DivSmart

Can I make a suggestion to the mods here, that you start up a thread on issues with ordering the book, so that we can separate comments about the book itself here which are becoming swamped with 'I ordered.... but didn't....' type things.

I've got mine! It is very cool!   :P

Beautifully presented in hardback and printed across 448 full color pages, the affinity designer workbook is the complete guide to getting the most out of affinity designer...

Please see this post.

Hey @MacRemco,
I got one of those elevators and bent it so its at a nice working angle and slid the ADW in front of it and it keeps the pages open as you can see attached.
 
 
The side view is there.
 
Its cool to have it by me as I work through the projects.
Yep, I'm loving the ADW too  ;)
Hope it helps!
Michael
 

Completely agree - we'll get it sorted, thanks! :)

Here:

Hi Michael,
The handles on the screenshot you have posted are smooth nodes. Their curvature is controlled by the node's handles (using the Node Tool).
The Corner Tool can only be applied to sharp nodes, that is, those identified with a rectangle rather than a circle. If you select the Corner Tool you will notice that the smooth nodes on a shape (identified by a circle) will appear as very small, non-selectable circles meaning they can't be rounded with the Corner Tool.
Let me know if you still have trouble.

How is AP/AD doing with color profiles? Is everything stable? Or are there any quirks?
 
I just got my hands on an i1pro spectrometer. Being a discontinued product, the bundled software won't run on Sierra (software support is limited up to OSX Lion). For this reason I tried creating an .icc profile by pairing it with the free displayCAL/argyllcms but being totally inexperienced, I'm not even sure I got it right.
 
When applying different profiles (system preferences->Display->colors) without quitting AP, AP seems to be flashing a bit before stabilizing to the new colors. Once, it even got stuck flashing colors non-stop. Other times I get the feeling that when reenabling the same display profile I get different colors (but can't be sure about that, might be my eyes attuning to finer hue variations). It also shows very different colors compared to the built in OSX Preview app.
I tested the preview app using a gray gradient .tif file (with no embedded color profiles). 
 
Unfortunately I no longer have PS to cross-check so I'm not even sure there is a problem whatsoever; and then I remember reading that AP/AD and LibreOffice have some issues in Sierra that get resolved only if you choose the default display profile!
 
Could somebody who has followed the topic a bit more and is using AP/AD with display profiles, give some feedback about whether (and to what extend) do color profiles work okay with AP and AD? (I'm runnning the latest betas - 1.5.2 and 1.5.4 respectively
 
Thanks!
-Fotis
 

hi @TechniSmart! Thank you so much for the feedback.
Regarding my icc files, they were created with a spectrophotometer (a device for the purpose). I did try the System Preferences -> Display -> Calibrate route too, but I was looking for something more accurate and since I could borrow the spectrophotometer, I went "the pro route". Sadly, I bit off more than I could actually chew  :rolleyes: and after all the reading, I'm still not 100% sure about the whole process!
 
I read your question on the other thread and replied (there) but please don't take this advice as a professional one, since it's merely what I've understood so far - and may eventually be wrong.
 
Hope this helps!
-Fotis

Hi Michael, glad I could help.
Yes, I was also using an X-rite calibrator: I used an old-school i1 Pro (i1Xtreme). X-rite products are certainly very good so I don't think you can go wrong with the i1 display pro model.
 
Still before you invest money, you should better speak with somebody who is more knowledgeable than myself. I had never used a calibrator up to a month or so ago, and even then I just happened to borrow one that a friend had lying around. All my understanding comes from speed-reading threads and articles on the web, but when it comes to actual experience? None. Zero. 
 
Plus that I haven't printed anything (pro or at home) since 2005! Being a UX and web-designer I target uncalibrated monitors of web-users. I did my calibration merely out of curiosity, and because I found the calibrator lying around. It's not something needed in my line of work!
 
If (as an amature non-professional) I was about to print bitmap/pixel data, I could go either with TIFF or PDF since both can can hold CMYK (I haven't delved into PDF flavors). If you send a PDF, just make sure the embedded bitmap images are compressed in a lossless way, otherwise you may end up with artifacts. For a few pages, I could go with CMYK TIFF but for a whole book I'd go with a CMYK PDF, since it's easier to distribute. 
 
However, If I was about to print vector data (everything that Affinity Designer creates), or mixed content (eg. a book with photos and vector lettering) in theory I'd go with PDF since it can hold both vector and bitmap data and thus produce smaller files and sharper prints. Since you are using Affinity Designer, I suppose you do vector-work, so there is theoretical benefit in using PDF, as long as Affinity designer doesn't rasterize any stroke by accident (read this old bug thread).
 
How to check rasterization didn't happen?
While Exporting the document in PDF, check if it says "some areas will be rasterized" like in the image below. If it does then some of the vector line art will be converted to bitmap and this may look strange.

 
In case there are unwanted rasterized elements in the PDF, expect them to be less sharp than the sharp vector elements. At this point you have to make a decision based on the nature of these rasterized elements. If it's not a book where sharp text is of paramount important, it's often easier to opt for a TIFF file that performs rasterization all over your page (with the slight albeit uniform softness this implies), rather than be sending a PDF that mixes both soft and sharp shapes in an uncontrolled manner.
 
Hope it helps!
-Fotis

Very helpful Fotis. I do appreciate the help and the Soft Proofing video.
Now I can develop a workflow
 
Michael

Hi Fotis,
 

Yes the discussion was helpful. I exported to PDF/X-3 and it came out perfectly.
 
Michael

mystrawberrymonkey

 

 

Please Help

 

 

I am soooo frustrated with this 'soft proofing' and NO ONE helping!   Sure, I have used soft proofing.   Have you, Big_Stan, attempted to have the exported image match what comes out as the .tiff and then open it in Photoshop?  There is no match!  Just does not happen!

 

I just cannot send to the Epson Pro 9900 printer the image in the tiff image file in PS CS5.  It does not match the original image file. Even if my custom printer profile is applied, there is no match.  Further more, sending the image through LR 6.4, or Printao 8, is useless.

 

In my workflow I used to use, the image in LR 6.4, edited for size, in PS CS5 is a perfect match (if any match is perfect).

 

My goal is to have AP become use staple in my workflow.

 

In previous posts I asked if what I was doing was correct.  I attached screen shots.  I have tried different combinations of settings available.  I still cannot get the digital image file to match the original

 

I have studied this effort with the X-Rite 24 patch target.  What more can I write?

 

Alan, please help!    Alan, your video lessons are have the right tempo for me!   

 

Kind Regards,

 

David

Great work René,
 
+1
Took me way back in time.
 
Michael

Windows should nowadays be as good in colour management as OSX so:
Select Adobe RGB 1998 as working RGB space 
Select Fogra 39 as working CMYK space (change this if your printer has better ideas or you will be printing other than standard coated paper, or you are american who have their own CMYK ideas)
Profile selection stays active until you change them (or you reset whole app).
 
Device specific profiles work only with devices and user should not touch those in working applications. I am not sure how scanners use profiles to day (quite automatically I suppose).

"DOT MATRIX WITH STEREO SOUND"  Clearly a vision from the future... err, wait...
 
Splendid work.

I think those nodes are small to encourage us to ignore them! If you switch to the Node Tool, you'll see a circle (with or without a dot in the middle) instead of a square. You can only use the Corner Tool on a sharp node, not a smooth or smart one.

Yogi9409,
I can feel your frustration but please stick along for a little longer.
Judging by the quality of the Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, Affinity Publisher should be worth waiting for.
Hang on in there mate.
Regards

IMNSHO, Serif have already alienated many loyal customers by ceasing development of their 'Plus' range of software. I suspect that the proportion of Serif's established user base who want to "dump all Windows stuff" is quite small.
 
An Affinity Publisher which matches the current capabilities of Serif PagePlus looks like being several years away, so a few extra months' wait for APub on Mac won't change things much.

We started Affinity Publisher 5 years ago. Sometimes progress is good and sometimes not so much. Not much we can rethink at this stage.

I think I have stayed out of this conversation until now for a reason  :lol:
 
PageMaker was just fine for its day. I didn't use it for long documents though. I did use Ventura from its GEM days through Corel's acquisition. It was great for long documents and had features still lacking in layout applications today.
 
But we (I owned a seven person shop) did create a lot of work in PM. One of its features which is being bandied about here is InDesigns optical kerning (which isn't always a good choice). Optical kerning made its debut in PM. It was a good application in its day--and yes, it was on life support for too long in one sense (it outlived its usefulness once ID was up and running). But there were a lot of businesses that depended on it and for them I think Adobe made the wise choice in eventually creating version 7.
 
I did more work in QXP though. While I use VP for long documents, and I used PM for 1 or two page work, I used QXP for ads and documents that didn't make sense to do in VP. And, of course, clients pretty much dictated what we used.
 
I started the mentioned business in 1989 and in the end, we made money with 'em all and did quality work in any of them.
 
Mike

Agreed on the drop caps feature—it was primitive and out of control. 
 
Wrong apostrophes came from wrong typists. Since I came from an environment where quote marks were keyboarded as seen (no such thing as a "double quote"…that would be two keystrokes of the open quote symbol), it was always interesting to see how Pagemaker would import and interpret so-called "typewriter quotes." Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
 
But, Oval, you happened to pick on two features that did not exist elsewhere in the DTP layout world when they were introduced. Of course they were not polished. But in the late 1980s a lot of people started making a living with those tools, and a lot of other people found themselves adapting to new workflows because of them.
 
Would I say Pagemaker is a great tool today, in comparison with what's available? Absolutely not. But much of the reason that it became a "horrible" product has to do with Adobe gobbling up the Aldus corporation, freezing Pagemaker's development, and then leaving it on the market way too long. It was problematic for long-form publishing, and had its quirks, but its many competitors were always chasing its feature set.
 
And honestly, for this discussion, the main thing is integration of digital sources into a layout. Getting that right was a huge Pagemaker strength. It allowed artists, copywriters, and editors to do their work and then submit it to the layout artist working in Pagemaker. That's one of the crucial functions that Affinity Publisher has to get right.

Alfred, I think that comment has earned you the Geek of the Week© award.  :lol:

PageMaker (which I first used in v1.2 on a Mac 512KE) was not IMHO a "horrible" or "terrible" product. When Aldus first published it in the mid 1980s there was nothing else like it. I came from a Compugraphic shop where I set galleys on photo paper, which then went to the layout guy, who waxed and pasted them down on boards with non-repro-blue guidelines. Corrections were 2-line slugs that got tipped in over the typos. Photos were indicated on the boards so that they could be shot separately with appropriate cropping and sizing, then stripped into the galley negatives. The negatives were used to make plates. And THEN you could go to press.
 
PageMaker's great (and revolutionary) strength was that it integrated all those elements onto a single virtual pasteboard, and did it all with a mouse click. It was "PageMaker the Horrible" only in the sense that it went through the printing industry like an scythe and eliminated the need for many, many crafts that were part of an older established workflow.
 
What I found horrific was Adobe's purchase of Aldus, which was more an attempt to eliminate FreeHand as a competitor to the truly horrible Illustrator (I'll retract that statement only if someone can explain to me why Illustrator STILL needs at least three different anchor-point tools for editing when FreeHand could do everything with a single, intuitive tool). When the rights instead went to Macromedia, Adobe eventually gobbled them up as well, and of course killed FreeHand. 
 
Instead of suffocating PageMaker, they put it in a development-free zone while they spent several years building InDesign from scratch. They allowed PageMaker to stay on the market, essentially a mid-1990s version, so that InDesign would shine in comparison. (And I confess, I'm a daily InDesign user, and overall it does not get in my way.) When PageMaker could no longer keep up with even the mediocrity that is Microsoft Publisher, THEN it looked horrible by comparison.
 
But, I lay all that out to make this point: PageMaker excelled at source->layout integration. And, that's what APub needs to do. That's incredibly difficult to get right, because so many elements are out of your control.
 
Affinity should not release a product until it can import and output files at least as seamlessly (for its time) as PageMaker did.