dcrosby

I'm truly sorry to hear that Designer can't work for you. The older I get the more disappointed I get with technology in general. Back in the late 80s and 90s I was the kid talking to the old guys in our in-house print shop and wondering why they didn't want to just dump their analog work flow and outfit the shop with a bunch of shiny new Macs. Maybe they knew something that I'm only just realizing. That I was embarking on a never ending roller coaster of upgrades, updates, learning, relearning, buying, rebuying, etc., forever. I never really owned the means of production, of making a living, I was renting and even my hardware functioned at the will of the upgrade cycle. This was made even more clear by Adobe's recent gank move to have control of you, your files, and your lively hood forever. Kind of a digital sharecropping when you think about it. "Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the Adobe store." Lol. Just so you know, I am on a Mac. An older one that dates back to Obama's first term and using Sierra. CS6 does work for me but I know it's days are numbered. I hold Apple in pretty much the same regard as Adobe these days. I'll hold on to the HW and SW combo as long as possible though and slowly transition to Affinity and accept it's quirks. You've stated your case and I agree. If others agree they should say so and maybe Serif will see the light. If they remain silent then maybe my opinion (and yours) is faulty. In any case, it is what it is. "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right". Affinity or Adobe, our choice. And for some reason Quark is still not an option.

I'll have to admit I'm still pimpin' CS6 at home. We finally got CC at work though I haven't upgraded past CC17. I could install CC at home legally but choose not to because I don't want my personal files and workflow under Adobe's subscription. So I generally compare Affinity to CS6 and can still use the old apps if necessary. I use Designer a lot and plan on getting Photo soon. I'm sure I won't get Publisher for a version or 2 because I expect it to take time to mature and I don't do much page layout at home. I hope they reconsider their layer implementation but Adobe CC really isn't an option for me.

In the time since I responded to your post I've come to agree more that a universal layer system is necessary. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe Publisher has it either, which I assumed it would since it works with multipage documents. The lack of a layer system as we've come to expect over the last 15 years or so tends to bollox up simple stuff, like keystroking objects from the top of the stack to the bottom. In transitioning from InDesign that lack will hover somewhere between "deal breaker" and "this kinda sucks, but I only paid $50." I'm not sure how far Affinity can go as the "only $50" program. I should acknowledge though, that in the book publishing office where I work, our other designer never uses layers or the automated footnotes, TOC, or indexing features that InDesign offers. At the end of the day each designer requires or ignores what they choose although it may make no logical sense to me personally.

As mentioned, the IDML import is being worked on. You're no worse off now than you were last month before Publisher was released. If you have a bunch of INDD files you can continue working with them using InDesign as you have been. Or you can get a copy of Xpress, which I believe imports INDD. I'm not happy that the feature is not yet available but ecstatic that someone had the stones to compete with Adobe at all. Over the last 10 years no other company, neither Quark or Corel, or anyone else has even tried to create a full suite of pro design products. Import needs to be addressed no doubt, but it's not a deal breaker to me personally. There are other issues I find more problematic, but I keep reading posts where some user insists his missing feature is the most import one of all. Then essentially bashing Serif for not seeing things their way. I think the only reason people are so upset is because Adobe is bleeding them dry with their subscription model. Otherwise, why not stick with Adobe? Adobe is the exploiter, Affinity is the alternative, even if imperfect. I don't look a gift horse in the mouth. We're still at version 1.x. I accept the flaws because the alternatives are slim and costly and because there are a lot of positives that the Affinity line brings to the table.

Thanks for pointing that out. The level of entitlement by some on these boards is astounding sometimes. People seem to want every feature from Adobe's "bloated" product, at version 1, for $50. The anger is misdirected. Serif is not the one exploiting you even if you lost $40.

Yeah, that was the point wasn't it. Adobe already had the graphics industry in an iron grip but decided that wasn't enough. Any thoughts of switching software is dashed by the fact that giving up the sub means no access to your older files. There's no way to open InDesign for those occasions you might need to while creating new sets of documents somewhere else. Workflows and expectations revolve around Adobe. At this point they OWN your ability to make a living in your field. That's a terrible feeling and untenable from a business standpoint. I only own Designer at the moment but plan to add the other apps at some point. I'm fortunate to have a copy of CS6 which has given me some breathing room. I've noticed a number of "missing" features and some UI flaws in the various Affinity apps but have no choice but work around them until Serif can add or fix those issues. Our options are few and Affinity is like a lifeboat that can't fit everyone all at once. Hopefully they can come back to pick you up later.

So I imported a bitmap file into Designer. The document color is Gray/8. There is nothing in the file other than that bitmap image. I export the image as a grayscale tiff. Open the tiff in PSD and it is a grayscale image as expected. Now I export a PDF of the same file. I set the Color Space to Gray and the Profile to Black and White. Open the PDF in Acrobat Pro and the Output Preview shows it is CMYK. Same thing happens when I start with a grayscale image. Someone tell me I missed something because it seems as if I can't export a grayscale image (one printing plate) to PDF for print.

Agreed.

Huh? I can’t import line art into any Affinity program? Seems odd. What am I gettin’ old or something?

Yeah, Make America Polite Again was his original slogan but a typo at the hat shop came out as “MAGA” so he had to change the slogan. Lol.

I have to agree with most of what JGD is saying. I've had Illustrator on my desktop for 20 years or more but I rarely used it because I found the interface confusing. And because I rarely used it I never got comfortable with the interface. Designer's interface is way more straight forward to me but once I began using it for larger projects I found the Layers panel a chore, for a number of reasons. It may be the one thing that I struggle with in the program. Oddly enough, in the past week I've seen a YouTube video; had a colleague send me an Illustrator file; and seen this post here, all using Illustrator for tasks I would have used InDesign for. The example in this post could go either way though IMHO. People certainly expect to use Designer in the same way they've used Illustrator in the past. While I think the Layers panel could use some rethinking I'm not sure if it's the earth-shattering deal breaker the poster believes it is or whether Publisher with a link to Designer would be the logical platform for this kind of work. In general I think Artboards should be more like pages with a separate panel and universal layer system and the Layers panel should more easily distinguish between groups, layers and masked items.

@MacmonkeyHey, I'm really glad that worked for you. It had me pulling my hair out too until someone on this forum clued me in. One day I'm gonna finally get rid of all the crap fonts I've accumulated over the last 20 years... but probably not today, lol.

My permissions problems were solved by limiting the number of fonts open at one time. Maybe that would work for you too.

Thanks for asking Sean P. I've already changed (fixed) the doc where option dragging works again so the situation I mentioned doesn't exist anymore. In general I'm still having a time figuring out my process when groups, masks, layers and artboards are all in the same panel. I'm not sure how groups, which open up after clicking on the arrow, are functionally different from layers, which open up when clicking the arrow. Add in 5 or 6 art boards, which open up after clicking on the arrow, and it gets messy pretty quickly.

OK. So the issue seems to be that I had selected items from a number of groups and layers and tried to option drag. They were grouped visually on the artboard but spread out within the layers panel. That panel can get confusing with layers, artboards, groups and single items all in the same place. Rearranging items to a single layer allowed me to option drag to duplicate.

Working with AD 1.7.1 on MacOs Sierra. Since the 1.7 upgrade neither option-drag nor command-drag will copy items on my artboards. Did I miss something? There's not an option to enable that feature is there?

I appreciate your thoughts on the matter. As inexpensive as Affinity apps are, $50 and a separate app still seems a lot just for hyphenation. The lack of it in Designer is so inexplicable that your explanation may be the only logical reason though. Can't help but wonder why there would be a paragraph panel with various options such as justification when you can't hyphenate a paragraph. Worse yet the text box brakes long words to the next line if you don't use the "no break" option on the specific word. it's broken and they need to fix it.

I'll second that. I was really hoping to see it in 1.7.

+1 as well. Please make it happen

As a temp solution (and rather helpful in any case), a listing of font status in Affinity apps would be helpful. With a list I could more easily activate fonts in my manager of choice if auto activation was not available. I'm assuming most font managers will be slow to add Affinity support because... well... Adobe.

Hi Walt. Yes Publisher would HAVE to include those features, hopefully they can be moved over easily and it's not a matter of them trying to differentiate the softwares. I plan to buy Photo at some point and assume I'll end up with Publisher as well but not sure when. I'm eager to see how they merge the different programs in the Publisher personas. Maybe it will be so smooth that you don't even notice you're using different programs. That would be a paradigm shift.

Hi folks. I've been a supporter of Affinity since I first found out about your program. One thing that's keeping me from using it as my go to vector program is its type handling though. I was glad to see that points and picas were added to the ruler, I use them frequently. I'm a bit surprised over the fact that there seems to be no hyphenation in text boxes. Did I miss something? That's pretty basic. I'm also not a fan of text falling outside the text box and would greatly appreciate the option to turn off that behavior. Better yet would be a way to link text frames as is done in Publisher. I know Designer is not a page layout program but I frequently make flyers, posters or tri-folds outside of inDesign and would very much like to use Designer for this kind of work. Thanks.

I don't know about the font manager as I've not tested Publisher to any great extent. I'm having a similar problem with auto activation though using Suitcase. If I'm missing a font and open it in Suitcase the fonts in my document do not update. I have to reopen the document for them to display. Oddly though, If I create a new textbox and add new copy I can then select the proper font but text boxes that already had the "missing" font don't update. I guess that's a bug then?

Interesting. I'll have to give that a go sometime. Thanks

Really? I could have sworn I'd seen an option for that in the past. Must have been some other function. Disappointed but thanks.