midsummer

You would think that preserving the look and content of a PDF file would be the greatest priority for a DTP app... Treating all PDFs as editable files doesn't make any sense whatsoever, preserving the look of the original PDF should be Publisher's default behaviour.
I'm starting to feel that Publisher's beta stage ended a few months too soon. Support for embedded fonts is simply DTP core functionality, I don't really know who Publisher's target customer group is at this point?

In 8 of 10 jobs we have to place PDFs "as they are". If AP didnt get the abilitity to import them as "picture" we cant use AP. :-(

There are two points here:
Firstly, I'm seeing errors in placed PDFs even when I have all the necessary fonts installed. 
Secondly, PDFs can be placed correctly in InDesign, Illustrator, XPress, Apple Pages, MS Word, etc etc, even if the correct fonts are not installed on your system.
 
Affinity's ability to turn PDFs into editable content is welcome, but the ability to place a PDF on a page as an 'image', accurately,  is paramount to a DTP app. 

A big problem for me is the fact, that I cannot place PDFs in APub with embedded fonts that are not installed on my computer. Well, I can place them but they don’t look like they should, because the missing fonts were replaced!
In a magazine I have to place a minimum of 70 ads that I get as PDFs from multiple customers. I only have to place them onto my pages within the editorial content. And they have to be ‚as they are‘ when it comes to printing. It’s not possible to tell all the customers: "Please give me all the fonts you have used"!
So please make it possible to use PDFs the common way: Put a PDF on a layout as it is, whether the fonts used in it are installed or not. 
Kindest regards
Udo

Preflight persona would be nice.

Hi there, I can't wait for the full retail version of Publisher, will be putting in my pre-order (I know it's close) in the next couple of days!
But I'd like to know if there's any chance anyone has thought about adding either a prepress plug-in or Persona to fully press check documents as you can in Adobe Acrobat DC Pro?
For example check that spot ink or CMYK separations and rasterisations are correct as required for the print destination.. Acrobat has remained as my only tether to Adobe, it would be nice to be completely free at some point in the future! Anyone else think this?
Thanks for listening... 
Cheers
Kind Regards
Piers Le Sueur

Read in forum "some people" ask this feature...
But color separations preview is important for professional printing.
For printing process, we use Illustrator a lot for these tools: checking resolution of bitmap pictures, checking and correcting CMYK (especially convert composite black to true black when a pdf has been generated with som "exotic" software") and so on.
Full control and preview is important if not working only for screen and web!
That's why I continue to use Adobe Illustrator rather Affinity Designer. Printing a PDF and checking resutl in Acrobat is not an answer.
Wish this helpfull fonction will be added one and not stay specific to Adobe...
Hope it will be present in Publisher too if it pretends to be a serious "InDesign Killer".
So Hope I can really work with "Affinity suite" once main professional functions are here :-)
Sorry for english mistakes, usually writing in french here.

Hi melriksdesign,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Global layers are already planned for an upcoming update (after Publisher's release eventually but I may be wrong here).

For example, I have a catalog with a colored frame below the prices. I usually place these frames all on a single layer under all prices on every site. Then I place different frames with another graphic style on another layer. When I now activate or deactivate these layers, all pages of the entire document are changed at once. If the customer made his choice, I change the style of the price-design in the whole document with just one mouse click. In Affinity Publisher, I have to edit each page, create layers, select ... It costs a lot of unnecessary time.
If you are working professional for paying Customers this workflow is a must. No one pays you for the time it takes to complete a process that should be completely automatic.

@thomaso: I haven't commented before, but here's another use-case for 1-bit support like in other layout applications (QuarkXpress, InDesign, PageMaker, etc.). At my printshop we just ran a mailing job with letters offset printed 2-color spot. The customer wanted the letter text in black with their signature in blue to look more like it was hand-written with a biro. I scanned their signature at 2400 DPI (that's our platemaker's native resolution) as a 1-bit TIFF, inserted it in InDesign, and applied the PMS blue swatch to it. Instantly spot separatable art without having to mess around with Photoshop Monotones or Illustrator vectorization tools. This cannot be done with grayscale, RGB, or CMYK raster graphics. It's a quick, simple, accurate method, and it works every time. It baffles me that the Affinity Suite do not support this in any way. It's literally an industry-standard print workflow (as evidenced by all the above commentary).

You explained it more succinct than I did. Indeed!
Here is an example of the wanted PDF output. The black line art is 1200ppi and set to overprint, and the colours are 300ppi. Notice the difference in pixel size. The colour work will be halftones, while the 1bit line art will retain its sharpness when printed - just like black text, or black vector art. No halftones there.
Absolutely essential for all sorts of print work. Without this option, Publisher is going to be handicapped from the very start. Just like Affinity Photo is with the lack of 1bit support.

Yet, there is. 1bit prints without being rasterized to half tones. 8bit is always rasterized and converted to halftones. A grayscale 8bit image contains 0-255 shades of gray, and even black will be printed at 300dpi (dots!). A 1200ppi 1bit black line will, however, be printed at that resolution (barring the quality of the paper, and the subsequent dot gain).

Just want to add my voice for this too -- 1bit support is important for a lot of things, from a logo over text up to pencil drawings, cuttings, plottin, artistic effects …
Please include this in a future update!

Yes, as long as 1bit support is lacking, we will have to deal with work-arounds, or just rely on alternative software. A bit frustrating, because when I open your PDF in PhotoLine it takes two clicks to create the proper 1bit layer and overprint it. Two more clicks to assign a spot colour. InDesign treats these type of 1bit tiffs automatically as overprinting.
Let's hope the Affinity devs will add this support before 1.7 is released. I think, because of the lack of 1bit support in the other Affinity apps, this may take longer for them to implement, however. I suspect it's just not part of the core functionality of Affinity, and will take more effort on their part.
Thanks for all your testing!

You are missing the point. Do you understand how halftones and LPI (lines per inch) work in print tech? If not, look it up.
Printing black and white line art at 300dpi is too low for a quality print. Refer to @Fixx answer about terrible looking comic strips and lettering when printed at 300dpi in a news paper, or in black and white print.

I also would love 1-bit support.
Definitely an upvote from me

Literally the very first thing I tried to do with Affinity Designer was to drop a 1-bit logo file into a blank document. It was a bit disappointing to realize that I'd just bought a graphic design app that can't handle company logos or barcodes.
In InDesign or Illustrator you can just drop a bitmap logo / drawing into a document and change its fill to any color (very handy for designs that require spot colors). The bitmaps keep their crisp 1200 dpi resolution (and don't get anti-aliased) when exported to PDFs. It's a very hassle-free and effective way of working.
Am I just old-fashioned? Is there some new way of dealing with this stuff in Affinity Photo / Designer / Publisher that I'm just not aware of yet?
Every alternative suggestion I've seen on the forums has been far too complicated for what needs to be done. Following those suggestions would also lead to losing the benefits of working with 1-bit bitmaps anyway, resulting in downsampled and lossily compressed images in PDFs. Adobe's software offers separate downsampling settings for color, grayscale, and bitmap images, Affinity squashes all and everything with equal measure. That makes Affinity apps simply unsuitable for some print workflows, despite all the fantastic features they have. 
I'm aware that proper 1-bit color support might be technically more challenging to implement than it sounds, as it comes with the requirement to treat different image files placed in the same document in a different manner. That would probably pose new challenges for drawing the images on the screen too. And the PDF engine is probably a big hurdle too, since it is a third-party solution (as far as I know), and not flexible enough?
 
It would be nice to hear the developers' view on bitmap support. What's the reasoning for leaving it off the roadmap? Is it going to be added later (together with better tools to work with spot colors, maybe), or has the decision been made that it's simply not going to be supported and old-fashioned geezers like me should look elsewhere? Affinity Publisher's release is going to attract even more people fed up with Adobe's pricing model looking for alternative software. The lack of bitmap support might be a decisive factor for many, more critical than the design tools themselves. Some software can't deal with CMYK. Affinity stumbles with 1-bit images.
 
(I probably sound like a broken record at this point, having written many posts about this subject already. Sorry about that.)

I need 1-Bit support for flatbed direct to plate UV-print and for Riso printing. Our layouts for the direct to plate print use complex white underprint which is set up via spot color. Currently we generate 1-Bit tif-files which get assigned with spot colors in InDesign. Same with the Riso print. Color separation for spot colors is a lot easier with colorized 1-Bit files.
Cheers
Benny

Literally the very first thing I tried to do with Affinity Designer was to drop a 1-bit logo file into a blank document. It was a bit disappointing to realize that I'd just bought a graphic design app that can't handle company logos or barcodes.
In InDesign or Illustrator you can just drop a bitmap logo / drawing into a document and change its fill to any color (very handy for designs that require spot colors). The bitmaps keep their crisp 1200 dpi resolution (and don't get anti-aliased) when exported to PDFs. It's a very hassle-free and effective way of working.
Am I just old-fashioned? Is there some new way of dealing with this stuff in Affinity Photo / Designer / Publisher that I'm just not aware of yet?
Every alternative suggestion I've seen on the forums has been far too complicated for what needs to be done. Following those suggestions would also lead to losing the benefits of working with 1-bit bitmaps anyway, resulting in downsampled and lossily compressed images in PDFs. Adobe's software offers separate downsampling settings for color, grayscale, and bitmap images, Affinity squashes all and everything with equal measure. That makes Affinity apps simply unsuitable for some print workflows, despite all the fantastic features they have. 
I'm aware that proper 1-bit color support might be technically more challenging to implement than it sounds, as it comes with the requirement to treat different image files placed in the same document in a different manner. That would probably pose new challenges for drawing the images on the screen too. And the PDF engine is probably a big hurdle too, since it is a third-party solution (as far as I know), and not flexible enough?
 
It would be nice to hear the developers' view on bitmap support. What's the reasoning for leaving it off the roadmap? Is it going to be added later (together with better tools to work with spot colors, maybe), or has the decision been made that it's simply not going to be supported and old-fashioned geezers like me should look elsewhere? Affinity Publisher's release is going to attract even more people fed up with Adobe's pricing model looking for alternative software. The lack of bitmap support might be a decisive factor for many, more critical than the design tools themselves. Some software can't deal with CMYK. Affinity stumbles with 1-bit images.
 
(I probably sound like a broken record at this point, having written many posts about this subject already. Sorry about that.)

I work in letterpress printing and screenprinting and use 1 bit mode every day. Please include this feature.
 
Reiterating what others have said:
Letterpress require a solid, no line screen image to make clean film for plates. We, too, scan calligraphy for invitations at 1200dpi for high resolution platemaking.
In PS I  scan>convert to greyscale>play with levels, then Threshold>convert to bitmap. Then I colorize with spot (Pantone) colors in layout software.
 
I've been doing this for close to 20 years (yikes) and am happy to consult to bring this feature to Affinity.
thanks!

Literally the very first thing I tried to do with Affinity Designer was to drop a 1-bit logo file into a blank document. It was a bit disappointing to realize that I'd just bought a graphic design app that can't handle company logos or barcodes.
In InDesign or Illustrator you can just drop a bitmap logo / drawing into a document and change its fill to any color (very handy for designs that require spot colors). The bitmaps keep their crisp 1200 dpi resolution (and don't get anti-aliased) when exported to PDFs. It's a very hassle-free and effective way of working.
Am I just old-fashioned? Is there some new way of dealing with this stuff in Affinity Photo / Designer / Publisher that I'm just not aware of yet?
Every alternative suggestion I've seen on the forums has been far too complicated for what needs to be done. Following those suggestions would also lead to losing the benefits of working with 1-bit bitmaps anyway, resulting in downsampled and lossily compressed images in PDFs. Adobe's software offers separate downsampling settings for color, grayscale, and bitmap images, Affinity squashes all and everything with equal measure. That makes Affinity apps simply unsuitable for some print workflows, despite all the fantastic features they have. 
I'm aware that proper 1-bit color support might be technically more challenging to implement than it sounds, as it comes with the requirement to treat different image files placed in the same document in a different manner. That would probably pose new challenges for drawing the images on the screen too. And the PDF engine is probably a big hurdle too, since it is a third-party solution (as far as I know), and not flexible enough?
 
It would be nice to hear the developers' view on bitmap support. What's the reasoning for leaving it off the roadmap? Is it going to be added later (together with better tools to work with spot colors, maybe), or has the decision been made that it's simply not going to be supported and old-fashioned geezers like me should look elsewhere? Affinity Publisher's release is going to attract even more people fed up with Adobe's pricing model looking for alternative software. The lack of bitmap support might be a decisive factor for many, more critical than the design tools themselves. Some software can't deal with CMYK. Affinity stumbles with 1-bit images.
 
(I probably sound like a broken record at this point, having written many posts about this subject already. Sorry about that.)

I need 1-bit support for my comics and illustrations. Currently I use PhotoLine for this, which surprisingly has perfect support for this, even better than Photoshop or any other image editor out there:
works with layers(!) Meaning, unlike Photoshop it's no problem to combine multiple 1bit layers. can be combined in a single document with RGB or CMYK 300ppi layers and create a top 1bit 1200ppi layer PDF output in PhotoLine keeps it all intact, and outputs a proper PDF file. The 1bit 1200ppi layer is retained, and the colour work maintains a 300ppi output. InDesign also works well with this, but I no longer rent that software. The only other software I found so far (other than QuarkXPress) that supports a good 1-bit workflow is PhotoLine. And I know of no other image editor that supports a layer-based workflow with 1-bit graphics.
I am hoping that Affinity Publisher will support this workflow as well, but so far no cigar. I think all Affinity products ought to support a 1-bit workflow to make this work out properly anyway. (And an 8-bit indexed colour mode is missing in action as well in Affinity Photo, btw!)

Literally the very first thing I tried to do with Affinity Designer was to drop a 1-bit logo file into a blank document. It was a bit disappointing to realize that I'd just bought a graphic design app that can't handle company logos or barcodes.
In InDesign or Illustrator you can just drop a bitmap logo / drawing into a document and change its fill to any color (very handy for designs that require spot colors). The bitmaps keep their crisp 1200 dpi resolution (and don't get anti-aliased) when exported to PDFs. It's a very hassle-free and effective way of working.
Am I just old-fashioned? Is there some new way of dealing with this stuff in Affinity Photo / Designer / Publisher that I'm just not aware of yet?
Every alternative suggestion I've seen on the forums has been far too complicated for what needs to be done. Following those suggestions would also lead to losing the benefits of working with 1-bit bitmaps anyway, resulting in downsampled and lossily compressed images in PDFs. Adobe's software offers separate downsampling settings for color, grayscale, and bitmap images, Affinity squashes all and everything with equal measure. That makes Affinity apps simply unsuitable for some print workflows, despite all the fantastic features they have. 
I'm aware that proper 1-bit color support might be technically more challenging to implement than it sounds, as it comes with the requirement to treat different image files placed in the same document in a different manner. That would probably pose new challenges for drawing the images on the screen too. And the PDF engine is probably a big hurdle too, since it is a third-party solution (as far as I know), and not flexible enough?
 
It would be nice to hear the developers' view on bitmap support. What's the reasoning for leaving it off the roadmap? Is it going to be added later (together with better tools to work with spot colors, maybe), or has the decision been made that it's simply not going to be supported and old-fashioned geezers like me should look elsewhere? Affinity Publisher's release is going to attract even more people fed up with Adobe's pricing model looking for alternative software. The lack of bitmap support might be a decisive factor for many, more critical than the design tools themselves. Some software can't deal with CMYK. Affinity stumbles with 1-bit images.
 
(I probably sound like a broken record at this point, having written many posts about this subject already. Sorry about that.)

Literally the very first thing I tried to do with Affinity Designer was to drop a 1-bit logo file into a blank document. It was a bit disappointing to realize that I'd just bought a graphic design app that can't handle company logos or barcodes.
In InDesign or Illustrator you can just drop a bitmap logo / drawing into a document and change its fill to any color (very handy for designs that require spot colors). The bitmaps keep their crisp 1200 dpi resolution (and don't get anti-aliased) when exported to PDFs. It's a very hassle-free and effective way of working.
Am I just old-fashioned? Is there some new way of dealing with this stuff in Affinity Photo / Designer / Publisher that I'm just not aware of yet?
Every alternative suggestion I've seen on the forums has been far too complicated for what needs to be done. Following those suggestions would also lead to losing the benefits of working with 1-bit bitmaps anyway, resulting in downsampled and lossily compressed images in PDFs. Adobe's software offers separate downsampling settings for color, grayscale, and bitmap images, Affinity squashes all and everything with equal measure. That makes Affinity apps simply unsuitable for some print workflows, despite all the fantastic features they have. 
I'm aware that proper 1-bit color support might be technically more challenging to implement than it sounds, as it comes with the requirement to treat different image files placed in the same document in a different manner. That would probably pose new challenges for drawing the images on the screen too. And the PDF engine is probably a big hurdle too, since it is a third-party solution (as far as I know), and not flexible enough?
 
It would be nice to hear the developers' view on bitmap support. What's the reasoning for leaving it off the roadmap? Is it going to be added later (together with better tools to work with spot colors, maybe), or has the decision been made that it's simply not going to be supported and old-fashioned geezers like me should look elsewhere? Affinity Publisher's release is going to attract even more people fed up with Adobe's pricing model looking for alternative software. The lack of bitmap support might be a decisive factor for many, more critical than the design tools themselves. Some software can't deal with CMYK. Affinity stumbles with 1-bit images.
 
(I probably sound like a broken record at this point, having written many posts about this subject already. Sorry about that.)

I would like to add my voice to the requests for 1-bit support. I run the design / pre-press department of a printing company. We do spot-color offset and letterpress. I absolutely need 1-bit support for our workflow. Please, folks! This is a very important part of print production!
Thanks!