nwhit

+1

Curious on the Dictionaries for languages/spell checking if you will have both a British English as well as American? While our company is in the US, we do a lot of work in the UK, so do need to be able to spell check for each. Thanks.

Aha! I see that the Crop tool does, indeed allow the image frame to be "cropped" in APub. Odd way to do it, but it appears to work. Select image, select crop tool, crop the frame. then using the select tool, double-click to move/slide the image to reframe.

+1

Yes, absolutely need to be able to easily resize the frame to crop images.

A key difference is/was that Adobe had already bought what was a very mature (at the time) PageMaker from Aldus (as well as FreeHand). During the transition, many of us kept on using PageMaker until InDesign caught up. But we always had a translator to go back and open PageMaker docs in InDesign for quite some time. Our work was not hugely interrupted nor did we face an issue where what we were doing and creating in PageMaker would be "lost" later when moving to the newer InDesign. Many of us weren't thrilled at the time about having to eventually move to ID, but at least Adobe did a somewhat reasonable job of helping the transition of PM files to ID. Thus we have to hope that Affinity can/will be able to offer a similar path. We will have to eventually be able to bring our legacy files into their Publisher app, and sooner would obviously be better for a more rapid adoption of the new app. Just like many apps can open, read and save-as Word documents in word processing, ID files are critical to many pro designers and shops.

Suffice it to say that InDesign is and has been the predominant software for the creation of professionally printed documents and their associated PDF derivatives for various uses. Ever since PageMaker and then InDesign, this is the most-used "creation" software by professional shops. While there are many others (and I've used and taught most of the biggies over the years like Quark and FrameMaker), professional media creation shops still mostly use InDesign to create documents for offset printing and pdf versions of that print job; and print shops will most often have it as well if it is desired to have them open and adjust a file. Therefore, as per my earlier post, we as a creative and media production shop have thousands of client documents/files already created in InDesign. It would be essential to be able to open and convert them in the new A-Pub. If that cannot be done, about 60-80% of our client work could not be done in the new app since the clients are not going to be willing to have us recreate existing documents (but needing updates, etc.) at their expense. And we sure aren't going to do it at our expense! As I said in my earlier post, for Affinity it's a matter of a slow rollout versus a faster rollout. If media production shops cannot use it to integrate into their InDesign workflow for clients until much later versions, then it will only be used for a "new" job or messing around. But even then, why create a client's job in a totally new format if that's not supported at other agencies, clients and print shops? In the pro world, you really do need to be able to share editable files and currently InDesign is the one most have/use. I would love to adopt Affinity Pub. It looks good in the preview video and we do like AP and AD. But we need to be able to correctly open InDesign files in order to actually use the new app for more than playing around. That's just business.

The upgrades to Mac AP and AD as of March 1. The "news" is this thread and the preview video in the first post.

While noticing today's new upgrades for AP and AD, I stumbled across this news and the video. Sounds great! While I oftentimes hate to admit it, I started out on PageMaker 1.0 with the then brand new LaserWriter ($6k+) and Mac SE. I not only used virtually all early DTP/graphics software and new iterations for many of my companies (including a media production company), I also taught the software during its several-year rollout. Also evangelized and set-up numerous ad agencies, media producers, newspapers, printers and university "commercial art" departments in the "new" electronic publishing and graphics methods and equipment/software. Over the years, I used and taught most of the popular software packages. Some good, many terrible. I came from the "manual" world, so understood what was really needed for day-to-day production versus flashy features. My 2¢ on the new A-Publisher is that I hope it can correctly open recent InDesign documents (we've stayed pre-cloud). While I saw one poster who wondered why anyone wanted to open an old document, the reality of media production has been and still is the ability to use the thousands of client files we store to either update materials, specifications, pics, etc., or to use an old publication/document as the basis for a totally "new" design -- but a "new" design that uses much of the old design as its basis. Just how it is for commercial design/publication work. And clients most often aren't willing to simply abandon otherwise good publications. Many just don't spend money for total from-scrartch redo's. Thus recycling is critical to a normal workflow. If accurate import of InDesign (notice that I didn't ask for import of PageMaker docs???? ;-D ) is not available or working well, it would terribly slow down the adoption of this new software. Just can't spend client's money rebuilding hundreds and hundreds of previously created work. There are many other "base" features that are important in DTP, but I assume Affinity has studied ID for quite some time. But it doesn't hurt to verify with people who make their living with this software every day for many, many years what are "nice to have" versus "critical". Could mean the difference between rapid adoption versus a multi-year roll-out. I'll keep my eyes and ears open to see how this all shapes up. Very encouraging. While our staff still occasionally curse and swear at things that can't be done in AP and AD, overall have been very pleased. So that bodes well for Publisher!

Well, here we are at v1.6.6 and into Feb 2018 -- still no sticky prefs/settings. Really a bummer. When we process 500-1,000 pics a day, really causes a lot of extra keystrokes/clicks/time/work. Love AP overall, but this seems like such a minor, minor thing to fix. And I do recall someone from Affinity promising that it was going to be fixed/added in v1.6. Sadly, our clients end up paying for the extra time/work. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE -- again! Please fix this for all of us who really use your great app! While it might seem like an insignificant thing, it is a HUGE thing when you do a lot of repetitive work in the app.

I agree on this. We were promised sticky settings for a wide variety of things in 1.6, but did not get them. Still cannot have settings for cropping, output presets, tool hardness, color swatches, etc., etc. stay/stick. EACH of us have prefs for many of these things based on our type of work and work flow, yet we waste time constantly having to reset things all over the place. And just trying to remember some of the settings each time is almost impossible, so we end up with varying settings each time we have to rest what is the "default". And so many of the defaults simply make no sense. Photo cropping is most often constrained to the original ratio and most want a darkened surround to preview the crop. Yet we cannot set that as a default! And color swatches for many, many people should have a default of colors, not greys. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE! Let people set their own prefs for these things by making them sticky like in most all other apps. We need to be able to set things for our workflow and be able to quit the app and still keep our most used settings. We were promised this here in this forum by Affinity and I am very disappointed that we did not get it.

No, installed just fine for me. (macOS 10.12.6)

I have the same question: How can I buy a gift copy of the Windoze version for someone? Really hoping there is a solution as I would like this young person to be able to get started with this software.

Currently in AP when you try to close a window/file that hasn't been saved, it gives you a pop-up to Save, etc. However, it does not then complete the Close of the window/file. You have to do a new Close command. Normal behavior in all other apps is the do the Save, then complete the close. Really slows down a workflow as is.

SOLVED! Stumbled across the Layer/New Live Filter/Depth of Field Filter. This is, essentially, the typical and common blur vignette, but also has the option for the "Tiny Town"/Tilt-Shift effect. IMPORTANT: Took me a while to figure out why I was getting a white border around my picture after applying the filter. Apparently you need to check the Preserve Alpha option in the adjustment pane. Not covered in the Help, but found a reference to it in the forum.

Yes, having processed several hundred pics recently, some needing cropping, I WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE! Seems the default should be constrain to original and darken in the first place! A real pain to have to switch it every time. Just more steps in the workflow.

There are numerous reasons to not disclose EXIF to either clients or end viewers. If you're not aware of the issues involved, you may not need it. But for many professional uses, it is required.

Thanks for the advice. I'm brand new to AP, moving from PS and Aperture. Trying to use AP for the job, primarily because I like the new Tone Mapping, etc. Since I'm in the middle of trying to get these pics back to the client, could you briefly walk me through the steps to do as you suggested? I've not used either, so am at a loss as where to start with those methods. For this morning, I may just have to rely on the NIK plugin to some shots done until I can learn how to do what you suggest. Thanks.

I now see that in NIK Collection, Color Effects Pro there is a simple Vignette Blur tool. Just hoping I can do it within AP to avoid the slowness of loading a NIK plugin.

I'm not getting this either. Have always used a vignette tool with a blur option. I have tried the suggestions above, but don't get the classic blurred vignette effect. If I make an oval selection around the subject, then tell it to invert the selection, I cannot get a feathered edge no matter how high I set the feathering (under Select) In fact, as I increase the Feather, it brings in the selection border from around the outside edge of the photograph, not wanted since it lightens the blur effect around the edge of the photo. I tried converting the selection to Outline as suggested, but the blur effect ends up inside a ring around the subject, not a graduated radial blur out from the center of the selection. If I try to invert that outline, it blurs the center of the selection and outside the outer ring of the selection. All I want is the plain old, standard blurred vignette with feathering of the circle/oval selection. Need it to process a few dozen pics, so not looking for a laborious process, just a fast repeatable tool like in all other photo and video apps from PS, FCP, etc., to Aperture. Hopefully someone can provide some advice on this. I just started a client project where I need this and it's very frustrating to not be able to do something simple like this.

Noticed that in the Macro Library pane/panel, if I close all the subs, when I restart the app they are all open again. 99% of the macros for styles, enhancements, etc. are seldom used. Really only want my own showing most of the time. The look of this pane/panel should stay sticky to however you last set it.

Would save a LOT of time if in the Export Persona the Export preset last used would be sticky. When processing a lot of pics, would save a step and insure using the correct preset for that batch. Thanks.

I've also noticed in trying to use this on a job that the export preset doesn't stick. Every time I go to the Export Persona, I have to reselect the preset. Any way to get it to stick?

Another question. For our workflow, we shoot AEB, then in AP we merge, tone map, make corrections, then export to the client's specified size (width) and format. I noticed that after the merge we end up with a layer name of background and when we go to the Export Persona and try to use a preset for size, type, etc. as discussed above, the output files are all the same name: "background". In looking at the custom Name box in the output configuration, I don't see anything there to be able to create an output file name with something like a custom name with a sequential numbering system. Is that possible (sequential numbered filenames), or are we stuck having to hand type every output filename on several hundred output files per job? Thanks.

I have the same question in AP. I found the hidden dialog in Export Pers/Slices, but I can't figure how to save these preset file sizes to be used in the normal file/export window? We're in need of the ability to take a few hundred shots and outputting them at various web quality and sizes, but find it a pain to have to set the size for each file. The Export Persona seems to be a slower method to accomplish this in our daily workflow. Is it possible to get these new presets created in Export Persona to be selectable in the File/Export dialog?