Rodi

I am at a similar crossroad, but I am taking the approach of "one day" perhaps. I can't yet switch from Adobe subscription to Affinity. However, it's much closer this year than last year. My suggestion for you is to get adobe for 1 year and learn Publisher in and out and just work on those files to see where it works. Honestly, I can probably use Publisher now if I absolutely had to, but it's not always easy. I could easily exchange Designer in place of Illustrator, but Acrobat and Photoshop would be really hard. I have yet to get the hang with Photo. I do prepress for two businesses in the same building and I have to have some agility in Photoshop (total ink, GCR, Channel Mixer), it's aloof in Photo, wheras in Photoshop it's quick. Sometimes with Publisher it's got it's own stupid little issues, and learning those is frustrating, when the money is on the line. I think you already answered that question. That's the hard part about not updating (ask me about how long I held on to Freehand!) to latest software. It sucks, it's costly. Yes Adobe is a great product line, but the price they want is seriously tough on smaller businesses.

So I ran into a problems of another sort with v 2.1.1. I was pulling my hair out. Instead of blaming the software, I kept trying different things. I don't know Publisher nearly as well as InDesign, 23 years of learned production to 2 years of self training, with lots of iterations. I see the promise and the problems. Sometimes you have to rethink how you problem solve. Simple issue I had was a 1 color envelope that was processing out. Well I wrote a little spiel to submit here, but I kept on working on it. Turns out it was a pretty neat thing to fix upon export. I kept saying to myself 30 seconds in InDesign, I know the link is correct! Well, Serif doesn't quite problem solve the same way as Adobe, surprise!! But they do problem solve. It's a lot of work to figure out what is causing an issue. It's not that Publisher is unprofessional, it's raw and not the Industry standard, but it's really good. I guess I take issue with blaming the program as being faulty but not questioning how you got there! I'm still trying to figure out why you would switch at the last moment to Publisher, unless you don't have InDesign and are just importing. I get that! I want to get to the point of that, but I am not there yet, but it's a learning curve.

Why? If you have InDesign why not just finish it off there for very complex jobs? I love Macromedia Freehand, but I would never open a job that was totally done in Illustrator then open in Freehand, unless it does something I need at that point. To my thinking it makes no sense. I have honestly had better results with opening .pdfs with certain files than IDML.

Beg to differ, it does some great work, but it seems like you took a very large project to create a gotcha moment. I have had some issues, including having to save as, which I then remove the old and resave as original. It's not fun, but remember, many issues with standard programs that have workarounds we no longer think much of, but to rethink certain aspects of workflow is work!! I have had issues with spot color pdfs (not so much now) and I have worked on files that did not work out. I left em. Later went back and tried again. It's a learning curve. When I convert IDML Files I immediately save and close the file. I save very often. I don't have a built in trust for Publisher that I do for InDesign, but I do keep going back and using it. It's a great tool if you work with it. Try saving a quark file that InDesign can convert (smiles, lol). So that Publisher can even open an IDML is pretty cool.

Why would you want to do that at this time in the project? So, first thing I would do, is make sure to link pictures/art instead of embed them. IF you still have the same issue, is there a .pdf you can open? Funny enough I was very worried about Adobe nixing postscript type one fonts, but it has become a blessing for me, now files are much more cross platform. I open many .idml files in Publisher, to see how they work, and they do a pretty good job, not perfect, and when the money is on the table, it's a risky venture.

Keeps crashing, but it's not insolvable as I change to the other program. But I find more and more that I use Affinity Publisher. Mind you I am in commercial printing, where speed accuracy and repeatability are necessary tools of the trade.

Ok, So yes there are some potential drawbacks with editing pdfs in Publisher. I think as a whole, Affinity is not ready for prime time. Presently I am having issues importing large pictures into Publisher, it needs to work like every other program that is a page layout program in that sense. Variable Fonts are a big deal too. I have to fiddle around with exporting to PDF too, it's not up to par. Mind you my critiques are not "don't get it" but "please fix it" to affinity. It;s a great product at a fair price and it does some amazing stuff, and some stuff is frustrating. I keep trying it to use it more and more. One thing is now that Adobe no longer has Pantone spot colors (for the most part) Affinity is the way to go. Not having spot colors was a big mark against a lot of ok programs.

How does black type work out that way? the problem with handing off RGB files to a CMYK shop is variants (SRGB, Adobe RGB) of the same build may not end up being the same color o n output. What to do? At least if you take the responsibility to convert you will see the color differences. Anyone want to pay to get those colors fixed? Time adds up in a hurry in prepress land.

Yellows, in RGB vs CMYK, CMYK wins. Personally I have no issue with RGB images or line work, but type, keep it black, black black 0C 0M 0Y 100K. Overprint black text (under 18 pt). I get more jobs with RGB Text that is 0R 0G 0B Comes out ~70C 68M 67Y 88K. The presses just love it when that happens (not really). CMYK has many pluses, you can make images colorful and neutral while printing. In RGB each channel has the same number to be neutral. This is true of whether you are going to press or digital. RGB blues tend to print purple, why? Welp, C is the weak link in C M Y neutrality. Highlights to get proper neutrality are set 5 C 2M 2Y (or some play around that). Why? Because in real life Cyan ink (toner too!) does a terrible job of covering red. Ever wonder why so many pictures have re faces? It's not all alcohol, it's the cyan is far lower in the numbers (that darned info pallet is my best friend) and weaker than the other two skin tone inks (regardless of ethnicity as well!). Had a job today that was given 100C 90M 10Y 0K. Customer requested it not veer to purple. Knocking the M fro 90 to 80 fixed it. I can sharpen the heck out of certain black channels in CMYK without killing the image, nay, it makes it better in many cases! The biggest issue is wisywig vs the info pallet, and who is responsible for the color being right? Well, personally, I take responsibility for that because I want it to be right! I want good skin tone, I want depth, I want to know (as much as possible) that I am giving the pressmen or digital operator a fighting chance to make the piece print as good as possible.

So my job is production printing. Have had some success and some failures in using Affinity Suite. The huge overriding plus is it opens PDFS for editing pretty darn well. Yes, you do need the font's but that's not an impossible feat these days. So we got a job from a client (B&W Ad for two different sizes in just black) who wanted to make edits to the pdf. Since Acrobat is not always the best pdf editor and the changes were more than slight, I decided to go for it in Affinity Publisher 2. The size the customer wanted and what they gave did not jibe, but they did have an outline rule to go by. Good. So opened directly into AP2, and it flowed as it should. Only drawback was the pdf was in "Gray" which means upon export it process out to all four (4) colors. I could only wish InDesign had search similar fill/stroke!! Made short shrift of the work. Affinity Suite keeps getting better, and I won't let the problems (doesn't like some fonts upon output) dissuade me from using it. Thanks Serif!!!

Go Get Qoppa PDF Studio. It has a great imposition feature. I use Affinity Suite and PDF Studio along with Callas PDFToolbox for my home arsenal.

used this again for V2, Mucho Gracias!!

That's great, another option I have learned!

Can you curve them out? Click on the PNG, and go to curves, CMYK, and up the k and remove the others. I do this in Adobe products (Little more time consuming opening up programs than StudioLink, LOL).

When push comes to shove, I use the vector doctor. Excellent work, great pricing.

Had a pdf file that normalized, preflighted, trapped and imposed. Proof sent. Couldn't proof or plate. All kinds of shennanigans to fix the file. Export to .eps., Import to InDesign and export to pdf, redistill, nope. Illegal file command. Today I take the file and import it into Affinity Publisher 2, and yes, it finally worked out. I find V2 on my pc is much more confident. Sometimes V1.1 x x would open and crash. Great news was it took a couple of pdfs to make it just right, black type is black. Kudos, you beat a pdf from illustrator to make it work.

nice, kinda classical, yet contemporary.

That is very hard, because one program is not another. As a graphic artist, I can tell you it's hit or miss in conversion of one file type to another. Really the big question for you is, is this 1,000 problems that have to be fixed now or can they be fixed upon need? It is really hard to leave Quark (lol, it's me!) because v3.33+ was great and stable, but InDesign really did work better after 2002. I have converted many files to ID. Conversely, you can save as Package, import pdf and some of the issues may go away, especially if you have the fonts.

That right there is a very big issue. I work in print. Yes there have been some challenges to .pdf files, black staying black and such. I am not using it as much as I would like, but, I have yet to have the confidence that the final output will be professional (output correctly). It does some things amazingly well. I have one job that is, no matter how one slices it, a lot of work, but with Publisher I have been able to cut the work down on these files from 20 minutes for 2 sided and 12 minutes for one sided to half that. Tricky file that should never come in as Illustrator, but it does. I have the Spot color on a masterpage and fit their file in. Works like a charm! That being said, it's tricky sometimes the pdf does not rip correctly after revisions (That SUX!). Sometimes the rip just bounces the file in normalizing mode. On certain files black type does not come out as what you would expect. It's all really frightening. Serif has issues they need to contend with to challenge the status quo in a print environment, but I think for the price, it does some great things. I have edited pdfs that would have otherwise been unable to get anything out of them.

Thank You! I will say that is awesome!!!

I wish that Affinity Suite could be one or two decimal points longer, instead of 0.000 it could be 0.00000 to accommodate 1/16" of inches, 0.4375" instead of now 0.438" or for a 1/32" instead of 0.031" it could be 0.03125" . My work is pretty technical and needs this. Thank you! Rodi

If I have to edit a PDF, it exports fine, lol. Only when just placing multiples of one pdf into an AP file does the black process out.

They are imported PDFs from customer files. Honestly, I have a "Basic" export I made that works for danged near everything, but when I get this issue, I export all different ways to see what may fix the friggin thing, so my specific pdf type may not be what I usually do, duly noted on the pass through, I will try to export at the latest and greatest.

90% of work comes in as PDFs, nad Had an all K pdf job turned into a perfect bound book, same thing. Ya know what I did? turned all the work into PANTONE Black C spot color. LOL, it worked, but it's lunacy that my RIP system needs to convert that to black (when only spot colors) because of an issue it has with not making side guides in Spot colors. A little sweating, but it got done. Cursed you AP for not being perfect! AP really does the job of both Illy and ID combined, and I like that, it's easy where ID is easy and flexible where Illy is flexible. Setting up panels is easily done in every page layout program, yes I get it done in em all and then some (still use Freehand!). I get many jobs just sent in PDF format. A tool that has been great for much is Callas PDFToolbox, it does a lot cool stuff cutting readers to single page, removing crops, even adding bleed (works a good portion of the time). I use AP/Designer as you probably use Illustrator, but I have never found Illustrator good at handling regular text, it's awful. AP works in similar fashion as Oris PDF Tuner, and with the advent of 1.9+ Passthrough is great. If I don't have the fonts I will make a PDF Copy of just text and eliminate the text on the art copy. Then I am free to move around.

PDFs come from everywhere in my shop. I need to be able to make folding panels go quickly, next job is on deck! Here is the thing, it's a great tool, if they get these small things ironed out, it's gonna be a dragon slayer, and I want it to work. I have a job that is a two (2) color item, done in Illustrator, never to do size with bleed always has to be fit in. I would spend a lot of time fixing it in Acrobat/Illustrator/ID. I get it done in a few minutes now... It's a great program.