wonderings

My guess is you did not select the right layer. No effort in this as it is sloppy, but you can see it does work when the right layer is selected

yes they added IDML support. There is no magic perfect conversion though so anything you are bring into Publisher will need to be checked carefully. Definitely helpful if you are transitioning from Indesign to Publisher and need files you do not want to recreate from scratch. Personally Publisher is not ready to replace Indesign yet but they are on a good path. Indesign just has years of refinement and development behind it, this will take a while to match.

Personally I would go with GarryP's suggestion. If you just fill the text box the colour is always going to be right at the edge of the text. A colour box behind the text gives you flexibility for design and look.

Affinity is still very new. Adobe has years and years of development and refinement. There will be many things you can do in Photoshop and the rest of CC that you cannot do with Affinity, but I trust that will change in time. For the price the Affinity software is an incredible value, but as you pointed out it will not suite everyone yet. Check back regularly after updates and I am sure at some time it will have what you need.

Before jumping ship from Adobe give Affinity an extensive test. I believe they still have the 90 day trial going on. While the Affinity products are great, they are not replacements for Adobe just yet in my opinion. Price point is amazing and there is a lot of bang for your buck with the software, just not quite there yet. Take your hardest tasks and try them using the Affinity software. If you can accomplish the most gruelling work you have it just may be an adequate replacement for you.

first thing to try when things are not acting as they should is do a restart.

Indesign seems to do the same thing... sometimes. It would change depending how far in I moved the image into the text. Sometimes it would look fine, other times it would indent similarly to what the OP showed with the screen shot... though not as bad as that.

For home users it is not, but you are getting an almost pro level application. Now Indesign CS6 (the last versions you could buy outright) cost around $700, Illustrator $600 and Photoshop another $700. When you can buy the entire Affinity suite for well under half the price of one Adobe application I think that is insanely cheap. Not exactly apples to oranges as Adobe does not sell outright and I have not priced out yearly membership, but basically 3-4 months of subscription from Adobe has bought you the entire suite from Affinity.

I personally would have no issue with the price raised, it is in incredibly cheap for what you are getting as it is and if a higher price point would bring faster change with needed features and flexibility as we are discussing then yes. $75 is still insanely cheap.

You have to buy for a specific OS. Why should buying for a specific OS on the Affinity website store matter? Why not buy the registration key and you decide on which computer you want to use it on, Mac or Windows? That seems like the easiest and simplest way and best solution for the end user as you are not tied to an OS.

I would say stay clear of text in Photo. If you are looking for speech bubbles I would stick to Designer, it is vector and will not lose resolution. Same goes for the text. Text will look infinitely better coming out of Designer then Photos as Photos. Same goes for Photoshop and Illustrator. I hate when people send me files and they set everything up in Photoshop. File would need to have a 1200 dpi for it to be passable by me, though I can be overly picky. Attached is a screen shot of the letter "e" font is Arial Regular. The one on the left is Illustrator, the one on the right is saved from Photoshop in jpeg format at 300 dpi. The difference is clear. You could enlarge the "e" on the left 100000000% and it would not lose any resolution. The "e" on the right only gets worse the bigger you go. You can get away with it, and many people might not notice, but if you only want to do text and speech bubbles I would stick with what will give you the best results and flexibility for editing and adjustments.

What does the water engraver need from a file? All I know is from signs and the cutters we have just need a CutContour path which is done by having a specific labeled spot colour "CutContour". If you are looking for something beyond this I would say you need different software. I would think the controlling software would have some sort of error detection, would not expect that from Affinity or even Adobe.

I think you missed the context, or I possibly was not clear. Adobe got it right with CC as your purchase does not care if you use Mac or Windows. I could have Adobe on my work iMac and have it installed on a PC laptop at the same time. The OS is irrelevant. People paying for the subscription are most likely making money with their Adobe products. They are not hobby tools but pro apps. That being said I hate the forced subscription service but loves the apps. I wish they went back to have options for outright purchase and subscription. Adobe CC did make life a lot easier as everyone has the same version (generally). I no longer need to worry upgrading because one of my clients did and the files they send require me to have the latest.

no answer for you, though I would suggest in the future when buying software buy it from 1 of 3 places. Mac App store, Windows App store or the official website. B&H is now the middleman in this, hopefully it is something that can be resolved quickly.

I do think this is a dated approach to software licensing. Adobe got it right when they switched to CC. It no longer mattered what OS you used (Mac/Windows), all they cared about was that you paid. Other companies have gone this route as well though I think they may all be subscription based. Would be nice for this to go the way of the Dodo, at least for purchases direct from Affinity. Not sure why it would matter much to Affinity if it was only the purchaser using their software. Maybe there are some good reasons, I can't think of any.

No problem. There are online options to convert any files you have already. I have not used them, but if they are not sensitive photos, ie for a customer or client it should work well https://heictojpg.com

It is up to the Affinity people to bring support. Because it works elsewhere does not mean it will work here. Not sure what is involved with adding support for different formats, but I would think it would be on the roadmap as there are a few hundred million iPhone users out there snapping pictures every now and then.

Maybe if you can post a picture in that format someone else with Affinity on Windows can give it a try. I tried taking a picture with my iPhone and sent it to my Mac but it came out jpeg. Not sure if that is a setting that can be changed somewhere to get jpegs rather then .heic I prefer the more open file formats like jpegs, tiffs, and png's. I get why Apple would do this, just creates more headaches for people who cannot work with the files as I am not sure it is all that common. Only had one client come in with heic files, think she took them on her iPad.

Publisher = Adobe Indesign Designer = Adobe Illustrator Photos = Adobe Photoshop Affinity has no competitor for Adobe Acrobat. If you are not doing pro work they are great applications and the price, even at full price, is a great deal for what Affinity has to offer so far. Vector images are usually in formats .eps, .ai, and .svg. These are graphics designed on the computer, fully editable and scalable without losing resolution. Vector files are used for things like logo creation among other things.

Yes it sucks that it happened but it did. Now you need to look at how you fix it and get going. Manually changing a brush extension is simple and easy, like changing the name of a folder on your desktop. To ditch the apps because you do not like that it changed an extension is a bit premature in my opinion. Not sure why you would need to be up all night when you could simply try fixing the brush extension. It is new software, are they ready for pro work? Not for me, but they are getting there. You have an option to try and make a real simple fix and get back to work, seems like you are more keen on complaining about how things should be rather then deal with the unfortunate situation at hand. Personally for work I make money at I am sticking with Adobe, it is an industry standard. You always have risks when converting something made for one software in another.

Where did you buy the app from? App store or the Affinity website? I am assuming the Affinity website and you downloaded the installer which then showed you dragging the app to the application folder. Did you just double click the app and open it from there? If so every time you restart you will have to mount the installer again. It will be in your download folder. Double click the installer again, it will mount a white drive on your desktop. The application will be in there. Instead of opening it in there do what it shows you and drag the app into your application folder

I am assuming you bought it from the Apple App store. You can download without paying again, I have installed all the Affinity app on different computers I own without issue. The step I am assuming you are missing is logging into the App store with the same Apple ID you used when you bought it originally. Once you have logged in you will be able to download any App you purchased. Now if you bought direct from the Affinity website, you will not be able to download the applications from the Apple App store, you will have to login into the Affinity website with the same email address you used to purchase it. You will be able to download from there.

I would try simply changing the extension name of the file. If Affinity is not actually converting you should be ok. If it is converting the file then you might have issues. Are you on a Mac? If so, do you have a TimeMachine backup? If you have that you could go back to the day before you tried it and restore your brushes from before you tried using with Affinity.

No idea if this will work, but in Indesign I would open the application. I would make all my adjustments to settings without a document open up. I would then close Indesign and restart it and all my settings would be retained. Might be worth a shot.

Data merge is not reliant on a PDF fix but many people place a designed PDF in Indesign and then do a data merge using the PDF as a shell. If all your files are native in Publisher no issue, if you are doing a data merge with supplied PDF's then there is an issue. This is why I would want the PDF issues fixed before moving to data merge as I think PDF's are used my many who are doing data merges.