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Overview
In this video, we'll learn how to create new files and also open files from other file formats. For the file that I have opened up in front of me, I can see the dimensions by looking in the upper right-hand corner. The dimensions are currently set in pixels and I can see for this one that it is set at 4247 by 2831 pixels. I can also see my rulers and as I talked about in the previous video, I can turn on and turn off my rulers by using the shortcut CTRL and R.
Create New Files
But this time, let's create a new document all together. So to do that, go to the Main Menu and click on File and then click on New. I can also use the shortcut CTRL and N as you would see in many other programs.
Okay, and here's the New Dialogue Box. I can create a new document by using any of these Presets. I'll just scroll down so that you can see the various Presets. Okay, so I've got all of these different Presets here for different page sizes. I'll go back up.
Document Setup - Part 1
I can also change my orientation here, Portrait and Landscape, and if I want to customize even further, well on the right hand side, I have all of these settings over here. So, let's go through a couple of these settings.
First of all, let's set up our document size. At the moment, I'm seeing it here as millimeters. I would like to change that to inches. I can also change my DPI or dots per inch. If I want to create a design for printing purposes that is being sent to a printery, then I could leave it at 300 DPI. If I want to create a document for other purposes, like for example on the web, well, I can change this to 72 DPI.
These are standard resolution settings that are used whether for web or for print purposes. Next, I have my page width and height. Let's say if I wanted this document to be an 8 1/2 x 14. So, I can just go here and change this to 8.5 8 1/2 by 14. Okay. So, 8 1/2 inches by 14 inches. I can also change the color format.
I would use either RGB or CMYK depending on the output of my design. At the moment, it's set to RGB. And for the color profile, it's also set to sRGB.
The color profile refers to the gamut or the range of colors based on the color format that you choose. Let's say if I wanted to create a design for print purposes. Well, I can change this from RGB to CMYK. Now, by changing it to CMYK, that changes the entire color range or gamut, and as you can see here, it's now changed to US WebCoated. If I'm using CMYK, I would choose either US WebCoated or US web UnCoated depending on the project that I'm working on. But in this particular case, we are not sending this design to a printery, so I'm going to change this back, the color format that is, back to RGB.
This next option determines whether or not I want my background to be transparent. I would leave this off for now. Next, we have artboards. If I turn on this option, it would limit my project to one artboard, but in this case, I want more than just one, so, I'm going to leave this off for now.
This next setting determines where images will be placed and how they will be placed. I have two options here, either linked or embedded. So when you import images, you can either import them as a linked image or as an embedded image. In this case, I'll leave it on embedded.
I can also determine what can be done to text files when I import them, for example, a notepad file or a Microsoft Word file. If I turn on this option, and I'll just turn it on, now, what that means is that I can edit that file externally from this program. But in this case, I'm going to turn that back off because I would like to edit my text content right inside of Affinity. I don't want to do that in an external program.
This next option has to do with preserving text styles. And this only applies to whenever I'm working with text styles, which I'm not working on right now. This feature is similar to InDesign.
Now, let's say if I wanted to create a document with three pages. Well, in that case, I'll need to turn on the multi-page option. So, I'll go down here to multi-page and turn that on.
Let's scroll down here a bit. I have here facing pages. I will leave this on.
I can arrange my pages either horizontally or vertically. I'll leave this on horizontal.
All additional pages would start on the right-hand side, so I'll leave it on right, and for the number of pages, I'm going to set this to three. Okay, so this document would start as a three-page document.
Also, if I wanted to add a page master, I could turn on this option and that would also give me a master page that I can use on all of the document pages. These features are very similar to Adobe InDesign.
Next, I have margins. So, I'll turn on this option, and if I want, I can turn on inner, outer, top, and bottom margins. Let's say if I wanted a 1-inch margin on all of the sides, inner, outer, top, and bottom. Okay, so I'll turn this on and then set inner to one as in 1 inch, and since I have this chain link on, it will turn on all of the others to 1 inch, so this will give me a 1-inch margin on the inner, outer, top, and bottom of every page.
Now let's talk about page-bleed. So, I'll turn on this option here, page-bleed, and just scroll down a bit, so I can apply bleed to the inner, outer, top, and bottom of every page. But if you're not sure what page bleed is all about, let me just give you a quick definition. A page bleed allows you to add extra space beyond the final trim edge of your document, allowing graphics or colors to extend off the page for a clean edge-to-edge finish. This is very important when it comes to printing your content. Page bleed would have no relevance to any content that is used for screen purposes, like for example creating content to be used for a website. In this particular case, for example purposes, I'll create a 1/8-inch page bleed. So for example, if I were to go to inner and let's type here 1/8 and then as soon as I click on outer it will do the conversion and since I have the chain link on, it would apply that measurement to all. So that gives me a 1/8 inch on all sides of all of the pages.
Save Document Preset
Now, if I wanted to save all of these settings as its own Preset, I can simply scroll back up, give this Preset a name, and then click on Create Preset, and I can always find that Preset over here if I wanted to create a new document based on these settings. But in this particular case, we will not be doing that, so I'm just going to come down here and click on Create Document. Okay, and here's my brand-new document.
In this case, I created a multi-page document. This is why Affinity automatically switched over to the Layout Studio. In the Layout Studio, I can see my pages and I could also see my Master pages by clicking here. All right. So, here's my Master pages. I can see here on my page that I'm seeing my margins and I'm also seeing my bleed.
Change Document Setup - Part 1
If I wanted to change any of the document settings, I can simply click on this button up here, Document Setup. Okay, so here I can see all of my settings. Document, Dimensions, Model, and let's just scroll down a bit, Color, Resources, Margins, Bleed. All right. So, let's say if I wanted to change my Margins. So, instead of having the margins at one inch, let's say if I change it to half an inch. So, I'll put 0.5. Right, and that will change it for all of the margins, and then as soon as I click OK, my margins have changed.
Let's say if I wanted to change the orientation of my document, I can go back to Document Setup and go to my Orientation settings here. At the moment, it is set as Portrait. Let's change it to Landscape, and then click OK, and now all of my pages are set as landscape.
I will give one more example. You can see in the Pages section that my pages are set as two pages per spread. Let's say if I did not want that. I can go back to Document Setup and just simply turn off this option Facing Pages, and now I have one page per spread. If you are familiar with programs like Adobe InDesign, all of these settings that I'm talking about here would be familiar to you.
Create New Documents from Clipboard Content
For this next part, I'll show you how you can create a new document from content that you have saved on your clipboard. This website is called Pixabay.com. You can use Pixabay.com to get free assets that you can use for any of your projects. As you can see, there are a lot of categories that I can choose from. From Photos all the way over to GIFs. In this case, we'll go to Photos, and let's say if I wanted to find a photo of a forest.
So, I can go in the search bar and type in “forest”, then press enter. And like it says here, I have well over a 100,000 free photos of a forest that I can choose from. So I'll just scroll down a bit and let's see if I could find one that I find interesting.
How about this one? So, I'll just click on this image to get to the page and let's say if I wanted to copy this image. So I can right-click on it and then go to Copy Image.
By doing that the image is now in my Clipboard. From there I will go back to Affinity to paste what I just copied as a new document. I can simply go to the File Menu and then click on New From Clipboard. Okay. As you can see here, it would create a new document all together.
My previous document is still here. So if at any point in time I want to go back to my previous document, I can just click on the tab or I can come back to the new document over here, and there you go. Notice that since this is a photo, Affinity has switched over to the Pixel Studio. But if I go back to my previous document, it'll switch over to the Layout Studio.
So depending on what file you are working on, Affinity will switch to the various studios accordingly.
Create New Documents by Dragging and Dropping
Another method you can use to create new documents is by dragging and dropping. For this example, let's say if I open up my File Explorer, I would like to open up this file which is called “mountain with horses”.
To do that, I can click and hold onto it, drag it up to the tabs area and let go of the mouse. I'll just minimize the File Explorer, and here's the file. So I now have three files open.
Adjusting Units of Measurement
While we are on this image, let's talk about different ways in which you can change the units of measurement for your document. You have three methods that you can use in order to do this.
The first method is by going to your Ruler. Now, if you are not seeing your Ruler, remember in the previous video I talked about turning on and turning off your Rulers by simply using the shortcut CTRL and R to turn on and turn off your rulers. So, if I press CTRL and R, that would hide the Ruler or turn it off, and I use CTRL and R again to turn it back on. Now with your Ruler on you can go to the intersection of the Rulers. This is on the upper left-hand side and just right-click and you could change your various units of measurement there. At the moment I'm using pixels. Let's say if I go to inches and now the Rulers are now set as inches. So that's the first method.
The second method involves going to the Zoom Tool in the Main Toolbar. So here's the Zoom Tool. I'll just click on that, and then if I go to my Tool Options up here, here's my Units Options, and I could change my units of measurement there. Let's say if I change it to centimeters. So now the Rulers are now set as centimeters. So that's the second method.
The third method involves going to the Main Toolbar, clicking on Document, then going to Setup, and then Document Setup. In the Document Setup Dialogue Box, I can see my units of measurement right here. So let's say if I change this back to pixels and then from there click OK. Now the Rulers are set back to pixels.
So those are the three methods that you can use to change the units of measurement for your document.
Change Document Setup - Part 2
Let's talk about modifying the setup for specific parts of your document.
So for this document I can go to the Document Setup button to bring up the same Document Setup Dialogue Box that we saw before. As you can see we have two buttons here, Whole Document or Specific Spreads. In this particular case if I click on Specific Spreads nothing would happen because there are no specific spreads for this particular document.
So let's go back to our first file. I'm going to close this Dialogue Box and then let's go back to our first file here.
For this first file, we have Masters and we also have multiple pages. Now let's go back to the Document Setup Dialogue Box.
Note that you can also get to this dialogue box by going to the Document Menu and then Setup and then Document Setup.
Now in this particular case, we have all of these options because we have multiple pages. So let's say if I wanted to modify the dimensions for just one of the pages, I can go to Selected Spreads and then I can decide which page I would like to modify. Let's say if I go to page two and for page two, I would like to change the orientation from Landscape to Portrait, and then I'll just click OK, and as you can see over here in the Pages Panel, page two is now set as Portrait.
So these are useful features that you can use when setting up a document with multiple pages.
Importing Photoshop Files
Now let's talk about opening files from the Adobe programs, mainly Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and PDF files.
I'll begin by opening up a Photoshop file. So, let me just switch over to Photoshop so you can see the file that I'm working with. Okay. So, here I am in Photoshop. This is one of my concept art designs that I made a few years ago and I would just like to see if this file can open in Affinity Studio.
Before doing that, let's have a look at the structure in the Layers Panel. So, as you can see, I have groups and I also have adjustment layers. I also have a clipping mask layer located right here, which is connected to the group directly below it. So, let's open up this file in Affinity Studio and let's see if that structure is maintained.
All right. So, here I am back in Affinity Studio, and here's the file that I would like to open. So, let's see what happens. It looks like it brought over almost everything except for this Gradient Fill. Okay. So, it seems like most of the content is brought over, but there are a few items that it would not be able to carry over into Affinity Studio.
Let me just close this dialogue box and let's have a look at the Layers Panel. Okay, so I can see my groups are still located here. I can open up this group. Okay, and there's the items inside of the group. I have an adjustment layer here, brightness and contrast. Okay, so that is carried over. But I noticed that the clipping mask is placed inside of the group, and what I'm referring to is this. If I open up this group, the adjustment layer, which was a clipping mask, is now placed inside of the group.
So if I'm bringing over content from Photoshop into Affinity Studio, I need to look out for these changes. Now, let's say if I wanted to export this file as a Photoshop file instead of saving it as an Affinity file. To do that, I can go to the File Menu and then go down to Export and choose PSD. As you can see, I have some options here, Preserve Accuracy, Preserve Editability, and this option which is for persons who use Mac computers, Final Cut Pro. In my case, I'm using a Windows computer, so I would not be using that.
Let's say if I choose Preserve Editability and it would adjust these options on the right-hand side. From there, I'll click on Export, and let's say if I were to save this file with a slightly different name and I'll save it in the same folder, of course, then click on Save.
From there, I'll switch over to Photoshop and open up the file and have a look at the structure again and see if there are any changes that I can notice. So, here we are back in Photoshop. I'll just open up the file that I just saved and let's see what we've got.
Okay, looking at my Layers Panel, it looks like the layers and the overall structure is pretty much the same way like how I had it before. I can see that my clipping mask layer is still here and my groups are exactly as I had them before.
So, it is indeed possible to work with Photoshop files in Affinity Studio. By using the Preserve Editability option, It allows you to have the maximum amount of editability when working between these two programs.
Importing Illustrator Files
Now, let's look at opening up Illustrator files in Affinity Studio. So, here I am in Illustrator and I have this file already opened. Let's look at the Layers Panel, so we can see the structure of this file. So for this file we have three layers and you can open up the layers to see the sub layers.
Okay, I'll just close those sub layers and I'll close this file and open it up in Affinity Studio and let's see if the structure will stay the same. Before saving a file that can be used in other programs like Affinity Studio, you need to remember to also save the Embedded PDF Compatible File when saving any Illustrator file. So for example, when saving this file, I would use the Save As command in order to do that. Doing that will carry me to this Dialogue Box, and here I can see the option Create PDF Compatible File.
Make sure to keep that option on, and then from there click OK, and now I will be able to open up this file in other programs like Affinity Studio. So let's now go over to Affinity Studio and open up this file. So I'm now back in Affinity Studio. Let's open up the file and see what happens.
Affinity Studio is actually using the PDF compatible file in order to import your Illustrator file. This is why you're seeing the PDF options Dialogue Box. The Illustrator file only has one artboard, so I don't need to use any of these options here. So I'll leave this as Import as Artboard and everything else I'll leave the same. The only option I would change is Replace Missing Fonts. In the original Illustrator file, one of the fonts used is Myriad Pro at Seibold. I will change that to Ariel and the replacement style I'll leave that as Regular, and then from there click OK, and here is our file.
From here, let's look at the Layers Panel. I can see in the Layers Panel, we have this layer. If I open this up, we have groups, and in each of those groups, we have our sub-layers. So, here's the screen, here's the side panel, and here's the TV body. So, the structure is a little different, but all of the content has indeed been carried over into Affinity Studio. So just keep in mind that in order to bring over Illustrator files into Affinity Studio, you need to also save the file as a PDF Compatible file.
Importing InDesign Files
Now let's see if Affinity Studio is able to open up InDesign files. First of all, please note that Adobe InDesign files use the INDD file format. The INDD file format is not supported in Affinity Studio. This is because that format is a proprietary format for Adobe and that format is not open to other applications.
However, Affinity Studio should be able to open up Adobe InDesign IDML files. So let's save this file as an IDML file and let's see if that file will be able to open up in Affinity Studio. Okay. So here I am in the Save As Dialogue Box in InDesign and all I need to do here is change the file type to IDML and I'll also change the file name. Okay, and then from there, just save this, and then let's go over to Affinity Studio to see if I can open up that file.
Now, before we go over to Affinity Studio, let's just have a quick look at the structure of this file. So, in the Pages Panel, I can see that this is made up of two pages in two spreads, as it says right here. Also, in the Layers Panel, all of the content is on one layer. So, here's my layer. I'll open up this layer to see my sub-layers. If I scroll down, I can see the second page.
All right. So, since the file is already saved as an IDML file, let's now go over to Affinity Studio and open up that file.
So, here I am back in Affinity Studio. And here's the file that I'd like to open. So, let's see what happens. So here's the file opened up in Affinity Studio. Let's have a look at the pages. So the two pages are here. I can also see that my Master page is also there. Let's have a look at the Layers Panel, and there's the layer. Let's have a look at the sub-layers. Yep, the sub-layers are also there.
Now, of course, the question is, is the text editable? Well, there's only one way to find out. So, I'll go to the text and double-click and I can select the text which automatically means that the text is indeed editable. So, it is indeed possible to export InDesign files. Just keep in mind that you cannot use the INDD format. You need to use the IDML format when exporting the file to bring it over into Affinity Studio.
Importing PDF Files
For this final part, let's see if I can export this InDesign file as a PDF file and then import that PDF file into Affinity Studio. So in InDesign, I'll go to the File Menu and then Export. and I would export this file as a PDF file. I'll just change the name
and then click on Save and I'll get this Dialogue Box. Note that importing a PDF file into Affinity Studio is a one-way process. You cannot overwrite the original file once it has been imported. Instead, it will be saved as an Affinity document. However, in Affinity Studio, you'll be able to edit the file and then export the file again as a PDF file.
I'll leave the export settings as they are right here in this Dialogue Box and then click on Export and then let's see what happens. All right, so I'm now back in Affinity Studio. So, here's the Open Dialogue Box, and here's the PDF file. So, let's open up the file and let's see if this would work.
Just like what you saw previously, it brings up the PDF Options Dialogue Box. I would open this as Pages, I'll leave everything else as is, and for the fonts, I'll just leave it with the recommended settings, and then from there, click OK. So, here's the file, and the first thing that I noticed is that in the Layers Panel, the text comes across as single lines of text.
So if I wanted to edit this text, I would need to click on each line and in this case double-click, and then edit the line. To go to the next line, I'll need to jump back to the Move Tool and then double-click on the next line. So I've noticed that the text does not come across as text frames, it comes across only as single lines of text, which is not very efficient.
So that's something that you need to keep in mind if you intend on importing PDF files.
Conclusion
So it is indeed possible to import Photoshop files, Illustrator files, InDesign files, and PDF files into Affinity Studio. Just keep in mind that you need to make some changes and modifications when importing these files. So with that said, this covers all of the basics of working with Affinity Studio. In our subsequent videos, we'll work with Affinity Studio to create various projects.
