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Making DVD/Blu-ray menu.  Have a series of titles in frame - in separate text boxes.  I see can align them right, centre, left.  In some apps (like Adobe Encore) I've seen where I can also align them 'vertically' ... meaning the text boxes will be placed in a vertical line equally spaced.

 

Is there a way to do this in Affinity Photo?

 

 

All ears,

 

 

Ben

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Select all of the text boxes and click on the 'Arrange' icon on the main toolbar. The rightmost button in the Align Vertically section activates the 'Space Vertically' option: if you don't want to auto-distribute between the current positions of the first and last object, clear the checkbox and type in the desired spacing value.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4 (iPad 7th gen)

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Hi Alfred,

 

I swear I've been staring at the main toolbar for twenty minutes, and can't find an Arrange icon that allows me to Align Vertically.  In the upper right corner I see a bunch of arrangement icons/buttons that allow me to 'move to back' or 'move to front', then further right I can 'align left edges', or 'horizontal centres', or 'right edges', top, vertical centres, bottom edges.  And then far right I can 'insert behind the selection' etc. etc.

 

Not seeing an Arrange icon that allows me to Align Vertically.

 

Could we be talking about Affinity 'Designer' here?  I'm in Affinity 'Photo'.

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Could we be talking about Affinity 'Designer' here?  I'm in Affinity 'Photo'.

 

Either or both, Ben, but I've attached a screenshot from Affinity Photo.

 

Edit: I've just re-read your OP, where you wrote "the text boxes will be placed in a vertical line equally spaced". The 'Space Vertically' option doesn't affect the horizontal positions of the objects: if you want them in a vertical line, you also need to choose the 'Align Centre' option from the Align Horizontally section.

post-8358-0-51534700-1485212760_thumb.png

post-8358-0-28421600-1485219551_thumb.png

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4 (iPad 7th gen)

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Ben, both apps allow you to customize the Toolbar (View menu > Customize Toolbar ...) so you may or may not have the "Arrange" button there. When you open the customize window, scroll down until you see the Arrange & various arrange & distribute icons & drag whichever ones you want into the toolbar. The Arrange button pops up a window with all the options in it that are shown in Alfred's screenshots.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Either or both, Ben, but I've attached a screenshot from Affinity Photo.

 

Edit: I've just re-read your OP, where you wrote "the text boxes will be placed in a vertical line equally spaced". The 'Space Vertically' option doesn't affect the horizontal positions of the objects: if you want them in a vertical line, you also need to choose the 'Align Centre' option from the Align Horizontally section.

 

Hi Alfred, you're being so helpful.

 

I'm looking, I'm looking, how do I activate those particular boxes.  They are nowhere obvious on the default screen setup.  I've been back and forth in the top menu (Arrange, View, etc.) and can't find a way to bring up the boxes.  Aha!!!  Subtle.  I finally found these tiny little arrows, click, up pops the box.  One of them.

 

 

I added a screenshot here, not sure if you're going to see it ... but if you do, you can see those tiny tiny little arrows in the lower right hand corner... up pops a box.  But only this one box.

 

So I guess I'm back to my first question above... how does one find the box where I can select to 'align vertically'?

 

In a quandary ...

 

Ben

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Ben, I am not exactly sure what you mean by tiny little arrows but in my previous post I explained that the options Alfred shows in his screen shots are on the main toolbar, & only if you have set it up to show the "Arrange" button. Please try what I suggested about customizing the toolbar -- it will be more obvious how it works if you try it.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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RC-R!!  Okay.  I had thought of that.  I had perused the customizing the toolbar ... but ... not trusting myself I didn't SEE the specific 'arrange' button.  Dang.  But your suggestion, and confirmation, that it was there ... I found it, pulled it up into the toolbar and ... it works!!

 

So I thank both Alfred, and yourself, for patiently pointing me to EXACTLY what I needed to solve my issue.  And I did.

 

I'm a filmmaker who has always had the luxury of handing films over to distributors in the past ... so not my problem all the things that happen afterwards, posters, DVD graphics, etc. etc.  I've decided to add the 'unknown' to my toolbox.  So I'm now distributing my own films.  A huge learning curve.  Which also means mastering all the graphics stuff that happens once the film is done.  Fun, when there are forums like this ... or I'd go nuts with the manuals.

 

Thank you most kindly,

 

Ben

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Glad we could help. :)

 

The Affinity app UI's are so customizable that after setting one up for whatever one likes & using it for a while it is easy to forget that it may not be the same for everyone. For me, neither the Tool panel nor the Main Toolbar are even close to the defaults, nor are the various Studio panels & tab groups, keyboard shortcuts, or just about anything else. I love that the UI is so customizable but it does complicate helping other users or getting help from them.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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For what it's worth, my main toolbar in APh (as in AD) is not customized in any way, so it should be the same for other standard installations on Windows. Maybe it's different on a Mac, but I wouldn't expect it to be.

post-8358-0-78289100-1485308215_thumb.png

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4 (iPad 7th gen)

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It is default in mac too. It is slightly weird that in context toolbar there are aligning options but you can only distribute objects using Arrange button in the Toolbar (thank god it is in the Layer menu too). Also, Arrange generally means layering order (see Layer menu), should be Alignment. And in AD you do not distribute objects, you space them.

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On a Mac (& I assume on Windows too) Arrange is on the main toolbar by default; however, depending on screen & window size, it may not be visible unless the user clicks on the chevron at the right of the toolbar, which exposes the items that won't fit in the available space.

 

I assume for much the same reasons the Context toolbar does not show all the arrange options when two or more items are selected & the Move tool is active -- on a small screen that might push the Group or rotation center buttons off into the area only shown by clicking on the chevron. That may also be why they decided to use "Arrange" on the main Toolbar instead of the longer "Alignment." Besides, my dictionary says arrange means to "put (things) in a neat, attractive, or required order," which is what the function does.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Arrange is in all other places in Affinity sw and other graphics sw meaning layer order.

I don't think that is true. Arrange may apply to the relative positions of objects on the canvas or in artboards, to the layout of artboards in the workspace, & so on. For example, searching AD help on "arrange" generates four hits, only one of which has anything to do with layer order.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 3 years later...
1 hour ago, GeoVictor said:

Alignment in Affinity Designer is only work with object that are no text frame.

Is there any special settings to alignment work with text?

Can you give us a screenshot to illustrate what you want to accomplish?

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
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    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4

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2 hours ago, GeoVictor said:

Alignment in Affinity Designer is only work with object that are no text frame.

Usually works fine on/with older MacOS versions, but in your case it might be more a MacOS Big Sur and Affinity Designer v.1.8.6 related problem.

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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