Affinity Publisher Customer Beta - 1.9.0.902

[AdamW]

Status: Release Candidate
Purpose: Stability and General Testing
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Publisher
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download: Download
Auto-update: Soon

---

We are pleased to announce that Affinity Publisher Customer Beta 1.9.0.902 is now available as a download from the link above.

If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry.

This beta is significant update from the 1.8 version available for purchase - we strongly recommend that you do not use this beta for real work as data could be lost and the files you save are not guaranteed to open in previous or future versions of Affinity Publisher.

---

Improvements and Fixes

Documents
Resizing single page Master could change the size of dependent spreads incorrectly
Deleting Master Page when editing detached could leave 'Editing Detached' notification open

Text / Tables
Text selection highlight across multiple spreads could display incorrectly 
Hyperlink styling could accidentally be added to new text 
Deleting a row with merged cells could cause a crash
Fix for hang resizing table columns in certain circumstances
Line widths around Drop Caps could be wrong /inconsistent

Import / Export
IDML text import now always applies appropriate text styling to be used when appending to imported text
IDML import speed and efficiency improvements
Fix for image handing in specific imported PDF files (in this case created by Microsoft Word)

Affinity Web Services
Miscellaneous improvements

---

Release Notes for 1.9.0.887

---

To be notified about all future Mac beta updates, please follow this notification thread 

To be notified when this Publisher update comes out of beta and is fully released to all Publisher customers, please follow this thread

[Patrick Connor]

Please can users of this beta look at the My Account feature (top right of the main toolbar) even if you have already done so recently in another recent beta.

We have now added the ability to link your Affinity app to your Affinity account through a new app registration process. This will have the advantages of you being able to stream any content you have purchased (or received for free from the Affinity store) directly to all your apps without having to manually install them. This is of particular use to customers who have more than one of our apps, or run our apps on different devices and operating systems as all your content will automatically be available across all of them.

If you register the beta app you will receive a free brush kit (the luminance brush kit) for testing purposes to add to any of the store content you may already own that should also show up.

There have been lots of behind the scene improvements and most of the purchasable and (historical) free claimable content has being made streamable as the beta has progressed.

PLEASE report anything you find using "My Account" IN THAT THREAD

[Dazmondo77]

All seems good - Nice splash screen (unlike Designer vvv busy)

Just wondering if export preview will be available to publisher, now that it's working great? 

[Patrick Connor]

22 minutes ago, Dazmondo77 said:

Just wondering if export preview will be available to publisher, now that it's working great? 

Export Preview is a simple pixel based preview for photo/designer documents. It's not designed to be enabled for vector formats or multi-page documents, so will not be added to publisher which is mainly designed for the vector/text mixed format export of PDF. Although Publisher can export pages or selections as pixel formats it is not it's primary purpose/market and this 1.9 feature is appearing in the applications it is most suited to.

[GRAFKOM]

3 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

so will not be added to publisher

I am very disappointed with this answer.
Although I have purchased all Affinity programs for Mac, Windows and iPad for my advertising company in Poland, until the basic errors in Designer and Photo are fixed, I use Affinity Publisher on a daily basis, using Persona Designer and Persona Photo for designing books, flyers, posters, business cards, logos, elements for websites, web banners, etc.
I even gave up buying the CorelDraw 2020 update (I have been working on CorelDraw from version 3.0) waiting for the Affinity software updates.

And here is such an uninteresting answer.
I would like the money prepared for CorelDraw to be spent on development at Affinity.

Please, Serif, enter your account number, I want to deposit 711 Euro so that you do not make bad decisions.
Butryn Marek is a company for graphic designers from Poland.

[Sam Neil]

33 minutes ago, GRAFKOM said:

I am very disappointed with this answer.
Although I have purchased all Affinity programs for Mac, Windows and iPad for my advertising company in Poland, until the basic errors in Designer and Photo are fixed, I use Affinity Publisher on a daily basis, using Persona Designer and Persona Photo for designing books, flyers, posters, business cards, logos, elements for websites, web banners, etc.
I even gave up buying the CorelDraw 2020 update (I have been working on CorelDraw from version 3.0) waiting for the Affinity software updates.

And here is such an uninteresting answer.
I would like the money prepared for CorelDraw to be spent on development and non-development at Affinity.

Please, Serif, enter your account number, I want to deposit 711 Euro so that you do not make bad decisions.
Butryn Marek is a company for graphic designers from Poland.

I am sorry I don't see you point what so ever. The fact that APUB is missing the so called feature is because it is not suited to it and its purpose. I too use the trio on daily basis and I am sure most of the users here. This is not a statement that has any bearing on the matter. Such posts are a waste of time for the Adam & team to even answer. Please focus on the realistic and logical issues and not things that don't even make sense! 

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

Although Publisher can export pages or selections as pixel formats it is not it's primary purpose/market

It's true that that's not Publisher's primary purpose. But it is very convenient to use Publisher even for non-book designs that need cooperation between Photo and Designer, as they can be used more easily in combination via StudioLink rather than by using File > Edit in ....

Therefore, when one is working on a single-page or artboard- or canvas-based design in Publisher, and exporting to a pixel-based format, it would be very convenient to have the Preview available. I hope Serif considers that enhancement in the future.

[Dazmondo77]

5 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

Export Preview is a simple pixel based preview for photo/designer documents. It's not designed to be enabled for vector formats or multi-page documents, so will not be added to publisher which is mainly designed for the vector/text mixed format export of PDF. Although Publisher can export pages or selections as pixel formats it is not it's primary purpose/market and this 1.9 feature is appearing in the applications it is most suited to.

Wow - that's a bit disappointing - I'm totally with Walt on this

I only ask as I very rarely open Designer or Photo as I use StudioLink in pub for 95% of the time so normally save elements as jpegs or png's (save selection without background) ----- oh well, it would have been handy in pub - and wouldn't really justify opening in Designer or Photo just for this feature

[GRAFKOM]

6 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

I very rarely open Designer or Photo as I use StudioLink in pub for 95% of the time so normally save elements as jpegs or png's (save selection without background) ----- oh well, it would have been handy in pub - and wouldn't really justify opening in Designer or Photo just for this feature

Exactly.
I have purchased Designer and Photo as separate programs just so that I can use StudioLink in Publisher. If all these good features exist in these two separate programs, I don't understand why they can't be implemented in Publisher. After all, the condition of the Publisher's full and proper operation is Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo.
I still stand by my decision that I want to donate the equivalent of the purchase of CorelDraw 2020 (711 Euro) for the faster development of the Affinity package and not making bad decisions for Serif.

[RNKLN]

In the meantime: Edit in Designer (Photo) is still available in Publisher. So, if you have simple, one page, document, you can edit in Designer and then make use of the Export Preview function.

[Dazmondo77]

3 hours ago, RNKLN said:

In the meantime: Edit in Designer (Photo) is still available in Publisher. So, if you have simple, one page, document, you can edit in Designer and then make use of the Export Preview function.

I think I'll still export jpegs from Pub and make do without the preview, it's worked out ok so far - I would have thought if image preview was such a Des/Photo specialised feature it would surely be available first in export persona in Designer and Photo, which I do use, and does justify opening in Designer for all the export options - oh well?!?!?!

As usual my thinking seems to be a bit arse over tit?

[fde101]

Why does the Photo persona in Publisher allow you to add a Liquify live filter to the document if you can't edit it without switching to the Photo application anyway?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

Why does the Photo persona in Publisher allow you to add a Liquify live filter to the document if you can't edit it without switching to the Photo application anyway?

On Windows, if I try to add a Liquify Live Filter in Publisher the application crashes.

[Move Along People]

-

[walt.farrell]

Thanks, @haakoo. I just found that.

[fde101]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

On Windows, if I try to add a Liquify Live Filter in Publisher the application crashes.

It doesn't crash for me on the Mac.  The layer gets created but is worthless within Publisher unless you switch to Photo to edit it.

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, fde101 said:

It doesn't crash for me on the Mac.  The layer gets created but is worthless within Publisher unless you switch to Photo to edit it.

Interesting. What happens when you double-click on the layer thumbnail for the Liquify Filter layer?

[fde101]

Just now, walt.farrell said:

Interesting. What happens when you double-click on the layer thumbnail for the Liquify Filter layer?

It sits there and stares at you.

[walt.farrell]

Just now, fde101 said:

It sits there and stares at you.

I can see why you wouldn't find that very useful

Thanks.

[fde101]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I can see why you wouldn't find that very useful

Thanks.

Sure - If I do a File -> Edit in Photo after creating the layer, I can double-click the thumbnail in Photo and edit it there, and the effect does carry back over to Publisher if I then send it back...  but that saves me nothing over simply doing a File -> Edit in Photo first then adding the layer.

[Patrick Connor]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

On Windows, if I try to add a Liquify Live Filter in Publisher the application crashes.

this has been fixed for the next build

[jiriq]

Data Merge is very good.

One remark: Doubleclicking on a filed (in the Fields pane) inserts that filed. But keyboard is not immediately active so in order to insert a character (space, return, ..) one has to point and click in the text frame to start typing. It would be nice to have the keyboard ready immediately after a field was inserted.