Anyone using Lulu.com & Publisher? Advice needed on Outlines etc

[DrScardo]

Hi All

 

I'm trying to put together a Songbook to self-publish - print & online - and I'll be using Lulu.com to print the paper version.

I'm importing PDF musical scores into Publisher (created in Dorico), and also creating lyrics and information PDFs in Mac Pages, exporting these as PDF and importing into Publisher.

I'm also inserting photographs (B&W) into some Pages created PDFs.

My main concern is converting everything into outlines. Having everything brought into Publisher as PDFs, do I need to convert all texts to outlines? Because each line shows up in a separate box, that's going to take some fiddly time! And what about photos, and the Musical Scores? These contain the graphic scores as well as lyrics and certain text.I wondered if there was a one step export function that would be smart enough to know that everything needs converting....

So a lot to consider and I'd really appreciate anyone with advice pitching in! Especially if there's a better way to do what I'm doing.

Thanks

Simon

[Alfred]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, Simon.

28 minutes ago, DrScardo said:

I wondered if there was a one step export function that would be smart enough to know that everything needs converting....

The ‘Text as Curves’ PDF export option should do what you need.

Affinity Publisher Help: Publishing PDF files

[DrScardo]

Thanks!

OK so now I'm looking at the InDesign template from Lulu, opened in Publisher - I cannot see whether it is automatically creating facing pages with inside and outside margins that will swap from page to page. I can see this easily in Pages (OSX Pages - annoying name for an app...) but it's a bit trickier in Publisher. At the moment I'm formatting everything in Pages then bringing in, as PDF, but it would make far more sense to do everything in Publisher. 

[DrScardo]

OK I get the PDX export with embedding etc, all good.

However, I see that when I export a PDF (any format) - pages 2,3 are rolled into one landscape numbered just Page 2, and so on for 3,4 etc. Looking at the Lulu site FAQs it specifically says not to send landscaped or full spread PDFs - sorry I know little about printers requirements, but is the full page layout exported going to be acceptable do you know? The mock up I tried in Mac Pages with the Lulu template output every page singly, when viewed as thumbnails in Preview. I can see no formatting options to change this in Publisher. Within Publisher it's showing mirrored pages as I lay them out, with page 1 to the right at the top of the column on the left, then 2,3 below, 4,5 below etc.

[MikeW]

The (stupid) default export is All Spreads.

Change the export to All Pages. Then each page is exported as individual pages. 

[DrScardo]

Ah that did it! Thanks, outputs look great, and it's really speeded up my layout process over using Pages. When I import a PDF that I've exported from Dorico scoring software, Affinity imports it at the correct size, so everything scales as it should.