Encountering lots of weirdness -- new user

[darinb]

I'm trying to learn to use Publisher but am encountering lots of weird behavior. Here are four examples:

1) I'm working on a photo book. When I export to pdf (both print and small sized) the photo on the right has a vertical "line" which is also visible in the preview in the pdf reader. This line is visible within Publisher itself. I do not know if it is visible within the PDF export preview window as it takes forever to load. This issue has stopped my project and I either need to fix it or abandon Publisher.

2) Publisher uses a lot of memory. I have 96 GB and it gave me a warning at 32 when I first tried to export to pdf (but not since--I've relaunched the program without additional warnings). Project is 178 pages, mostly images (all jpegs). Activity Monitor routinely shows it using 60-80 GB.

3) On this file (I haven't tried others) I will sometimes get a warning box saying that links to broken objects have been removed. It offers me a "close" button and a "close" X in the top corner, but no indication at all what the warning is talking about or how to get more info. I can find nothing wrong with the file. And sometimes it will appear on opening, sometimes not, even when there has been no change to the file or the locations of any of the source files. 

4) I made the page in the project by creating a page, using the image tool to create an image box, then using the shape tool to create a solid color layer (gray or black), which I placed behind the image--the color layer shows through at the border of the images. The first pages have white borders, then mid-gray, then finally black. I created additional pages by duplicating the first.

When I delete a page I would expect that the subsequent pages would just shift one "space" closer, with no other changes. What I find is that from that point on the backgrounds all go white--but only on the right side. The right side shows the error no matter if I delete an image on the left or right.

I am bewildered at encountering so many weird issues so quickly on so simple a project. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

--Darin

[thomaso]

34 minutes ago, darinb said:

This line is visible within Publisher itself.

• Do you mean in the layout document?

• Is any transparency involved, a blend mode other than 'normal' included?

• To me it doesn't look like a line but rather like a rectangle (almost squared) that darkens the images on the right pages. What elements do these pages contain? Can you show the layout + Layers panel for a spread with this occurrence, with unfolded Picture Frame layer + the containing image selected + "Checkerboard Background" activated in the Layers Panel options?

40 minutes ago, darinb said:

the color layer shows through at the border of the images.

• What do you mean by "shows through"? To me it appears the picture frame is smaller than its page while the gray 'background' layer ("Layer1" ?) fills the page + gets bleed at the bottom edge only. – So, the picture frames have no stroke assigned to create the gray border?

• What do the Master Pages contain?

• The second screenshot shows for page 140/41 two "Layer1" while the third screenshot shows only one "Layer1" but with a different aspect ratio. This single 'background' object for two facing pages could cause the problem on the following pages (white 'background'): if you delete in the third screenshot page 140 then the rectangle will move, if you delete 141 the rectangle will get deleted, too.

• Page 143 seems to show a moved 'background' … can you show the Layers panel of this spread?

[darinb]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

• Do you mean in the layout document?

• Is any transparency involved, a blend mode other than 'normal' included?

• To me it doesn't look like a line but rather like a rectangle (almost squared) that darkens the images on the right pages. What elements do these pages contain? Can you show the layout + Layers panel for a spread with this occurrence, with unfolded Picture Frame layer + the containing image selected + "Checkerboard Background" activated in the Layers Panel options?

Hi, here is a sample screen showing one of the images within Publisher. All of the layers are in "Normal" blend more. I do not see any wayward elements. However, I do notice that these are photoshop files and so maybe that is a clue--is there a problem with using photoshop files? Note, I couldn't figured out how to set "Checkerboard Background." Also note, the weird problem is not visible inside Publisher--it only appears in the exported PDF.

 

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

• What do you mean by "shows through"? To me it appears the picture frame is smaller than its page while the gray 'background' layer ("Layer1" ?) fills the page + gets bleed at the bottom edge only. – So, the picture frames have no stroke assigned to create the gray border?

The b&w images with a white border are made just by placing an image in an image frame over the master. The black and white images with a gray or black background have an additional color layer created with a rectangle tool and a color-filled full-page rectangle.

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

• What do the Master Pages contain?

The master page is just a default master page with no elements.

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

• The second screenshot shows for page 140/41 two "Layer1" while the third screenshot shows only one "Layer1" but with a different aspect ratio. This single 'background' object for two facing pages could cause the problem on the following pages (white 'background'): if you delete in the third screenshot page 140 then the rectangle will move, if you delete 141 the rectangle will get deleted, too.

• Page 143 seems to show a moved 'background' … can you show the Layers panel of this spread?

I'm not 100% I understand what you are saying. In the "pre-delete" screen shot you can see two background layers and two jpgs (one each from the image peaking in from the left). Once I delete the page and all of the following pages shift up one, I can see the background layer (the gray) has vanished leaving the border white, instead of gray. For reasons unclear, all subsequent spreads also lose their right-hand background fill layer.

I hope that gets to your question.

Thanks again for your thoughts!

--Darin

[firstdefence]

Re the line on the image, I think you need to turn off any layers that are above it to see if the effect goes away, if it does, you know one or more layers above are the culprit.

Why aren't you using master pages for things like the grey background on the B&W, simply adding a rectangle to the master pages with a grey fill, you can also add adjustment filters to master pages and also fx, in the screenshot, the images are actually colour but I have used a HSL adjustment filter to desaturate the images, I've also used a levels adjustment to make the images a tad more punchy. Any page that has that master page will be consistently formatted and should you want to tweak all the pages like make the grey lighter you can do so en masse by editing the master pages.

You can have a Blank master, a B&W master, a Colour Master and a Text master.

[thomaso]

8 hours ago, darinb said:

I'm not 100% I understand what you are saying. In the "pre-delete" screen shot you can see two background layers and two jpgs (one each from the image peaking in from the left). Once I delete the page and all of the following pages shift up one, I can see the background layer (the gray) has vanished leaving the border white, instead of gray. For reasons unclear, all subsequent spreads also lose their right-hand background fill layer.

Sorry, I misinterpreted before in your third screenshot on 140/141 the "Layer1" in the long aspect ratio not as two rectangles next to each other.

Nevertheless the spread below seems to show the gray rectangle as being moved to the right off the page – which is indeed strange, especially together with possibly the same result on the following right pages. I don't have V2 but in V1 I can't reproduce such an issue of a missing or moved background rectangle, for instance:

What do you get when you delete pages in the attached sample V1 .afpub with your V2 APub?

delete pages from spreads w BG-Layer.afpub

[darinb]

12 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Re the line on the image, I think you need to turn off any layers that are above it to see if the effect goes away, if it does, you know one or more layers above are the culprit.

Why aren't you using master pages for things like the grey background on the B&W, simply adding a rectangle to the master pages with a grey fill, you can also add adjustment filters to master pages and also fx, in the screenshot, the images are actually colour but I have used a HSL adjustment filter to desaturate the images, I've also used a levels adjustment to make the images a tad more punchy. Any page that has that master page will be consistently formatted and should you want to tweak all the pages like make the grey lighter you can do so en masse by editing the master pages.

You can have a Blank master, a B&W master, a Colour Master and a Text master.

Hello,

 

Oh, I know, I should have set up Masters, but this was my first time using Publisher and I was just playing around. I figured duplicating (which was quite easy) would amount to the same thing for my test run.

I experimented--here are the results:

Every layer on: Error

Only Master layer turned off: Error

Only left picture frame turn off: NO ERROR

Only left Photograph turned off: NO ERROR

Something to do with the left page, obviously, but what? And, again, no error is visible within Publisher--I can only see it on the exported PDF document. I tried turning on/off various options in the export dialog box but no luck. 

Then I tried substituting a jpeg for the Photoshop file on the RIGHT hand page--no error.

Something strange here if what is on the left page interacts in a bad way with the picture format on the right page?

--Darin

[darinb]

8 hours ago, thomaso said:

 

8 hours ago, thomaso said:

When I delete pages from your document everything seems to behave as you'd expect. Here is a screenshot showing the screen just after the first deletion:

delete pages from spreads w BG-Layer.afpub

 

[thomaso]

15 minutes ago, darinb said:

When I delete pages from your document everything seems to behave as you'd expect.

That seems to indicate that the problem you experience with your current .afpub would be caused by the way your document is set up. Can you upload a sample .afpub with a few spreads so one with V2 might be able to take a look?

And / or, this issue possibly it is influenced by the PSD … since you also experience:

26 minutes ago, darinb said:

Only left picture frame turn off: NO ERROR

Only left Photograph turned off: NO ERROR

Something to do with the left page, obviously, but what? And, again, no error is visible within Publisher--I can only see it on the exported PDF document. I tried turning on/off various options in the export dialog box but no luck. 

Then I tried substituting a jpeg for the Photoshop file on the RIGHT hand page--no error.

Something strange here if what is on the left page interacts in a bad way with the picture format on the right page?

Indeed, all this is confusing – unfortunately I don't know a solution, and I am not experienced with using PSD in Affinity.

But I wonder whether the image issue (the darkened area on right pages) that occurs in your PDF viewer only might be related to your PDF viewer app? If I remember correctly there were a few reports about Apple's Preview.app not displaying Affinity PDF as expected.

Have you tried to export with a different PDF version? (e.g. incl. 'rasterize everything'). And have you tried to open the PDF in a different viewer app, or re-opening it in APub? Here is a simple and free PDF viewer for mac: "Podofyllin" https://eclecticlight.co/delighted-podofyllin/  … Or can you upload a sample PDF that contains the image issue?

[darinb]

Tried Acrobat as an alternative to Preview but it also showed the error.

Replaced the Photoshop files with jpegs and the "rectangle" or "line" error is gone but the other issues remain.

My goal in trying out Publisher was to get down "on paper" a few ideas for a new photobook--The book would not be designed in Publisher but would give me something to show my book designer, etc. I've managed to export what I have to pdf and I'll delete pages from there (which will avoid the weird background-changing-color issue and will be good enough for my purposes.

So I'm done with this for now--if I come across any more info on these weird issues I'll post here.

Thanks for all of your help.

--Darin