wonderings

Personally I would like to see REAL competition for Adobes software. I do not want to settle for subpar software just to keep the price down. With that you will get sub par software. It will be OK but it will never be a mainstay application used by professionals as they would then need to find software to do the other things Publisher cannot and Indesign can. Charge $500 for the software or a $1000, just bring the features needed to make this a pro application. Striving to keep the price down will keep the features down that are necessary for a page layout application. They are in a good place for a beta but it is far from finished.

All those features have a purpose, not having them is far worse. You may not use them all, I could do way more with Indesign and the rest of the apps I am sure. I grew into certain things and very glad those features were there. One big one that has its own thread is the ability to data merge (Publisher needs to on release). This is not a bloated unnecessary feature, it is actually a very important and crucial feature to compete against an incredibly well refined app. Not matching feature for feature will lead to an app that is not capable of meeting the needs of professionals. Affinity can add its own twist, do it the Affinity way, but they cannot ignore them if they want a viable app for pro needs. When it comes down to someone looking to buy they are going to look for software that does everything and more then they need. Going down feature for feature between Publisher and Indesign you see Indesign is a clear winner (not fair at the moment I know as Publisher is in beta). As a business I am not going to buy Publisher because it is cheaper, I am going to buy the software that does what I need and possibly more. As I mentioned in a previous post I would happily pay what Adobe was charging for apps before the subscription service became mandatory.

Once you start getting into the in app purchase it can quickly spiral out of control. I would rather a piece of software that has everything I need and more done right and ready for purchase. If Affinity is honestly trying to compete with Adobe then they need to match feature for feature. Anything they leave out is a big negative for Affinity. Things like preflight and data merge are 2 off the top of my head that are must have features for me. Affinity has done some amazing things, I find the application incredibly slick and fast. Definitely a learning curve trying to figure out the Affinity way of doing things when so used to Adobes (I like Adobes way of doing things in applications). No way am I going to put serious time into understanding software that in the end will not be able to handle my needs. If I was a small time user this is definitely the software I would be looking at. It is head over heels better then anything else out there. It, at the moment, is not in the same league as Indesign and possibly Quark (have not used Quark in years).

Without being able to properly handle PDF's the software will never be something a pro user can use. PDF's have increasingly become the standard file format for print and just about everything. 9 out of 10 files we receive from clients come in PDF format. People will pay a higher price for software that works right. The BIG issue with Adobe is being forced into a subscription service. I had no issue paying for the Adobe CS updates when I wanted to do them. I do resent being forced into subscription and if I ever cancel being left with ZERO software, even older versions. If this is ever to be an app used in pro environments PDF support is an absolute must. There is no way around this, it is the standard. If I cannot trust how Publisher is going to handle a PDF then I am never going to use it. As an app for amateurs it has a great feature set and would definitely be the best budget layout app out there.

Is it a graphic heavy PDF or is your computer a little old? Even in beta that sounds extremely slow. I tried exporting a 180 pg PDF from a math textbook and seemed to export as I would expect from Indesign. My computer is a maxed out 5K iMac though with a 1tb flash drive so that helps with a lot of things.

Part of it is a workflow thing. I prefer making the changes to the PDF itself and not edit the PDF in a program that I am saving it with those changes. This really is embedded vs linked. I can have a PDF that needs to be used in a few different jobs, so rather then copy from a Publisher file into a new Publisher file the changes would have been done with the PDF that is to be linked. All changes done now for anything I am using it with. So opposite of you I would like to make changes to the actual PDF, save it, then place it. Unless of course I missed something where Publisher will also resave the edited PDF as well. Microsoft is horrible with PDF's though I find Adobe handles them pretty well, I rarely have issues with them other then trying to fix the customers file to make it work for print (i.e. bleeds, fold position, etc).

Editing PDF's can be a nightmare. I am all for editing a PDF in the right place. Trying to get a page layout program to also properly rip apart a PDF and make it editable is scary. Programs like Illustrator/Designer are going to have far more options to do this when PDF's are complex. Currently Publisher has trouble even placing a PDF without messing things up (from my experience with PDF's made from Word and placed in Publisher). Priority should be on that and not making a PDF editor. I get people wanting this, it has been something people have been asking for for a long time. Again I do not think a page layout program is the best place for this, trying to be too much while ignoring features that are an absolute MUST for any pro page layout software (data merge being one). I do agree with postmadesign that they at least need to have more advanced options when placing a PDF, and even a way to turn this feature off completely. The focus should be on different things at the moment to get a good solid base. People have had trouble editing PDF's for a very long time and I seriously doubt Affinity is going to solve that. They have software that can rip apart a PDF already and let you edit it. Designer would be a much better place to focus this on in my opinion to edit pages of a PDF.

I personally think they should scrap the whole notion of editing PDF's in Publisher.

Ok I see now that it is opening the PDF in a new tab. Have to say that needs some work as the tabs do not stand out at all, had no clue it even had tabbed documents. Would be nice to turn that feature off completely, an accidentally double click and I am in edit mode.

Not sure why Affinity is so insistent on having us edit PDF's in Publisher. PDF's can be a nightmare to edit at the best of times when not using the right software to rip it apart and now they are trying to do this with a page layout program? How can I place a PDF without it making every bit something I can edit??? Sometimes you just want to place a PDF and not have that, well I would say most times I want to be able to just drop a PDF in and not edit it. Seriously, this is something that would be more functional and useful in Designer/Illustrator or directly in Acrobat DC. It is not needed and I for-see it causing more headaches then it is worth to be able to edit a PDF right in Publisher. At the very least give an option to simply place a PDF without the option to edit it in the software. Maybe it is there and I have missed it, I tried clicking various things in the dialogue box that only seems to come up when I drag and drop a PDF outside of the document page. Placing a PDF through file>place does not bring up the dialogue box and directly dropping the PDF inside the page itself does not bring up a dialogue box. Guessing that is a glitch.

Ok see now, document > resource manager. Reminds me of how Quark works, and not the preferred or easiest way in my opinion. That may just come down to personal preference. - Would like (if there is not already) a way to have placed file always be linked rather then embedded - Would like to be able to right click on an image and have an option to edit in the preferred application as Indesign does it - ideally would like a links pane rather then going to resource manager. Much simpler to have a panel that is always open on the side (if I choose to have that) to see if something needs updating, is missing or to click the link and find in the document. Any other issues could be seen with a preflight panel (another of my must have items).

So if I understand it correctly Publisher does not link placed images like indesign, everything seems to be embedded. Seems to me like this might lead to a problem if you want to edit the placed image and using something other then Affinities software. With Indesign I can right click on my image, then select "edit with" and I am given a list of apps to open the image with. This is pretty flexible as you can see from the screen shot I can choose my Adobe apps or I can use Affinity plus a host of other apps of which I will never use for editing a picture. Are we going to be locked into Affinity software for placed images and vectors that need editing because they are embedded ant not linked? Screen Shot 2018-09-14 at 1.14.19 PM by B P, on Flickr

I hope so. Indesign has scripts you can get that add different functionality. There are a few I use for importing multi page PDF's while applying reduction or enlarging at a certain percentage. Super useful when needing to bring in a large PDF to adjust and prep for imposing.

Better solution is contact the printer who you are going to be sending your file to and ask for a template for how they fold it. There are tons of PDF templates out there, but the safest is a template from your printer. Better for printers if software companies stay away from templates that may not actually be correct. Canva has some serious issues with some of their templates and it is seriously annoying to have to fix files that come from this web based design site. Simple thing like business cards are always a mess, at least the ones coming from our customers who use it.

Then it is something that definitely needs to be changed. While it is nice to be able to edit a PDF if I have to, the majority of times it is not needed. Personally I am not a big fan of editing a PDF in a program that did not create it. I do on occasion but only when I am stuck and need to try and make something work.

Here is another screen shot showing a PDF in Publisher and Indesign. Screen Shot 2018-09-14 at 9.27.12 AM by B P, on Flickr I have also extracted a single page from the PDF (same page as the preview above) for others to test and see if the same issue is happening on their end. test page.pdf

I cannot attach a PDF unfortunately, not my file to distribute. I did not create the PDF myself. When I looked at the properties it says it was created in Microsoft Word. I did not open it as an edible file in Publisher, I simply placed the file. I agree it is very easy to make PDF's from Word and from experience I have never seen this happen to a PDF.

Is it only this one file that you have that will not export? Maybe there is something wonky in it causing problems. Not common but I have had a few problem files over the years that would not export correctly to PDF.

I searched for it but did not find anything, maybe it is under a different name but I am suspecting it is not there. That being said preflight is a crucial tool as well if this software is going to be used in a pro environment. Again looking at Indesign who have years of fine tuning, they have a preflight box that is customizable, allows me to set my own preflights based on the job at hand. Be it a black only job, or RGB or CMYK, or multi colour spot/pantones, I can set it for what I need and quickly and easily see if there are any problems with the job I am working on, from fonts, text reflow, colours, whatever. Incredibly handy tool and really a must for pro use.

In regards to CS6, not sure where your issue is but I have no problem downloading CS6 and installing and activating with my serial # that is in my Adobe account. Do you log on on the Adobe website and go to your account and see your purchases and serial numbers? Your entire history should be there with everything you need to install.

It is too faint with some colour backgrounds. If they just followed Indesigns lead on this one there would be no issues. The magenta colour Adobe uses does not get lost no matter what colour you make your background. If you look at my first post with the first image you will see the bleed line is very hard to see.

Why would you want to work without knowing how big your page is? Anyways, that is a different function then the preview function I would like to see added.

Not sure what that function is even for, but not even remotely the same as Indesigns preview Here is Indesign and you can clearly see the document is cropped to preview after hitting "w" for preview mode: Screen Shot 2018-09-11 at 10.15.13 AM by B P, on Flickr And now Publisher, you can clearly see that all hitting "ctrl w" does is remove any guide lines, page lines, bleeds lines and just leaves a big clear view of the picture, inside and out of the document. Not helpful and again not sure what the purpose is for it. Screen Shot 2018-09-11 at 10.15.27 AM by B P, on Flickr

Or they could just look at Indesign and the years of fine tuning and stop trying to reinvent the wheel. In Indesign the guides stay forefront, they cannot be covered by anything to you place on the page. So no need for colour options or customization (not a bad thing, but not necessary). The only way the guides disappear is viewing in preview mode (just hit "w"). Which is a feature I would like to see implemented if not there already (cannot find it). Preview mode gets rid of all outside objects and guides to see the finished page view. Very helpful and something I use regularly.

Think you might want to post this in the Windows section. This is the mac portion and there is no real installer. Just open up a .dmg file and drag and drop the application into the application folder and you are done.