OzNate

The way I understand it, the only thing that makes a Designer file different to a Photo file or a Publisher file is the filename extension. Inside they're all the same. You can try it if you like. All apps will open all files. The difference you'll experience is how each program works with that file and the options and tools it exposes. So that's why it's tricky to add something to Publisher, because you're also simultaneously adding it to Designer and Photo, and on all platforms.

That quote from Affinity in Peter's post above is what has me worried. A killer feature for Affinity apps is that they are so interoperable across all apps and platforms, with the same file format for everything. I am just hoping that as we move into more Publisher-specific features like footnotes, data merge, etc, that this killer feature doesn't become the achilles' heel.

+1

I came here because I am laying out a book and needed the feature but couldn't find it. Couldn't read all 19 pages of comments but now I know what I have to do for now. I was an early adopter of InDesign and from memory it didn't have footnotes when it came out. So I'm not too worried to be honest. Serif have been smashing it with their development speed, really. Meanwhile I'm really happy I'm not paying Adobe club fees so all good. 🙂 🙂

Me too, I need this capability. :-)

Wow! I was wondering what was happening over at Serif. I can see you've been busy. :-)

I understand that possibility but the fact is that other software does not exhibit that behaviour when something is exported. If you use save or save as, I would expect it, but not export. Rarely after export do I want to open the exported file in the same application. That's what the Recent feature is for - reopening files that were previously opened. As an end user I am not so concerned about the goings on in code and Windows API - the fact that this is annoying and other software is able to get it right is enough for me to class this as a BUG

Also occurs with other formats. I exported also as SVG and now that's there as well.

Ok, so whenever you export a PDF it also shows up in Recent files (right-click on the Designer icon on the taskbar, you get a list of recent files). If you exported it with the same name as the Designer file, then you have two identical entries in the Recent files list. It's not very useful for the PDF to show up here. If I wanted to open it I would probably do so in a PDF reader, not in Designer. Not only this, if I want to reopen the Designer file, I have no way of knowing which one it is. Can this be fixed?

Sorry, I should use precise language. Yes, I meant embedded. I see what you mean. It would be useful to be able to create an embedded document file out of an embedded image file. Anyway I am further experimenting with embedding JPEGs and using the basic functionality. With Photo persona you can pretty much do anything you want.

As I posted elsewhere on this forum, there is an interesting twist that I hadn't seen coming. Because of StudioLink, I have found I don't need to link a folder full of PSD files. That's an older way of looking at it, which is not always necessary now. A JPEG stock image can live in the Publisher file, with all live effects applied, and may therefore not increase the file size that much. I haven't fully tested this but I'm just putting this comment here because Affinity are going in a whole new direction. I still think full linking without massively increasing the file size should be an option, because that is the way people are used to working. But I'm starting to rethink my approach.

Coming from the InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator trio, I had a very set way of working - create your elements in Photoshop and Illustrator, bring them in and place them in InDesign. Images are pre-sized to correct resolution in Photoshop. Anything too tricky such as gradients and shadows can be built into the Photoshop file background, etc. All in CMYK of course, unless you were one of the people that saves RGB to CMYK conversion to the output stage. I would routinely have a folder full of huge PSD files to support a given publication. Watching the StudioLink announcement and working with it a little, I realised that we can probably be more free to mix and match, and there's no particular reason to have every single image live as its own layered file. If you're just placing a stock photo, why not place the JPG directly and do your minor edits right in Publisher. I don't see any need to go to all the bother of creating a separate file (PSD equivalent) for a lot of that work, unless it's a special composition or something that will be reused elsewhere. David Blatner suggested something similar with InDesign a few years ago, but I never really took that up because I wanted really clean files going to pre-press, plus InDesign had limited tools for image manipulation. But with StudioLink, I don't think it really matters anymore. Provided the RGB to CMYK conversion is going to be straightforward and predictable at the point I make a press-ready PDF (haven't delved into that yet with Affinity), I'm really starting to reimagine how to build a publication. Artists coming from other software or workflows may already be in this mindset but I've come from a background in serial publications where it was very much a folder full of linked images that are all prepped and managed in Photoshop, nothing embedded (only linked), nothing RGB, nothing straight from JPG or not appropriately resized prior to placement, etc. Interested to hear what others think. Cheers.

I'm tired, have to sleep, will catch you all later. Too bad for the Aussies, I'm keen but not enough to stay up or get up that early. :-)

I have done this too. Ever since my work stopped giving me a licence I haven't had the option. But even if I had the option I wouldn't want to install it on my new laptop. GIGABYTES worth of stuff that wants to update itself constantly. Ugh. I remember the days when Adobe was cool. They were innovating. They did performance releases sometimes (anyone remember Photoshop 7?). I went to their launches and conferences. I was at the original InDesign launch tour. You wanted to buy in because there was just nothing like it. When they put everything together into CS I wanted the Master Collection. It was great! But with CC, it was too expensive, too problematic (licencing errors like we all know too well). And if you don't pay the bill, it all stops working. When Premiere started having problems, and InDesign started taking forever to launch, I had enough. I struggled for a few years getting by with other alternatives. When I found Affinity last year I didn't look back. Publisher has completed the suite of design apps for me. For all things video I went to Davinci Resolve. I understand that a lot of people still need Adobe apps and that's cool, this is not a hate club in my view. In fact, I actually hope Adobe is listening. But having moved from Quark years back I'm no stranger to moving on if need be. When the market leader gets comfortable and their customer experience goes down, that's just not good. Me? I'm done with Adobe. No regrets guys!

Oho! Just saw this. I fetched the .371 installer out of my trash and took it for a spin. Niiiice! InDesign, eat your heart out.

Ah, thanks Pedro. I was just about to look that up. To be honest, it's a bit early for me to bother. I hope we catch up on the news a few hours later as you suggest. :-)

Oh, ok, so we're only halfway there. That will be interesting. I will test a little more. Kinda funny, space savings from using native document file such as .afphoto or .psd is lost because of the embedding (make a separate .TIF to switch to linking and we're not saving much space). Anyway look forward to further improvement.

Just some early results from me and comments after reading some of this thread... having migrated from Quark to InDesign years ago, I found at that time that converters didn't really do the best job. If you are talking about handing files back and forth and you think you are going to do that between different applications, it's a waste of time. Converting should be a one way thing really. Anyway, what I've found is that Publisher does a great job of opening PDFs. I always had a habit of saving PDF versions of all projects (that's how we would do proofs anyway). Today I opened a 32 page full colour publication from a PDF. It was good enough that I could probably just tweak or make necessary changes and go to press. If I wanted to fully regain layout functionality, I would need to recreate master pages, styles, and re-link columns and text boxes back into stories. Not that hard really. When we went from Quark to InDesign for our magazines I just created a new template in InDesign from scratch, including master pages, text and object styles. That was a good time to clean up our styles and layout, and didn't take that much time. So for me I've come to realise that I don't actually need to open my InDesign files. I have the PDFs for existing work, and so far either Designer or Publisher has been able to open them to use as necessary.

Opened the file created earlier which was 505MB, and replaced all linked images to trigger a true linking. The result is 427MB file. Still bigger than it should be. Now, these are PSD files so that may make a difference. I'll have to rebuild the document from scratch in the current version and see if that will change things.

I can confirm having tested true linking in 337 and it is working. :-)

I agree with both of these. Just tested with an existing 32pp publication that we previously produced in InDesign. I created a 32pp layout and just placed the images (no text imported yet). I have a resulting 505MB Publisher file. The InDesign file was 19MB. I can live with this for testing purposes but for ongoing production it would be a pain to essentially have the space usage of 2 copies of everything.

My feedback to Serif on this is that I would like files to truly link, and the document stores only an optimized thumbnail.