AlanPC

"I can understand that your first contact with APub must have been frustrating" I helped as a beta tester and have Affinity Photo, so I'm happy enough to learn the interface, I just don't have time to learn graphic design... "Then it was exported from PP with text as curves" Well that's the problem with workarounds... I shouldn't have to figure this stuff out just to use the tool (and I couldn't select photos properly either) I'm hoping they'll work with the template-selling people and make it easy for them to offer the Affinity Publisher format. That would make everyone happy! For now I'll take up the refund offer, as I've wasted an evening when I could have been productive. Cheers for the help anyway.

Here's the example I just played with, if anyone is curious. I'll have to move on, as the conference is 21st of next month and I need to work on the message. If using an old Pageplus template then I can just use Pageplus, with no need to workaround with Affinity. I'd love to see Affinity offer such templates, paid or not, indeed I'd like to see them make money from such things to help ensure the long-term health of the company. Perhaps open a store that others can sell their designs? I've written to template.net, asking if they have any plans of supporting this software, but it's just a forlorn shot in the dark and I think we already know the answer. Perhaps if the Serif/Affinity people were to reach out to such companies, making it easy for them to convert indesign templates? Feels pretty silly to buy this software, then find myself using ancient PagePlus or downloading MICROSOFT WORD templates, in order to publish a simple brochure? Offering templates takes away nothing from those that want a blank screen and freedom but would make a huge difference to people like me, that want a tool to help them publish things. Right now, to be blunt, this software is pretty much useless to me. A blank screen doesn't help me at all, and my first attempt at editing a PDF has left me entirely underwhelmed. I need to get on with some actual work now. Thanks for trying Publication1.pdf

That sounded like a great idea but it doesn't work at all. Most of the text appears to be shapes, not editable text. Nor do I seem to be able to select images to change them.

Well one of the things I loved about Serif Pageplus was I could pick a template and please a client with a new brochure that looked pretty good, as I'm 100% a sales copywriter, not a designer or graphics person. So right now I have the brief from a client, a brochure for an upcoming conference, to attract new business partners... My choices are basically the size of paper and in inches or mm, with ZERO help towards creating any kind of brochure. Not even a trifold layout, nothing at all. To have any chance of getting this done in time it looks like I need to go back to Pageplus then.

Wait, what? I just came here to ask where are the templates, as I can't find them? I just purchased, moments ago, as I figured it's time to move on from my trusty Serif - and the templates for that are looking a bit old. So there are NO templates for Affinity Publisher? Not even basic guidelines or pre-sized docs? Holy pants.

It DOES have some basic "start new batch job" feature, but it does nothing much except convert tiffs into jpg for example, or to strip metadata. I can't use it for RAW files though.

I understand the frustration and it drove me somewhat nuts at first. I can tell you though that much of it makes more sense with time. What happened to me was I realized I was chasing my own tail, getting frustrated at tutorials I didn't really understand, as they were talking a foreign language and in the meantime I was distracted by some other feature... So what I did was write down a list of the top 10 things I needed to know, that I didn't already. For me it was how to do 'dodge and burn', split-toning, and a few others, including the 'in-painting' thing. Heck, I still don't really feel confident with 'masks' and 'quick masks' (or what the difference is?) but usually manage to muddle through. Doing my own personal Top 10 has made me much more comfortable and confident with it, and now I just edit my photos, rather than getting frustrated. I did try a variety of other softwares out there and Affinity seems the allround best, though far from the best for raw conversion. For my particular camera model (RX10IV) I find the DXO software does a much better job with it's profile for that camera/lens and for noise reduction. On the other hand it's $200, 4X the price of Affinity and nowhere near as nice to use for the actual editing. So I use both, DXO to process RAW, then export as 16 bit TIFF files and edit those with Affinity as JPEG. Guess what I'm saying is, don't give up so easy. Figure out what you actually need to do, learn those things and don't worry about the masses of other stuff you don't really need anyway. Hope that helps, a little?

I'm having the same issue, just got back from a shoot, have 400 RAW files, it's nearly 1AM and have realized that at my current rate it will be, literally, daylight before I'm finished. As an image editor I love it but as RAW processor I can't use this. I'll have to find something else to process the raw files then tweak and edit with Affinity. In fact I already know what software I'll be using, as the 30 day free trial has expired and for now I'm trying to do this with Affinity, but I just can't. That other software is $200 but it has much better noise reduction and I can process an entire folder of raw files, just tell it to get going and come back an hour or two later. If there's any updates on this issue, do tell?

In a YT vid a chap talks about overlays, but the buttons and brushes he refers to don't seem to exist in my copy of Affinity Photo? Is this a discontinued feature or am I missing something? Never mind, found it, it's in the Develop persona again

Aha! There it is! Cheers!

Is there a way to spot which, if any, parts of a photo are over-exposed or underexposed? In a video with a different software they have little triangles on the histogram, that makes the over/under bits stand out. Do we have something similar?

Thanks!

Sorry, let me rephrase that, as I guess you could export an 8 bit jpg as a 16 bit tif, which would just be a larger file size for the same image - my concern is if there is any setting or adjustment I might make by mistake, such as some default, or a setting I should make on purpose, even if it slows things down, to ensure I am preserving the 16 bit aspect of the file I'm working on? Sorry for being so nooby

OK, so as long as I export it as a 16 bit tif there's nothing Affinity Photo can or will do to change it to 8 bit?

OK, good to know. I'm sure in one of the tutorials the silky-voiced guy says to make sure you're editing in 16 bit, to prevent banding when doing gradients and stuff? So.. I guess that's my question.. or was he just talking about saving the file, for later?