wonderings

I would imagine APUB is still showing total individual pages. Facing pages does not change how many pages are in the document, just how they are laid out. Facing pages shows what it will look like when open. For a perfect bound you will want to move your text out from the centre, this will depends on how large the book is. I recently did a 178 page perfect bound book (89 sheets) and shifted out away from the spine about .25". When you think about a book think how it opens, you lose things into that binding as you are not really seeing the whole sheet. When exporting make sure you are doing single pages and not in spreads.

You need to know the stock weight you are using. We generally use 60lb and 70lb for perfect bound books. When your book is completely formatted so you have the exact number of pages your printer should be able to tell you how thick it will be. I do it the old fashion way and just count out however many sheets it will use and measure it with a ruler.

Also Adobe you are paying monthly with recurring revenue, Affinity is a one time purchase, how long should they offer cloud services for free after purchase before jumping to a subscription plan?

The basic colours for print are CMYK. I would take the few basic colours over an endless list that is given by default. Again this is not an issue with the software as it all works, just not a great basic setup in my opinion. It is all subjective. I do think a simplified basic swatch list is far simpler and easier to start with then every hue imaginable. You can build that as you go if you really need that for every single job you setup.

I would hope you get updates for the version you bought. If they stopped giving me free updates for V1 after 2 years when no new V2 has been released I would say that is pretty low for software development. I don't need to justify $636 a year for the global standard in desktop publishing and a hardly inferior software package. The money made for a years software is easily covered in a days work. If a PS update broke your workflow you really need to do better testing before updating new software. Thankfully with Adobe CC you can install previous versions very simply with a few mouse clicks. Great that you can print RAW photos straight from Photo, we stopped worrying about print drivers years ago and rely on RIP's to run our wide form, digital and anything else we print from. Now all our wide form is 44", 54" and 64", maybe it is normal for the smaller desktop to run it direct through a printer drive, just seems very old fashion to me to still be going about it this way. Again you complete devalue a standard. If you are working by yourself then great that you have found a cheap solution that works for you. Most are not operating this way and knowing what I have is what is used by virtually everyone else on the planet in the same industry simplifies life. You technically do not own any of your software, you have a licensee agreement that you need to follow. You cannot rip your software apart, play with code, add to it however you want. You are locked down, though I do get your point. You are paying less by "renting" software from Adobe then you would be if you bought it flat out every 2 years. If you are not making enough for this to be financially viable then I would suggest either looking at your business model or you are in the hobbyist category.

I am well aware I can make a custom pallet, this is not the issue. The default swatch should be basic the basic colours and simplified without the need for users to create their own. This is not a make or break thing of course as it is customizable, just an annoying UI that I do not think is all that functional. Could just be me of course. The other thing that is severely missing is for spots and pantones inside of placed files to show in the swatch panel as it does in Indesign. Now this is a very functional feature. If you were to look back at my original screen shot comparing Publisher to Indesign. If I were to drop a PDF with Pantone 032 in my Indesign file, in the swatches panel I would automatically see 032 C there, no need to hunt around a convoluted pallet/swatch system, just there and usable for anything I may need to do to match and use colours present in the placed document. It is so simple and basic and I think, as I have again said before, they should flat out copy Adobe on this rather then try and re-invent the wheel.

You are still going to have fragmentation when you pay for every update because many people are just not going to do it. Not everyone stays up to date on what is out and what is new, they have something that works and they just keep plugging along. This works fine when you are isolated to yourself but can be a mess when you need to play with others and share files. As you mentioned it was $1500 for the master collection. If you update every 2 years it is cheaper to be on the subscription plan then it is to buy out right. Anyone starting now really needs to stick with the standard if they intend to work with other people in the industry because they will quickly find it is not so easy collaborating in an Adobe dominated world with something other than Adobe. Adobe made a business decision to go this route, as did many others. There are many positives for the end user with a monthly subscription and I think they are far outweighs the negatives. Again not for everyone, if you are not making enough from the software to pay for $55 a month that it is obviously not geared towards you. You thankfully have options, and a great suite of options that has not been there before Affinity. It is very cheap and feature rich and hopefully one day will do everything you need it to do!

Your perpetual licenses are still good on top of CC, they are perpetual, not dependant on a subscription. The price is actually a little cheaper for CC if you were to upgrade a perpetual license every 2 years. I can still install CS6 from my perpetual license with no issue (as long as the OS supports it), same goes for CS5. The only reason I have ever gone back to an older version of the software was because of a plugin that was not out for the latest version. This is not a common thing needing to go back to old software to open old files as the new files will open fine in the vast majority of cases in the latest version. If you don't see the value then it is not for you obviously, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is Adobe's job to make software to bring people in, and they are doing that as their increase in users continues to rise. Everyone considers Adobe the default because it is an industry standard which again I think you minimize the important of. Knowing I am using the exact same software as the design house, print shop or anyone else is a HUGE breath of fresh air from the days of everyone on different versions and updates. Affinity will have this issue when they get beyond V1. The adobe house is far from falling and again bringing in the money for Adobe, there is no decline at the moment for Adobe, it seems to be your strange emotional anger against the company as you call for a "fall" like it is some tyrannical government. I bought all 3 apps from Affinity to see what they were doing, and I like what they have done so far but it is not something I am going to replace Adobe for and it will take a very long time for that to happen to make them anything like Adobe, being the standard they are. You can make your sky is falling predictions all you want, but the numbers do not lie and professionals do not balk at the price of the software that makes them their money and plays well with virtually everyone else. It is the outsides, the corel users, quark users, affinity users that make things difficult (when they have not setup their files properly, lots of good files come from all these apps).

you want to have a hyper link embedded in the image itself that is displayed in Facebook? Not sure if that can be done, would actually be a scary thing if images had hidden hyperlinks that you click on the picture would then bring you to whatever webpage is associated with it.

That is your personal opinion and not based on any factual statistics. People did not have to sign up for CC, they could have been working in CS6 to this day as long as they did not upgrade their OS. You can have ideas and fantasies, but they are purely hypothetical and it does not work that way. Photoshop used to be bundled for free with scanners, they have come a long way and are the standard. Standards themselves are nothing to push aside lightly, they make life so much easier for the industry that has them. If everyone were to jump to Affinity today you would see the headaches come after a few versions when people did not pay to upgrade to the latest version. People were pirating Adobe and anything and everything else because they do not want to pay. If you can't afford the price of pro software then again it is not made for you. Stealing it because it is too expensive does not prove anything but that people will steal anything they can get their hands on. File versions definitely do matter if you want consistency, if everyone is using different software and swiping files around you are in for some massive headaches and unhappy clients. Not sure why the animosity towards Adobe, they are just a software company, not an evil corp trying to dominate the world. They make software, good software for all sorts of creative things. If you don't like it you don't have to use it.

Adobe is not geared for the hobbyist, it is designed and priced for production pro environments where people are making their living with the software. Right or wrong is a matter of opinion, this is what Adobe wants though. If they wanted to go after the casual users they would definitely need a cheaper light option. Indesign, Illustrator and Photoshop are still the holy trinity of desktop publishing. They are the standard. There are few people still using Quark and Corel, but from my anecdotal experience they are older shops who are just maintaining and serving the customer base they have till they retire. I don't think anyone would say Adobe is perfect, there is always room for improvement but the mere fact that any design house, any print shop, anyone in the industry are almost all using the same version is amazing. I remember the days of dealing with files from various versions, needing to update or to get the client to send in IDML files, or PDF's to try and work from that. Those headaches are almost completely gone. Affinity does not have that issue right now as they are still V1. What happens when Affinity is 4 or 5 versions in? You are going to have that fragmentation again if files do not move across older and newer versions. I think it is great for anyone who can move to Affinity, the savings are huge! The reality is though that many many many people/shops cannot switch over for various reasons. The forums are full of them with people trying to accomplish the same thing with Publisher, Designer and Photos. I have had one file come in that was made with Designer. It was simple and easy to edit in Designer, but there was no difference then if I was dealing with an Illustrator file, they both just work. It will take a lot to topple the standard because they very idea of a standard is so much better then pockets of people all using different software and trying to work together to get good end results. Affinity has great software for a great price and they are better suited for those home users where $60 a month is a heavy burden.

The price is so incredibly cheap already, not sure why you would expect new features because of a simple price hike. If your business is running that lean that you cannot afford the monthly Adobe subscription I would question the viability of that business. We have many licenses so pay a fair bit every month but that is a small fraction of what we bring in using the software. I have not seem the doom and gloom you seem to be seeing with the Adobe apps, yes they have little glitches now and then but nothing that has made it completely unusable or have had noticeable performance issues for me. I would also not say the "Adobe house is falling". From what I see their user base is continuing to grow. Now with Affinity you are getting a whole heck of a lot of features for all 3 apps that run just about the same amount as one month of Adobe. It is not something I would switch to as I like what Adobe is doing with CC and it has solved so many headaches going this route.

I think most people don't care as much as you think they do. If people really hated Adobe why is their user base continually rising? Windows 11 from my understanding is going to be free for anyone using Windows 10 so upgrading on that alone costs nothing. Of course you need a PC that supports Windows 11 which seems like it is going to be a very small number to start. That being said the OS is becoming less and less important. I prefer Mac OS but like Windows 10 as well, but very little time is spent in the actual OS itself, it is all spent in the applications.

It is all anecdotal really, but I don't have any clients or design houses holding onto CS6 or earlier. Everyone I deal with is using CC. This saves so many headaches and as you mentioned and you get rid of those incompatibility issues. I think it is safe to say the vast majority are using Adobe CC. They continue to grow and increase their subscriptions so there is no large pocket of hold outs otherwise I think you would see Adobe looking at changing their strategy. I have not been forced to update yet on my iMac. I am still on Mojave, and we have a few computers using High Sierra as well with latest Adobe offerings.

Adobe for the most part has fixed this issue with CC. Now everyone has the same version or with the click of button can have the same version with no added cost beyond their monthly fee. I can't remember the last time I had issues with a designer or another shop and having different versions of the big Adobe trio. Adobe also allows you to keep older versions when upgrading as well and it is not limited to one version. I don't think there is a limit really though I only keep one version back incase something went wonky with the new. This is more a habit as I can still download and install the previous version if I need to.

Looks the same to me in Photo and Photoshop (latest version). What does look different is when viewing a preview through Mac OS and in the Preview app in Mac OS. Background comes out very black. The attached screen shot is the quick view and the PSD opened in Preview.

Depending on the complexity of the image and the background you want removed, it does not always take that long to remove the "paper" from the scan. You can do select all the white background and delete. Issues come when colours are close to white and get selected as well as the white. You can do it all manually and again, unless a super complex image like trying to remove background through foliage or strands of hair, it is not super time consuming. If it is worth paying for there is a website you can use and do it yourself. You can see with a low quality image how it will come out before paying for anything https://www.remove.bg

You have Affinity licenses but have not used Windows for years, are you using a Mac or just super generous to buy software you don't use? What do you get with this port if you had the group in the link you posted do it? What happens when Affinity has updates, are they given the base Linux code to do this themselves? Curious how this would work for developers who do not have in house people to maintain and program for Linux.

There are Apple certified repair places (not Apple stores) that will do this all for reasonable prices, at least around here. There are also kits you can buy on OWC to do these things yourself. It can be finicky but can be done. And if you are tossing the computer anyways why not try? At the very least if it is a hard drive issue you can boot off an external.

If it is a relatively new Mac then it is either under AppleCare warranty. If only a couple please years old then this is incredibly bad luck and I would be more upset by a new Mac dying then I would be about $149 worth of software. I think it is safe to assume it is a Mac that has been around for a few years, and those are much easier to fix.

In what way were you cheated? It is unfortunate that your computer died, but that is not Affinities issue and nothing malicious was done. I would question what died on your Mac. I have been using Mac's for a long time and I think I have come across only one that just completely up and died. If it is a hard drive you can replace that for cheap and be up and running again in no time.

It may not be as simple fixing the issues right now, I am sure they would be working on it otherwise word would get around that the software is unstable and would ultimately kill the business. It is obviously not happening fast enough for some. I don't think Affinity giving a clear statement would really help anything, people still go on and on about why they should do this or that. The Linux thread is a great example, it has been said from Affinity they are not looking to develop for Linux at the moment but still it goes on.

I think trying to have user input on direction can lead you all over the place. Not all users are active or even on the forums. I am sure they have a road map and direction they are planning that they have strategized about. You are never going to please everyone, what is important for some is not important to others. Others may need more work to impliment or are not realistic. So you have a bunch of people vote for what they want, they win the vote but then Affinity vetos it as not being feasible yet and you are right back where you started with some people not being happy. I rarely use the Affinity software, I bought it to test and see what is out there against Adobe (which I use professionally and really like). The resources at Affinity pale in comparison to Adobe or many other software developers. Expecting the same level of software as Adobe's but for a fraction of the cost is not realistic. Not saying they should not be trying to put out the best, bug free, software they can, they just have limitations with their few hundred staff compared to the 10's of thousands at Adobe.

Thankfully only a very small number of my clients ever request a working file. Not really an issue for me as I work with Adobe so it is a standard format but I do understand the frustration. If you can work faster and better and produce the same quality of work for a fraction of the cost of Adobe I would hate hitting that brick wall when someone needs a format that is not native.

You don't even need cracking tools, I can do it simply and free in Mac OS with the tools that come with every Mac computer. I still use password protecting on my proofs I send out, most of my clients are not tech savvy and other shops around here have passed up on jobs because they could not get around the security.