Tony Pritchard

Thanks. I had retired and no longer had access to the work Adobe account. So I could pay Adobe rent or buy Affinity. I made a decision. There are always pros and cons. Overall I think it worked out but for Affinity Publisher to be a commercial competitor, in my view, of InDesign some of the typographic nuances should ideally come into line with expectations. But I'm happy to have gone through the process.

Thanks. It had its struggles. Maybe some of the issues are resolved in new updates. The default optical alignment was a bit much on the left but I could reset those. The main thing was the optical kerning. There wasn't anything as you might find in InDesign. My main kerning issue was the number 1 so I kerned this manually. Overall I managed to achieve what I wanted within Affinity. And importantly when sending to PDF for Print everything worked out with the printer we were using. I also bought the typeface I used. So everything was legit and legal. I doubt if most people would spot the difference between InDesign and Publisher.

Dear Affinity Community I bought Affinity 2.0 to produce a book. I learnt the software from scratch. When I came up against issues I found it useful to post on the forum. The book is now printed and due for distribution. Thank you Affinity and the community. Tony

Thanks for the swift replies. Reassuring. In the troublesome areas I exported the chapter then extracted the single pages I needed in Adobe Acrobat

Thanks Joe, It's an odd one as I have now been able to export a current page as a right hand single page but other 'chapters' won't play so I have exported the chapter and extracted the relevant single pages in Adobe Acrobat. So slightly unresolved but I found a work around as the matter needs to be sorted today. It's a 432pp book with chapters and sections so maybe some complexity got introduced somewhere along the line. I tried your suggestion which would have been what I'd done in the past but something was blocking some of the situations.

Affinity Publisher. I am used to exporting pages for print in single page format as required by traditional printers. I've got individual pages that need correcting so I just need to output those pages. So from the individual document: File > Export > Current Page (or all pages and define range) Or from book: Export > Selected Chapters As Pages It seems to select the current page as the left page even though I am on the right page. It won't allow me to export a single right hand page. I can export the chapter and then either delete pages or extract pages in Adobe Acrobat but I cant export from Affinity Publisher a right hand single page

Thanks MikeTO I appreciate your advice.

Thanks. I took a look and got into more pickle. To over come this where there was a problem. I chose 'continue from previous chapter' in the page options and this seemed to update. I might go through the chapters and click this option on each of them to ensure the numbering occurs from the previous chapter. I should have done this from the outset but didn't know. Does that sound like a sensible way to get the page flow?

I start on page 1, a right hand page (the title page). That 'chapter' ends on page 3. Because of the layout I've started all subsequent chapters as a left start so I have changed the usual right start to a left start for all subsequent chapters after the first three pages. I've done this in document set up. To hopefully rectify the matter, what I've done is the delete the chapter that isn't updating the numbers in sequence ie chapter 2 that jumps to 39. I open this up separately and go to section manager and type a 0 in the 'start page numbering at'. This seems to delete the old page range. I then re-drag the chapter in and it seems to update the number as per my new attachment. I did seem to push the problem down thw chapters. So I deleted those chapters and did the same thing to reset the start page number at and re-dragged those in. It seems that the page numbers are now running in sequence. I'm using the Books feature to get the page numbering. I wouldn't know how to do this other than merge documents. I'm still a bit worried that another ghost in the machine will enter and put the numbers out. It software does feel a bit unstable in this respect. What do you think about what i ahve done to get the pages to run from 1-431?

Another frustration I'm afraid. I have set up a book and dragged files in to make the chapters. Chapter 1 to chapter 2 jumps a page from 37 to 39. Why? What can I do about this? It's put all references out by a page. See attached image. It's panicked me.

Thanks Thomaso. Some useful suggestions here. I think there might have to be a balance between judicial editing and maybe in extreme cases minus tracking the line back. either the way there is some experimentation ahead.

Thanks Lacerto. Useful confirmation. I tried both 10% and 5%. The optical alignment still feels over compensated. There is an overflow in each case. So some judicial editing plus Thomaso's tracking suggestion.

In Affinity Publisher I find the left alignment over done. The A and W in particular hang out the left edge by too much. I see that one can manually adapt this. My concern is that if one changes the left alignment how this impacts the right alignment. I have produced a lengthy book. I am concerned that any change on the left alignment will start the text reflowing. At the moment the ATWY is set at Left 20% and Right 20%. If I change the left to 10% should I compensate on the right alignment eg 30%. Is this how it works? I hope you understand what i mean. I've attached a screenshot of the Optical Alignment area.

Thanks MikeTo. This is really helpful, in fact beyond really helpful. It is what I need as I feel I knew nothing but now have the confidence to go through and check what is needed. It also allows for that conversation to happen with the printer in a more informed way. I am preparing some test prints so will use your guidance to set these up. In pre-flight there are some bleed hazards that I think relate to the picture box and not the image within. I could drag the picture box closer to the image. The image doesn't bleed and it is within the margins, it's just the picture box is bigger. The resample options is intersting but I assume it applies to all images through the document and not individual ones. I have one image that has a weird mottling / moire effect on export to PDF. We might just have to accept that as no-one has come up with an idea as to why it's happening. Anyway thanks for responding – really appreciated.

• Can I assume that when one is ready to export an Affinity Publisher document for sending to a traditional litho printer you choose the 'press ready option'? • Press ready changes the colour space to CMYK which looks right. • Press ready includes bleed which looks right • Press ready deselects 'include layers' – what does this mean? • Should I deselect 'downsample images'? • I don't know what 'rasterise' or 'resample means' • It seems a mine field to me and I want the best end result – any help gratefully received. • Is the default selection when you export safe? • The printer deals with Adobe InDesign and not Affinity Publisher so doesn't advise from this perspective. • I've attached the two PDF options