Affinity Publisher Customer Beta - 1.9.0.742

[Joachim_L]

31 minutes ago, Jens Krebs said:

Uncle Bob's BrochureMaker

I can not find it, did I type it wrong? Please help! 🙄

[000]

5 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

I can not find it, did I type it wrong? Please help! 🙄

If you're serious about this question, please know that it was a joke, Uncle Bob is a nice guy but he doesn't know sh** about making brochures. Also, try googling "BrochureMaker" as one word, that gives you better results. 😂

[benwiggy]

Apologies, I just came up with a name that sounded like the crappiest template-driven DTP app I could think of.

Maybe I'll develop it myself. Maybe I won't: clearly there isn't a market for importing, editing or rastering PDFs.

[thomaso]

22 minutes ago, benwiggy said:

Maybe I'll develop it myself. Maybe I won't: clearly there isn't a market for importing, editing or rastering PDFs.

Oh, if at least it worked with Lego™...

[Joachim_L]

3 hours ago, Jens Krebs said:

If you're serious about this question, please know that it was a joke,

No, this was not serious. I liked the title of this "application". 😂

[abarkalo]

First of all, amazing that you have PSD bitmapping - that's amazing. I have several PSDs which use a pattern stamp and there is no such thing in Affinity (yet - soon?) but as a bitmap the fidelity is perfect. At the same time I was wondering if you could do the same thing with placing Adobe Illustrator files that don't interpret the same with from Illustrator to Designer/Publisher. However, I would think that Illustrator files are saved with a compatible PDF file, yet this doesn't show through. Or is this a different thing altogether. Attached find the screenshots and the sample graphic AI.

320_[Converted].ai

[Filo63]

@abarkalo

I opened your illustrator file and noticed that many of the effects on the various layers are to be reactivated using the most suitable layer properties. Affinity is not an Adobe clone and many things are interpreted differently, often better. Layer properties for example, from my point of view, are much finer and more effective on Affinity.

The differences are all here. Great compatibility with pdf but different ways to get the same results.
Where you read "PassThrough" you have to go and look for the most suitable level property.

Such a complex design would be better to rasterize it or do it directly in Affinity

[big smile]

Affinity Designer Beta has a new feature: "Select Same / Select Object functionality"

Are there any plans to add this to Affinity Publisher?

It would be very handy especially when using automation software (such as Keyboard Maestro) to work on large documents. Today I had a project where I needed to select all the text on a page (but not the images) on a 160 page document, so something like this would have been perfect.

The Adobe apps allow for scripting, which Affinity does not, so anything that makes Affinity more accessible to automation software would be great (especially as Automation software is more user friendly than scripting). In this context, adding Keyboard shortcuts for transform options would also be a game changer, so perhaps you consider that too!

[big smile]

15 minutes ago, haakoo said:

You can do this through the studiolink

It would be better if it was in Publisher natively. Especially when using automation software to go through multiple pages. Having to switch to Studiolink first adds unnecessary complexity. 

[thomaso]

On 9/18/2020 at 4:01 PM, AdamW said:

New Features and Improvements

We are still very early in the beta process for 1.9. We have additional features we expect to integrate over the next few weeks.

@AdamW, are there noteworthy bug fixes besides the promising new features? If yes, could you add them to the list above?

[big smile]

Fingers cross they fix the table of contents style sheet bug and the duplicate style sheet bugs!!

[JoeDC]

On 9/19/2020 at 4:04 AM, Dazmondo77 said:

Tried more tests and doesn't work using PDF/X-1a:2003 so tried PDF/X-4 and just bombs but now can't even get that far as as soon as the export screen comes up it bombs so can't even change the settings - tried making new documents and trying existing documents - as soon as I go to export it bombs

I can create a new blank document and go into the export settings and very quickly click the drop down for the PDF setting before it bombs and change the preset PDF (Print). You have to be quick about it though.

I see no reason why any preset can't be used when exporting a PDF but the X4a preset crashes everything as soon as you select it on every PDF I have tried so far. That needs to be fixed for sure.

[JoeDC]

A couple of issues I see with this beta on PDF export.

 

1) Document created at 8.375" x 10.875" with .125" bleed. When exported with bleed the media box come out as 8.6267" x 11.1267" instead of the expected 8.625" x 11.125". The trim box comes out as 8.3767" x 10.8767" instead of the expected 8.375" x 10.875". It isn't a huge difference but it isn't correct.

 

2) The exported PDF does not have a crop and bleed box in it which it should. If you export the PDF with printer marks you do get a bleed box but still no crop box.

[lepr]

4 hours ago, JoeDC said:

A couple of issues I see with this beta on PDF export.

1) Document created at 8.375" x 10.875" with .125" bleed. When exported with bleed the media box come out as 8.6267" x 11.1267" instead of the expected 8.625" x 11.125". The trim box comes out as 8.3767" x 10.8767" instead of the expected 8.375" x 10.875". It isn't a huge difference but it isn't correct.

 

That's not new in my experience with Affinity apps, although I agree that it's incorrect behaviour for a vector file format export.

When Affinity apps export, the page dimensions are increased (without scaling the page content) to contain whole pixels at the Affinity document's PPI.

8.375" @ 300 PPI is 2512.5 pixels, so that is rounded up to 2513 pixels @ 300 PPI for export, which is 8.3766666667" 
10.875" @ 300 PPI is 3,262.5 pixels, so that is rounded up to 3263 pixels @ 300 PPI for export, which is 10.8766666667"

That expansion is understandable when exporting to a raster image file format since a raster image can contain no fractional pixels, but the Affinity apps erroneously do it when exporting to vector formats such as PDF.

[MikeW]

41 minutes ago, anon2 said:

..  That expansion is understandable when exporting to a raster image file format since a raster image can contain no fractional pixels, but the Affinity apps erroneously do it when exporting to vector formats such as PDF.

Perhaps the fault lies with having a document dpi in (at least) APub to begin with. No other layout application has such dependence upon a document dpi that I am aware of. 

[thomaso]

On 9/30/2020 at 7:33 AM, MikeW said:

Perhaps the fault lies with having a document dpi in (at least) APub to begin with.

...which by the way also can cause unexpected, confusing results on PDF export where the export resolution seems to be ignored but the document resolution rules: If a raster image is placed inside a rectangle object (e.g. Vector Crop Tool) it may get upscaled on export, relative to the document resolution, not to the export resolution – while placed in a Picture Frame doesn't cause such upscaling: