hi i'm robin whalley welcome to lenscraft today i'm looking at customizing the studio panel layout
in affinity photo and i'll also explain how to use the new studio preset feature
most people don't seem to give much thought to their interface layout in affinity photo
many assume their layout is the default and everyone else's looks the same
in fact i often receive emails from people struggling to make sense of affinity photo
because their screen doesn't match a video or a tutorial there are lots of reasons this can happen
so this video is a crash course in customizing and organizing the studio panels in affinity photo
after all studio panels probably make up eighty percent of the layout i'd also encourage you to
watch the entire video because i throw in lots of information throughout when you understand this
video you'll immediately feel more confident using affinity photo for editing let's start
by looking at a single studio panel the navigator studio panel is a good example to use because it's
quite simple at the top we have a zoom control to set the image magnification for the main preview
when the preview spills over the edges of the screen a movable window appears in the navigator
we can use this to navigate around the image by dragging it with our mouse
then at the bottom we can define a series of viewpoints which then appear in a drop down list
at this point you might be thinking i don't have a viewpoint drop down if you don't you can make
it visible by selecting the advanced option in the studio panels menu in the top right a lot of the
studio panels have an advanced view which reveals more tools what we have in the navigator then is a
series of related tools to navigate our images and which affinity pulls together into a single studio
panel and it's the same with the other studio panels they consolidate tools together that are
used for a related purpose for example the layer studio panel has lots of tools many of these are
available in pop-up menus or are displayed as icons but they all relate to working with layers
the next thing that you probably already realize is that not all of the available studio panels
are visible if they were the interface would become very crowded and confusing
when we look in the view menu and select studio we see a list of the available studio panels
the ones with the tick mark next to them are currently visible in the interface
when i click the navigator panel in the menu it toggles the visibility off to hide it i can then
select it again to redisplay it and it appears in its original position you should also realize that
different personas have different studio panels if i switch to the export persona and select the
studio menu there are less panels available than in the photo persona whilst there are some panels
like the navigator panel that you'll find in other personas a panel like slices is only available
in the export persona let's go back to the photo persona now to look at arranging the studio panels
as you can see the panels are in groups and appear as a series of tabs which you can
select by clicking with your mouse you can also change the order of these tabs by clicking and
dragging them with your mouse it's even possible to click and drag the panels to different groups
if i click and drag the navigator panel i can move it into the same group as the layers panel
but i can also drag it out of the groups and have it as a free floating window if you're working on
a large screen you might want to have a panel as a floating window you can then move the panel to
near the area you're working on so there's less movement when you want to select other tools this
is especially useful when you're using a graphics tablet where you need to move the pen much more
than you would a mouse currently the panels are organized into three groups on the right of the
interface what you may not realize is that you can create additional groups watch what happens when
i drag the panel to a new position in the right hand studio area of the interface the area becomes
highlighted as a blue rectangle when i release the mouse it creates a new studio panel grouping
something that i didn't mention earlier when i showed you the floating panel was that it wasn't
just a single panel it's really a group where you can dock multiple panels to save screen space
i can now dock this floating group into the new group i created in the right studio area
once you've been watching this you may have noticed that i've been referring to this area
as the right studio well there's also a left studio as well but you can't see it
at the moment because none of the panels are visible if i use the view studio menu
to make the macros panel visible the left studio area also becomes visible
you can also see the options to show the left and right studios
and now ticked in the bottom of the studio's menu as with the studios panel you can click
these to toggle the areas off and on if i click the option to show the right studio
panel when it has a tick mark next to it it hides all the studio panels on the right
when i click it again the right studio becomes visible and we can see all the panels again
notice that when the studio became visible again all the same panels are displayed as before now
if i remove a panel to make it flow before i hide the studio area the floating panel isn't hidden
because it's not part of that studio area it's only the panels in the studio area that are hidden
there's also another option in the menu that you can use to hide or show both studio panels
together before i click this notice that i've assigned a shortcut key to the menu option by
default this menu option doesn't have a shortcut but you can define your own as well as changing
others i find it helpful to use the keyboard to toggle this option rather than keep moving
my mouse if you want to create your own shortcuts use the shortcuts page in the affinity preferences
given all this flexibility it's not unusual for people to change their interface without
realizing it or to forget they've changed something if you find you get into a mess
use the reset option at the bottom of the studio menu to get back to the default layout this
produces the default arrangement of the studio panels when you first install finiti unfortunately
it's not the arrangement i started with for that i need to use one of the new features released
in affinity photo 1.9 which is the studio presets it's now possible to save an arrangement of studio
panels as a preset so you can easily return to that layout just use the option in the menu to add
the preset and then enter the preset name in the dialog you can see in the studio presets manager
that i've already saved a preset before i started this video when i select that it adjusts my layout
if you find yourself needing to delete or rename a preset use the studio presets manager
i'm going to wrap up the video here but there are other things you can do to customize the affinity
photo interface i've already mentioned setting up custom shortcuts but you can also configure
your tools and toolbars if you want to know more please see my book affinity photo how-to
which explains these and a lot more about using affinity photo i hope you found today's video
helpful i'm robin whalley you've been watching lenscraft i'll see you soon for another video