Atmavidya

I must say it is great to see what other users are experiencing and to read your views. So, all the input above is very much appreciated by me. I have been a user of PagePlus in addition to various versions of QuarkXPress. The only gripe I have with PagePlus (and DrawPlus for that matter) that I could not get both application to recognize true greyscale images. Serif solved the issue (for me) by providing the “100K Only" option on PDF export for projects that were greyscale only. Personally, I feel that PP had reached its end-of-life cycle in a natural evolutionary way, for want of a better expression. Yet, it will stay on my computer as long as it plays well with the OS. (I do not like to kick out old and faithful friends). The betas of Publisher have been pretty much smooth sailing so far for me. Serif may not like to hear it, but Publisher cannot hide its heritage from PagePlus. For me that is a good thing. The other thing that is obvious is that Serif/Affinity gave more than a nod to users who are used to Adobe applications. Keyboad short cuts, panning, you name it. Again, it is a question of personal preferences – I grew up with Adobe software years ago – so I have no problems with that either. In conclusion, I am very much convinced that Affinity has a winner here. I am sure it will be well received by graphic designers, both budding and seasoned. And even if later on feature-wise and operation-wise it will not be all that different from its competitors, the price tag will make the decision easy for many.

>>>Meanwhile, there is nothing like working with it to learn to really love Publisher! >>> I sure second that statement. :-) I am also working on a (private) project using the current beta version. And yes, I keep exporting PDFs after crucial work on the project. Simply the best way to get to know Publisher. Please note that I am coming quite late to the beta testing and this forum. But I am already convinced that this will be my application for all my page layout and most of my design needs. (My history: started out with PageMaker 4.0, tried to like InDesign early on, used Quark XPress a lot for client’s assignments, checked out VivaDesigner recently, and produced a lot of mostly private projects with good old PagePlus I can live easily with the fact that many feature will be added later to Publisher.