Norway4T Posted August 23, 2017 Share Posted August 23, 2017 I've watched the tutorials and I'm trying to make a text follow the outside of a circle. I find it extremely difficult. The control handles are small and difficult to manipulate and I can't get all the text to wrap nicely on the outside of the circle. Rather one letter always seems to want to stick to the inside. I've tried to find some tutorials that better explain these controls with no luck. Maybe you guys have a few pointers on how to get a better grasp on this? I hope in future revisions of the program that the control handles gets a make over in order to make them more intuitive and easy to manipulate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFisher Posted August 24, 2017 Share Posted August 24, 2017 Hi Norway4T Sorry to hear you're having some issues with this, you many find this tutorial helpful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Harris Posted August 24, 2017 Share Posted August 24, 2017 You can make the handles bigger with Preferences > Tools > Tool Handle Size, if that helps. They set the start and end positions of the text on the curve; I'm not sure how they could be made simpler or more intuitive? You might also try using Layer > Convert to text path on a circle, which provides default handle positions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted August 24, 2017 Staff Share Posted August 24, 2017 Hi Norway4T, You have to move the end handle near to the start handle, so you can fill the whole outside of the circle with letters. Check the clip below: as you can see when you reach the end handle the letters switch to inside - because they don't fit anymore in the allocated space -. So i deleted the last letter that forced the switch to the inside in the clip and moved the end handle a little more to the right and as you can see i can fit a few more letters there. So if you move the end handle near to the start handle (to cover the outside whole circle - you can fill the whole area with letters. Let me know if you still have trouble. RNKLN and Synergist 1 1 Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted August 24, 2017 Share Posted August 24, 2017 4 hours ago, Dave Harris said: I'm not sure how they could be made simpler or more intuitive? At least for me, it would help a lot if the start & end handles were both considerably larger & better differentiated, like maybe with very different colors or with triangles or arrowheads rotated to 'point' to the beginning & end positions, sort of like in this crude mockup: It is also slightly weird that the Artistic Text tool can be used to convert a shape to a text path but in the Layers panel it is assigned the Frame Text icon -- that often confuses me, but it is a minor matter. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Harris Posted August 31, 2017 Share Posted August 31, 2017 The intention is that the handles act as bookends. I don't feel that arrows would be clearer because it's not obvious whether they should be pointing towards their text or away from it - you can move them in either direction. I'm not keen on relying on colour to convey meaning, because some people are red-green colour-blind, but in this case it shouldn't hurt so I'll tweak that. I'll also make the default size slightly bigger and fix the icon. Thanks for the feedback. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted August 31, 2017 Share Posted August 31, 2017 51 minutes ago, Dave Harris said: The intention is that the handles act as bookends. The problem for me is it is often hard to tell which bookend indicates the start of the text entry area & which one indicates the end. This partially because they are very small & partially because it is difficult to discern the orientation of the triangles as they are moved around the perimeter of the shape because all three sides are of too similar length. So maybe just making them slightly larger & making the side that touches the perimeter shorter relative to the other sides would be all that is needed? John Rostron 1 Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bee and Nectar Design Posted April 28, 2018 Share Posted April 28, 2018 Maybe a bit late on this one, but I wanted to respond to the original poster's query, because I think he's describing something I've also experienced. I've played with this a lot because it infuriates me. I was drawing ellipses and getting the text on the inside when converting them to text paths, only to find that I couldn't move all the text to the outside, no matter how I messed with the little handles. I would always be left with one letter inside, as if the text was anchored there and didn't want to move. Then I started looking at how other people were doing this, and realised something fundamental: all those people with the text on the outside to begin with had drawn their ellipses by dragging diagonally from a point. I was making my ellipses by dragging out from the centre (by holding cmd+shift whilst doing so; that's ctrl+shift on a PC). I've never seen a tutorial which explains this difference (which is probably just because I haven't found the right one yet). To summarise: If you create your base ellipse for your text path by dragging diagonally downwards, you will never get all the text on the inside. If you create your ellipse by dragging out from the centre, you will never get all of your text on the outside. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lepr Posted April 28, 2018 Share Posted April 28, 2018 . Synergist, Alfred and R C-R 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bee and Nectar Design Posted April 28, 2018 Share Posted April 28, 2018 I stand corrected. Thanks for the clarification. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted April 28, 2018 Share Posted April 28, 2018 Nice Avatar @Bee and Nectar Design Bee and Nectar Design 1 Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bee and Nectar Design Posted May 11, 2018 Share Posted May 11, 2018 On 28/04/2018 at 10:03 PM, firstdefence said: Nice Avatar @Bee and Nectar Design Thank you! You're too kind. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris.bannu Posted May 13, 2018 Share Posted May 13, 2018 HI, I have the same problem, only I want all the text to be inside a circle, but I always get one letter staying outside. I really don't understand how that's done. I attached the test file here, I'm trying to get the H next to the ELLO, but that seems impossible. Not sure this is not more intuitively, the whole app is so amazingly intuitively, but this section just doesn't make sense to me, and the help file didn't provide that much help in this situation. Please help. Thank you kindly text-on-path-INSIDE.afdesign Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted May 13, 2018 Share Posted May 13, 2018 13 minutes ago, chris.bannu said: I have the same problem, only I want all the text to be inside a circle, but I always get one letter staying outside. I really don't understand how that's done. I attached the test file here, I'm trying to get the H next to the ELLO, but that seems impossible. Refer to this post above by @owenr to see how to do this. Or use the History panel to step backwards & forwards through the attached text-on-path-INSIDE Fixed.afdesign to see how simple it can be to fix your file. (Basically, move all the text to the outside using the red & green positioning handles & then click the Reverse Text Path button to put it inside.) Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toltec Posted May 13, 2018 Share Posted May 13, 2018 1 hour ago, chris.bannu said: HI, I have the same problem, only I want all the text to be inside a circle, but I always get one letter staying outside. I really don't understand how that's done. I attached the test file here, I'm trying to get the H next to the ELLO, but that seems impossible. Not sure this is not more intuitively, the whole app is so amazingly intuitively, but this section just doesn't make sense to me, and the help file didn't provide that much help in this situation. Please help. Thank you kindly text-on-path-INSIDE.afdesign Click on the object Reverse the path Drag the handles The orange one forces the new line, so move that too. chris.bannu 1 Quote Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris.bannu Posted May 13, 2018 Share Posted May 13, 2018 Thank you toltec Couldn't have figured that out in a milion years. It's bad ux, no offence to such a beautiful app, but it still has some usability issues. Thanks again, very much appreciated Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted May 13, 2018 Share Posted May 13, 2018 Regarding the UX, I think it might help if the button was named "Flip Text Path" rather than "Reverse Text Path," & its icon redone to better indicate that is what it does. Personally, I would also like to see the red & green positioning handles reshaped & enlarged a bit to better indicate which text segment they were paired with when there is more than one segment, but maybe it is just me who has problems with that? Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted May 13, 2018 Share Posted May 13, 2018 11 minutes ago, R C-R said: I think it might help if the button was named "Flip Text Path" rather than "Reverse Text Path," I’m not so sure about that. "Reverse Text Path" indicates that the start and end of the path will simply be swapped, but "Flip Text Path" suggests that the path will be mirrored. Quote Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted May 13, 2018 Share Posted May 13, 2018 11 minutes ago, Alfred said: I’m not so sure about that. "Reverse Text Path" indicates that the start and end of the path will simply be swapped, but "Flip Text Path" suggests that the path will be mirrored. Neither, to me, obviously indicates that the text would appear on the opposite side of the path (inside vs outside, or above vs below, or whatever). But I haven't come up with a good self-explanatory label. Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 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 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted May 13, 2018 Share Posted May 13, 2018 26 minutes ago, Alfred said: I’m not so sure about that. Well, neither am I, which is why I said "might." Admittedly, there does not seem to be an obvious self-explanatory name or icon, but the current ones are not very helpful or intuitive. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris.bannu Posted May 13, 2018 Share Posted May 13, 2018 I totally agree, this is probably the first I encounter something unintuitive in Affinity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheOtherRoland Posted November 9, 2018 Share Posted November 9, 2018 Here's a useful tutorial that helped me to get text on a circular path. Many of the other videos I've watched are either incomplete (leaving a sloppy jumble of colliding text is not what I want to see...) or they don't address the "right side up" text in the bottom — and with good spacing. I think the trick is to make use of the baseline shift — and to copy the top curve to the bottom for consistency. This at least gets it looking a little more elegant and "professional." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zVui7H93gM Quote My BOOK (created with Publisher, Designer & Photo):Clearing a Path to Joy (And finding contentment along the way) My WEBSITE (also developed using Affinity apps):www.RolandK.ca — "Relentless adventures in self-expression" [Power Mac & Intel PC (HighSierra/Monterey/Win 10] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Datum Posted January 22, 2020 Share Posted January 22, 2020 Hey everyone! I am very new to designer and have had a small issue with some of my fonts following the path. I am currently having an issue with an ellipsis and the font I would like to use, when placed on the path, wont follow it and just overlap onto itself. The first picture is when I type the first letter in and the 2nd is when I type the whole word. It works for some fonts and doesn't for others. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarryP Posted January 23, 2020 Share Posted January 23, 2020 Welcome to the forums. Without being able to look at the file itself it’s a bit difficult to see what’s going on but, from your second image, it looks like you could have the Tracking set to a very high (low?) negative value which could mean that each subsequent character is getting placed over most of the previous character. See my attached images for examples. Datum 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Datum Posted January 27, 2020 Share Posted January 27, 2020 @GarryP Thanks for that, much appreciated. Its working fine now! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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