KipV

I am trying to cut around an image and put into a layout program like I can do with Photoshop. Am I really not able to do this Affinity? When I exported it I said "save without background" but the white background still comes into Quark. Is there a way to do a clipping path like you can with Photoshop?

I still haven't been able to get this to work but it could very likely be user error.

I wonder, who specifically doubted if Serif was working on a layout tool? Serif has said that they are working on a DAM and even though I haven't seen it I have no good reason to think that isn't true.

With a movie I tend to want to know as little as possible but just enough to know if I am interested in seeing it. At this point with Publisher I haven't seen anything much that would compel me to get it since I already have both ID and Quark that do the same things. Like I have pointed out extensively in other threads I feel that the development priority should be given to Photo and especially Designer. If you take the innovative features from those products and couple them with many of the catch up features we saw yesterday you would have an amazing competitor. Both products are still pretty mediocre at doing basic layouts (meaning one or two pages not books.) To see my thoughts on that see the other posts I made about a year ago on this.

I don't care about working vs. non working as much as I do about innovative vs rehashing old ground.

I really doubt there are people who didn't think this product existed and Serif was just lying to us. It seems like your bar for success is set pretty low.

@R C-R I would expect them to show things other products can't do. What is the point of a product that just does all the same things? The earliest demos of Photo and Designer showed things that the competitors couldn't do so this unveiling was largely a disappointment.

The blending modes don't function live when I try them. Not sure why that is. When I discussed this with Martin it sounded like he wasn't aware of Quark being able to do that. If Publisher doesn't competitive with features like projects (and other things) I would find little use it using it. ID just recently caught up with end notes so they already have a competitor gaining around on them.

I would also like to know if Publisher is project based like Quark or just only file at a time like ID. I strongly prefer Quark's approach. My layout projects are grouped together and I finder needing to go to the Finder to find ID files is a much more cumbersome approach then having all the project files readily available in open tabs.

I think an ebook persona would be one. Both Quark (1985) and ID (1999) predate ebooks (and modern versions of tablets and smart phones) by quite a number of years so the original developers didn't have a chance to think about this type of workflow. They may be a better way to do it then they way they are currently doing it. I don't know how far Serif wants to get into the web development category; it probably makes sense to split that off into a separate app if they made a Dreamweaver like tool. I don't know tons about web development but it seems like the differences are still substantial over other layout.

@smadell That would make sense to me. I wonder if Publisher will even have personas?!

What I mean is when you scroll down the blend mode menu it updates the effect immediately. This is a great time saver and I haven't seen the feature on anything other then Affinity.

That's great Tony, my question would be about the different Personas which were not shown off. The demo most shows features that are already in Photo/Designer/Quark/ID. Personas in a layout tool is new (as far as I know) so that would probably be what I am most interested in.

Yes, I do expect some explanation since they made it public. It is no longer a secret if they make it public. I don't know if the current unveiling says much. Almost all of the Publisher features can already be done in Photo and/or Designer, Quark and/or InDesign. The main feature (only feature?) Quark/ID can't do is live blending modes. I guess it is ok that they are catching up and it is nice that some of these features will make it to Photo/Designer (visible bleeds for an example.) If they are really going to release a beta in 6 months I don't know how much time they can have to make massive feature adjustments. They also have to get touch Designer iPad and a DAM tool which would pressingly limit their time. If they do another delay I can't see anyone taking them serious in this area, I already don't to be honest in a ways.

When Serif showed off the Publisher video on Facebook today it showed three persona icons that were the icons for the three Affinity apps. Unfortunately they didn't click between these personas so it's hard to tell how they work. Can someone at Serif please explain what the personas are?

Seems like it is taking time away from adding new features. Not a good trade off it appears.

I never said people had to be on High Sierra or a new Mac. My questions was why are people running a version that is five or more versions back? "Before Mavericks" means they are running 10.8 or older while the latest version is 10.13. Even you are running a MacOS that is substantially newer then that on your 2008 pro. High Sierra runs on some machines from 2009 and 2010. It is also not secure to be running versions that are that old.

Why would anyone be on a version of MacOS older then Mavericks? Or anything more then one version back? There are a lot of important improvements in the last few versions.

Hi Paul, yes it is a true story. I worked with Jimbo's mother when putting the book cover together (Jimbo is the main character.) She has been trying to publish the book for over 30 years!

I just noticed the new Affinity Photo book has a section on book cover design.

There are a lot of points getting brought up here from my last message and I don't think I have time to address them all. But I just wanted to back to the discussion about Adobe buying out the technology that would later become ID. I find it very unlikely that there is still one person on this planet that would call that a bad decision. As the first version of ID was being developed they were able to incorporate technology from Photoshop, Illustrator, etc to make a tool that would eventually overthrow the market leader. This compatibility between the apps was one of several reasons that got them to where they are. I also I don't buy this idea that ID became the leader mainly because they bundled it in suites, There have been several apps in their suites that are no longer around today. I don't think most people were forced to use ID Adobe just kept making decisions that made sense and the competition made decisions that didn't make sense. I don't think anyone here brought up that argument but I have heard it elsewhere.

SrPx, I think we are talking past each other. I am not saying Adobe and Serif should merge I am saying that it would be beneficial to work along side other one product companies so that Serif can at least be a medium sized fish to against Adobe the big fish. The problem in my eyes is that no one is a real competitor to Adobe just lots of small fish trying to take on the big fish but that doesn't work. I don't think Serif needs to be a massive 20 product company but if they were a 5 or 6 product company that would be at least enough to take them seriously (I am not including Serif's pre-Affinity line into that number as they said that line would be discontinued to replace it with Affinity.) The important part about third party plug-in support is that what one person considers essential to their workflow another considers bloat. A layout company has to decide on what the basics are for most people and then provide access to third parties to provide custom solutions. R C-R, I have no problem with my hardware at all, I have none of the issues you brought up anymore. It just whizzes along without any slow down or noise at all. Apple is just about ready to put out an iMac Pro that is significantly faster then my iMac and I already have no problem with performance of that machine at all. Adobe didn't kill the competing products they killed some of them, most notably the bulk of Macromedia, but there is a long list of competing products out there it's just that they don't want to work together to become a serious response to Adobe.

I don't care much about saving RAM I have 64gb and haven't filled that up yet (highest use was 50gb so far) and you can buy desktops that have at least twice that much ram. A 64 bit processor allows the RAM limit to be virtually limitless.

SrPx I never tried to defend every merge that has happened in human history. There was one merge I specifically brought up which was with Aldus. I haven't heard anyone here argue against the fact that whatever you think about Adobe today late 90s Adobe was much better then early 90s Adobe. There is a similarity between early 90s Adobe and where Serif is today, although of course early 90s Adobe wasn't as advanced as 2017 Serif. At the time they had Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier, and After Effects. I don't know if the video programs are of much relevance in this conversation but the fact that they only had a photo editor and drawing program without a layout tool was a big problem in this lineup. Aldus gave them both short term and long term solutions and Serif could be in a similar position by having both solutions as well. People have been saying they don't know what the initial version of Publisher will be like but I think people do know and they are right to set their exceptions pretty low. I don't have super high hopes for version two or three either. Then there is the question of plug-in support which we have no guarantee that wide spread third party plug-in will even happen. This support is essential to a layout program getting off the ground. Some ID plug-ins haven't even made their way to Quark even though it was an industry standard. You really think there is going to be a big third party push for Publisher? Why? It seems to me that a lot of people here don't get that the reason Adobe is in the position they are currently in is because the "competition" lets that get away with a lot. If the competition was a bit more competitive Adobe wouldn't be in such a dominate position.