[Feature Request] Allow Stroke/Outline on "Live Text" in Affinity Publisher 2 (Critical for Print-on-Demand Legibility)

[hayaku]

Hi Affinity team,

I'm a longtime Affinity Publisher user preparing a professionally typeset novel for release through Amazon KDP and other print-on-demand services. I’ve run into a serious and recurring issue that I believe deserves urgent attention:

There is currently no way in Affinity Publisher to apply a live stroke (outline) to body text via styles or character formatting.

This is a critical missing feature for anyone designing long-form print documents—especially for POD platforms like Amazon KDP, where:

 

• Fonts like Garamond, while classic, often render too thin or faint in KDP's lower-resolution digital presses (especially on cream paper).

• 100% black ink (K=100) alone is not enough to ensure text legibility. Many body fonts need a slight stroke/outline to thicken the glyphs and compensate for ink spread, paper absorption, and rasterization.

• Other publishing tools (e.g., Adobe InDesign) allow this via character styles or text appearance settings.

 

I initially assumed that Affinity’s [Decorations > Stroke] setting would solve this—but it only applies to underlines or decorative elements, not the letterforms themselves. After digging further and testing workarounds (converting to curves, stacking duplicate layers, trying bold weights), it’s clear: there is no native support for live text stroke in Publisher 2.

In my opinion, this is a glaring omission, especially given your user base of indie authors and designers working in long-form media.

As things stand, I’m just weeks away from launching my book—but I’m now seriously considering switching to Adobe (despite the cost) just to get this right. There’s no other way to compensate for Amazon’s known print softness without this feature.

What surprises me most is that Affinity Publisher and Amazon KDP seem like they should be a perfect match. This software could be the go-to platform for indie authors, while large publishing houses stick with Adobe. But right now, the single most important feature for fixing POD typography is simply missing.

Please consider making this an urgent priority, rather than continuing to prioritize flashy features that do little to help working authors produce beautiful, readable books.

Thank you.

 

[loukash]

4 hours ago, hayaku said:

There is currently no way in Affinity Publisher to apply a live stroke (outline) to body text via styles or character formatting.

Huh?
Of course you can add outlines. Use the Color and Stroke panels for that. You can even create lively effects by adding a pressure curve. Then create styles and edit the outlines there as well.

As far as I recall, this function has been there since the first Affinity Designer has been released 10 years ago.

[hayaku]

Ok, I just spent hours with Chat GPT trying to figure this out, only to be directly told that its not possible.

I'm trying to work through this now. Is there any way to enable this within the Text Styles Editor? Or does this have to be manually done to all the text in a document though the Color/Stroke tabs?

Also, is there any way to actually select one's pre-made swatches from the Color tab? I see a "Color Picker" button which for some reason makes everything Red, and cannot be changed, and I also see a "Set Stroke" button, which can be double clicked, but cannot access any of my pre-made Swatches, and seems to default/reset to "Set No Fill" whenever it feels like it, which is frequently.

All very confusing!

[hayaku]

Ok, been playing around some more, trying to figure this out.

What a nightmare!!

Text Styles do seem to have some "stroke" setting under Decorations, but note of these are accessible or useful, and seem to only apply for background fill (creating a solid mask behind the whole text).

Using Ctl + A and applying manual Stroke to the entire document works in the VERY short term, but it is buggy and deceptive; since even if you try and create global properties (Cap, Join, Align) while all text is selected, this will not override previous values, meaning that you have to select paragraphs manually and set them all to your global standard.

Making matters significantly worse...

Setting a new Text Style (or even re-applying an existing Text Style) resets everything! And when you go to re-apply Stroke, guess what? All your color and chosen settings are also erased/reset, meaning you have to back through and MANUALLY set your Cap/Join/Align settings, in addition to C = 0, M = 0, Y = 0, K = 100 all over again (hint hint, and you can't select from swatches either, since they aren't even accessible in this menu).

It seems that Text Styles are indeed programmed/coded with Stroke "Metadata", but not the capability to change that Metadata within the Text Styles Menu. On the contrary, these settings can only be TEMPORARILY overridden using the Stroke Menu, but with revert back to their original blank/default values at will, overriding whatever user settings have been selected in the process (Text Styles are programming values into Stroke, rather than the other way around).

Why has this not all been built into the Text Styles Menu from the beginning? What on earth is going on here?

No wonder Chat GPT told me that it was impossible. It practically is impossible.

[loukash]

52 minutes ago, hayaku said:

I just spent hours with Chat GPT trying to figure this out, only to be directly told that its not possible.

Hahaha! This says more about the AI (Artificial Idiocy) hype than about anything else…  

54 minutes ago, hayaku said:

Is there any way to enable this within the Text Styles Editor?

[hayaku]

Wonderful!!!!!!! Exactly!!! What I was searching for!!!!!!!!! 😄

ChatGPT had me going through "Decorations" down the bottom, and "Stroke" on the side panel. Seems it was there all along.

One more question:

Is there any way to change the units?

I am now setting stroke widths of 0.0125, 0.075 pt etc, but it seems to apply these values then round them up to "0.1", "0.2" etc. Kind of annoying (but maybe this is another feature request).

[loukash]

7 minutes ago, hayaku said:

I am now setting stroke widths of 0.0125, 0.075 pt etc, but it seems to apply these values then round them up to "0.1", "0.2" etc.

It's just the value display that is "rounding":
Settings → User Interface → Decimal Places for Unit Types

The actual values that you're entering will be used nonetheless.

[hayaku]

Wonderful!!!!!!!! Thanks again!!!!!!!!