Photobook: working with multiple images

[Aquabuoy]

Hello,

I'm evaluating desktop Affinity Publisher V2 to determine if it will suit my needs for creating photobooks. To start thank you to the folks at Serif, for creating software that's not subscription based! That's a big draw!

I've been trying to add images to a photobook test project. I understand the place image tool. And when using it to add multiple images, the place image panel shows my the thumbnails of the images I selected. But it disappears as soon as I select another tool.

Is there a way to toggle this back into view? Or do I need to reselect each image at each instance I want to use them?

I'm trying to understand the workflow. I've seen video tutorials where when the stock panel feature is used, the images are available in Designer to add/remove from the pages without having to continually turn to 're-importing' the images.

Thank you for your help!

Cheers,

Nic

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @Aquabuoy

I’m pretty sure that, when you start using a different tool, the software assumes that you have finished placing your images/documents and discards the other non-placed images/documents. I don’t think there’s a way to get the images back without placing them again.

The Stock Panel is only used to place images from certain websites; it’s not possible to add your own image locations into there.

One of the other forum members might have some suggestions.

[laurent32]

You could place your images in an asset and use them as you need, one by one, 5 by 5, etc…

[GarryP]

Using Assets is certainly one possibility but I think it’s worth mentioning that creating lots of assets can cause application start-up times to become longer as the software reads through (verifies) the assets every time you launch the application. (It did in V1; not absolutely 100% sure for V2.)

Might not be a problem with a few dozen assets but a few hundred could push things on older machines.

Also, if you have lots of assets then it’s a good idea to take a backup of them every now and again, just to be safe. (Plenty of instructions for this in the forums; just search for backup asset .)

[thomaso]

18 minutes ago, laurent32 said:

You could place your images in an asset and use them as you need, one by one, 5 by 5, etc…

To become assets they need first to get placed in the document anyway, right?

From that view it may also be an option to place them temporarily on an extra page or in the workspace left/right of a spread (optionally with "Preview Mode" off).

[PaulEC]

Personally I would put all the images in a folder, add picture frames to the document, then add the pictures to the frames.

[laurent32]

8 minutes ago, thomaso said:

To become assets they need first to get placed in the document anyway, right

No, I don't think so, you can just drag images from a folder to an asset…

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Aquabuoy said:

to determine if it will suit my needs for creating photobooks.

Not related to your question but possibly to your goal: Using Picture Frames as parent containers for images can make it easier to place them and also to toggle between various layouts for a certain set of images. See also "smart master" feature, for instance:

Using master pages can be an advantage, which on the other hand gets reduced if you want to modify a master page object on a document's page, for instance the size, aspect ratio or position of such a picture frame.

[PaulEC]

Assets were not mentioned in the OP. I cannot see much point in using them unless you intend to reuse the same image multiple times. If you Place the images you have to place them all at the same time and get the size right each time. By far the easiest way is to use Picture Frames!

[thomaso]

2 minutes ago, laurent32 said:

No, I don't think so, you can just drag images from a folder to an asset…

Ah, I haven't experienced this before. But this leads me to another aspect of assets: Assets seem to convert images to "(Pixel)" layers + thus lose the file path to their original images + are not listed in the Resource Manager. –> Feels like a 'risky' workflow, especially for a photobook.

[laurent32]

12 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

Assets were not mentioned in the OP. I cannot see much point in using them unless you intend to reuse the same image multiple times. If you Place the images you have to place them all at the same time and get the size right each time. By far the easiest way is to use Picture Frames!

It was a quick and convenient way to have them aside… and it's good to remember assets are there…

[laurent32]

22 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Ah, I haven't experienced this before. But this leads me to another aspect of assets: Assets seem to convert images to "(Pixel)" layers + thus lose the file path to their original images + are not listed in the Resource Manager. –> Feels like a 'risky' workflow, especially for a photobook.

True…

[Aquabuoy]

Thank you for the clarity and suggestions/possible workarounds everyone. It's been helpful in understanding how Publisher 2 works. Much appreciated!

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, Aquabuoy said:

Or do I need to reselect each image at each instance I want to use them?

How specifically do you want to use them? Do you want to duplicate them, perform some operation to all or some of them at the same time, like resizing or grouping them, or something else?

[Aquabuoy]

20 hours ago, R C-R said:

How specifically do you want to use them? Do you want to duplicate them, perform some operation to all or some of them at the same time, like resizing or grouping them, or something else?

As you assemble a photo book you often want to swap images, move them around, try new combinations, etc. Ultimately it's a very iterative process. I guess I was surprised when I initially "imported" a batch of images and the Place Image panel disappeared as soon as I selected another tool. Intuitively, for me at least, I thought I could go back to it as needed to select/choose various images as I built the book, adding pages, moving pages around, etc. So my original question was to know if there was a way to do that inside Publisher vs toggling between Publisher and the OS file folder window, it seems to be the latter.

[R C-R]

10 minutes ago, Aquabuoy said:

I thought I could go back to it as needed to select/choose various images as I built the book, adding pages, moving pages around, etc.

You can select placed images with the Move Tool & move them wherever you want, including to different pages, but adding pages is a completely different thing from placing images into pages of a document. So for example, to add pages, use the add page items from the Document menu or click on the Add Pages button in the Pages panel.

I'm not sure what you mean by moving pages around. You can add or delete pages, & move or copy content like placed images among existing pages but there is no way I know of to reorder pages themselves.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Aquabuoy said:

to select/choose various images as I built the book, (...) if there was a way to do that inside Publisher vs toggling between Publisher and the OS file folder window, it seems to be the latter.

APub v2 has an option to 'auto'-place a bunch of images into a grid with 1 click. It could be used for instance to fill an extra spread with placed images in small sizes where you can come back during the layout process to pick further images for their use in the book layout. Note such a "image library" spread can have its own page dimensions and it can be moved to any position within the book at any time.

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

there is no way I know of to reorder pages themselves.

It can be done in the Pages Panel. For complex changes to the page order it appears helpful to resize the Pages Panel to larger size (up to full screen) which gives a far better overview over the document.

Unfortunately page movements can be done manually via drag & drop only. There is no way to move pages numerically, for instance like "move pages 7, 9, 12-14 before page 5" or "move the selected pages to the end of the document".

[R C-R]

9 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Unfortunately page movements can be done manually via drag & drop only.

At least for me, drag & drop to move pages around is fiddly & sometimes does not work, like when trying to move one page in a spread to the last page position.