | slim layers panel | flexibility | … ?

If you switch to APhoto you can add a Fill Layer. – Nice: Auto-sized with page, locked in the document window against selection. … But don't want to change its size different from the page size, or add a stroke … 😉

[GarryP]

1 hour ago, AlleyDukakis said:

I have one page in the middle of my book that calls for all black (with white text on top), then whats the best way to do that?

Unless you want (or are okay with) the text to be rasterised, I don’t think it’s possible to do what you want automatically, and nicely.

The reason for this is that there is no way for the software to automatically change the colour of the text in relation to the colour behind it, except for using an Adjustment Blend Mode which would cause rasterisation.

See attached video for an example.

You can do it manually by formatting the text where it needs to be a different colour but you may need to keep checking that the correct characters have been re-coloured if the text or layout changes in any way. It sounds like this is what you are doing anyway.

I’d be happy to learn if there was a better way though.

Edited August 18, 2022 by GarryP
Fixed detail(s).

[AlleyDukakis]

i dont care about the text

i just want to turn the page black

[GarryP]

5 minutes ago, AlleyDukakis said:

i dont care about the text

What do you mean by that?
What is it about the text you don’t care about?
If you don’t care about the text then why is it there?

[Old Bruce]

11 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Unless you want (or are okay with) the text to be rasterised, I don’t think it’s possible to do what you want automatically, and nicely.

The reason for this is that there is no way for the software to automatically change the colour of the text in relation to the colour behind it, except for using an Adjustment which would cause rasterisation.

 I would just change the blend mode to Divide.

[GarryP]

Sorry, I said Adjustment when I meant Blend Mode, as used in my video.
I’ve changed the earlier post to, hopefully, cause less confusion.

[tudor]

2 hours ago, AlleyDukakis said:

E.g. if I have one page in the middle of my book that calls for all black (with white text on top), then whats the best way to do that?

Since you're doing a book, I presume you use Affinity Publisher.

Make a master page with a black rectangle as a background. Apply it to that specific page.

As for the text, make paragraph styles using white as the text color.

Don't mess with the blend modes as suggested above. They're ugly hacks and will cause troubles if you ever going to print that book..

[PaoloT]

10 minutes ago, tudor said:

As for the text, make paragraph styles using white as the text color.

Just wondering if a character style wouldn't be quicker. You wouldn't have to create a whole new set of paragraph styles.

Paolo

 

[GarryP]

9 minutes ago, tudor said:

Don't mess with the blend modes as suggested above. They're ugly hacks and will cause troubles if you ever going to print that book.

They’re "ugly hacks" but they’re all we have got if we don’t, as mentioned above, want to have to keep checking the formatting of the text to make sure the white text hasn’t been ‘shifted’ off the black page somehow.

I think you are assuming that the white text doesn’t flow in from, or out to, other frames, while I am assuming that it could - I don't know which of us is making the correct assumption (assuming that you have made the assumption that I assume you have assumed).

If the text is wholly contained in text frames which don’t flow onto or from other pages then this isn’t a problem of course, but the OP didn’t give us much information about the contents of the document.

They asked how they could do something without giving us much detail, and then later said that they don’t care about the text.
I think it’s probably best if we wait to see if they give us more information.

[tudor]

21 minutes ago, GarryP said:

They’re "ugly hacks" but they’re all we have got if we don’t, as mentioned above, want to have to keep checking the formatting of the text to make sure the white text hasn’t been ‘shifted’ off the black page somehow.

Unlike screen design, where everything is doable, dealing with something one might print, like a book, is different. You have to follow some rules and there will always be some amount of manual work involved, no matter how much we'd like everything to be automatic.

[AlleyDukakis]

38 minutes ago, tudor said:

Since you're doing a book, I presume you use Affinity Publisher.

Make a master page with a black rectangle as a background. Apply it to that specific page.

As for the text, make paragraph styles using white as the text color.

Don't mess with the blend modes as suggested above. They're ugly hacks and will cause troubles if you ever going to print that book..

 

right

thats what i'm doing now

but i assumed there might be a variable called "PAGE_COLOR" where i could just set the page to black or grey or pink.

It seemed like this would be an obvious feature to have on a Publisher app....

 

[tudor]

7 minutes ago, AlleyDukakis said:

but i assumed there might be a variable called "PAGE_COLOR" where i could just set the page to black or grey or pink.

 

Your "variable" is called a master page. You can make as many master pages you need, each with a different background color. And, if you define those colors as Global Document Colors, you'll have even more options to play with.

[AlleyDukakis]

7 minutes ago, tudor said:

Your "variable" is called a master page. You can make as many master pages you need, each with a different background color. And, if you define those colors as Global Document Colors, you'll have even more options to play with.

 

There is a "background color" for a Master Page?

Or, you mean, I have to draw a black rectangle and that's my background color?

[thomaso]

11 minutes ago, tudor said:

Your "variable" is called a master page.

Not really. Master pages are, like all pages in an .afpub, always white containers for additional objects which may get coloured. – Different to AD which allows to colourize its Artboards or apply a stroke, without creating an additional layer.

[tudor]

40 minutes ago, AlleyDukakis said:

There is a "background color" for a Master Page?

Or, you mean, I have to draw a black rectangle and that's my background color?

You still have to draw a rectangle filled with a background color on the master page.

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, tudor said:

You still have to draw a rectangle filled with a background color on the master page.

Or on the document page. Using a Master page for this is a good idea if you need or expect in the future to have more than one document page with a black background.

Just for the sake of completeness, if you have AP as well as APub, you could in either AP or the Photo Persona of APub, add a black Fill layer set to black. No real advantage to this I can see vs. using a rectangle, other than that do do not need to set the size iof the fill layer, since it automatically will be set to the page size. Black page via fill.afpub is a very simple example of this.

[AlleyDukakis]

LETS ADD A FEATURE

 

[R C-R]

20 minutes ago, AlleyDukakis said:

LETS ADD A FEATURE

Have you considered posting this to the Feature Requests forum?