Mirror 2 Text Fields in Publisher?

[David Gill]

I was wondering if it's possible to mirror 2 text fields in Affinity Publisher. Essentially when I type in one text field, it automatically copies it in another text field. I would like to use this feature if it's possible so I can create a glow effect behind title texts for a catalog. The Glow Effect in the FX panel isn't achieving what I'd like it to, so I want a mirrored text field directly behind it with a Gaussian Blur applied to it.

[v_kyr]

16 minutes ago, David Gill said:

I was wondering if it's possible to mirror 2 text fields in Affinity Publisher. ...

That's something (mirror via symbols) Affinity Designer supports, but I somehow doubt that APub 2 got that direct function too (?). - In case you have ADe 2 too, it should be probably possible to take that (some mirrored text via symbols) also over to APub too then, since the Affinity apps share the same file formats. - You have to give it a try.

[walt.farrell]

4 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

That's something (mirror via symbols) Affinity Designer supports, but I somehow doubt that APub 2 got that direct function too (?). - In case you have ADe 2 too, it should be probably possible to take that (some mirrored text via symbols) also over to APub too then, since the Affinity apps share the same file formats. - You have to give it a try.

If you have both Publisher and Designer, you can use Symbols via the Designer Persona, of course.

[v_kyr]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

If you have both Publisher and Designer, you can use Symbols via the Designer Persona, of course.

Well that's clear, but what if you don't have Designer? - That's why I wrote & guessed, that APub 2 probably doesn't have this capability now on it's own.

[walt.farrell]

38 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

but what if you don't have Designer?

Then you don't have Symbols.

Your comment about Designer seemed to imply that one had to use the standalone app, and then transfer to Publisher, which is why I made my comment

[v_kyr]

7 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Then you don't have Symbols.

Your comment about Designer seemed to imply that one had to use the standalone app, and then transfer to Publisher, which is why I made my comment

Since one never knows if the OP has all three Affinity apps (and thus direct persona switching in APub) or just two of them (ADe + APub) etc. I tend to describe it more generic.

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Well that's clear, but what if you don't have Designer?

Well, you could sort of cheat & open a symbol like this text frame Symbol.afdesign file I made in AD in APub & duplicate it to get the symbol.

Also works via drag & drop.

[v_kyr]

26 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Well, you could sort of cheat & open a symbol like this text frame Symbol.afdesign file I made in AD in APub & duplicate it to get the symbol.

Also works via drag & drop.

Well, if here you explicitely provide it to the folks who don't have Designer, but how should they have done on their own without Designer, that was the main point and why we said before "...if you have Designer too"!

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Well, if here you explicitely provide it to the folks who don't have Designer, but how should they have done on their own without Designer, that was the main point and why we said before "...if you have Designer too"!

There are lots of example *.afdesign files posted in various places in these forums that include symbols, & I'm sure others can be found elsewhere on the web, so all anybody that does not have AD needs to do is find one that does, download it, & go from there. They do not have to rely on my file for this.

[v_kyr]

40 minutes ago, R C-R said:

There are lots of example *.afdesign files posted in various places in these forums that include symbols, & I'm sure others can be found elsewhere on the web, so all anybody that does not have AD needs to do is find one that does ...

I think most new users to Affinity here aren't aware of that, same as most new users don't look or search first at all for maybe existing previous forum topics about the problems/topics/themes they have. - If everyone (ideally) would do that first, then this forum for sure wouldn't have so much repetitive threads and the voluntair helpers here wouldn't need to point them always to the already existing forum or net answers (FAQs/threads/tutorials/Youtube videos/weblinks ... etc.) which deal with all that!

In short, there is a good reason why I once upon a time wrote up this here.

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, v_kyr said:

I think most new users to Affinity here aren't aware of that

That's why I mentioned it! 😀

[loukash]

5 hours ago, v_kyr said:

one never knows if the OP has all three Affinity apps

Look at their profile page and you'll know.  

[v_kyr]

22 minutes ago, loukash said:

Look at their profile page and you'll know.  

No time for that, user profiles are usually of not much interest to me (...since I even don't look at my own one). - But hey where I now looked at yours, do you really think I would maybe go through all your postings then just in order to find out, which apps & which OS you may have in use? 🙃

Either one tells in a posting's signature, or via added thread tags, or has instead explicitely to tell then. But I'm not going to hunt after those infos!

[loukash]

11 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

No time for that

Meh. Whatever.

8 hours ago, David Gill said:

I was wondering if it's possible to mirror 2 text fields in Affinity Publisher. Essentially when I type in one text field, it automatically copies it in another text field. I would like to use this feature if it's possible so I can create a glow effect behind title texts for a catalog. The Glow Effect in the FX panel isn't achieving what I'd like it to, so I want a mirrored text field directly behind it with a Gaussian Blur applied to it.

Since you obviously have Designer: yes, it's possible via Symbols in the Designer persona, as already noted above.
You'll have to temporarily unsync the "glow" text object instance so that you can apply the Layer Effect to it, then enable the Sync button to keep the other attributes in sync.
If you also have Photo, then using the Links panel is even easier as you can simply select and deselect any individual linked attributes from there. (The Links panel being just another UI to the underlying Symbols technology.)

[walt.farrell]

37 minutes ago, loukash said:

Look at their profile page and you'll know.  

How does that help tell you what apps they own? 

[loukash]

8 hours ago, David Gill said:

The Glow Effect in the FX panel isn't achieving what I'd like it to

Actually the Outer Glow is pretty flexible on its own, more flexible than the Blur.
Did you know that you're not limited to just "100 px" radius as the slider might confusingly suggest? Simply enter any value you want directly into the value field. You can enter any units you want: mm, pt, inch, you name it. You also have blend modes to choose from. 

Like this, for example (in v1 for now):

[David Gill]

On 1/7/2023 at 9:56 AM, v_kyr said:

That's something (mirror via symbols) Affinity Designer supports, but I somehow doubt that APub 2 got that direct function too (?). - In case you have ADe 2 too, it should be probably possible to take that (some mirrored text via symbols) also over to APub too then, since the Affinity apps share the same file formats. - You have to give it a try.

Thanks, I did watch a little training video on how to use symbols after reading your suggestion, it worked great. Appreciate your insight!

[David Gill]

On 1/7/2023 at 5:48 PM, loukash said:

Actually the Outer Glow is pretty flexible on its own, more flexible than the Blur.
Did you know that you're not limited to just "100 px" radius as the slider might confusingly suggest? Simply enter any value you want directly into the value field. You can enter any units you want: mm, pt, inch, you name it. You also have blend modes to choose from.

Thank you, yes I did try that first before posting my question. Unfortunately it wasn't quite achieving the effect I wanted.