3 page spread

[Clayton King]

10 hours ago, Rob Luxford said:

If you can't live without specific Adobe features then hang onto your Adobe subscription. If its critical to your workflow then maybe Affinity is not the best fit for your design role.

We are throwing ideas into the mix here to get the best out of an amazing tool. Books feature combining art boards and pages sounds very powerful.

 

I agree. I must’ve missed something, though. When you reference “combining art boards,” what do you mean?

 

I think the book feature in Publisher is more for book chapters, which goes a long way toward avoiding unwieldy long documents. 

[loukash]

2 hours ago, Clayton King said:

When you reference “combining art boards,” what do you mean?

@Rob Luxford means my earlier post:

On 11/17/2022 at 11:00 AM, loukash said:

I haven't tested it yet, but the new Books feature could theoretically help somewhat, by combining artboard and pages documents. I have no idea yet if it's possible or what the results would look like, and likely won't have the time today to try, so feel free to experiment.

By which I mean that an APu/ADe document can be either page based, or artboard based. You cannot mix both concepts in one document.
By using artboards you can work around the missing multi-page spreads in Publisher. But you need a separate document for those spreads if the rest of your layout are meant to be regular facing pages.

And with the Books feature, it may be easier to combine multiple documents in such cases.

(I still haven't tested it yet. Anyone brave enough to check it out? )

[debraspicher]

+1 this feature

[loukash]

On 11/18/2022 at 3:11 PM, loukash said:

And with the Books feature, it may be easier to combine multiple documents in such cases.

(I still haven't tested it yet. Anyone brave enough to check it out? )

Alright, so on a very quick test, it is possible to combine page and artboard based layouts into a book.
Of course, all must have the afpub file extension.
You can't select which artboard to include on export though. Each will be included as a unique page, including nested ones.
Also, you can't add new artboards while it's open in a book.

Also afphoto documents can be included in a book, as long as they have the afpub file extension. Technically, the file extension doesn't matter as all is the same document format.

But at the end of the day, for inclusion of multipage spreads I would likely use a different workflow, adding master pages with extended sizes and – for example – place individual pages from external afpub documents or something. Using artboards has no immediate benefit within a book.

Page 3 is an artboard, page 8 was a simple afphoto document with a master page applied to it later.

[Petar Petrenko]

It would be nice if A-Team add these capabilities to Designer considering artboards:

1. Artboards should not overlap each other;
2. When resizing the width of the (middle) artboard, it should push the page next to it.

These 2 features can simulate what we want to be added in Publisher -- multi page spreads.

[walt.farrell]

13 minutes ago, NNN said:

It would be nice if A-Team add these capabilities to Designer considering artboards:

1. Artboards should not overlap each other;
2. When resizing the width of the (middle) artboard, it should push the page next to it.

These 2 features can simulate what we want to be added in Publisher -- multi page spreads.

In case it helps you, you can quickly get them to adjoin each other using the Alignment tool/icon in the Toolbar, even without those two functions.

1. Select all 3 Artboards
2. Click Alignment
3. Click Space Horizontally
4. Uncheck Auto-Distribute
5. Click Apply

[Petar Petrenko]

It doesn't works.

[walt.farrell]

29 minutes ago, NNN said:

It doesn't works.

It does for me. But you must follow all the steps I listed.

[Petar Petrenko]

11 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

It does for me. But you must follow all the steps I listed.

I followed the steps, but it didn't work.

[Hangman]

14 hours ago, NNN said:

• Artboards should not overlap each other;
• When resizing the width of the (middle) artboard, it should push the page next to it.

To align Artboards, as @walt.farrell mentions... but currently, resizing the width of the middle artboard won't push the page next to it though that would make for a good feature request.

[Petar Petrenko]

5 minutes ago, Hangman said:

To align Artboards, as @walt.farrell mentions... but currently, resizing the width of the middle artboard won't push the page next to it though that would make for a good feature request.

Yes, I know. I've tried.

[GarryP]

14 hours ago, NNN said:

Artboards should not overlap each other;

I disagree. 

Being able to overlap artboards can be very useful when visually checking the same area of multiple designs against each other.

Also, it would make composing artboards from other artboards impossible, which is a useful feature.

14 hours ago, NNN said:

When resizing the width of the (middle) artboard, it should push the page next to it.

I disagree.

I think this would quickly become impractical when there are many artboards.

E.g. How does the software know how much gap to maintain between artboards? What happens if the resize of one artboard has a knock-on affect on multiple other artboards? Etc. Etc.

14 hours ago, NNN said:

These 2 features can simulate what we want to be added in Publisher -- multi page spreads.

Why request a change in one application to fit what you want another application to do?

Just request multi-page spreads in Publisher rather than asking for changes to Designer which might change existing workflows.

[Petar Petrenko]

1 hour ago, GarryP said:

Why request a change in one application to fit what you want another application to do?

Maybe because multi page thread is easy to achieve in Designer?

1 hour ago, GarryP said:

Just request multi-page spreads in Publisher rather than asking for changes to Designer which might change existing workflows.

It is still a valid request, but in meantime...

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, NNN said:

Yes, I know. I've tried.

Resizing won't push them, but the Alignment after you resize will fix things up.

[Dazmondo77]

3 hours ago, NNN said:

Maybe because multi page thread is easy to achieve in Designer?

Not really as you have to duplicate your artwork to sit within each artboard and then you have the headache of trying to get trim, fold and bleed guides to show if you need to output as spread - my super easy workaround is to do the artwork to finished full spread size in Pub then export a PDF and place on my old Mojave MacBook and fire up InDesign CS5 with multipage spreads with fold marks sitting in the Slug area and make a new PDF ---- job done- or for a large format exhibition display job 2340mmH x 950mmW x 6 pages, I work to 2340mmH x 5700mm (+ bleed) in Pub - PDF - Place on a 6 page spread in InDesign pages sized 2340mmH x 950mmW output PDF single pages = no faff and ready to roll - I had a go at a on a exhibition display job in Designer last year and there was just too much faff involved plus a huge pub file as it will end up being six times the size as artboards are basically masks in designer - Multipage spreads are really needed in pub - I have a 4pg roll old hospital leaflet on the horizon and publisher would be perfect if it could only handle multi page spreads - only option for saving time and faff is InDesign☹️

[Petar Petrenko]

1 hour ago, Dazmondo77 said:

my super easy workaround is to do the artwork to finished full spread size in Pub then export a PDF and place on my old Mojave MacBook and fire up InDesign CS5 with multipage spreads with fold marks sitting in the Slug area and make a new PDF ---- job done

I have also super easy and even faster workflow -- I do it in InDesign directly.

[spinko]

On 4/29/2023 at 5:15 PM, Petar Petrenko said:

I have also super easy and even faster workflow -- I do it in InDesign directly.

😁 is this implemented now in 2.1 ?

[Petar Petrenko]

2 hours ago, spinko said:

😁 is this implemented now in 2.1 ?

No, it is not.

[spinko]

oh, well. Just paid for yet another year of Adobe subscription.

🍿

[Petar Petrenko]

48 minutes ago, spinko said:

oh, well. Just paid for yet another year of Adobe subscription.

This is one of the reasons I still use ID, too.

[NiTOXide]

Hey Serif + Affinity Team,

Just chiming in to show support for a 3+ page spread option in Affinity Publisher. It's something I thought I could leave behind in Adobe InDesign but now I am sorely missing the ability to do a multi-page spread for a layout project.

May we please have some clarification on where this feature is in the pipeline? 

I could create an obscenely wide sheet/page and then divide it up in Photo's Export Persona but other items have come up:

• The project is 10 pages (Instagram carousel layout) with overlapping content across each page. Almost like a mural of photographs and content.
  • "Why not use Designer?" - I wish to retain the Picture Frame elements of Publisher for the photo layouts and cropping. Easier for me.
• I created a single super-wide page which would be divided up into 10 pages. This is where I discovered:
  • We're limited to a maximum of 48 column and row guides on a page
    • The original idea was to have 10 column guides per page to help with image and content layout.
      •  Therefore the super-wide page should have 100 columns and 10 rows.
    • Finally just opted for 40 columns and 10 rows - 4 per page. Should suffice. Had to adjust gutters so everything lined up with the "page end" guides.

This is a janky way of doing it with the following limitations:

• Can't use individual page/spread masters for each page or spread.
  • Not a big problem as this layout will be custom. 
  • However for someone who wants to create a lot of these and change sections of the massive spread on the fly.
• Weird stuff happens when you add or remove spreads or pages (sizes change, masters change ... it becomes a hot mess).

Action items to consider:

• Serif, please give us the ability to place pages side-by-side so we can overlap content over multiple pages. Will give you money in exchange for not having to do the above. Even create a plugin or an add on for a reasonable cost.

Attachments:

• Apub-File with two-page spreads and the massive spread.
  • Delete, add, or insert pages ahead of the massive spread, I dare you. See what happens.
• PDF of the Massive Spread.

Sample.afpub Sample.pdf

[Jose Alvarez]

I can't think of a more BASIC and NECESSARY feature for Publisher. And more knowing that previous programs of Serif (PagePlus X9) implemented it. Do you understand something? Not me...

[loukash]

21 minutes ago, Jose Alvarez said:

Do you understand something?

Yeah.
The 1990s have called and want their gnarled PageMaker-ish concept back!

Just the other day I had to rebuild a relatively simple 6-page 3-fold broschure – that I made out of necessity on two landscape pages – into a 4-page (sans a reply coupon) PDF for web. 
It was a literal p.i.t.a.
(Yeah, I should have followed my own old advice and work with artboards in the first place. Silly me, I just happen to like master pages otherwise…)

[Return]

10 minutes ago, loukash said:

master pages

Place

[loukash]

Just now, Return said:

Place

Nah, it wasn't that simple, as some other changes were required as well.