EddCh

FWIW… whilst I can still get Aperture 3.6 run on my Macs in High Sierra and Mojave, I can wait. Yes, it is a dead end application but there is nothing currently available that comes close to it in terms of ease of use and its Light Table is unmatched. i can understand the limited resources available and that the completion of an Affinity ‘Creative Suite’ (like Adobe’s former Creative Suite Design Standard edition) will be a hugely compelling offering to small (design/creative) businesses and freelancers like myself – because Adobe does not offer a comparable package in their subscription model. If Serif/Affinity do eventually get round to releasing a DAM/LR alternative and it comes remotely close to Aperture’s ease of use (esp if it also has a Light Table-esque feature) then it will be worth the wait IMO.

Riiiiiiight… I totally believe you. Honest.

Having waited eagerly for Publisher to arrive, I didn't hesitate to download the first beta and test it out. Rather than just 'tinkering around the fringes', I decided to give it a proper test by designing and laying out one of my portfolio photobooks, which would normally be done in InDesign, and then have it digitally printed by a commercial printer. In effect, I treated it like I would all other jobs I do for my clients. My experience of Publisher, from a professional perspective, was actually surprisingly good (as far as beta software goes). As a highly experienced PageMaker, QuarkXpress and InDesign user (from the v1.0 days) the learning curve was very minimal. The end result was that this initial beta release managed to produce a professional product that I would have no qualms releasing to a paying client. However the journey involved to reach that point was, obviously, not straight forward – but by no means remotely anywhere near as painful as some of the discussions on here would indicate. Without trying to 'blow my own trumpet', I will readily admit that it does require the kind of mindset that is capable of coming up with multiple workarounds and and when required. Aside from some of the initial issues that many had reported (ie. master pages, lack of visible bleed guides, sliders staying visible etc), the main obstacle that I had was at the output stage because I was unable to output a final press-ready PDF with reliable bleed settings on every page/spread. Some pages would output WITHOUT any bleed, some only output with about 1mm of bleed and some would output with the full 3mm that was set throughout the document. In the end, my workaround was to create a template document with my own trims and bleed on it. The second most frequent problem I came across was the instability of the application – there were A LOT of randomly occurring crashes which, if it wasn't for recovery files, could have been a massive problem. Whilst I fully expected beta software to crash, I didn't anticipate so many (more than 12) during this process. Less of a 'user experience' and more of a future file management issue is that the file sizes are HORRENDOUSLY MAHOOSIVE. Despite having all images linked instead of embedded, this 32pp layout resulted in a whopping 1.5GB .afpub file. As a comparison, a previous 96pp photobook with the same spec created in InDesign resulted in a 50MB .indd file. There is so much more that needs to be fixed and implementd but, overall, if the first beta of Publisher is already capable of this standard then I am going to chomping at the bit for the full commercial release.

So, this is what I’ve tried so far: 1. Ticked the Bleed setting in export dialogue 2. Add bleed to all ‘spread’ settings for every page and for the document 3. Created a new, blank, document then copy/paste elements from my working document 4. Exported pages one at a time 5. Exported all 32 pages as one 6. Tried both facing and non-facing page settings 7. Print to postscript file (using Adobe PDF printer driver) and bleed settings in there None of the above worked, except for pages 1-9. The workaround I used in the end was to set the document size large enough to accommodate my own trims and bleed (on a master page).

So I have successfully created a 32pp document and it is now ready to be sent off as a PDF to be printed. However, with many pages having 3mm bleed, I am finding that the resulting PDF has omitted bleed even though it was specifically set to include it (the option was ticked) when exporting.

I doubt if Adobe would take any notice of that request as it would not be in their interest to do so (especially as they are effectively a monopoly in the professional creative software suite environment). However, I do agree with you and it seems like some are reacting as though this Beta 1.7.0.57 release is feature-comparable to InDesign 13.1.0.76

OMG!! I spent ages looking for it last night – and did come across it, but I think "Combine identical" was ticked and it didn't work the way I expected and thus dismissed it. Finally got it working now (through the Paragraph tab) but I completely agree that "Decorations" is the most confusing and abysmal name to call it. That said, now that I've found it, I do like its functionality – even though I hate its name.

I am in the midst of creating a multi-page test document and I am stumped trying to find a paragraph rules option. Is such an option available in the Beta? If so, where can I find it? Otherwise I really do hope it will be included in a future update.

YES!!! I love QuarkXpress' ability to have more than two pages together which is a feature I use all the time when designing documents with intermittent fold out pages or roll fold literature.

As a freelance creative, I have to use Adobe InDesign and Quark Xpress—mostly from files supplied by clients who only know the very basics of their particular applications—and it has reached a point where I will no longer support/invest in the Adobe CC due to the costs and that I don't believe Adobe really has their customers' interests in mind any more. As I have already migrated away from Photoshop to Photo and in the process of migrating from Illustrator to Designer, it will be great if Publisher will enable me to migrate away from InDesign/Xpress. Therefore, in future, an ability to import/export INDD/IDML and QXP files WOULD BE AMAZING AND A HUGE DEAL FOR ME.

YES, PLEASE!!! Data merge is, potentially, a huge deal for me as I often have to design and create printed mailshots for clients that can frequently run into 1000s of names/entries (usually supplied as Excel spreadsheets).

Whilst Luminar's upcoming DAM module has been previously mentioned, I don't know if the DAM capabilities of Alien Skin's Exposure X3 has been mentioned before. https://www.alienskin.com/tutorial/exposure-managing-image-files/

I don't expect Apple to do anything at all for photography professionals – they've sunk that ship the moment Aperture was discontinued. What I was referring to is that Aperture 3.6 will run on the latest macOS High Sierra with pretty good stability and will run on the latest Macs currently on sale. Therefore it is not inconceivable that Aperture might still be running reliably for at least the next few years – thus giving third parties like Serif more time to create a good DAM/Aperture alternative.

I’m very glad to see this. Now that Apple (through High Sierra) has possibly bought another year or two for Aperture, it will hopefully give you guys more time to develop a DAM that matches the standard of the other Affinity apps. BTW: there is an awesome feature called Light Table in Aperture that NO OTHER software seems to have (at least none that I can find) – please, please build an Affinity version of it into your DAM.

Whilst I would like to keep it in the Affinity family, I have a 200K+ Aperture photo library running on Macs that will ultimately need upgrading so cannot wait indefinitely for a pro level DAM. I have tried many of the alternatives and, sadly, nothing seems to come even remotely close to my needs. If Luminar and its forthcoming DAM module lives up to and delivers on their hype then great. The price is affordable and fair – but the fact that their EULA permits installation on up to five computers is a big plus. However, Aperture has had a new lease of life since High Sierra was released. I've had the opportunity to test my main Aperture library on the latest MacBook Pro models and it runs very smoothly. I've now updated all my Macs to High Sierra and they're all running Aperture with no issues as yet. Looks like Apple has bought some extra time for Aperture.