DesignSurge

I can only see this as bad news in the long term, the way I see it there will eventually be only two options, each with their own mass customer base - Adobe for the pros and Canva for the amateurs. Unfortunately, after reading this news I have already started to lose interest in Affinity. There doesn't feel much point in dwelling on it, I will continue to use Affinity until the time comes when I have no real option but to head back to Adobe.

It does seem to be a pointless feature if the 'default' palette isn't actually selected as the active palette on creating a new document, just a minor niggle in the end.

Hi @smadell Thanks for taking the time to reply, I did work that one out for myself eventually, simply changing the name of the colour palette I wanted as the default to make sure it was at the top of the list alphabetically. However on mac at least there is an option to set the current palette as the default for various colour modes, unfortunately it doesn't seem to work.

I work with two 27" screens and like to make full use of the workspace, so like some others I activated separated mode pretty much straight off when using the V1 apps, though it was quite flawed in reality. But being a mac user since the late 80's (and a bit stuck in my ways) it is the natural way of working with graphics apps for me. Since realising that separated mode is no longer available in V2 I took the approach that if I want to move forward with Affinity I just need to get used to the application window approach. Personally I am finding it OK in V2, once I had undocked tools and pulled out all the pallets and positioned them on my second screen I can move my workspace around as I want, so not that different to the way I am used to working. It's only really the top tool bar that is stuck in the main application window. The float to window feature could prove to be more useful if it gets some improvement, but the old separated mode was quite poorly implemented so maybe not such a big loss after all.

I for one was happy to pay for the new Universal Licence, to me the 40% discounted price represents fantastic value for money considering what we are getting for it. Everyone gets the same offer price - personally, I am happy with that. In my mind it looks like this: 3x macOS apps at £25 each 3x iOS apps at £5 each BARGAIN!

This is an issue I had with V1 of all Affinity apps and are still seeing the same behaviour in V2. Way back, I created an application palette of a few, basic CMYK colours. At various times when the palette is in use I have used the option in the swatches panel to set it as the default for CMYK/8, however the setting never seems to stick. I have done this with all 3 macOS desktop apps multiple times, but every time I create a new CMYK document the colour palette has reverted to the usual 'Colours'. It would be nice to open or create a CMYK document and find that my chosen CMYK colour palette is automatically active. Is this a bug, or am I doing it wrong, or misunderstanding the functionality of the setting?

The Affinity apps are all 'young' in the scheme of things and I am not suggesting a substantial update wouldn't be welcome, but who remembers the 'good old days' of the early - mid '90's when software was updated on a very infrequent basis? Quark Xpress V3, Photoshop V2.5, Illustrator V5 and the Mac System 7 - all of which were the daily tools of so many in the design and print industry for what was in fact years. Small updates came along every once in a while and we found tricks and workarounds to compensate for the quirks and bugs. We all expect everything without delay these days.

@Maigriet, Thats great, just shows how some apps fit in with your workflow better than others.

I am aware of the need to use the interception of font requests setting, it may have been related to my own system but I still found it to be generally unreliable. This wasn't just an Affinity issue, integration with Adobe never seemed to be as good as expected either. Right Font is working out for me at present so I am happy with the change.

Yes, it was really the auto activation aspect. Also, after manually activating a font I would always have to relaunch the app I was working in, whether that be Affinity or Adobe for the new font to be available. Right Font is much better in this regard.

@Margriet I think it is sometimes down to the way you work as to what is best, TypeFace just didn't seem as good for me as Right Font did. Testing the options yourself is the way to go.

After being a long time user of FontExplorer (since V1) I recently gave up on it, it really isn't that great. I tested pretty much all the options and eventually settled on RightFont, this is currently working well for me, not perfect of course but it's doing a good job and the auto activation works well with all Affinity apps. It actually works better with Adobe apps than FontExplorer and it's (usually out of date) activation plugins.

@Jon P Yes, a ctrl start has sorted that out, I can confirm the preflight panel will now display in separated mode.

I see the same behaviour - Preflight panel does not display in Separated Mode on Mac OS 10.14.6

I tend to use separated mode with all Affinity products as I like to take full advantage of 2 screens when working and move things around quite a lot, I couldn't find the preflight panel until I switched Separated Mode off, then it is available.

I am seeing the same, slightly blurred items too.

Just wondered if anyone else is having the same hesitations as me? My problem isn't that I don't like Affinity products, quite the opposite: I am still learning how they work all the time and there is so much that I really like, the more I use them the more I find it annoying when I go back to Adobe. So, what's the problem? Unfortunately when it comes to sending press-ready PDFs to print I am unsure if I can fully trust Affinity Designer and Publisher, so the easy option is to stick with tried and tested Illustrator and InDesign. I am using Photo very often now for web based artwork, I have recently completed 3 new logo design projects with Designer with no issues. But only one print job has been done so far with Publisher (a small run business card), again with no issues. I just can't quite commit and produce a brochure design for example with Publisher in case something goes wrong at the printers. In a typical daily workflow there is very little, if anything that I can't do with Affinity, but I am finding it difficult to jump this hurdle.

Hi My second attempt at such an illustration with Designer.

I can see that my original post isn't very clear, so I will add a bit more detail. The idea is that I am testing out how viable it is to convert PDF's into AP files and save the images as linked instead of embedded. I have tested this out with two PDF's generated from InDesign files. One PDF contains CMYK .tif photos and saved as PDF/X-1a, the other contains CMYK photoshop .eps photos and saved as a 'press quality' non flattened PDF. When opened in AP and according to Resource Manager, the images are all CMYK .jpg - I assume this is because both PDF's use JPEG compression when being exported from InDesign, hence AP sees them as .jpg instead of the original format? I am not manually changing file extensions or anything like that. Within AP Resource Manager I used the option to make embedded photos linked, which then prompts for a folder to save them in (as in point 3 above 'Images saved as .jpg into a folder'). At this point when images are saved they are also inverted. So, now I have just done another quick experiment. I saved a PDF containing CMYK .tif images from InDesign but this time I made sure JPEG compression was turned OFF, when opened in AP the images are still .tif and when selecting 'make linked' they are saved into the folder without being changed to negative. There is the bug - When using AP to open a CMYK PDF that uses JPEG compression and then changing images from embedded to linked, the .jpg images saved become negative.

While doing a bit of experimenting I came across what may be a bug. I opened a CMYK PDF in Publisher (original artwork created with InDesign) From the 'Resource Manager' dialogue I selected the images and chose 'Make Linked' Images saved as .jpg into a folder File saved as a Publisher document The process seems to be working well except that the images that are now linked and saved into the folder have inverted colours - ie. have become negative.

After owning AD since it was released I have not really made much use of it - my workflow means that I use InDesign every day, so I end up relying on Adobe Illustrator. Now Publisher is almost here I might be able to think more seriously about making the switch. Anyway, I have been working on this illustration for some time in AD as a way of acquainting myself with it, finally finished it so thought I may as well share the results. Completely done in AD except for the rock texture, unfortunately I resorted to using Illustrators auto trace to generate that from a JPG. I found AD to be a great tool for this illustration, I will definitely be using it much more from now on.

Auto update worked perfectly for me too, seemed a little slow, but worked without issues.

I also think that the bleed margins need to be in a stronger colour, interestingly they are no longer displaying at all for me. One minute they were visible and suddenly no longer, its the same if I open a saved file or create a new one.

1. Tab doesn't work well when in the colour studio for example - ie. if you press tab between fields as you enter values, the next field isn't fully selected so you need to manually select it instead. 2. Shortcuts for leading don't appear to work very often but those for horizontal spacing seem to work OK.

I have found this exact same issue too.