Affinity Publisher for Beginners - Top 10 Things Beginners Want to Know

in this video I'll show you the top 10 things that beginners want to know how to do in Affinity publisher let's get started the very first thing beginners want to know is how to set up a new document to do this come up to the file menu and then select new over on the left Affinity gives us presets for common document sizes but instead of using a prese set let's take a look at some of the settings that we can customize first I'll change my document units from millim 2 in then I'll change my document

size to 8 and2 by 11 I'll also change the image placement from prefer linked to prefer embedded without getting too technical just know that this makes it easier to add images to your document next let's come to the pages tab from here you can choose whether or not you want facing Pages if you use facing Pages your document will be a series of two pages facing each other just like how books and magazines are formatted but without facing pages each page will stand totally on its own just like when you print something on a home

computer for this project I'll keep facing Pages turned on then I'll change the number of pages in my document to six next let's come to the color tab from here you can change the color format of your document RGB is for anything that will be shown on a computer screen or printed on a home computer CMYK is for anything that will be printed with a commercial printing shop if you're not sure which one to use then stick to RGB next let's come to the margins tab up here you can see a preview of what your

margins will look like I'll make all of my margins 1 in except for the bottom margin I'll make that 1.25 in to leave room for page numbers later on and finally let's come to the bleed tab bleed isn't something you need to worry about as a beginner so I recommend you set all of these values to zero and with that we're ready to create our new document now let's move on to the second thing that beginners want to know which is how Affinity Publishers interface is organized the interface is broken into three main areas the

tools are on the left the context toolbar is at the top and the studio panels are on the right and left let's start by looking at the tools we'll practice some of the tools throughout this video but the important thing is to notice what happens when you select different tools if you look in the context toolbar you'll notice that it changes every time I select a different tool that's why it's called the context toolbar because it will give you different options based on the context of what tool you currently have selected next let's look at

the studio panels there are around 30 different panels in Affinity publisher and they offer a wide range of functionality but it might not look like there's 30 panels and that's because by default Affinity hides the less important ones in fact you don't even need all of the default panels so to keep my interface tidy I like to remove some of them to remove a panel just click and drag on its name and then press the X to delete it I'll continue this process to remove the assets panel the transform panel the history panel and the

Navigator panel this is how I like to have my panels but if you ever need to bring back a panel just come up to the window menu at the top and then click on the name of the panel that you want to restore or if you want all of your panels to go back to the default come down to Studio reset Studio you can also customize your panels by opening the menu at the top right of the panel with the color panel I like to use the color wheel instead of the color sliders but that's

just my personal prefer now let's learn the third thing that beginners want to know which is how to add text to do this we'll use the artistic text tool with this tool you just need to click and drag to make a text box then you can type whatever you want and if you want to make another text box just click and drag to make a new one then to format the text we'll get out the move tool I want to format the first text box I made so I'll click on it to select it now

from the context toolbar I can give it a new [Music] font we can also change the font size from the context toolbar or you can just click and drag to resize the text now I want to give my other text the same font so I'll click on it to select it and then change its font and I'll also resize it then I'll Place both of these in the center of the document and if you're not getting snapping lines then click on the red magnet to turn on snapping the text is looking a lot better now

but I think I want to remove the second text box I made so how can I get rid of it well the first way is to turn off its layer to turn a layer on or off just press on the little circle to the right of the layer in the layers panel but if you want to totally delete it click on its layer to select it and then press the delete key on a Mac or the backspace key on on a PC next let's learn the fourth thing beginners want to know which is how to

add large bodies of text to do this we'll use the frame text tool but I want to add text on a new page so I'll double click on page two to go to that page now we can click and drag to make a text frame unlike the artistic text tool the frame text tool tool is designed for large amounts of text so go ahead and type as much as you want because that's exactly what this tool is made for after a minute I finished typing but wait a second I can't see everything that I wrote

that's because my text frame isn't big enough and we know that because there's a red eye at the bottom of the text frame that means there's more text in the frame than what's being shown so I'm going to make the frame bigger so that all of the text is visible perfect now we can see all of the text but you probably noticed my text didn't get bigger as I made the frame bigger unlike the artistic text tool the frame text tool will resize the frame independently of the text but don't worry we can still format

the text just click and drag to select all of it and then change it from the context toolbar or instead we can use the move tool like before with the move tool you'll change all of the text in the frame you have selected without needing to highlight [Music] anything but now that I'm using a bigger font it looks like my text is being cut off again and since this Frame is already taking up most of of the page I can't just make it bigger instead we need to make another text frame that's connected to this

one to do this we'll First Press command Z on a Mac or control 0 on a PC which will perfectly fit both facing pages to your screen size then click on the red output Arrow at the bottom of the text frame then click and drag to make a new text frame and it will automatically be connected conned to the original frame now if I continue typing you'll see that the text at the bottom of the first frame automatically flows to the top of the next frame that's what happens when you have multiple text frames connected

together and as a side note if you ever want to continue typing in a text frame just have one of the text tools selected or double click on the frame if you have the move tool out okay now let's let's learn the fifth thing beginners want to know which is how to place a Word document into Affinity publisher first let's go to page four by double clicking on it then I'll make another text frame which will be the same size as the document margins then to add a Word document come up to file and then

down to place then select the word document from your computer and just like that the word document is instantly loaded into the text frame and if you'd like to follow along with me I've left a download link for this word document in the video description along with a PDF summary of this video but for now let's make some more text frames since this Frame isn't big enough to show all of the text so once again press command Z on a Mac or control 0 on a PC to see both of the facing Pages then click

on the output arrow and click and drag to make a connected text frame but even with this second text frame there still isn't enough room for all of the text so we could make more text frames but there's actually a faster way do this we can use a little feature called autoflow autoflow will duplicate this text frame over and over until there are enough frames to fit all of the text to use autoflow just hold down shift and then click on the output Arrow now all of the text is inside the text frames and if

I scroll up a little bit we can see exactly what's going on here's the original text frame I made and here's the frame I connected it to then when I used autoflow these frames were also created autoflow even made an additional page to make room for the fourth text frame and now that the text is visible we can format it to do that click anywhere in one of the text frames and then press command a on a Mac or or crl a on a PC to select all of the text then we can format it

from the context toolbar then click anywhere in the text to deselect it now let's learn the sixth thing beginners want to know how to use text Styles text styles are presets for your paragraphs they are very useful because they can be updated at any time as an example let's say you're working in a document that has 10 paragraphs as you're formatting the text you decide that paragraphs one four and N should all have cool looking text then you format paragraphs 2 3 and 7even to have cute looking text and finally paragraphs 5 6 8 and

10 10 all get classy looking text but then suddenly you realize you've made a terrible mistake everyone knows that cute text needs to be hot pink not boring old black but luckily this is easy to fix with text Styles just make one of the paragraphs pink and then the others will automatically update with long documents this can save you a lot of time okay now that we know how text Styles work let's see how to actually use them first I'll double click on page 4 to zoom into it next click anywhere in the paragraph that

you want to apply a text style to then to apply a text style open this drop- down menu I'll use the body textile textiles come with some default formatting but we can change that later on for now let's apply the body text style to all the other paragraphs on this page then I'll come over to page five and to speed things up we can select multiple paragraphs and then apply a text Style to all of them at the same time in fact we can press command or control a to select all of the text and

then apply a text style to all of it at once okay now let's apply a different text style to the section headings so I'll come back to page four and then I'll click in the very first paragraph even though this is just a single line it still counts as a paragraph so we can apply a Tex style to it I'm going to apply the heading one style we'll refine this style in a minute but for now I'll apply the heading one style to all of the section headings then I'll come back to the beginning of

the text and press command or control 0 to see both facing pages okay now comes the fun part with our text Styles applied we can change any of these paragraphs and then the other paragraphs with that style will also be changed to begin I'll select the first body paragraph then I'll make it bigger and give it a new font I also want the text to go to the very edge of the text frame we can do that by pressing on the Justified button which adds additional spacing to the text so that it goes to both

edges of the frame okay I'm really liking how this paragraph looks but why do the rest of the paragraphs still look the same well to Apper changes to the rest of the body text we need to update the text style that's our way of telling Affinity hey I know body text used to look like this but now it should look like this to update a text style have your new text selected and then press on the button that's right next to the text style drop- down menu and just like that the rest of the body

text has been updated now let's do the same same thing for our section headings I'll select the first heading and then make it bigger and give it a new font and I would Center the text but the heading one style already has that by default but just so you know this is the button for centering text and just for fun I'm also going to give this text a color now I'm ready to update the heading one style and if I come down to the next page you can see that the heading one style has been

successfully updated but there's still a small problem we need to fix if I come to the next page and then click in the text frame you can see that the red eye is back that's because we made our text bigger so now the text frames aren't big enough to hold it all but luckily this is an easy fix we just need to do another autoflow so hold down shift and then click on the output arrow and once again autoflow has made enough text frames and pages to hold all of the text okay now let's move

on to the seventh thing beginners want to know which is how to use the pages panel we've already seen that you can double click on a page to zoom into it but there's more you can do with this panel for example we can use it to make more pages so if I wanted to add more pages after page five I just need to click on page five and then click on the add pages button from here we can choose exactly how many pages we want to add so now I'll add one page after page number

five five that's exactly what I want so I'll press okay and just like that we have a new page but now I'm thinking this page should come after the evolution of ducks so I'll click on the page to select it and then click and drag to move it perfect that looks so much better next I'll come to Pages two and three by double clicking in the center of their page previews as you can see these Pages don't really go with the rest of my document so I think I'll delete them to delete a page you

first need to select it so I'll click on page two to select it and then while holding shift I'll click on page three to select it as well then we can use the trash can to delete the pages now let's learn the eth thing that beginners want to know which is how to add images to do this I'll first come to the blank page that I made since that has the perfect opening for some photos then to add photos we can use the place tool which is the tool that looks like a picture from here

select the photos you want to add and then press open now we just need to to click and drag to place each photo and if you want to use these same images I'll include them in the download link in the video description along with the PDF summary of this video after placing the images Affinity will automatically select the move tool for you with this tool we can refine the size and position of all of the pictures now we're already to the ninth thing that beginners want to know how to use Master pages with a master

page you can make something one time and then that thing will appear on every page of your document to use a Master Page open the master Pages section of the pages panel then double click on the master page now anything we add to the master page will appear on every other page of the document as an example I'll make a big rectangle so I'll select the rectangle tool and then click and drag to make a rectangle and just for fun I'll give it a color now if you look at the page previews you can see

this rectangle has been added to all of the other pages well kind of the rectangle is only appearing on half of the pages why isn't it being added to the others well it's because in our Master page template there are two pages a left Page and a right page anything we add to the left master page will be added to the left pages in the document and anything we add to the right Master page will be added to the right pages in the document to see this I'll add a rectangle to the right Master page

now in the page previews you can see that the red rectangle has been added to all of the left pages and the green rectangle has been added to all of the right pages okay now that we know how Master Pages work let's learn a more practical use for them which is how to add page numbers but first I'll delete these rectangles to do that I'll hold shift to select both of their layers and then press delete on a Mac or backspace on a PC now to add page numbers let's get out the frame text tool

then click and drag to make a text frame at the bottom of the page then to add a page number right click in the frame and go to insert field page number now Affinity has added this little piece of code which will add the correct page number to each page but I'd like to stylize the page number so I'll get out the move tool and then click on the text frame to select it then I can Center the page number I can also Center vertically from this drop- down menu then I'll make its color black

and give it a new font and finally let's add a page number to the other Master page by duplicating this text frame to duplicate something in Affinity just have it selected with the move tool and then press command J on a Mac or control J on a PC now in the layers panel you can see that there are two page numbers so now we just need to click and drag to move the duplicate copy to the other page and now if we look in the actual document you can see that we've successfully added page numbers

but there's one small problem if I come to the first page you can see there's a big old page one on it that is correct but I think it would look better if the cover page didn't have a page number on it luckily this is an easy fix on all of the pages there's a master page layer in the layers panel so if you don't want the master page to be applied just turn off that layer that was an easy fix but now if we come to page two we can see that it still says

page number two if you'd rather this be page one just click on its page preview to select it and then press on the section manager button then make a new section and tell it to restart page numbering now starting on page number two Affinity will restart page numbering at one and now if I press command or control Z we can see that the page numbers are working exactly as we wanted okay now we're finally ready for the 10th thing beginners want to know how to save and export your work to do this come up to

the file menu and then down to save as this will save an affinity file which you can open later if you want to continue working on your document but if you're finished with your project then come down to export then if we come to the top of this dialog box we can choose the file type we want to export our work as for this example I'll choose PDF then from down here Affinity gives us options for customizing the PDF you don't need to worry about most of these options but one thing I want to change

is the export area right now it's set to current spread a spread is what two facing pages are called so this will only export the last set of facing pages that I had selected I'm going to change this to all pages since I want my entire document to be exported then we're ready to press export from here you can choose where you want the PDF to be saved after you do that you'll have a file that looks something like this and once your file has been exported as a PDF you can easily print it or

share your wonderful Creation with anyone in the world great job I know that was a lot to learn so be sure to download the PDF summary in the video description you've already learned so much and I'll see you in the next Affinity Revolution tutorial