KipV

Interesting, perhaps incorporating pages into Designer is one reason they are holding back Publisher. It looks like there is a couple new features under the pro printing section as well such as improvements for bleeds.

Yes Mike that is what I am talking about. It looks like the DPI keeps getting larger when you make the photo smaller. At first I couldn't figure out how to check the DPI so that I could change it if need but but changing it in an external program doesn't seem necessary if you can just make the photo smaller. When I scaled this particular photo to get to 300 DPI it came out to an acceptable size so it doesn't look like I have to do any more adjusting.

In the coming weeks I will start working with the publisher and all those details will be known. I just wanted to run it past the Affinity community in case the publisher asks for native files or PSD or what not. In such a case I would have to start thinking about how to best export the file to other formats but I don't think that will be the case. If they are flexible enough to do the interior layout in Word it seems like they would be flexible enough to handle Affinity. I don't generally handle most of the print work myself as the print jobs are usually small enough quantity to do on a laser printer. When I have sent files out to offset printers would sometimes want to see the native files (which at that time would have been FreeHand and I think InDesign as well.) Partly I don't want to act like a complete ignoramus when I start talking with my publisher and client.

I have been working on a cover design in Affinity Designer and I was curious as to how publishers like to receive files. Do I send the native Affinity file or a PDF or something else? I ask because the set up is different then it has been in the past. The people writing the book are doing the work in Word instead of a layout program for an example. I would love to know what experiences others have had in this area. When I self published by first book with InDesign (just using a basic laser printer) I would export the interior as a PDF and then print the cover straight out of InDesign. Since the cover is just one page (of course) I figured Affinity could handle that job.

As I understand it pages is just a Publisher feature. Artboards is already in Designer.

There are some layout features that you would want even in an app that has the most basic layout features. Text wrap was in FreeHand and is probably in illustrator. Artboards are important in drawing and photo software because you need to make variations of designs in those programs and you need a solution that works better then putting the variations on the pasteboard. When I get an idea for a design variation in the photo app it is too time consuming to quit out of the app, find the right version of Photo and then open the right file all to just make a copy of that artboard so that can now quit out of Designer, reopen Photo and reopen that file. This needs to be a one step process; it's too basic to not be included in Photo. Where publisher comes in is if you need to do long documents like a book, magazine, or ebook. Features to do those tasks should not be in Designer or Photo. It's hard to say how many Design and Photo features should be in Publisher. InDesign has some drawing tools for an example but they are so poor it's hard to imagine that make people use them very often. I think the last time I used the pen tool in InDesign was when I took the tutorial learning how to use the software.

WOW! I just noticed the auto adjusting of DPI when you resize a raster image! What an incredible feature! So tedious when using InDesign the links panel would tell you the image was the wrong DPI so you would have to open the image in PS, go to the resize dialog, find the right size to get you 300 DPI, save the image, and then update the image in the links panel. Big time saver especially if you have lots of images that need to be adjusted and have to go through that whole process for each image. @bleduc It seems like it would be an easy enough feature to add since they wouldn't be making it from scratch just bringing it across form the other program. It was only recently added to Designer (1.4?) so they are probably getting the feature improved before bring it across to Photo. The other feature I would like to see brought to artboards is the ability to turn the pasteboard off (including the bleed area) so that I can get rid of all the distractions when I am trying to just look at the artboard.

I hope text wrap also comes to Designer as well for people who use it for basic layouts. As I have been doing my first big project in Affinity and one Designer feature that would be nice to have in Photo is the ability to work with artboards. It doesn't seem like I should have to move to another app to just edit, resize, or create an artboard.

I see, yes that was the problem (I was using artistic text.) Also is there anything like text wrap or least some type of work around if there isn't?

Can someone please help me on how to import Word files into Affinity Designer? I am trying to import some basic body text in but Affinity isn't letting me resize the text blocks (see what they look like in the attachment.) When I move the handle on the text block it stretches the text which I obviously don't want to do.

Nevermind this post I think I got it to work except for the part about the pointer tool not turning into the selected tool when clicked on. I successfully got the tool to function though although I am not very good at using it. Old post: It looks like the patch tool isn't working for me. When I click on the tool it still remains a pointer. I can draw around an item but then I can't do anything to select to the new area that I want to sample from. I don't think this is a user error because it seems like I have tried this tool before in Affinity.

Very interesting feature.

@DavidMac I will look into that workaround if I need to, thanks for telling me about it. @MEB I guess what I don't understand entirely is why not keep Designer as a release candidate until 1.4.4 comes out? Why push 1.5 to the app store at all?

Yes I was just told about global colors from one of the staff. That looks like a great idea! However even that may not give me entirely what I am looking for. The photo I started out with didn't have color applied to it at all. If there was color applied then I could see how your global color solution would solve this problem but when the original file I placed in Designer doesn't have color it won't get updated unless photo is linked to the layout software, I think. I am pretty sure that is right. So what I am doing now is making copies of the newest color change in Designer then reapplying my layout to each of those photos. I am of two minds about this because I like the idea of getting rid of linking since it is an annoying task yet for some workflows it seems to make sense to link. I have to wonder how Publisher is going to go about this? Will it too avoid linking?

@Nana I agree that the betas have mostly been pretty stable but betas still come with no guarantee that they will work. It seems like AD 1.5 could have waited until AP 1.4.4 came out. If there is a way for me to switch back to AP 1.4.x then that would be fine.

I am a little confused that in the release notes it says that I won't be able to open my Photo 1.5 files in Photo 1.4. I got stuck into using the beta because when I installed Design 1.5 I was under the impression that I would still be able to open my files in Photo 1.4. At this time it seems like I am forced into using the unstable 1.5 photo beta for production work. I guess I am still not 100% sure what to do now.

After using Affinity for my first layout project I have a question on how to make multiple variations of a design. When I would work in InDesign I could link a photo or illustration in the layout and then make several copies of that file so I could make revisions to the layout. Affinity doesn't link files, which on one hand is really neat, but if I revise a photo the layout is based on it doesn't update across all the layout revision artboards. Ideally to me you would want to choose whether or not a layout could get updated or stay at a previous state. For an example I wanted to see what one layout would look like with the black and white photo and another layout with a color photo.

Once Photo 1.4.4 comes out will I be able to bring a file I have been working on in Photo Beta 1.5 back to Photo 1.4.4? It seems like I wouldn't be able to go from a higher version number back down to a lower one.

I hope there won't be a problem using the beta. When I was using it on some unimportant photos it had some save problems for a while. That error was due to trying to edit photos from Apple Photos into Affinity Photo so I hope I don't have a problem with the Affinity docs I use in the Finder (which is where the file I am currently working on is.)

Serif probably doesn't have control over the timing of these releases. That is a bit of a problem when being able to open files requires that you both pieces of software to be released at the same time. I really hope it comes out today.

I don't usually rely on betas to do my main work but it seems like the only solution for me to open the file. Is there going to be an update to AP 1.4.x that will allow me to open AD 1.5 files? I am not sure if I want to rely on a beta.

I think I understand. I will play around and see if I get it. Thanks

Some Adobe apps like Illustrator, and now I think some others (Photoshop?), have a way to replace a color combination with another color combination. Does Affinity have something like this?

@Newbie I hate the subscription plan too which is one of the reasons I stick with CS6. What is more important to me then saving money on subscriptions though is worthwhile updates. If Adobe was able to justify software upgrades that were actually worth $600 a year (plus the cost of upgrading all your extensions) then I would spend $600+ a year. Unfortunately the value of their updates have taken a slide and it is not because of product maturity as some Adobe trolls like to portray it as. @Fixx I found PageMaker to be a horrible product. Even non layout programs like FreeHand did a better job at layout. There was on rare case where Adobe was justified in killing off a product where they usually made bad judgement in this area (LiveMotion, FreeHand, etc.)

To me it seems like the ideal time to release the software is once it can do several things that ID and Quark can not do. InDesign generally works ok so just rushing out a competitor doesn't make sense to me. I think what will entice most people to get the software is when it is able to do many of the features that ID users have been asking for over the years that Adobe hasn't delivered. The fact that some people don't want to pay a subscription for ID probably isn't enough reason to rush out the software.