nicolasbulb

Okay, I'm an early beta user of all the Affinity suite and I'm convinced it's getting better and better after each update.
I hope I'm wrong but I can't find a way to work on photos or bitmap illustrations in Affinity Photo with duotones, tritones and even quadritones with spot colours via the channel like I'm doing it with Photoshop. Is it possible? It would really help me to get rid of Photoshop for good.
To clarify my process, in Photoshop, I'm working in Greyscale mode and then I'm adding spot colours via the Channel panel. Photoshop is then able to simulate in Grey mode the spot colours and simulate the overprint of each colour. While working with spot colours on illustrations, I'm having 1200 dpi A3 files in greyscale mode which gives me quite small files size while working with large high resolution files. This is super handy. Most people working with silkscreen print process know what I'm talking about.
I'd also love to be able to work with bitmap 1 bit image in Affinity Photo as well but I don't think I can do that either.
Many thanks.

Yay, finally! But as a heavy Layercomp user in Adobe Photoshop, I'm wondering:
- is it possible to assign shortcuts to function like: update State / Next State / Previous State?
- is it possible to create an action to automatically create State like Before/After?
 
Many thanks…

Please, please add a filter function in order to search inside the Preferences/Shortcuts, because it's starting to be very tricky to manage all these functions. PhaseOne CaptureOne Pro has a really nice one… check here…

Please, please add a filter function in order to search inside the Preferences/Shortcuts, because it's starting to be very tricky to manage all these functions. PhaseOne CaptureOne Pro has a really nice one… check here…

Thanks for the trick. The same I was using before InDesign implemented the more convenient one. I'm going to fill a "feature request" and in the meantime I'll try the trick. Cheers. 

Okay, again I'm raising up the request to support 1-bit bitmap into Affinity Photo channels in order to create artworks for screenprint like we can do it in Photoshop 2.0. I'm supporting Affinity since day one when I've bought the very first beta of Affinity Designer and I was eager to see the full potential. But seriously after almost 7 years, I've used it professionally only once. I still support it and advise it as an alternative to the entire Adobe mess but I need 1-bitmap support and a better way to assign spot colour to channel.

Mmmh… in artschool, silkscreen and Riso are back for some time now in the "young" ones for small press publication. And even when working with tech printing for luxury watchmakers with CMYK + 1 or 2 spots inks, the ability to add some supercrisp 1200dpi bitmap at 1-bit is still super handy, especially when you're working with trapping that let the original artworks remain crisp. So yeah, Affinity, I'm an independent graphic designer and image production tech for more than 25 years, and I truly believe 1-bit is still super useful. The recent update of Affinity Photo with some better channel option is going into the right direction but for highly efficient and professional works sadly the whole Affinity suite is not ready yet despite all the magnificent features.
It's lacking:
- the ability to work with true 1-bit bitmap, with the ability to spot colorizing
- the ability to properly assign overprints and knockouts.
- the ability create spot colours channels with transparency options in order to emulate some opaque inks like metallic ones and blend them with standard offset transparent ones.
- the ability to preview channels one by one before exporting to a PDF in order to spot some eventual problem with overprints or knockouts.
- a true Acrobat Pro PDF like software in the suite in order to check trap inks, etc.
- the ability to scripts all the app in the Suite in order to automate some crucial professional workflow.
 
Well… 7 years after I've bought the first beta of Affinity Designer, I still hope and believe you can do it. It's almost there.
 
Thanks.

I have the same issue with all three v2's since day one, even I do NOT have the Yield icon. I tried everything, from deleting and overwriting the ⌘! to set to Affinity Default. If i set the Zoom-In to ⌘+, it switches back to ⌘!, or sometimes to ⌘1.

Thanks for the trick. The same I was using before InDesign implemented the more convenient one. I'm going to fill a "feature request" and in the meantime I'll try the trick. Cheers. 

There's been a longstanding request in the Publisher v1 forum to add GREP into Text styles. I was excited to see the announcement about v2 but saddened to see this didn't make it in. Since the feature isn't there (yet? ) and since those v1 forums are being archived, I'm bringing the request into this new forum to keep it alive.
For a specific kind of technical document I work with, there are dozens of types of replacements that need to happen on the text in new docs, within one text style. Having the GREP expressions in the style definition makes all of these replacements happen in one click of applying a style, rather than a laborious effort to do them individually.
I understand that this isn't a mainstream feature, but it's so, so helpful to those that need it. Since the engine is already in the software, it seems like it shouldn't be a huge deal to be able to attach GREP search/replace expressions into a text style. I could be wrong, of course, as I'm not a developer. But I (and many others) would very much appreciate this coming in a new update.
 

Mmmh… in artschool, silkscreen and Riso are back for some time now in the "young" ones for small press publication. And even when working with tech printing for luxury watchmakers with CMYK + 1 or 2 spots inks, the ability to add some supercrisp 1200dpi bitmap at 1-bit is still super handy, especially when you're working with trapping that let the original artworks remain crisp. So yeah, Affinity, I'm an independent graphic designer and image production tech for more than 25 years, and I truly believe 1-bit is still super useful. The recent update of Affinity Photo with some better channel option is going into the right direction but for highly efficient and professional works sadly the whole Affinity suite is not ready yet despite all the magnificent features.
It's lacking:
- the ability to work with true 1-bit bitmap, with the ability to spot colorizing
- the ability to properly assign overprints and knockouts.
- the ability create spot colours channels with transparency options in order to emulate some opaque inks like metallic ones and blend them with standard offset transparent ones.
- the ability to preview channels one by one before exporting to a PDF in order to spot some eventual problem with overprints or knockouts.
- a true Acrobat Pro PDF like software in the suite in order to check trap inks, etc.
- the ability to scripts all the app in the Suite in order to automate some crucial professional workflow.
 
Well… 7 years after I've bought the first beta of Affinity Designer, I still hope and believe you can do it. It's almost there.
 
Thanks.

It is not hard to understand that InDesign is a real beast to compete with. It would be great to see some steps being taken in the right direction though .
I understand it is complex and all that, and also of course, we need to understand that it took a few years even for a giant like Adobe to push InDesign to supersede Quark in this respect, even though it was launched as a "Quark-killer", with a very modularised buildup, promising fast development of plugins from third-party developers. But while Quark had its XPress Tags, it had nothing like InDesign's ESTK.
The way forward for Affinity? Maybe it could be good to utilise extended javascript, like Adobe did. I am not a developer, I just "cheat". It sounds like a lot of work making the DOM and parts of the interface available for a scripting language. But since we have other possibilities today, maybe it would be smart to look at, for instance, Lua? Python would be another possibility, having been used a lot for similar things, and being just as easy, if not easier, to learn than Javascript. It may feel more "worth it" in these days to learn Python, for an inexperienced would-be Publisher automator developer.
To continue with the more technical aspects: the big big change for InDesign and usability/automation friendliness came when they switched from INCX/INCD to ICML/IDML. Every collection of objects (one or many) in a document could be replicated in any other document by the use of so called snippets (INDS), supporting every possible object you can think of making inside inDesign, save for the actual document "framework". Best of all, the code is valid XML, not just some tagged text.
The same goes for every collection of objects in a text frame/story. The code is very wordy, and a bit strange when you look at it, but the way they solved it, everything in a story is viewed as a "text style range", so there is no hierarchy with paragraphs and such. This also means the underlying "tagged text" is totally portable. But very hard to read for a human being. I can heartily recommend a look at the code in an InDesign snippet, or an exported InCopy Story. It is totally readable (although, as I said, very wordy) in any text editor. 

Thanks for confirming that for me and I'm sorry to hear you've needed to disable Metal for this document - however as you mention this makes it much easier to report the issue to our developers, so I will be sure to do this now

Mmmh… in artschool, silkscreen and Riso are back for some time now in the "young" ones for small press publication. And even when working with tech printing for luxury watchmakers with CMYK + 1 or 2 spots inks, the ability to add some supercrisp 1200dpi bitmap at 1-bit is still super handy, especially when you're working with trapping that let the original artworks remain crisp. So yeah, Affinity, I'm an independent graphic designer and image production tech for more than 25 years, and I truly believe 1-bit is still super useful. The recent update of Affinity Photo with some better channel option is going into the right direction but for highly efficient and professional works sadly the whole Affinity suite is not ready yet despite all the magnificent features.
It's lacking:
- the ability to work with true 1-bit bitmap, with the ability to spot colorizing
- the ability to properly assign overprints and knockouts.
- the ability create spot colours channels with transparency options in order to emulate some opaque inks like metallic ones and blend them with standard offset transparent ones.
- the ability to preview channels one by one before exporting to a PDF in order to spot some eventual problem with overprints or knockouts.
- a true Acrobat Pro PDF like software in the suite in order to check trap inks, etc.
- the ability to scripts all the app in the Suite in order to automate some crucial professional workflow.
 
Well… 7 years after I've bought the first beta of Affinity Designer, I still hope and believe you can do it. It's almost there.
 
Thanks.

Hey Affinity, is there any news about 1-bit support?

Mmmh… in artschool, silkscreen and Riso are back for some time now in the "young" ones for small press publication. And even when working with tech printing for luxury watchmakers with CMYK + 1 or 2 spots inks, the ability to add some supercrisp 1200dpi bitmap at 1-bit is still super handy, especially when you're working with trapping that let the original artworks remain crisp. So yeah, Affinity, I'm an independent graphic designer and image production tech for more than 25 years, and I truly believe 1-bit is still super useful. The recent update of Affinity Photo with some better channel option is going into the right direction but for highly efficient and professional works sadly the whole Affinity suite is not ready yet despite all the magnificent features.
It's lacking:
- the ability to work with true 1-bit bitmap, with the ability to spot colorizing
- the ability to properly assign overprints and knockouts.
- the ability create spot colours channels with transparency options in order to emulate some opaque inks like metallic ones and blend them with standard offset transparent ones.
- the ability to preview channels one by one before exporting to a PDF in order to spot some eventual problem with overprints or knockouts.
- a true Acrobat Pro PDF like software in the suite in order to check trap inks, etc.
- the ability to scripts all the app in the Suite in order to automate some crucial professional workflow.
 
Well… 7 years after I've bought the first beta of Affinity Designer, I still hope and believe you can do it. It's almost there.
 
Thanks.

Mmmh… in artschool, silkscreen and Riso are back for some time now in the "young" ones for small press publication. And even when working with tech printing for luxury watchmakers with CMYK + 1 or 2 spots inks, the ability to add some supercrisp 1200dpi bitmap at 1-bit is still super handy, especially when you're working with trapping that let the original artworks remain crisp. So yeah, Affinity, I'm an independent graphic designer and image production tech for more than 25 years, and I truly believe 1-bit is still super useful. The recent update of Affinity Photo with some better channel option is going into the right direction but for highly efficient and professional works sadly the whole Affinity suite is not ready yet despite all the magnificent features.
It's lacking:
- the ability to work with true 1-bit bitmap, with the ability to spot colorizing
- the ability to properly assign overprints and knockouts.
- the ability create spot colours channels with transparency options in order to emulate some opaque inks like metallic ones and blend them with standard offset transparent ones.
- the ability to preview channels one by one before exporting to a PDF in order to spot some eventual problem with overprints or knockouts.
- a true Acrobat Pro PDF like software in the suite in order to check trap inks, etc.
- the ability to scripts all the app in the Suite in order to automate some crucial professional workflow.
 
Well… 7 years after I've bought the first beta of Affinity Designer, I still hope and believe you can do it. It's almost there.
 
Thanks.

Mmmh… in artschool, silkscreen and Riso are back for some time now in the "young" ones for small press publication. And even when working with tech printing for luxury watchmakers with CMYK + 1 or 2 spots inks, the ability to add some supercrisp 1200dpi bitmap at 1-bit is still super handy, especially when you're working with trapping that let the original artworks remain crisp. So yeah, Affinity, I'm an independent graphic designer and image production tech for more than 25 years, and I truly believe 1-bit is still super useful. The recent update of Affinity Photo with some better channel option is going into the right direction but for highly efficient and professional works sadly the whole Affinity suite is not ready yet despite all the magnificent features.
It's lacking:
- the ability to work with true 1-bit bitmap, with the ability to spot colorizing
- the ability to properly assign overprints and knockouts.
- the ability create spot colours channels with transparency options in order to emulate some opaque inks like metallic ones and blend them with standard offset transparent ones.
- the ability to preview channels one by one before exporting to a PDF in order to spot some eventual problem with overprints or knockouts.
- a true Acrobat Pro PDF like software in the suite in order to check trap inks, etc.
- the ability to scripts all the app in the Suite in order to automate some crucial professional workflow.
 
Well… 7 years after I've bought the first beta of Affinity Designer, I still hope and believe you can do it. It's almost there.
 
Thanks.

@Dan C Thanks for the detailed explanation. Clear to me but what a mess! With the new system since Mojave, even connecting a Wacom tablet with security settings, it's a pain… not in the right direction though.
I've downloaded the beta and it's way much better… thanks.
Let's wait for osx 12.1 and see if things gets better and faster. It's a shame with such MacBookPro monsters, Apple somehow slow them down with system bugs. But as as longtime time user, it's just a "Déjà vu". Thanks for making good apps and having a good support.

Mmmh… in artschool, silkscreen and Riso are back for some time now in the "young" ones for small press publication. And even when working with tech printing for luxury watchmakers with CMYK + 1 or 2 spots inks, the ability to add some supercrisp 1200dpi bitmap at 1-bit is still super handy, especially when you're working with trapping that let the original artworks remain crisp. So yeah, Affinity, I'm an independent graphic designer and image production tech for more than 25 years, and I truly believe 1-bit is still super useful. The recent update of Affinity Photo with some better channel option is going into the right direction but for highly efficient and professional works sadly the whole Affinity suite is not ready yet despite all the magnificent features.
It's lacking:
- the ability to work with true 1-bit bitmap, with the ability to spot colorizing
- the ability to properly assign overprints and knockouts.
- the ability create spot colours channels with transparency options in order to emulate some opaque inks like metallic ones and blend them with standard offset transparent ones.
- the ability to preview channels one by one before exporting to a PDF in order to spot some eventual problem with overprints or knockouts.
- a true Acrobat Pro PDF like software in the suite in order to check trap inks, etc.
- the ability to scripts all the app in the Suite in order to automate some crucial professional workflow.
 
Well… 7 years after I've bought the first beta of Affinity Designer, I still hope and believe you can do it. It's almost there.
 
Thanks.

Mmmh… in artschool, silkscreen and Riso are back for some time now in the "young" ones for small press publication. And even when working with tech printing for luxury watchmakers with CMYK + 1 or 2 spots inks, the ability to add some supercrisp 1200dpi bitmap at 1-bit is still super handy, especially when you're working with trapping that let the original artworks remain crisp. So yeah, Affinity, I'm an independent graphic designer and image production tech for more than 25 years, and I truly believe 1-bit is still super useful. The recent update of Affinity Photo with some better channel option is going into the right direction but for highly efficient and professional works sadly the whole Affinity suite is not ready yet despite all the magnificent features.
It's lacking:
- the ability to work with true 1-bit bitmap, with the ability to spot colorizing
- the ability to properly assign overprints and knockouts.
- the ability create spot colours channels with transparency options in order to emulate some opaque inks like metallic ones and blend them with standard offset transparent ones.
- the ability to preview channels one by one before exporting to a PDF in order to spot some eventual problem with overprints or knockouts.
- a true Acrobat Pro PDF like software in the suite in order to check trap inks, etc.
- the ability to scripts all the app in the Suite in order to automate some crucial professional workflow.
 
Well… 7 years after I've bought the first beta of Affinity Designer, I still hope and believe you can do it. It's almost there.
 
Thanks.

Mmmh… in artschool, silkscreen and Riso are back for some time now in the "young" ones for small press publication. And even when working with tech printing for luxury watchmakers with CMYK + 1 or 2 spots inks, the ability to add some supercrisp 1200dpi bitmap at 1-bit is still super handy, especially when you're working with trapping that let the original artworks remain crisp. So yeah, Affinity, I'm an independent graphic designer and image production tech for more than 25 years, and I truly believe 1-bit is still super useful. The recent update of Affinity Photo with some better channel option is going into the right direction but for highly efficient and professional works sadly the whole Affinity suite is not ready yet despite all the magnificent features.
It's lacking:
- the ability to work with true 1-bit bitmap, with the ability to spot colorizing
- the ability to properly assign overprints and knockouts.
- the ability create spot colours channels with transparency options in order to emulate some opaque inks like metallic ones and blend them with standard offset transparent ones.
- the ability to preview channels one by one before exporting to a PDF in order to spot some eventual problem with overprints or knockouts.
- a true Acrobat Pro PDF like software in the suite in order to check trap inks, etc.
- the ability to scripts all the app in the Suite in order to automate some crucial professional workflow.
 
Well… 7 years after I've bought the first beta of Affinity Designer, I still hope and believe you can do it. It's almost there.
 
Thanks.

Mmmh… in artschool, silkscreen and Riso are back for some time now in the "young" ones for small press publication. And even when working with tech printing for luxury watchmakers with CMYK + 1 or 2 spots inks, the ability to add some supercrisp 1200dpi bitmap at 1-bit is still super handy, especially when you're working with trapping that let the original artworks remain crisp. So yeah, Affinity, I'm an independent graphic designer and image production tech for more than 25 years, and I truly believe 1-bit is still super useful. The recent update of Affinity Photo with some better channel option is going into the right direction but for highly efficient and professional works sadly the whole Affinity suite is not ready yet despite all the magnificent features.
It's lacking:
- the ability to work with true 1-bit bitmap, with the ability to spot colorizing
- the ability to properly assign overprints and knockouts.
- the ability create spot colours channels with transparency options in order to emulate some opaque inks like metallic ones and blend them with standard offset transparent ones.
- the ability to preview channels one by one before exporting to a PDF in order to spot some eventual problem with overprints or knockouts.
- a true Acrobat Pro PDF like software in the suite in order to check trap inks, etc.
- the ability to scripts all the app in the Suite in order to automate some crucial professional workflow.
 
Well… 7 years after I've bought the first beta of Affinity Designer, I still hope and believe you can do it. It's almost there.
 
Thanks.

Mmmh… in artschool, silkscreen and Riso are back for some time now in the "young" ones for small press publication. And even when working with tech printing for luxury watchmakers with CMYK + 1 or 2 spots inks, the ability to add some supercrisp 1200dpi bitmap at 1-bit is still super handy, especially when you're working with trapping that let the original artworks remain crisp. So yeah, Affinity, I'm an independent graphic designer and image production tech for more than 25 years, and I truly believe 1-bit is still super useful. The recent update of Affinity Photo with some better channel option is going into the right direction but for highly efficient and professional works sadly the whole Affinity suite is not ready yet despite all the magnificent features.
It's lacking:
- the ability to work with true 1-bit bitmap, with the ability to spot colorizing
- the ability to properly assign overprints and knockouts.
- the ability create spot colours channels with transparency options in order to emulate some opaque inks like metallic ones and blend them with standard offset transparent ones.
- the ability to preview channels one by one before exporting to a PDF in order to spot some eventual problem with overprints or knockouts.
- a true Acrobat Pro PDF like software in the suite in order to check trap inks, etc.
- the ability to scripts all the app in the Suite in order to automate some crucial professional workflow.
 
Well… 7 years after I've bought the first beta of Affinity Designer, I still hope and believe you can do it. It's almost there.
 
Thanks.

Mmmh… in artschool, silkscreen and Riso are back for some time now in the "young" ones for small press publication. And even when working with tech printing for luxury watchmakers with CMYK + 1 or 2 spots inks, the ability to add some supercrisp 1200dpi bitmap at 1-bit is still super handy, especially when you're working with trapping that let the original artworks remain crisp. So yeah, Affinity, I'm an independent graphic designer and image production tech for more than 25 years, and I truly believe 1-bit is still super useful. The recent update of Affinity Photo with some better channel option is going into the right direction but for highly efficient and professional works sadly the whole Affinity suite is not ready yet despite all the magnificent features.
It's lacking:
- the ability to work with true 1-bit bitmap, with the ability to spot colorizing
- the ability to properly assign overprints and knockouts.
- the ability create spot colours channels with transparency options in order to emulate some opaque inks like metallic ones and blend them with standard offset transparent ones.
- the ability to preview channels one by one before exporting to a PDF in order to spot some eventual problem with overprints or knockouts.
- a true Acrobat Pro PDF like software in the suite in order to check trap inks, etc.
- the ability to scripts all the app in the Suite in order to automate some crucial professional workflow.
 
Well… 7 years after I've bought the first beta of Affinity Designer, I still hope and believe you can do it. It's almost there.
 
Thanks.