Amateur John

I guess that this topic is going to be very relevant again now that MS is removing MS Publisher from MS365 and withdrawing all support from late next year. When I started using Affinity Publisher and needed to convert old MS files I used my soon to be sidelined MS Publisher to export files to PDF, then opened the PDF files into Affinity Publisher and saved as afpub files for further modification. This worked pretty well. The important thing is to export MS Publisher files to PDF while you still can. I hope that Serif picks up some business from the demise of MS Publisher.

You must be more ancient than me. You are right about the architecture but Linux certainly was the successor to Unix and built upon Unix as did HPUX and Sunos.

Currently I am under the influence of wine! However, back on topic. Professionally, at least twenty years ago, I used HPUX and Sunos, even at the same time. They were different flavours of Unix. Linux is also a flavour of Unix. Many very important commercial servers run under Linux but it is still a bit 'geeky' for general amateur use. For now I am happy enough to run my home PC and laptop under MS widows. I would not be concerned if I had to revert to Unix/Linux.

That's OK. Affinity allow inward migration but no return path.

Something important that Canva can do but the Affinity trio cannot do is create websites. Canva's own efforts at Affinity's expertise are limited to put it mildly. This buyout by Canva need not be a disaster. Sure Canva are putting up prices to companies but still recruit one man bands cheaply and students and charities for free. Serif offered free use of Affinity during the lockdown to new users including many students. The attitudes are not too dissimilar. Let's see how this all pans out. Back on track. How about a DAM that handles all Affinity products initially in phase one, all Affinity and Canva products in phase two, and everything else in phase three. This could be achieved without diverting Serif experts from that which they are undoubtabley expert.

Writing to an undocumented file type runs risks. It changes offsets in the file and possibly messes up check sums. It would be acceptable to only read in many cases.

Can Imatch now work with metadata in Affinity files? I thought that Imatch uses Phil Harvey's Exiftool for reading and sometimes writing metadata. The present published version of Exiftool does not work with Affinity files. Reading meta data is essential. Writing can be problematic and can be avoided in a DAM application.

A catalog function added to AP similar to LR's catalog function would only be of use to AP users and I agree is not appropriate for Affinity. A useful start would be an application initially supporting all Affinity products but designed to be extendable to other digital assets.

Some members of the forum are suggesting the DAM features of other photo editing suites. This is not helpful to users of Designer or Publisher. Also photographers may wonder why buy two photo editors. It highlights the risk of Serif losing Photo only users due to the lack of DAM. I see Imatch mentioned. How useful is this for a user of Affinity Publisher and Photo? I would appreciate an experienced Affinity and Imatch user to give a brief review of Imatch in this context.

This topic has been raised many times before. It seems that Serif have very good talent for creating the creative apps. Database creation is a very different area of expertise. I hope that within the wider company that a DAM system can be created. It should not be an LR lookalike. An affinity DAM should manage all file types supported by the present Affinity applications, and use the present Affinity applications to open them. As it matures I would hope for semi auto identification of people in all affinity files. (Identify someone once and the system would find other possible matches, maybe as a background process) I realise that this might be costly to implement and would be willing to pay for it.

A DAM would be useful, very useful. 'Need' is different to 'would like'. If Affinity produced a DAM that could manage Affinity files and maybe other files associated with our projects, and pricing was reasonable then I would buy it. Almost everyone writing on this thread puts the emphasis on organising photographs. An Affinity DAM would manage all the assets associated with Affinity publisher, photo and design. That would be very powerful. Can Adobe Lightroom manage InDesign and Illustrator files?

The three workbooks have become more than a little out of date due to the progress made on the applications. I would consider them still useful to new users albeit a bit confusing in places.

Remember 'The Mythical Man Month' . It was a book published in the mid seventies about the development of an IBM operating system. The project ran late and IBM threw more and more people into the team. Progress slowed. Much later Pro-Engineer, a CAD CAM company was founded by a very small team of software engineers who were fed up with their large employer. They produced a very successful innovative product which became more popular than that of their previous employer. I expect that there are many examples where small teams successfully challenge big teams. A small expert and enthusiastic team in which everyone knows and understands what everyone else is doing can make rapid progress. Big teams get bogged down with lack of communication and lack of shared understanding. A small company like Serif does compete with the Adobe leviathan. I have bought the full Affinity licence although I only use Photo (and Publisher occasionally). I wish the company well.

Walt's method works with Nikon Studio. Like LR it is necessary to change the default .exe file type to *.*

It is very important that version 2 of any application is not full of bugs and crashes. The present live versions are stable and have few bugs. Version 2 must not introduce significant new bugs. Version 2 must be stable from the day it is released. I am as impatient and curious to know what is brewing as anybody. I also am prepared to wait for a product that is only released, even in beta, when it clearly is more than what we already have. Releasing product too early would be frustrating to us users and reputationally damaging to the company. Patientes estote.