postmadesign

This is a good question, indeed. Responses here are slow sometimes, so I wrote a message on twitter to some professionals that make Affinity brushes. When I get an answer I will post it here.

That is very interesting! I am very much looking forward to puclisher on iPad to see how it would work for me.

That is very interesting! I am very much looking forward to puclisher on iPad to see how it would work for me.

That is very interesting! I am very much looking forward to puclisher on iPad to see how it would work for me.

Many have pointed out that Apple is showing Affinity Publisher in it's ads for iPad Air 5. My guess is that this is where their attention is going at the moment. There is still one application in the lineup that hasn't been released even as a beta yet so it makes sense that this is their main focus.

Yes, I am aware of this, and this is quite useful in itself.
But my problem is there is not much visual hierarchy in the tabs, so it can be hard to find what I am looking for in these long list. See attached the screenshot where I have character & paragraph panels on top of each other: it becomes quite hard to find what I need, let alone, where the one panel begins or ends. This has to do with the low contrast as a whole (be it dark or light ui). So as it is now, i prefer to put character & paragraph tabbed together, and pick whatever on I need. I hope you can address the issue with the low contrast UI (which is a separate topic) as I think this is an area Affinity can still improve a lot.

I am really liking publisher so far, and can imagine working with it professionally in the future.
I am using indesign cs5.5 at the moment and one thing I would like to see in publisher which is in this program is collapsible panels.
I like to have some panels open all the time, like character, paragraph, pages and color. This already fills my workspace pretty much, but I would like other options quickly available too, but not take up space all the time, f.i. the text frame option, the text styles and stroke options.
Having some way to group a couple and minimize them would be very helpful.

Amazing that an ex-user still have so much time to whine about the software you don't want to use. Of course there are things Affinity does not do as well as some would like. But no one is forcing you to use it and no app is for everyone. I miss some things in Affinity too, but for me as a whole it has giving me a lot and I like to use the apps, despite some shortcomings. If you want more advanced vector support but not illustrator, just try Vectorstyler. This is an app with great potential, and many of the features Affinity users request. Despite that the UX is still better with Affinity so its only a side gig.

I had hoped that there would be a fix for the pixel tool, which is broken for both the Mac (intel) and iPad versions. I reported on this issue before, but as no improvement has been made I would like to bring it to the attention. It affects many of the standard brushes like the pencils and airbrushes. The pressure dynamics is somehow broken so it either makes no mark or a mark at full pressure. I hope to see a fix for this as it is something I like  to use.

I had hoped that there would be a fix for the pixel tool, which is broken for both the Mac (intel) and iPad versions. I reported on this issue before, but as no improvement has been made I would like to bring it to the attention. It affects many of the standard brushes like the pencils and airbrushes. The pressure dynamics is somehow broken so it either makes no mark or a mark at full pressure. I hope to see a fix for this as it is something I like  to use.

I created this illustration, loosely based on the Citroen Mehari, in Affinity Designer. It is a part of a map project, but as this one did not really fit, I wanted to share it with you here. It is all done in vectors and it was very enjoyable. I hope you like it.

I created this illustration, loosely based on the Citroen Mehari, in Affinity Designer. It is a part of a map project, but as this one did not really fit, I wanted to share it with you here. It is all done in vectors and it was very enjoyable. I hope you like it.

I created this illustration, loosely based on the Citroen Mehari, in Affinity Designer. It is a part of a map project, but as this one did not really fit, I wanted to share it with you here. It is all done in vectors and it was very enjoyable. I hope you like it.

I created this illustration, loosely based on the Citroen Mehari, in Affinity Designer. It is a part of a map project, but as this one did not really fit, I wanted to share it with you here. It is all done in vectors and it was very enjoyable. I hope you like it.

An interesting idea that fits wel with the brand. I do think the colors need some work, as the red and the blue clash and create an unappealing look. I would be interested if the logo would work better if a Sans-Serif typeface was used?

I created this illustration, loosely based on the Citroen Mehari, in Affinity Designer. It is a part of a map project, but as this one did not really fit, I wanted to share it with you here. It is all done in vectors and it was very enjoyable. I hope you like it.

I use vectorization of a pixel based graphic a lot - but I learned, that there are cheap one-time buy tools (Super vectorizer for multi colour and Image vectorizer for one colour) that do a much better job than Illustrator (at least when I last used it about 1.5/2 years before). So this is not a plus for Adobe IMO. However free transform of shapes/text,... would be really handy needed. But I'm sure that we will see this in the near future.

I guess it all comes down to the expectations. I agree 100% that Affinity would need a couple of features to really compete with Illustrator for everyone. How much you rely on these features to do your work determines your success or failure in using Designer. For me, there are things I would like to see, but I have about 95% of the features I need ATM. If you need Live-Trace or Vector transform all the time, then AD is not for you right now, and you would need to try Corel or Adobe. But it would make little sense for Affinity to add a feature like trace when it works badly. Inkscape, Vectorstyler and Vectornator all have this feature, but the results are very poor most of the time, especially for color images. Even Illustrator is not very good at that. And if you only need B/W vectorisations, either trace yourself or use an online convertor. Only if Affinity adds one that does a proper job am I going to use it.

I finally got the hang of Final Cut and decided to get the ball rolling again with my tutorials/demos. I ended up making a follow up video to my original vintage coloring tutorial. This time around, I address some questions about how to use some of the tools in the kit I made, and I also demonstrate the entire process from beginning to end. Hope you guys enjoy!
 

This problem seems to be finally corrected in Win version 1.9.1. in the recent update, so hopefully it comes soon also to Mac version. I did different tests and it worked in Win 10. However even I turned on option of manual update of linked files, referenced Affinity files are being updated automatically without any asking. While working in one document popup window belonging to other document shows up. Quite messy. This still needs to be done properly. At least it is not rescaling. Good luck and solid nerves. Affinity is on the good way, but still many things to be developed.

We are pleased to announce an update for the MacOS release of Affinity Designer, to version 1.9.1
The detailed changes in Affinity Designer for MacOS 1.9.1 over the release build Affinity Designer for macOS 1.9.0 are as follows:
Fixes & Improvements:
My Account & Registration system improvements and fixes. This feature is explained in more detail here Sync your Affinity Store resources with your Affinity 1.9 apps Fixed numerous brush management issues. Fixed toolbar height in separated mode. Fixed the inability to save some files originally opened as read only. Text in scaled text frame could increase in size when grouped. TIFF loading fixes. Assets improvements and fixes. Fixed some icons being very small. Fixed incorrect/missing cursor issues. Fixed crash loading large TGA files. Fixed monochromatic iconography option not working. Fixed alignment issues with pixel tool. Fixed marquee selection issues on Apple Silicon devices. Fixed New Document dialog on older macOS versions. Fix for some old documents with Constraints failing to load properly if they contained Compound objects. Fix for Compound node operation mode chooser not being available in the Layers studio. Fixed Resource Manager on OS X 10.9 Fix for updating images via Resource Manager causing image scale to be reset. Fixed printing crash when the document has multiple artboards. Fixed mirroring objects to transform individually based on tool settings. Fixed PDF passthrough failing to work on multi-page documents. Improved performance of snapping by restricting inner bound snapping to objects with no more than two curves (i.e. single holes). New samples. Various stability improvements and assorted other small fixes. Help and Localisation improvements Changes and fixes in 1.9 made since 1.8.x (including the new 1.9 features) are listed in some detail in this 1.9.0 Designer macOS update announcement 
The 1.9 new features are explained by our team in this video
UPDATING TO THIS VERSION (Free for existing customers)
The software version can be seen on the splash screen and the About dialog (in application menu, Affinity Designer > About).
If you’ve purchased from the Mac App Store— updates are done automatically next time you run your software after it is available in the Mac App Store. If this does not happen for you, open the Mac App Store app and go to the Updates page and then Store > Reload page or press CMD+R. This should hopefully force the update to show. Apple sometimes phase roll outs around the world which can mean it may take up to 72 hours for your update to be available.
If you’ve purchased from the Affinity Store— each time you start the software it will check for updates and offer to download and install any available update, or in the application main menu there is an option Check for Updates. You can download the latest installer by logging into the affinity store here and find the order in your account and use the "Download" button in there. Alternatively, this new release (and previous versions of Affinity Designer for macOS) can be downloaded from this link (that installer is NOT for Mac App Store purchases and needs a product key).

I don't have a time machine backup post 1.9 unfortunatly. About the crah report, I will have to check later.
I did have content loaded via the account, but synced manually.

Status: Release Candidate
Purpose: Fixes
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download ZIP: Download
Auto-update: Available
 
Hello,
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the second build of Affinity Photo 1.9.1 for macOS.
If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry.
This beta is an incremental update to the 1.9.0 version recently released to all customers (although it still installs parallel to the released version, as described above). We recommend that you use this beta in preference to the store version if you are affected by any of the issues listed below.
Affinity Photo Team  
 
Changes Since 1.9.1.119
 
- Registration system improvements and fixes.
- Fixed numerous brush management issues.
- Fixed toolbar height in separated mode.
- Text in scaled text frame could increase in size when grouped.
- Astrophotography bad pixel tool improvements.
- Added ability to load FITS files with .fts extensions.
- TIFF loading fixes.
- Further TGA fixes for large files.
- Assets improvements and fixes.
- Fixed numerous tiny icons.
- Assorted small fixes.
- New samples.
- Help improvements.
- Localisation improvements.
 
Changes Since 1.9.0
 
- Fixed crash exporting LUTs.
- Fixed some icons being very small.
- Fixed incorrect cursor issues.
- Fixed crash loading large TGA files.
- Fixed bug when erasing from a panorama source mask.
- Fixed CR3 bugs.
- Fixed monochromatic iconography option not working.
- Fixed alignment issues with pixel tool.
- Fixed marquee selection issues on Apple Silicon devices.
- Fixed loading of 16bit LAB TIFF.
- Fixed assorted live filter issues.
- Fixed live stack with live perspective issues when the source images have differing orientations.
- Assorted other small fixes.

I have been playing around trying to figure out how to convert some InDesign documents to Publisher. Although the conversion works really quite well, there are certainly some bugs, especially with placed images. I got frequent crashes when replacing images, and they are generally not correctly sized and sometimes squished.
Now that I had set up the spread as I wanted, I wanted to test if it would work in a real world situation: I have the same basic spread but the content (graphs, tables etc.) have to be changed. What I ran into immediately is that Publisher does not retain the customized placement of the image when I replace it. I replaced both Designer files as well as EPS files, but in both cases I have to manually rescale and position the image each time. The files that I replace the images with are exactly the same dimensions, so this can not be the problem. It just seems to reset the picture frame each time. This is of course very annoying and gives a lot of unneccesary work. Is this some kind of bug, as I can not see why this would be intended behaviour?

I am sorry to be negative on this forum, as in general I like most of the things in the Affinity Suite, but the tables function in Publisher just leaves way to much to be desired. I have commented on this issue before, but besides some small bug fixes it is still generally the same deal. I have a project I am working on that includes many specifically formatted tables which occur many times in the report, each with different data, but the same setup. I started this recurring project in Indesign 2 years ago and was hoping to transfer it to Publisher, as I still work with an old Indesign version and it is not very smooth. Publisher is much smoother overall. However I cannot get the tables to work as they do in Indesign, however way I try. I have several problems.
First thing is that it is very hard to get the column widths as i want them. It works very different from indesign and I just find it very frustrating. When I create a table with a specific nr. of rows and columns the entire table has a specific width and each column has a uniform width. Now I want to make specific column to right of the one I widened gets squished... When I try instead to first change the width of the right most column, the table as a whole changes size...? I have no idea why this makes any sense at all. I have been working with tables in indesign for years, so perhaps I just don't understand what Publisher is doing? The only wy to archieve the result I want is to drag the width of the table wider then I will use it in the end, and then change the width of each column from left to right. But this is very inflexible, and if I want to change the width of a column later it will always affect the other columns. I find this highly frustrating.
The other big problem is the text formatting within the table. I have use several text styles within the same table, so I have created a basic table in the way I want it to look. Now I will paste the data from Excel into the table, but this is where the problem occurs: All the pasted text will have the style of the upper left most cell. It completely ignores all the local formatting I have done. This creates a lot of unnecesary work to adjust the table the way I want it to be again. The only partial solution was to use the table style dialog and create a separate style for each table with text style assigned to the right cell. So when I have my table defined in this way I can paste the data and apply the table style. But this is quite unintuitive and gives me new problems with regards to lines. If I have have certain cells with and certain cells without border lines, it will not retain these local formatting. I have no idea why these things have to be so complicated.
It is these things that keep me from using Publisher for this project, which is a great shame. Can you tell me if you are working on improving the tables in the near future?