[Affinity Publisher resulting file sizes - HUGE]

Leslie, what difference does the size of the AFpub file make for you?

[Affinity Publisher resulting file sizes - HUGE]

11 hours ago, Arsh said:

I wasn't referring to the PDF file size. I was referring to the Publisher file itself vs the Indesign INDD file. 

I was asking Leslie A as she seems to have a similar workflow as I do.

I would add if I need to shrink files I use two programs to reduce file size, Qoppa PDF Studio has a great optimize feature that gets most files shrunk in size... when that doesn't work I go to Callas PDFToolbox, and it will really shrink the worst of em. That is mostly for emailing

21 hours ago, fde101 said:

Many people generate PDFs to distribute over the internet.  The larger the PDF is, the more bandwidth is consumed by each user who downloads it, each time they download it, and the longer it will take to download - making users wait unnecessarily long does not help to keep them happy.

Many companies hosting files for people to download also pay for bandwidth, meaning that smaller files are cheaper to offer.

I understand that, I but I also regularly download large pdfs (hobby stuff) and waiting doesn't bother me in this day and age. Dial up, paging dial up. I remember when sending a one page document to service bureau took a couple hours or more!

[Affinity Publisher resulting file sizes - HUGE]

Can you tell us why large pdf is not acceptable for you?

Have you exported an IDML or packaged the InDesign file and opened the IDML in Publisher?

I would make sure all the parameters of export are the same or close.

Personally, I make all pdfs as large as possible with no compression, I find for my RIP systems (Founder Elecroc, Prinergy, Fiery) not having to decompress files works quicker at the time of ripping.

 

[Unofficial PDF Manual - Expert Guide to Affinity Publisher]

Thanks so much!!

Just a quick look around and I am already being helped out.

I do have to comment (positively) about the fonts, Postscript Type 1! Yay, try that in that other program!! I really think that is one thing that makes me happy to use Publisher even with it's little issues, Pantone Libraries and Type 1 fonts!!

[Canva]

I do not watch TV at all, not in the slightest. Today, at Grand Central Station in NYC, I saw some Canva ads and I can't say it moved me to even consider their products. I would say getting Affinity Suit into schools for free could be amazing!

[Canva]

13 hours ago, Bit Disappointed said:

Forget it, it's a lost cause. This thread - and many others here - prove that Serif has long lost the battle for the serious and professional market, and has attracted hobbyists and the smallest sole proprietorships, and a number of users who lead these discussions here.

 

Ya know, I use Publisher daily. It's got great features not found in InDesign that allows me to get work done faster, better and more efficiently.

Would I recommend for other pros to use? YES! The suite has many cool great features that help artists to get work done.

Would I recommend for other pros to leave Creative Suite for it now? No. It's not yet mature enough to handle the myriad of tasks that are required for graphic arts (print in my case).

I think we are all here because we care about the whole environment of Serif/Affinity, and I think you are wholesale selling the whole community as unserious is quite fitting. Perhaps you are the one who is missing out on what drives this community, and in part it's not what drives other communities.

So @Bit Disappointed what makes the suite not professional to you? Also what are the features and things you really dig?

[Canva]

22 hours ago, Alfred said:

Does that mean you’re out of print now?

I COULD ONLY WISH!!!!

What does one do to get thrown off/out of the typesetting industry (or, indeed, any industry)? 

In fact the whole industry was no more by 1995. So from 1992-1998 I had no job within the graphic arts industry. I still use many elements of those days. I do really miss the strength of that industry with proof readers, quality of fonts and cool equipment. Our camera department  had distortion cameras and platen devices to distort type. We used punches to knock type out of black elements. Our typesetting equipment did some cool things, but essentially we did type that could be laid down on a mechanical easily for artists, they paid for that. We sent glassine copies (see through 16#, iirc) of the type for them to overlay before they commited to spray/wax the galleys to put on the boards.

[Canva]

10 hours ago, wonderings said:

At the moment no plans to upgrade to V2, I just don't use V1 and have no plans of moving from Adobe at the moment. 

What I do with new spot colours? I use them. With unsupported fonts, which I have yet to come up one that I could not simply replace with a newer font. Also pretty rare for a file that old to come up of a reprint. 

I would not say people were not using software because they were afraid they would not be respected, at least not the good and profitable shops. Why does it matter what you use as long as the job gets done efficiently without breaking the bank. I found plenty of cheap work arounds to do what the big shops with expensive top of the line RIPS and other software would do. Pride comes before the fall, and if you are letting your image in the community come before what the quality of your work is telling people, then you will not last long. 

 

LOL, outside of being thrown of of the typesetting industry (there was one, once, lol) I have been in print a long time! Each season brings new challenges, and as an artist I like to make clients work look as good as it can.

I worked at a label shop that was spot color shop, I converted them to process work and after a few years of photoshop work for total ink, we got a new rip. Welp, first job, without adjustment gets done. Boss throws the label roll at me, "what am I gonna tell them, we didn't know what we were doing before this?" Everything went  back to the way it was, lol.

[Canva]

On 4/5/2024 at 9:39 AM, Bit Disappointed said:

There's so much more than you mention that's missing in Affinity. I haven't been conservative. I've just been unable to use anything but Designer. Like, at all.

The lack of valid accessibility in PDFs alone is a total deal-breaker. Here we're talking about legislation and beyond legislation, basic education and respect for everyone. And the accessibility within Affinity itself is also terrible.

No, there's a long way up to Adobe. It's not just the small against the big story. There are many who have to choose something else due to professional requirements, and others not being able to identify or understand these requirements doesn't change reality.

We're talking about a deficient ecosystem from company to product to output. Not just individual flaws and lacks. There are simply people out there with different needs and expectations for professional software than what people here understand and can comprehend, and until this is recognized and respected by the members of the forum, the full truth about why Affinity didn't "bizarrely" take large market shares won't be known, and so the story about conservatism and Adobe can continue. It's as if many here including Serif don't grasp the world a few steps away from their own desk.

Overall, the manic focus on Adobe annoys me. There are other big companies, and their products also exude professionalism whether you like them or not. They have delivered and gained insight into the customers' needs and workflows due to real contact with them.

Conservatism is also about clinging to the same narrative of victimhood.

Did you ever work on V1 or InDesign or Illustrator or v3 Pagemaker? LOL, every program needs time to mature to get professional. Quark took to V3 and it was so good they forgot to make it better in good ways and v4 was terrible.

Have you opened a PDF with InDesign to edit it? Can't do it. You can with Affinity Publisher. It's terrifying at times, but once you work out a system, it's pretty nice.. I have edited text and extended bleeds to files that would have otherwise been total failures.


Can you explain the lack of accesibility in PDFS means? I do think they should have an acrobat type of program, but since they don't I use Qoppa PDF Studio and Callas PDF Toolbox desktop and an old (7) of Acrobat.

I have identified issues with Publisher but it still does a good job on a number of items that Adobe will never address. Try this, import a PDF to InDesign, say 24 pages with bleed. Do the same in Publisher. In ID you have to set each page up in the right place each page... it's work. Affinity, make 24 pages bring first page in on first page of doc, set, then copy and past and just switch the page numbers, it's very robust.

On Adobe, well they are the kingpin, everyone should gun for them if they intend to dethrone them. If Affinity went after Quark... well I think you get what I mean.

I really like Affinity programs even though I can't use them all 100% of the time, yet. I hope they continue to mature them and can compete.

LetraStudio, ColorStudio, FontStudio, FreeHand, Quark, Corel, Canvas, Scribus, Inkscape, Gimp, Ready Set Go, Live Picture, Painter, Typestry . . . and a host of many others I have used to get jobs done. Sometimes the top dogs are great, but they don't have all the answers for all the problems.

Adobe, in my, and many other's opinion are too expensive for a good amount of the design community. Affinity is trying to alleviate that problem and we salute them, but we don't give them an easy pass for short falls.

 

[Canva]

7 hours ago, wonderings said:

I. I have no upgraded to V2 of the Affinity suite, but have the full package with V1. Initially I bought them because they were cheap and I wanted to see what the competition was offering over Adobe. Now if I look at files someone uploaded on the forum when asking for help, I can't open many of them as they are in V2 and I am V1. This will grow larger as some people will be fine with what they have now so there is no real incentive to pay for an upgrade. This is not an issue with Adobe, we are all using the same software. 

 

I am not a huge fan of Canva, it is created more headaches for me with clients who think they can prepare print files properly in Canvas. Yes they could if they knew what they were doing, but that is the point, few actually know what they are doing in order to give proper files ready to go. Editing Canvas files was a real pain. Not sure if they have gotten better as it has been a number of years since I have received a file made in Canva. When clients have an inexperienced graphics person I always recommend Affinity simply for the feature set for the price point. People and companies not making their living with graphics are not going to pay a subscription fee for Adobe, but are more willing to pay a low cost once for apps like the Affinity suite. I hope and assume Canva sees value in what was created here, and with their resources will be able to take it to another level. I am not expecting they would simply turn the Affinity apps into offline Canvas apps, there would be much cheaper ways to do that. 

upgrade to Affinity v2 totally worth it, I have found it more stable and usable on every front and the little updates aren't as quircky as some 1.x versions were.

What do you do about new spot colors or changes to files with Postcript type 1 fonts?


As far as the past, graphic designers were not content but frightened that if they didn't use particular software that was top dog at the time they would not be respected... I used Illustrator and Freehand, Quark (later InDesign, but that was 2005) Photoshop, Live Picture. I also used cool little programs for vectors LetraStudio. I hated Corel, but I was able to make color bars with slurs for a place I worked at. I try to find what works.  The only adobe product I can say I need professionally is Acrobat, but that's because Pitstop don't stand alone like Callas PDFToolbox that I use. I still have Freehand 10 (the best version) on Windows 10 machine.

Canva has been a thorn in my professional bottom, I told my bosses these customers are so cheap they should buy Affinity! IT's so much better! LOL...

[Canva]

15 hours ago, Bit Disappointed said:

And the professional customers? I can't remember ever seeing Affinity mentioned in relation to professionals, and I've certainly not met anyone in professional circles who knows Affinity when I mention the name.

 

This is partly true and partly an issue within the graphic arts community, which is very conservative (much like the guitar community) in their choices. No one wants to make a mistake.
Aldus/Macromedia Freehand was a great program that did three things very well, .ps fidelity, vector art and page layout. It had a way to make word spaces tighter than the letter spaces, which we used in old typesetting systems. Very nice. It's nowhere in Illustrator but made its way into InDesign.

I am a pro and I use Affinity Publisher a lot, but not exclusively because it has a few nagging issues, one of which is importing spot color pdfs from other programs, most of the time (especially having more than one of the same page to adjust for panels) it processes out. If I worked in an all digital shop, I would def swap out some adobe licenses for Affinity.

I know hi end boutique guys state the type engine will never work with new font technology, but they are crowing in rare air, I have only seen a few files that have those multiple weight fonts. I do a lot of varied work, including with one of the larges printers in the world.

Affinity was never going to smash Adobe because the scale in comparison is crazy! Adobe is huge. Affinity is like Robin Hood and his merry men!! I found my use for the Affinity suite in professional arena. It's a super capable PDF editor and opens IDML files from InDesign pretty darn well. I live with the shortfalls because I have no choice and there is no other viable alternative.

[Canva]

On 4/1/2024 at 11:21 AM, albertkinng said:

 These printshops still follow the same procedures from the 80s, albeit with better machines, but unfortunately, they often encounter the same demands from designers.

Just last week, I sent a 6 spot color separation PDF as requested, only to receive a call from an intermediary who claimed that all the files were black. It became evident to me that this individual was positioned in a department where they lacked a comprehensive understanding of the workflows and technicalities involved. I simply advised them to forward the files to the print department, reassuring them that those professionals would know how to handle the situation. Although this response was not well-received, the end product turned out to be flawlessly beautiful. Recalling a similar incident from last year, I approached a supposedly experienced Art Director and inquired whether they were familiar with the picas measurements for file accuracy.

To my surprise, they had no idea what I was referring to. It is disheartening to encounter individuals with college degrees who lack even the basic understanding of the graphic design industry. To illustrate this point further, my 15-year-old daughter recently received a Photoshop Batch from a professional user via email. However, she lacks the knowledge and skills to use Photoshop effectively. This highlights the issue we face as true professionals within the industry. We are being negatively impacted by a new generation of "Canva users" who view graphic design as merely "generating images" and moving clipart around.

What we truly need are companies like Affinity that continue to support and cater to us, the professionals who have dedicated our careers to this field. It is disheartening to witness the industry being dumbed down for the sake of the new generation, who are willing to pay a monthly fee for quick and effortless design apps. Our expertise, knowledge, and commitment should not be undervalued or overlooked.

Hi,

Did you send a pre separated file? 6 pdfs per color?

I have some use for that in a certain subfield, but it's been a while since they can be used with modern rips architecture, you lose a way to trap.

Yes on Picas! When I was a camera man and did not need to know about sheet size I used picas forever! My only issue with picas is real picas vs picas on computer are not equal (digital picas are exactly 1/72", whereas regular picas on my Plankcs Typographic ruler is slightly larger 72.3 or so per inch.

I have one thing that kills me in printing. PANTONE Color books are not numerical anymore. Some genius's decided to put them numerically at the index and by hue on the printed page. Well that's just a pain somewhere...

I get files in that have the same issues as in the 1980's, RGB/missing fonts...  just had a canva job yesterday where a maroon red was picked from two different online colors that look similar I am sure, but they converted to cmyk and it was light years different.

I blame schools for hiring poor teachers in graphic arts programs. I would love to teach a class on production values of printing. Type, Color and Bleed. I regularly run into experienced designer who don't bleed out items... I would teach about quality font choices on a budget, PANTONE Color to Process, document size!!

How about a class how not use photoshop as a pagelayout program!!

[Canva]

14 hours ago, Laura Ess said:

 I thought it might have been a later version of Canvas, a vector editing app I tried a long time ago  in the pipeline of improvements.  Wait and see.

Canvas was a program that promised integration between page, vector raster and web. It failed. Theversions I tried were buggy. It had great fonts though! 2540 quality URW fonts.

I always think historically that Affinity accomplished what was promised on the dawn of the DTP revolution (1980s!!) of an all in one program. No double clicking from Q to P,  you just worked in it. Now there are two programs that can do this pretty well, PDF Tuner from CGS and Affinity. PDF Tuner is free! You have to have one of their other programs/plans to get it and it's pretty expensive!

[Canva]

6 hours ago, albertkinng said:

 My journey with Adobe began in 1994, but the introduction of Creative Cloud (CC) marked the beginning of my dissatisfaction. After a year of using CC, I was troubled by the realization that discontinuing my payment would mean losing access to all my cloud-saved documents and apps. This felt like Adobe was coercing me into a perpetual subscription, prompting me to explore alternatives.

I

 

Adobe, in the font world, got a patent (due to being chummy with the then President) for a font that is historically well known (Garamond) and honestly, a pilfering of Berthold Garamond by Günter Gerhard Langes revival of Garamond in the early 70s... Then what they did with the ScannGraphic font Today Sans (a beautiful font!) and made it an Adobe exclulsive named Kronos... What they did with Ares Font products (Font Chameleon, Font Monger, Fonthopper, Font Studio) was buy and can.

Then what they did Freehand... that was the death knell of competition in DTP on that level.

Adobe has a bad rep in my mind for most everything.

[Canva]

11 hours ago, SallijaneG said:

 Bleak but entirely plausible future.  I think back to Aldus PageMaker being bought by Adobe. . . .
I see that QuarkXPress is still out there, way more expensive, but perpetual license is possible—I paid that much in the old days before InDesign became part of a “Creative Suite”—of course, I was not retired and doing mostly pro-bono and personal work then. . . .

Coming from a typesetting background then early to semi mature dtp, Quark was great, much better than other offerings. It was stable, it trapped where you could do it one of several ways. V 3.xx was great.
Quark had a dominance issue. Adobe was barely competing with em, they came up with CS so people who barely needed it would buy CS over AI and PS alone, this allowed them to say we are gaining and growing. Quark should have wrangled Freehand, but they did all stupid things, their license was hard. etc etc. The last version of Quark I tried was a joke. But I bet they have Pantone colors!

[Canva]

14 minutes ago, Bryce said:

What problems are you experiencing? I use Affinity and the problems with CMYK colors was fixed in a later version of 1.x. We are a print and vinyl shop and don't seem to have any more problems with Affinity (there are always certain files depending on the designer) than we have with Adobe.

Hey Bryce,

Spot color issues going to process, black going to process. Here is a regular problem. Spot color job have to adjust for folding panels. Most times it is quicker to duplicate the pdf and crop n move the panels, but they touch and ouch, process! So now I Generally use Affinity as a panel check file.


It's a tough spot because the pdfs I get in are questionable at best at times.

I've done a lot of work with it and I have touted it to many people. They are freaked out when you show how to edit a pdf and make it a page layout program instead of a pdf. I do that for envelope work that will be repeated and changed in the future. 

Try this in InDesign, 84 page pdf. Each page you have to bring in and drop just right or adjust. Affinity drop once adjust copy go to next page, very nice!

 

[Canva]

5 hours ago, Gaz said:

The Affinity suite is easily as good as CS6

 

I am a fan of Affinity, but in Prepress it needs maturing. I have regular stupid issues that are not my fault, but the program. I can use Adobe CC for everything, but I don't because I like Affinity. Two years of more and more use and still not ready to tell the boss to ditch Adobe.

I will say it runs much better with a lot RAM than it did on my older computer, but that's on me.

[Canva]

I think Affinity Suite was too good, too small and too poor to stay the way it was.

I get the business reality.

I also understand what happens with mega buying meager, mega is always hungry.

So that being said, until they prove us right, lets just dig in and do good stuff.

BTW, lol, I use Affinity to fix a good number of Canva created PDFs  I get in... lets hope it stays that way!

So, I wanna dream big.

Affinity show us pros that Canva can do it better. Get the right tyopgraphic engines that can run the big fonts with all the styles.

Make a fourth killer program that introduces pro stuff to edit PDFs and open them in less destructive ways.

I am preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.

Congrats on making some moolah!



 

[Following message in a 200 pages document we have reached in publisher "Dokumentendatei beschädigt, die Datei muss nun geschlossen werden"! That´s not funny, we are working for a Magazin and we need to go to print.]

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.

[Following message in a 200 pages document we have reached in publisher "Dokumentendatei beschädigt, die Datei muss nun geschlossen werden"! That´s not funny, we are working for a Magazin and we need to go to print.]

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.

[Following message in a 200 pages document we have reached in publisher "Dokumentendatei beschädigt, die Datei muss nun geschlossen werden"! That´s not funny, we are working for a Magazin and we need to go to print.]

14 hours ago, Heilix Blechle said:

We have worked until now with Indesign and transformed now to publisher

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.

[Following message in a 200 pages document we have reached in publisher "Dokumentendatei beschädigt, die Datei muss nun geschlossen werden"! That´s not funny, we are working for a Magazin and we need to go to print.]

7 hours ago, Heilix Blechle said:

Thank you very much for your helpfull post. But if this is the problem, the software is not made for professional use.

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.

[Following message in a 200 pages document we have reached in publisher "Dokumentendatei beschädigt, die Datei muss nun geschlossen werden"! That´s not funny, we are working for a Magazin and we need to go to print.]

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.

[More usage out of Affinity Suite]

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.

[More usage out of Affinity Suite]

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.