wonderings

I think the software aspects are very different from video editing to page layout. Even photoshop/photos work is a different ballgame to this. Lots of nitty gritty things. They are not hard, but they take some learning, especially if you want to be really efficient with it. I used to do everything manual so any change to fonts, sizes, spaces, etc, these were all a nightmare. Using the tools in Indesign, if used correctly makes formatting so much easier and consistent. But like anything, it is something you really need to sit down with. You also need to understand the print process to a certain extent when designing. I have dealt with so many designers who know how to make nice graphics, but have zero clue about print and how it will be used. So in turn their pretty graphics are useless as they don't translate to making a good final product. A good print shop will work with you, though if you are only looking for 1 book expect the price to be pretty high. Price per piece goes down with volume. The thing the big online shops have is volume and they gang jobs together, and have presses that are pretty much going 24/7, so they can get better prices. These of course lack on the customer service side of things. So it is a trade off, but I am always for supporting a local business and utilizing their expertise rather than the faceless online shops.

If cost is no issue I would certainly recommend dealing with a local print shop. There is nothing all that complicated about printing a book with perfect binding. Dealing with a professional you can actually talk to is worth a lot in my opinion and you can get better help from a local shop rather then a large company that is web only. The hardest part is the layout, the more you do it the faster you will be at it. We have a guy who can take a word document and formate and layout a book like this with amazing speed, and still making a great looking book. The actual setup is easy, you make your page the size you want your book to be, insert the number of pages you need with content. Setting up the content is obviously where all the work comes in with a constant design and layout theme. I am no expert with the Affinity software, I have all 3 apps as I was curious about what Affinity was doing, I work in Adobe using Indesign so this sort of thing is pretty common for me. Character Styles and Paragraph styles are really helpful tools, I am assuming Affinity as an equivalent option. This makes global changes to formatting a breeze.

I have never had to do this, but could you do a simple find and replace in this case? Replace the name or whatever it is with **redacted**. That way it is not there at all. I can't speak to the security of other options but there may be ways of getting around things. I know with locking down a PDF you can get by those easily on a Mac, and if the free way on a Mac does not work there are apps you can buy for less than $50 that will remove a PDF security.

This sort of thing is not for the hobbyist or home user. You are entering a world of colour theory and calibrations. There is no auto print and match your screen to your printer. There are so many variables it is not even funny. Honestly 99% of the world is happy with pleasing colours that come off a printer, especially if you are using a home printer and not a digital press, or high end inkjet printer. Most print shops don't even bother trying to maintain this level of calibration. As others have mentioned you are using two different colour spaces, RGB and CMYK. You will never be able to hit the vibrancy of RGB with CMYK, it is just not possible. Whenever you print you are converting to CMYK, so it will inevitably be converted. I have had clients want the same thing with certain colours and you will never get a match. Some colours you won't notice a big shift, others will be massive or will come out looking completely different. Again there is no magic software that can make CMYK hit what you can do with RGB. I would ask yourself if what you are printing really needs the level of colour accuracy to your monitor as you think you do. And if so, and it is really that important I would recommend going to a local print shop and see what they have to say about it, as well as price them out to print it for you.

Even with Adobe you are always exporting to a PDF to send for pretty much most types of print jobs. Very rarely does anyone actually give me native files and rarely do I ever request them, unless I need to do serious fix up work to their files. So my work is saved and packed in Indesign, the file I use for printing be it wide format or digital presses is PDF. Not sure any RIPs would even support native Adobe files, or the majority of them anyways.

I agree, though if you have to choose one jpeg can at least be saved as CMYK whereas a PNG file can only be RGB and will always have to be converted again to CMYK. A jpeg is better in my opinion if saved as a CMYK jpeg, otherwise you are going through the same process as a PNG. If your artwork is original vector then as loukash said a PDF would be better as it retains the vector elements and resolution is no longer an issue. I would be curious to know what the print shop is using if they can't handle PDF's/vector files.

If they just need a raster file I would recommend sticking with Jpeg and making sure it is CMYK. I am sure there will be no major issues but a PNG will still have to be converted to CMYK for printing, and depending on the software that is doing the converting it will convert differently. If not colour critical then no issues, though if you are picky and want some sort of idea of the colour shift always good to do this first.

What is it you are looking to get printed? I have been in print for many years and would never ask for an EPS made from Photoshop of all places.

It has been said many times on this site, if you need to work in Adobe it is best to create in one application. So many headaches come or are possible by trying to go between 2 different applications made by different companies. You will never get a 1:1 equivalency with Serif and Adobe.

Your best bet is probably to restart, especially if there is a deadline. Worst case is they can't recover and you have already started recreating. Best case is they recover and you have only spent a little time starting over again.

What is the issue? It is something you need, makes your life easier, why should it be free?

Did you uninstall or you were going to try and it did not let you? If the app is frozen do as Ron mentioned and force quit the app. Cmd + Option + Escape brings up the Force Quit window. Select Publisher and then hit the force quit button.

There is a reasonably lengthy thread regarding Variable fonts here:

I think that is a bit of an over reaction saying "I can't even do basic graphic design tasks that involve any text...". While variable fonts are great and a nice addition, there are still hundreds of thousands of fonts to do all sorts of great and wonderful things. I like the idea of variable fonts but rarely ever use them as most font families cover all my needs. I do agree it is something that should be added, it will be the future of fonts for sure, but I don't think there is going to be a big tidal wave and everyone stops using traditional fonts as we use them now, it is just going to take a while as new fonts are created and new standards set.

Just saw this thread and read the original post. How would anyone expect a company to grow if they did not charge for major new releases? I can't believe anyone would even think this makes sense. There are a few outlier apps that do this, but it is not the norm. You the user can decide if the update price is worth it, there is no gun to your head, you will not be stopped from using V1, you have exactly what you paid for... actually more considering how much Affinity did to update and improve V1. Many additions I thought for sure would be V2 features. This is standard practice. Quark and Corel are not giving away free updates to their software, you pay for version updates while enjoying updates for various things through the life of that specific version.

This is not completely accurate. Fonts need to be embedded into a PDF. If you do not embed the font in the PDF (this is done by default with Adobe software) it will preview correctly, but if you try and outline the fonts in Acrobat it will not work because the fonts are not present. Demo fonts cannot be embedded in a PDF, the work around is to outline them before saving the PDF. This of course restricts your editing and you may have to go back and forth saving a working file and an outlined file. Not ideal. I have not had image quality issues with outlined fonts, they are basically turned into vector artwork.

That is the route I would go. I would seriously recommend converting those files while you can. Not sure what incentive Affinity would have to supporting a dead file format that is no longer in use. If you have not used these files since the 90's what are the chances the client is coming back, at least for that file? And if they do, it is an easy sell to let them know their files from 30 years ago are no longer compatible so it is time to look at recreating or replacing with new artwork.

There is a free app called "AppCleaner" for Mac OS. It is great for deleting apps as it pulls everything related to that file and lists where everything goes. You could use that for pulling everything and moving to the same spot on the new computer. Would be a long and tedious job though, seems much easier to just reset your preferences.

AI has become a great and powerful tool in Photoshop. Not sure what you do, but the ability to add to photos to give me space to the centre focused object is amazing and so easy. Removing elements just as easy, circle and tell AI to remove, it is gone and replaced with what AI thinks would be seen behind the removed piece. Not always perfect but from my experience I would say 9/10 it is usable and no one can tell there was something there before. I rarely ask for something to be inserted in a picture, generally I need to get more image added, like if a client supplied a picture in portrait but I need it in landscape. AI does an amazing job with landscapes and nature. The image below was almost entirely done with AI in photoshop. The magenta rectangle is the real and original image, everything else was just extending and letting AI do what it does. It has been a regular used tool for me. I do wish AI could be used to trace objects better in Illustrator. Corel has long been the champion for tracing. If AI could be harnessed to trace objects it would be a great asset.

Would be a nice thing if there was a way of exporting each PDF as what was in your document. So in your case a 2 page Publisher file to merge out 100 records as 100 - 2 sided PDF files. I thought I could do this in Indesign but just did a test and I can't there either. Would be a handy little feature for those dealing with a lot of business card orders. Are the cards all the same quantity? If so there is no real benefit that I can think of for having them as separate files, you could impose 24 up on a sheet and just go through the list selecting the first 24, then the next 24, and so on. Will save you a ton of time separating them all out.

Why not just turn off all scaling to begin with? Go with the native resolution of the images you have. If they are bad to start they don't get better by upping the DPI anyways, so let them go to print with the highest DPI they have. The only time I adjust these settings is when I am trying to make a PDF that is suitable for email distribution.

Did not ask for an explanation, simply offered some advice from someone who makes a living working with graphics. Without seeing it it sounds like they are grouped together if when you click one piece you select everything.

you could make your own layers and then cut and paste each colour into each layer. Not sure why you would really need to do this though when you can simply click on a colour and edit it. If you are doing a lot of SVG editing you should look at Designer, not Publisher for this. Publisher is for page layout and is like Adobe Indesign. Designer is for vector artwork and would be comparable to Adobe Illustrator.

I use Indesign daily, it is my main application for work. I find it strange that if you can figure out Indesign you can't figure out Publisher. Are they different in how they do things? Yes, but the basic ideas are the same and getting around to simply make a book in spreads should not be that complicated for you. Your original post made it sound like you want drag and drop like the websites you use for photo books, this is not what Indesign and Publisher are for, simple book creation. You create everything from scratch having powerful pro tools to do it.