Affinity Publisher: Caption to Picture Frame (I must be blind....)?

[GregTh]

I want to add a caption to a picture frame.
Shouldn't be too difficult.... I thought.

Found this online: add a caption to a picture frame in Affinity Publisher 2, follow these steps:

1 Select the picture frame by clicking on it.
2 Go to the "Properties" panel on the right side of the interface.
3 In the "Caption" section of the panel, click the checkbox to enable captions.
4 Enter the text for your caption in the "Caption text" field.

Simple I thought....
But... my eyes must be deceiving me as I can not find the proper 'properties panel', and so can't find the caption section either.
What and where am I overlooking this?
Please help me, as its driving me a little insane today  

[walt.farrell]

Where online did you find that method described? None of that sounds like Affinity Publisher. 

 

[GregTh]

Bing Chat..... I know.... don't trust too much on AI yet. 🤣
But still is it possible to add a caption, or not. 
And if so, how without having to add an extra text frame under the image.

There should (must) be a consistent and repetitive way to add captions to images?
I know I can make a picture frame, group it and make it an asset. But then when you change the aspect ration of the image, the caption gets distorted. That's not what I want.

 

 

[walt.farrell]

As far as I know you still do it with an extra Text Frame, optionally Grouped with the Picture Frame.

[GregTh]

Yikes, not what I had hoped to hear.
So still work to do for the affinity development team to add this.
Any reason why Affinity/Serif didn't add this feature yet? Its common to have the need for  a caption below an image.

 

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, GregTh said:

when you change the aspect ration of the image, the caption gets distorted.

It just depends on your setup and your workflow. If you use a Frame Text object (not Art Text) resizing the Group does affect the Picture Frame (incl. its nested image) without affecting the font in the caption. If you do not select the Group for resizing but its nested two layers you have more options for the image and still don't resize the text.

For some automatism you can use Data Merge. This enables you to create pairs of picture + text frames and get the text frames auto-filled according to the contents of a source document. If you create this like a "contact sheet" you can use the result as source and copy/paste selected pairs of objects for use in a custom layout.

[GregTh]

35 minutes ago, thomaso said:

It just depends on your setup and your workflow. If you use a Frame Text object (not Art Text) resizing the Group does affect the Picture Frame (incl. its nested image) without affecting the font in the caption. If you do not select the Group for resizing but its nested two layers you have more options for the image and still don't resize the text.

For some automatism you can use Data Merge. This enables you to create pairs of picture + text frames and get the text frames auto-filled according to the contents of a source document. If you create this like a "contact sheet" you can use the result as source and copy/paste selected pairs of objects for use in a custom layout.

Thanks, let's try that.

 

[carl123]

2 hours ago, GregTh said:

I want to add a caption to a picture frame.
Shouldn't be too difficult.... I thought.

Try it in reverse

Add a text frame for the caption then pin a picture frame to the start of the text frame

 

[Jeremy R]

I also wanted to add captions to picture frames and I 'knew' that it could be done because the Help article on Constraints talks about captions in picture frames, including a screen shot showing one, but I could not find an explanation of how to add them. Pasting the caption as content into the picture frame did not work properly. But with a bit of trial and error, I think I have worked out a way to do it:

Create a picture frame / Add a picture / Create a text frame for the caption / Go to the layers panel / Drag caption layer onto Picture frame layer / Select the caption and position it exactly where you want it within the picture frame / With caption still selected, open Constraints panel to control the behaviour of the caption text frame/ Click on the vertical double-ended arrow inside the small box—it will change to a dotted arrow—to prevent the caption from stretching or compressing vertically when the picture frame is resized. (It will continue to resize horizontally with the picture frame if the horizontal arrow is kept solid.) / Click on one of the dotted lines between the inner and outer box to lock the caption to an edge of the picture frame.

In the screen shot I have locked the caption to the bottom edge of the picture frame. With these settings, the caption always remains the same height but varies its width according to how I might resize the picture frame.

I hope this helps for anyone who hasn't already solved this little conundrum.

Edited April 16, 2023 by Jeremy R
Typo in the word 'explanation'.

[Horizon3]

@Jeremy R thanks for this. I follow your good directions exactly, but problem I having: text in captions box (text frame create for caption) does not show and tells to me text is overflow. But is not overflow. Please to see screenshot. Am I do something wrong?

Do you know why this happen and how to fix, please?

[Jeremy R]

This has also occasionally happened to me after I have repositioned the text frame and I found that manually resizing it a tiny amount fixed the problem—possibly as little as 0.1 mm height or width. You could also uncheck 'Hide overflow' so that you can see how much space the text wants—the lines of text might be breaking differently than you expect, resulting in an extra line. You might be able to fix this by slightly adjusting word and letter spacing in the Justification section of the Paragraph panel.

Good luck, Jeremy

[thomaso]

Alternatively to Jeremy R's hint: activate in the Text Frame panel the options "Ignore Text Wrap" or "Ignore Baseline Grid" to detect a possible reason for the overflow.

If this doesn't help: Does the text appear if you copy this frame and paste it on an empty page that has no master page assigned?

[anto]

6 годин тому Horizon3 сказав:

but problem I having: text in captions box (text frame create for caption) does not show and tells to me text is overflow. But is not overflow. Please to see screenshot. Am I do something wrong?

Here are videos

 

 

 

[Greg E]

@Horizon3 The reason that your text doesn't show is that the  text box is BEHIND the picture (i.e. it is lower in the stack on the layers panel). If you drag it up in the layers panel to be above the picture frame, it will show. If you have the picture frame wrapping properties set to wrap, as in the video above, the text will get pushed out of the frame, and it will overflow. You can either set the wrapping property of the picture frame to "off", or set the text frame property to ignore text wraps. Ideally, you will place your text box inside the group, but above the picture itself. Then it will move with the picture frame as illustrated in the video clips. 

[Horizon3]

@Jeremy R Thank you. I did try what you say but still it give to me the problem I show. 

On 9/21/2023 at 8:53 PM, thomaso said:

Does the text appear if you copy this frame and paste it on an empty page that has no master page assigned?

Yes, @thomaso text appears if I paste frame onto empty page. This why I not know why text not show on page with image. I know I do something wrong but cannot find out what before I post my question. 

@anto always your videos are helpful. Now all works correctly. Thank you very much. 

@Greg E Thank you. Yes, all that you say is what I was doing wrong. I do what @anto's video show and all works correctly now. Thank you for explain what I do wrong. I'm not understand the problem I do and your explanation makes it clear.