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One thing I really love about Designer Artboards is how content is grouped into "Artboard1", "Artboard2" and so on. The outcome of this arrangement is you end up with really clean layers that makes it easy to understand what you have "going on" on your canvas. Sadly that's not the case in Publisher when you have facing pages. Anything and everything on the left and right pages goes anywhere on the layers panel and the outcome is lots of chaos in your layers. I suggest implementing the same technique used in designer so that anything created on the left page is automatically grouped under "Left Page" and "Right Page" for content created on the right page.

I have 2 simple pages to illustrate

Artboards or Pages In Designer.PNG

Pages In Publisher.PNG

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Hi @dkibui if you add a new layer using the icon next to the trash can at the bottom right of your layers panel, you can use these as a master layer, as long as you have the correct layer selected when adding things. They can also be renamed ... I think :) I am not near a desktop at the moment so can’t test any of this for you. I haven’t used it much, so not sure if it will help. Try it and see if it does what you need.

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9 hours ago, Pebowski said:

I think, on facing pages, the left and right page are treated as one spread. And you can have an element (i.e. a picture) that spans over both pages.

Quite correct, I think it has more to do with when an item was added to the spread as opposed to where. Think of the layers' ordering as the time axis.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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7 hours ago, Murfee said:

Hi @dkibui if you add a new layer using the icon next to the trash can at the bottom right of your layers panel, you can use these as a master layer, as long as you have the correct layer selected when adding things. They can also be renamed ... I think :) I am not near a desktop at the moment so can’t test any of this for you. I haven’t used it much, so not sure if it will help. Try it and see if it does what you need.

Yes that works, thanks - TBH I'd been wondering what that 'new layer' command was for, given that each element you draw or place creates its own layer automatically.

'New Layer from selection' would be a useful command - also agree with @dkibui though - automatically splitting pages in layers panel would be best.

MacBook Pro M1 Max, macOS 12.6.1 Monterey
Affinity Designer : 2.0  Affinity Photo: 2.0,   Affinity Publisher: 2.0

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7 hours ago, Murfee said:

Hi @dkibui if you add a new layer using the icon next to the trash can at the bottom right of your layers panel, you can use these as a master layer, as long as you have the correct layer selected when adding things. They can also be renamed ... I think :) 

You are correct. They can be renamed, they have a folder icon, they can be color coded (via right click) and all child items get the same color assigned.

Only thing: I wouldn't call them 'master layers' but rather 'folder layers'. There is a long disussion in the forum about master layers that have a different concept of layers across all spreads. What you suggest is more likely layers to organize things within only one spread :)

With the tools at hand plus a little planing and practice it is possible to create a layer structure that is not chaotic (same goes for paragraph styles and master pages).

d.

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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19 hours ago, Pebowski said:

I think, on facing pages, the left and right page are treated as one spread. And you can have an element (i.e. a picture) that spans over both pages.

You are absolutely right about some content spanning over the pages, with that in mind I have this expectation that the software is intelligent to classify content according to which page it resides or is created on. Perhaps it can be ordered into three folders, left page, right page and across spread. The idea here is for the software to takeover the task of creating order in the layers panel so that the designer can concentrate on creating, I hope I am not expecting too much from the good developers at Serif:22_stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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15 hours ago, Murfee said:

Hi @dkibui if you add a new layer using the icon next to the trash can at the bottom right of your layers panel, you can use these as a master layer, as long as you have the correct layer selected when adding things. They can also be renamed ... I think :) I am not near a desktop at the moment so can’t test any of this for you. I haven’t used it much, so not sure if it will help. Try it and see if it does what you need.

Thanks Murfee for the suggestion. That works like a charm but as on my reply to Pebowski the idea is for the software do this automatically for you. You would be surprised how much time it takes to manually organise these layers if you have a document with considerable number of pages.

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10 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Quite correct, I think it has more to do with when an item was added to the spread as opposed to where. Think of the layers' ordering as the time axis.

Actually the current layer order is based on the layer you have selected before creating a new element which can seem to follow a time axis because you create progressively across time. This can result in good order for the layers for people who don't tweak and refine the composition as they go, I tend to tweak and refine my pages as I go and I feel that is what most designers do. You end up with elements from the left and right pages allover the layers panel.

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9 hours ago, dominik said:

What you suggest is more likely layers to organize things within only one spread :)

My suggestion is for organising layers per spread.

With the tools at hand plus a little planing and practice it is possible to create a layer structure that is not chaotic (same goes for paragraph styles and master pages).

You are absolutely right but as I have mentioned in my replies above it is really about improving the way the software works by default. I don't think you would deny it would be better if Publisher automatically created the said folder and placed content into those folders according to where content resides in the pages. Open Designer and create 2 Artboards, create any object and drag it across the Artboards, see that?? That is what I want but also allowing for spanning content. Logically speaking that is the best implementation plus it is consistent across the 2 softwares from Serif

 

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1 hour ago, dkibui said:

What you suggest is more likely layers to organize things within only one spread

Not if you first create two (or three) folder layers that are called left page and right page (plus spread) and use them accordingly :)

To be clear, I am not against your suggestion of some more automatic assistance from the software itself. I think your example of the artboards in AD illustrates the idea very well. But I assume to make this work really well for all kinds of situations this has to be thought out very well.

What I stumbled across is your claim that the layers are chaotic per se (no offense, just a comment). There are tools to work in a less chaotic way if one wishes to. It's just a manual way at the moment. But working neat and with a plan always takes longer at first. In a workshop, in a kitchen, in art ;-)

Cheers,
d.

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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25 minutes ago, dominik said:

To be clear, I am not against your suggestion of some more automatic assistance from the software itself. I think your example of the artboards in AD illustrates the idea very well. But I assume to make this work really well for all kinds of situations this has to be thought out very well.

 

Maybe I am asking too much, I don't know! This is just feedback of an in-consistency I noticed across the software suite, if AD has it I don't see why it should not be in Publisher especially if it increases efficiency of the software. Hopefully the developers agree this is a good thing to have.

 

25 minutes ago, dominik said:

What I stumbled across is your claim that the layers are chaotic per se (no offense, just a comment). There are tools to work in a less chaotic way if one wishes to. It's just a manual way at the moment. But working neat and with a plan always takes longer at first. In a workshop, in a kitchen, in art ;-)

 

Just to be clear, I am in agreement with you, mostly. Prior planning goes a long way. The best designed software hides the most mundane activities from the user. Creating facing pages in Publisher is probably the most obvious thing you will do, assuming organisation of layers is important to you then you have to deliberately plan to do that for every single page, it's okay if you are creating a few pages. Publisher by definition is used to create many pages though. My question is why not automate this activity especially because it already works automatically in AD. The pursuit of better or improved is why we keep progressing as a society.

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28 minutes ago, dkibui said:

Maybe I am asking too much, I don't know!

I don't think you are asking too much. It is a valid suggestion and we will see if the Affinity team will make something out of it. Just don't expect to see it next week ;)

 

28 minutes ago, dkibui said:

it's okay if you are creating a few pages. Publisher by definition is used to create many pages though. My question is why not automate this activity especially because it already works automatically in AD.

I am sure we will see an enhanced layer concept. I mentioned above the discussion about 'global layers' and these are related to your idea, too. I could imagine a simple option in the spread setup like 'create folder per page' would work (I wouldn't call them artboards because there needs to be a distinction from artboards in AD). OTOH we have to keep in mind that eventually we will see spreads with multiple pages :o

Cheers,
d.

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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