HenrikM

I do not want anyone of those! Except for Keynote, the programs on the list are either crapware presentation programs, or programs that are not presentation programs at all. For example, Camtasia is a very good program, but it is a screen recorder, not a presentation program, Windows Movie Maker is a video editing program, and so on. Most of the presentation programs in the list don't work offline. Many of them have pay-until-you-die subscription models. The first program on the list, CustomShow, you can't even buy without talking to a sales person first. LibreOffice Impress can't handle a simple cross fade correctly. Reallusion requires Google Slides to work, and Google Slides presentations loose all pictures when you try to show a presentation while offline, even if the pictures you have linked to are stored locally on the hard drive. It is because of junk programs such as those on the list, that I believe there is room for a simple, but high quality, presentation program on the market.

There is no good presentation program in the PC/Windows market. Even a very basic presentation program built on the Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher platform and licensing model could be a killer app. I occasionally do presentations, on topics ranging from photography and digital art to management history, agile methodologies, systems thinking, and complexity thinking. I am not the best presenter around, but I am good enough, and well know enough (, in my little corner of the world), to get paid to present. A couple of years ago I switched from using Macs to using PCs, and I more or less stopped doing presentations, except at work, where I used PowerPoint. Can't hold a candle to Keynote, but I used it because someone else paid for the licence. Now, I have been asked to do a couple of presentations outside of work, in locations where there may not be a reliable WiFi connection, so I started looking for a decent presentation program that runs on the PC. I could not find a single one! First, I'll describe the showstoppers that keeps me from using the PC software I had a look at. Then, I'll write about why I think adding a presentation program to the Affinity suite would be an excellent idea. Showstoppers: Licensing model: Most presentation software for the PC have a pay/month licensing model. If I was a full-time professional presenter, that might be worth it, but I am not. I expect to use the software 4-8 times per year. Dependency on the Internet: I need to be able to run the presentations locally on my computer. WiFi guest networks are not always available. When they are available, they tend to be unreliable. Quality: Basic things, like doing a cross fade between pictures, tend to suck in opensource programs like LibreOffice. Don't get me started on the cluttered LibreOffice Impress user interface, designed to show off as much functionality as possible, while completely ignoring how presenters think and work. Each one of the three problems above is enough to stop me from using a presentation program. While a bad user interface is painful enough on its own, if the quality of transitions is bad enough, I won't even use a free one. I believe there are many other people who feel the same way. That creates an opportunity for Serif: The Affinity products use the licensing model I want. Affinity products are designed to work offline, while at the same time taking advantage of online features, like online picture libraries, when Internet connection is available. The quality of Affinity products is already excellent. They take advantage of fast processors, and fast graphics cards. In addition to solving the showstopper issues, Serif has several other strong advantages if the choose to make a presentation program: Much of the functionality has already been built: Excellent drawing tools Great image processing tools Asset manager Online image libraries Page management ...and so on. The only things missing are page transitions, simple animation features, and a presentation mode. Because of the very tight integration between Affinity products, I believe a presentation program would require a modest investment in terms of time and effort. At the same time, the integration would make it uniquely powerful. It would be possible to design the program so that it focuses on graphics, not on bullet points, which would be great. What do you think of the idea?

I worked on a multi-page document yesterday, and quickly got frustrated because I could not find a way to override the No. of columns setting at the paragraph level. It is useful to be able to do this because you can then have titles and introductory paragraphs than span the full width of the text area in the same text box as the main text. This makes master pages way more flexible. You do not have to create separate text boxes for titles and introductory paragraphs. You can also do other things, like having a wide text column, and then, in the text flow, you can override the number of paragraphs, and have a multi-column section right in the main flow. FrameMaker could do this, and it was very useful, both for short articles and longer non-fiction documents.

If I could choose the scripting language, I'd definitely go with Python over Javascript or Applescript. Applescript is out, because I currently use a PC running Windows. Javascript is a horrible mess of a language. I have used Javascript rather extensively in the past, because I got very well paid to do it. Today, I am not remotely interested in using it, for any reason. Python is a well designed, easy to learn, and very powerful language with very extensive support in the form of libraries. It fits very well with professional programming practices like TDD and BDD. If choosing between those three, Python is the best choice by far.

Thanks! There is room for improvement. There are some things I'll do differently next time. Still, I am happy with the results, and more importantly, so was the model.

@Alfred and @Smee Again, Here is a version without frequency separation.

For a recent portrait, I decided to try out the Frequency Separation functionality in Affinity Photo to remove skin discoloration. Worked very well.

I have started using DxO and Affinity Photo together. I do basic stuff in DxO, then use DxO to send the result straight to Affinity Photo for compositing and other work. Worked like a charm from the start. The programs work very well together.

For comparison...a daylight version of the same scene. Traditional werewolves would be unlikely to venture out in the mid-day sun though.

Alice of Sandby vs. werewolves. Alice is a graphic novel character created by Petra Brewitz. Petra and I are working on a graphic novel manuscript, Alice: Demons Gate. No werewolves in that story...but there is definitely story potential in an encounter between Alice and a pack of werewolves. The scene was rendered in Daz Studio. I used Affinity photo to turn the original daylight scene into a nighttime scene: I increased the contrast reduced saturation toned bright parts slightly yellow, and darker parts slightly blue, to create a feeling of night. That is basically it. A

It'll be awhile before we do the shoot, but I'll post the image once it is done.

Ordinary house cat, and a really, really good makeup-artist. Actually, I cheat a bit. I bought the cat model in the Daz store. For the final photo version, I will probably buy fur with longer hair. The model looks pretty realistic as it is right now though.

I have begun storyboarding photo sessions using Affinity Photo, Daz Studio, and Dynamic Auto-Painter. Cat and Mouse is a good example. I set the scene up in Daz Studio and rendered it. Then I post-processed it in Affinity Photo. Finally, to reduce the realism and get a more painterly feeling, I ran the picture through Auto-Painter. Works pretty well, I think. Now, of course, I have to do everything all over again, shooting with a live model. However, having a storyboard picture like this makes it a lot easier to figure out how to light the scene, to discuss the scene with the model, to figure out what props to use...

Thank you! I'll hold a rather boring business presentation on Wednesday. I'm counting on this picture to wake the audience up a bit. :-)

Five Finger Voting - A quick-and-dirty illustration for a presentation slide.

Very good work!

Here is the final version of the poster. There are still things that can be improved, but I had to get it printed while there was still time.

I did make a new version where all the text is centered, black, and immediately under the title. That works a bit better. I can't upload the file to the forum. Might be a bit too large. I'm off to work in a few minutes, but I can upload a lower resolution picture tonight, when I get back home, if you want to see it.

Yes, I checked. What's there is pretty much what I need in regard to text boxes. I just might come up with a few other suggestions... I have tested the beta a little bit, by designing a poster for a photo exhibition. I really like the way it works. I won't lay out a book until I can anchor pictures in text flows though. It would not surprise me if that feature will be in the finished version. It is pretty much a must have for anything longer than 2-4 pages.

We are three different artists with three very different personal styles. The reason that we have an exhibition together is simply that we are very good friends, and we like to work together. For this exhibition, we stick to our own styles, and that is why the pictures on the poster are different. The exhibition is more for fun than anything else. We have done other work, a graphic novel, where we designed a common style, and stuck to it.

In some vector graphics applications, for example Omnigraffle for the Mac, all objects with an area can contain text. Arrows can have labels, so technically, they contain text too. Even groups can have their own text. In addition, text boxes can be formatted with outlines and background colors, just like any other object. This makes it a lot easier to label figures in diagrams and other drawings than the nested text box approach currently used by Designer and Photo. Having a similar feature in Affinity Designer would be highly useful.

It is a better design than my original. I was too stuck on having the pictures cover the entire poster. Centering the subtitle is also an improvement. Thanks! BTW, here is a link to a blog post with the full bottom right picture, and a bit of context: http://kallokainphoto.blogspot.com/2018/07/oland-nudes-i-at-beach.html

This is a selfie. I shot the photo of myself in the tunnel over a year ago. My initial attempts at adding tentacles did not work out too well. A couple of months ago, I made a new attempt. I rendered the tentacles in Daz Studio, composited in Affinity Photo, and painted in Dynamic Auto-Painter. I created several different versions. This is the one my son likes the best.

Good point about the font. I tested with a heavier one, and it does increase legibility. The white text is not ideal, but it'll have to do. Öland 2018 Poster v03 Tre Konstnärer.pdf

This is a poster made in the Affinity Publisher beta. I used three 120 degree circle segments as containers for three different pictures by photographers Petra Brewitz, Julia Reinhart, and myself. The bottom right picture is a composite made in Affinity Photo, and converted to a digital painting in Dynamic Auto-Painter. The other two pictures were processed in Photoshop. There are still some important features missing in the Publisher Beta, but I really like the stuff that is there. I believe this will be a great layout program. BTW, the poster is in Swedish, it is about a photo exhibition in the city of Borgholm on the island Öland, during a harvest festival.