Seeking Publisher Layers Tutorial

[roadcone]

Frequent guidance given here directs people to the Layers Panel. With most of my AP problems I've gone there and wondered what that grey-on-grey panel means. I click on layers and items on the page are selected, and vice-versa. But how to draw conclusions from what I see.

Mike's manual is crammed with the word but does not seem to contain an explatory chapter.

Can anyone direct me to a decent tutorial please?

Clive

[walt.farrell]

First, please note that the abbreviation AP (and APh) is generally used and recognized as Affinity Photo, not Publisher. The accepted abbreviations for Publisher are APu or APub. You can see this by hovering your mouse cursor over any of those abbreviations in this post. 

Do you use any of the other Affinity applications, or only Publisher? I ask because the Layers panel is common to all 3 applications, and the only Publisher-specific difference I can think of is that Publisher also supports Master Pages and inheritance of Master Page items (layers, objects) on document pages which are noted specially in the Layers panel.

For your question, I would start with the Help, and if that doesn't explain something adequately perhaps you could ask a more specific question and show a screenshot of what confuses you. Please also check the "See Also" pages linked from the bottom of the Layers Panel help page, which should explain the basic concepts of what layers/objects are: https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/Panels/layersPanel.html

I'm not aware of any tutorials focused specifically on interpreting the Layers panel, though I suppose any very basic Affinity tutorial (for any of the 3 applications) might address it.

 

[KarinC]

If you search YouTube there are many videos on how to use layers in Affinity. Here is one:

 

[roadcone]

Walt: Thanks for the response and prompt on A(not just P) for Publisher. I also use AP (yes, just P this time) but for tasks for which I do not need layers. Maybe Photo creates them, but I don't need them. Jobs like the more complicated replace / heal / inpaint that DxO and Capture One can't achieve or pano-stitch and HDR merge. Oh, and warp for when I have not left enough around an image, need to sort out the geometry and run out of sky or grass!

I frequently read responses from you and the other knowledgeable people referring to the layer panel and I wonder 'how would I have identified that from there'. This is my start point, but I'll follow your link so thank you.

KarinC: Thank you for the youtube link. I've looked there and found masses of tutorials under ten minutes with a lot of the length spent listening to how excited the presenter is, what they do, or don't do, what they like, or don't like and how much of a super-hero they are. And a lot seem to have problems with um, err, ahh, talking. And some US people, well, their delivery is super-charged and I need to slow the speed down to understand what they are saying. Then there is not a lot of the ten or less minutes left. I'm being disparaging of youtubers and I'm told there are some good ones out there, but my mileage varies!. But i did start to listen to the one you linked and he launched straight in to the subject, he didn't sound excited and I could understand him, so I'll give that one a go. Thank you.

Clive

[R C-R]

11 hours ago, roadcone said:

... and wondered what that grey-on-grey panel means.

I am not sure what you mean by "grey-on-grey" unless it is that layers in that panel that do not have custom user-created names assigned to them show in grey. To assign a custom name to a layer, double-click on the grey text & type whatever name you want. This is particularly useful in large complex documents to help keep track of what the various layers are used for.

[KarinC]

22 hours ago, roadcone said:

KarinC: Thank you for the youtube link. I've looked there and found masses of tutorials under ten minutes with a lot of the length spent listening to how excited the presenter is, what they do, or don't do, what they like, or don't like and how much of a super-hero they are. And a lot seem to have problems with um, err, ahh, talking. And some US people, well, their delivery is super-charged and I need to slow the speed down to understand what they are saying. Then there is not a lot of the ten or less minutes left. I'm being disparaging of youtubers and I'm told there are some good ones out there, but my mileage varies!. But i did start to listen to the one you linked and he launched straight in to the subject, he didn't sound excited and I could understand him, so I'll give that one a go. Thank you.

Clive

I appreciate the time and expense YouTubers take to teach others how to accomplish tasks in software. I doubt they make much of an income at least teaching Affinity since they don't have a huge number of views but I'm glad they do what they do. There are several members of this forum who produce Affinity teaching videos. They are very good at it. I have learned a lot from them. 

 

[loukash]

On 4/11/2025 at 7:49 AM, roadcone said:

I click on layers and items on the page are selected, and vice-versa. But how to draw conclusions from what I see.

• What you see on the canvas/artboard/page is generally two-dimensional.
• The Layers panel adds the 3rd dimension to control your layout: what's on top, what's on the bottom, is it nested, cropped, clipped, masked, affected by effects or adjustments, etc. All that information is visible in the Layers panel at first glance.
• In other words: Hierarchy matters™