Where is Preview mode in Affinity Photo 2?

[CCal]

Hi, 

Where can I find the "Preview" mode in Affinity Photo 2?
I have language proofing on and my AP is set to English, but currently im working on a document with texts in another language.
So now I have red wiggly lines underneath all my texts.

Is there a preview mode I can switch to temporary to see my document without the distracting red wiggly lines all over?

[GarryP]

There is no Preview Mode in Photo like there is in Publisher.

If you don’t want to see the ‘squiggly lines’ then you can switch “Check Spelling While Typing” OFF – menu “Text → Spelling → Check Spelling While Typing”.

[CCal]

Ah, really? That's an intuitive mode one would normally expect to see.

But thank you for the alternative solution.

[GarryP]

I agree that it would be useful to have a Preview Mode in Photo as it would mean that other things like margins, guides, etc. could also be temporarily hidden without switching them all off/on one-by-one.

Maybe there’s a technical/ideological reason for it not existing in Photo.

I’m pretty sure that this has been requested in the forums before – maybe you can find such a request and ‘resurrect’ it.

[loukash]

3 hours ago, GarryP said:

Maybe there’s a technical/ideological reason for it not existing in Photo.

Hm… Publisher is focused on page layout: In the "construction mode" you may want to see all guides, bounding boxes, text frames etc. Its Preview Mode needs to be at hand so you can see the final page appearance at a glance. That's been basically copied from the InDesign preview mode. And that's a much needed feature.

Also compare to Designer which is the one with 1) Outline Mode, and 2) Pixel Preview mode. All that also in accordance to its intended focus.

And Photo's focus is again elsewhere, so I guess the, um… "ideological" decision to hide the "Preview Mode" was to reduce bloat and ultralong menus, as it probably wasn't deemed an essential feature, unlike in Publisher. (For example, I use Photo almost daily for stitching scans and cropping them, but I rarely ever use that many guides or grids that I would need to turn on and off all at once. Unlike in Publisher where I'm turning the Preview Mode on and off x-times per hour.)

And: those who have Publisher, can still make use of its preview mode by instantly switching via File > Edit in Publisher using a keyboard shortcut, and back again. That doesn't take that much longer than having a direct Preview Mode menu item in Photo.
Or you can work in Publisher's Photo persona if you don't need Photo's extra features.
Be aware though that if you turn the page preview on in Publisher, this setting remains after switching the document back to Photo, with no way to turn it off there. So you need to turn it off in Publisher first. (edit: see below)

Edited December 2, 2022 by loukash

[loukash]

3 hours ago, GarryP said:

margins, guides, etc. could also be temporarily hidden without switching them all off/on one-by-one.

On Mac, this can be also accomplished by UI scripting. Standard menu items are scriptable even in Affinity. The script can be saved as an Automator Service, and those can be assigned a keyboard shortcut.
Or by using a more advanced macro utility like Keyboard Maestro. (I'm already using K.M. macros with a keyboard shortcut for such tedious tasks like converting a list of swatches to Global, or deleting swatches from a list.)

[loukash]

21 minutes ago, loukash said:

Be aware though that if you turn the page preview on in Publisher, this setting remains after switching the document back to Photo, with no way to turn it off there. So you need to turn it off in Publisher first.

Correction:
I just noticed that you don't need to turn the preview off in Publisher first.
If you turn on the preview in Publisher and then switch back to Photo, all "View > Show…" menu items will be simply disabled. Turning one of them on will also enable all others that were turned off by APu's preview mode.