Snapseed

I have three suggestions if I may, please. You could see if any of VivaDesigner, QuarkXPpress or the free and open source Scribus meet you needs and all good luck there. I have tried out VivaDesigner and I think it is competent software and I've seen excellent work done with QuarkXPpress. While I do recommend the rather good Serif Affinity products over Abobe's perma-rental extortionware, I think it is unfortunate that they cannot supply the previous editions of their software where there are difficult and specific circumstances such as yours. Some software companies openly make previous versions available while others like DxO ask the customer to make a specific request to their DxO Support Team.

Two words: Many thanks! Thank you for sharing that file so that anyone in a similar situation can now benefit from your act of kindness. 🙂

^ Thank you both for those constructive suggestions. In my case, I'm a 100% Linux user and the Windows users and Mac user I know don't use any Affinity products. In this Resources section, quite a few people have already shared their projects/designs/images with others for them to download. Perhaps someone could kindly create something like an empty affinity photo project file for us Linux users to download and use e.g. something along the lines of Project1.afphoto

^ Thank you for your excellent advice and I have a question that I hope is not too illogical. If saving a new project cannot be done, what is the method please of creating the initial empty afphoto file? Thanks.

Gimp's sucky interface can be cured with the addition of the PhotoGimp patch so it then looks like it has joined the 21st century. While the current development team has made good and useful progress, Gimp is still missing essential features like non-destructive editing and full, inbuilt CMYK capability and that will hopefully start to change with the Gimp 3.0+ series of releases.

I also use Gravit Designer (now Corel Vector) for any design work I have to do although my design needs are relatively modest.

Then the logical thing to to do is use paid-for professional grade software that can run on Linux such as VivaDesigner and PhotoLine+Wine:

Tbh though, the real pioneers of desktop publishing, and GUI computing in general, was Rank Xerox at their Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California and their Gypsy software was basically the world’s first desktop publishing package. It is safe to say though that both Microsoft and Apple (along with others) heavily borrowed (as in ripped off) all the work that was going on at PARC. If this happened today then there would probably have been a huge lawsuit over what was going on. Anyway, there's a good account of the early days of computing in Robert X Cringely's book Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, And Still Can't Get a Date.

I have two suggestions there if I may. The first is to use the Adobe and Serif products in the way that Hartmut Doering suggests below if you have 16GB+ RAM: The second suggestion is to try out the native Linux VivaDesigner in place of InDesign and Publisher and to try out PhotoLine + Wine in place of Affinity Photo. While the developers of PhotoLine don't make a specific Linux version, they do make the effort to ensure that PhotoLine works well with Wine to cater for Linux users. That is a commendable thing to do and it is a good example for others to follow.

I have to ask if you have ever used Linux because that comment makes no sense whatsoever. There are now universal containerised package types, such as Flatpak, and so all a company or free software provider has to do is supply the software in that single format and it will work on all Debian, RedHat and Arch based Linux distributions. That is not the issue. The real and only issue is that desktop Linux's current overall market share is at 2.77% (figures from Statcounter for November 2022) and that is significantly behind that of both Windows (75.11%) and macOS (15.6%).

I wish all those very same wealthy corporations would do the decent thing and fund full time professional developers for both Gimp and CinePaint and then we would not even want/need Affinity Photo on Linux.

I am not sure if you are going to see this but thank you for the advice and suggestions that you have provided in this thread. I hope that things work out for you over at DuckDuckGo and you might very well have a quieter life over there (in a good way).

Microsoft joined the Blender Foundation’s Development Fund as a Corporate Gold member in order to help Blender continue to develop and improve its software. I'd like to see the prosperous VFX companies pull their fingers out and follow Microsoft's excellent example by funding multiple, paid full time developers for Gimp and CinePaint and then wondrous things will happen.

Please put stereotyped views aside and just think for one moment. If Linux, for example, had a 15% market share then the great majority of those people would almost certainly be standard ordinary computer users just like macOS users. I believe that developers should be rewarded for their efforts and I am only too happy to pay for software like Softmaker Office, Pixeluvo, Vuescan, Ukuu and the rest.

Tbh, I am not sure that's the real issue. As of last month, macOS had a desktop market share of 15.6% whereas Linux's comparable figure was 2.77%, i.e. Linux has a market share 6x smaller than macOS. If macOS had, for example, a general market share of 15.6% and Linux had one of 14.8% then very many more companies would likely produce a Linux version of their softwares. When it comes to specialist development work, Linux has a reported developer market share of between 30% to 40% so that makes it worthwhile for companies in that area like JetBrains to produce Linux versions of their products.