Preview Mode in Designer without any lines?

[3joern]

Hi,

just have a small project that I want to do in designer and for the consistents I need some Guides, Margins, bleeds, columns. Nice all there, but when I want to see how the Layout looks like without all the lines there no way to hide them in one step.

In Publisher is a Preview Mode, why not in designer?

[MickRose]

Do you have Publisher? If yes, you could start in Publisher and do all your editing in the Designer persona. Then back to Publisher for preview.

[3joern]

You professional advice is that I should use Publisher for ... maybe a user interface project? with Icons and other stuff that need symbols and assets. I don't think so. Also in Designer is a preview mode useful.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, 3joern said:

maybe a user interface project? with Icons and other stuff that need symbols and assets.

Publisher supports all of that, too. However, it lacks the Pixel Persona if that's important to your work, and the Export Persona.

And, yes, suggesting the use of Publisher can be viewed as a workaround for your problem. But it could help until Serif decides to provide the Preview function in Designer.

[3joern]

Maybe I don't understand it right, but this is the feature request and suggestion area, right. I don't need interim solutions, I want to suggest a feature that maybe also help other, so I think in this area the community agree or disagree suggestions or requests.

I don't think is the right way to give Serif the support of »you can do it by a complicated not good solution« I hope they also want Designer became to be a better software, so please, support feature request with constructive feedback, that they understand how many customers need it or not. Don't spoil the Software engineers, That's their job.  

Sorry if this sounds harsh, english is not my mother tongue 

[Old Bruce]

3 hours ago, 3joern said:

In Publisher is a Preview Mode, why not in designer?

Excellent point. I waste a fair amount of time turning everything off/on via the menu.

[selcukyilmaz]

1- Disable Show Bleed and Show Margins in View menubar
2- View > New View

Now you can change the views.

Edited July 27, 2019 by selcukyilmaz
changing solution

[xman]

Any update on this request?

I actually started my project in Publisher, but move it to designer for better control ... however now in order to turn off the crosslink in a vector box I need to go back to publisher and remember to turn on preview mode. this is fairly easy at first, but it will reset back to visible at some point (I think).

So not sure if this feature is connected directly with pages, but would save me a lot of time. 

Thanks

[garrettm30]

I understand that Serif is trying to differentiate between its different apps for things that rightly belong to one app or another, but I keep feeling like preview mode should not be one of them. Forget Publisher for a moment: if things like guides, margins, and bleed rightfully belong in Designer, then so does the need to be able to turn off display of these interface elements to see a clean preview of a finished design. I fail to understand how a preview mode is more relevant in Publisher than in Designer.

For folks like me who have also purchased Publisher, the lack of this feature that has already implemented seems like an annoying arbitrary limitation that forces one to unnecessarily open up Publisher just to see a preview, even when Designer is the natural choice for the project at hand.

For folks who only have Designer because they only work on the kind of documents that Designer is best suited for, do they have no need of a preview mode at all? For example, is it useless in designing vector artwork? I think not.

[tcdaly]

On 7/27/2019 at 11:50 AM, selcukyilmaz said:

1- Disable Show Bleed and Show Margins in View menubar
2- View > New View

Now you can change the views.

Great idea for a workaround.

[Denis2]

I'm also missing this feature since I started to use Designer. Now its 2025 and it's still not there (at least I havn't found it). 
I cannot understand why others do not need a preview button which shows a kind of fast export of the current view. Even Export persona has red squiggle under unknown words in text. Designer is my goto program when I need to draw something, but I cannot understand why such a simple feature is not there.
In the picture below I work on a white website design and the pink helper lines around last selected elements are really disturbing when you want to see how the page looks at the end.

[PaulEC]

1 hour ago, Denis2 said:

the pink helper lines around last selected elements are really disturbing

I'd agree that a Preview Mode would be useful in Designer, but for now, if you want to get rid of these lines, just disable Snapping Candidates in the snapping options, or temporarily turn off Snapping altogether.

[garrettm30]

I was surprised to find this is still an issue, because I thought it has been added to Designer for a long time. I had to specifically launch Designer to find out that it is still not there, because it is in the Designer mode of Publisher. When in Designer mode of Publisher, the menus change to the Designer menus, and you can find it right there in the View menu. But it is missing from actual Designer. I wonder if it was an oversight, since the menus of Publisher when in Desinger and Photo mode are supposed to match Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo, so it is odd and kind of misleading for there to be a Designer option that Affinity Designer actually does not have.

[GarryP]

12 hours ago, garrettm30 said:

I thought it has been added to Designer for a long time.

The iPad version of Designer has a Preview Mode but not the Desktop version.

I have no idea why this should be.

See: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/205554-preview-affinity-designer/

[3joern]

since this section is about version 1, no one from the staff will look here anymore, let's switch to the other thread and continue the discussion

 

[GarryP]

8 minutes ago, 3joern said:

since this section is about version 1, no one from the staff will look here anymore

I’ve been told (somewhere, a while back) that they do, because old requests are still regarded as current requests until they are no longer relevant.

If something was requested for V1 and it’s not been implemented in V2 then it’s still something that has been requested for inclusion in the software.

This might be one of the reasons why the V1 requests threads have not been locked, so that people can still ‘add their voice’ to them if they want to.

[3joern]

@GarryP you right 

[garrettm30]

7 hours ago, GarryP said:

The iPad version of Designer has a Preview Mode but not the Desktop version.

 

That makes it seem all the more an oversight. I wonder if this should be brought up as a bug: it is in Designer mode in Publisher and Affinity Designer on iPad, but not Affinity Designer on Desktop.

[GarryP]

15 hours ago, garrettm30 said:

I wonder if this should be brought up as a bug

As it’s already been brought up in at least two Feedback threads, and we don’t know that it wasn’t a deliberate ‘omission’, I don’t see why it would need to be reported as a ‘bug’.

It looks to me like it was something which just got overlooked/forgotten and, since it’s been requested, I don’t think we need to do anything else but wait to see if anything happens.

[Kal]

 

Typical Affinity approach to UI. Here's how the design meeting probably went…

Designer 1: How could we make guides as annoying as possible?

Designer 2: I know… We could split guides into three different categories: margins, guides and column guides, and force the user to turn them all off individually just to preview their design! 😂

Designer 3: Yes, and let's not give them shortcuts for margins and column guides, so they have to navigate the menu with their mouse four times just to turn them off and on again! 🤣

On 3/29/2025 at 7:17 PM, GarryP said:

I don’t think we need to do anything else but wait to see if anything happens.

Good idea. Let's wait another 6 years to see if anything happens!

[Bryan Rieger]

Product Manager: “Yeah, those are all great suggestions, but how annoying would it be if we required users to go into a View > Guides panel just to manage them? Am I right?”

I'm waiting to see what's announced this Thursday @ Canva Create before I decided to finally cut my losses and abandon the entire Affinity suite (after 10+ years). The past year since the acquisition hasn't been terribly positive (both 2.5 and 2.6 were very buggy releases), the pace of development has turned glacial, and there seems to be almost complete radio silence from Serif (beyond bug reporting) lately.

I truly enjoy using the Affinity apps (when they work), and admire the original intention of the Affinity suite. The problem is that execution matters, and for whatever reason, Serif appears to have significant problems executing.

 

[q1234]

it is incredible that this is not a thing??? hello???