Any essential Indesign features that Affinity Publisher lacks?

[PhilipJohnston]

Long time Indesign user here, my first 48 hours with Affinity Publisher. Yet to run into anything in my workflow that Publisher doesn't have an equivalent for. 

So, before Adobe and I possibly go our separate ways:

What can't Publisher do yet, that Indesign can, that might frustrate an Indesign user to a point of saying "not...yet..." to Affinity? Or are we only talking about little-known, rarely used features, that Serif has wisely chosen not to replicate to avoid bloat?

 

 

 

[firstdefence]

Welcome to the forum @PhilipJohnston

I think comparison really depends on what you have used indesign for and what parts of indesign have been used, so in your case, to date, Affinity Publisher is just as featured as indesign. Preempting future feature usage may be prudent but by then any feature that may not have been in Affinity Publisher that was in indesign may have been added. A case in point would be, at the moment Affinity Publisher cannot export to epub files but if you never export to epub you have not lost anything.

[SoftZoom]

A decent font manager is the main issue for me. If you end up with a missing font, you have to use a strange "find and replace" method of fixing it (which doesn't seem to work properly on Tables) rather than opening the font manager and replacing all instances of X font with Y font. The font manager lets you choose a substitute which can just get you by and let you continue, but it doesn't actually replace the font in the document, so it's forever complaining about missing fonts.

There's also no Variable font support yet.

[kaffeeundsalz]

@PhilipJohnston I think I understand where you're coming from, but with the way your question is phrased, it can't be answered in a meaningful way. There are approximately hundrets of features that InDesign has and Affinity Publisher doesn't. That's because you're comparing a program that has a 20 year long history with a product that's still relatively new to the market. People complain about missing features for sure – but different ones depending on their use case. For any guess about what you might be missing in Publisher, we'd need to know what you use InDesign for. But even then, your best bet is the one you already started: download the trial version and try replicating one of your real-world projects in Affinity Publisher, first a simple one, then a more complex one. In doing so, it's pretty safe that sooner or later, you will discover most of Publisher's shortcomings that are relevant to your workflow. Then, ask here in the forums for a workaround and decide if you can live with it. Also note that the trial period of the Affinity suite is still a whole 90 days at the moment. That should be more than enough for you to make a choice.

[PaulEC]

IMHO - I think the biggest shortcoming in APub is the lack of footnotes and endnotes. I've never needed to use these until recently, but I'm currently working on a book with my wife which needs quite a number of footnotes. I was intending to use APub, but we are probably going to have to use her copy of InDesign instead just because of this issue.

[Joachim_L]

1 minute ago, PaulEC said:

I've never needed to use these until recently

Foot- / endnotes are things I NEVER needed the last 35 years in business. Everyone has different preferences what is missing then. The last few things I am missing before the complete switch are making forms in APu, tables spanning several pages and plugin support in AD for our Mimaki.

[PaulEC]

12 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

Foot- / endnotes are things I NEVER needed the last 35 years in business.

This is really the problem. Everyone has their own ideas of what is "essential"! Until we started working on this current book I would not have considered footnotes/endnotes as "essential", but now trying to add them manually is proving more trouble than it's worth, (when we can just use InDesign instead). It depends on what type of work you are doing. For years my main DTP work involved posters, brochures, booklets and that sort of thing. This is the first time I've worked on a full length "scholarly" type of book, and it's proving to be a completely different ball-game! For my part, I rarely use forms or tables, when I do they are very simple ones, but I can see that, for someone else, better functionality in them is essential.

[PhilipJohnston]

Many thanks for the replies so far.

Point is well taken that any meaningful answer depends on knowing the user's workflow requirements.

Which means my question wasn't fair—it effectively asked for sight-unseen reassurance that my future projects would not require Indesign again, were I to switch. 

(It's too late in any case. I've bought the Affinity suite already. They had me at StudioLink.)

 

 

[kaffeeundsalz]

3 hours ago, PaulEC said:

This is really the problem. Everyone has their own ideas of what is "essential"!

That's exactly what I was trying to say. And there's more to it: What I've learned from following these forums is that people are not equally flexible in transferring their knowledge and experience to a new piece of software. There are users (and I think and hope these might be in the majority) who can adapt to different implementations quite easily and can find and accept workarounds for missing features. On the other hand, some users really seem to expect that the entire UX needs to be perfectly identical to the software they come from. I've actually seen someone complain about the foreground and background color swatches of Affinity Photo being arranged differently than in Photoshop. (Now wait until they figure out that e.g. there's no such thing as Smart Objects in Affinity Photo. 😱) So even if feature equivalents do exist, people may not necessarily be happy with the solutions the program offers. In the end, it's a question of how much the end result counts vs. the way to get there.

[jmwellborn]

1 hour ago, PhilipJohnston said:

(It's too late in any case. I've bought the Affinity suite already. They had me at StudioLink.)

Good for you!  If you run into problems or difficulties, just post here in the forums.  There will be many who can help or can offer the "workarounds" that @kaffeeundsalz so nicely stated.   We used Pagemaker for years, then InDesign (which I always hated) for several more in my publishing business.  For me, Publisher/Photo/Designer have been a breath of fresh air from the very beginning.  And they will only get better and better. 

[loukash]

16 hours ago, PhilipJohnston said:

What can't Publisher do yet, that Indesign can, that might frustrate an Indesign user to a point of saying "not...yet..." to Affinity?

Features, schmeatures.

Here's the real food for thought:

& bugs, bugs, bugs…

 

[Joachim_L]

2 minutes ago, loukash said:

& bugs, bugs, bugs…

I am using AP / AD since March 2018 and APu since June 2019 and no print job went wrong in this period ... toitoitoi.

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

I am using AP / AD since March 2018 and APu since June 2019 and no print job went wrong in this period ... toitoitoi.

I believe this phenomenon is referred to as "…but it works on my machine!"

[loukash]

2 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

no print job went wrong in this period

Lucky you.
I've tried several times between 2014 and 2019, and I usually ended up rebuilding the whole thing in ID or in AI respectively because I couldn't get any accurate PDF/X-3 output from Affinity.
By the end of 2020 when v1.8.x appeared to have somewhat matured, it got better, so I decided to convert my projects from CS5 to Affinity, but still pulling my long but increasingly scarce hair while at it.

Let me put it this way:
As long as the design stays within the Affinity window, all looks fine and well. Most minor bugs can be worked around by trying a different workflow. I, for one, even prefer many Affinity workflows to Adobe's. Affinity Photo's workflows are great for what I need. (I didn't even know about so many PS CS5 features until I read user complaints here on the forums about what Photo lacks compared to PS. D'oh! But then again, I'm not necessarily a "pixel guy".)

But if you can't output what you want your print guy to print on paper by delivering them the PDF document they need, you're pretty much s*wed.
As noted in some of those aforelinked threads, in those cases the best option remains PDF/X-4 export from Publisher, import that to InDesign, export to X-3 from there.

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, loukash said:

…the best option remains PDF/X-4 export from Publisher, import that to InDesign, export to X-3 from there.

Another workaround which (again) begs the question why not just do the whole project in InDesign and simply forget about Affinity?

I know Serif's policy is to stay tight-lipped about their plans, but the silence from them on these (and many other long-standing and arguably critical) issues is deafening.

[loukash]

Just now, Bryan Rieger said:

why not just do the whole project in InDesign and simply forget about Affinity?

Well, I genuinely like to work in Affinity, now that I've freed myself from the Schmadobe Mindset™ for most parts. It's very fluid. Like, zooming in and out with MacBook trackpad from 0.2 % to literally 309402941 % within seconds and the like.
Try that in InDesign CS5.
Better don't try that in Illustrator CS5 without saving all your work first…

And I also want Serif to succeed. I mean, hey, they have the balls to stand up against the old bull! Way to go! Fight the de facto Schmadobe monopoly!

11 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

the silence from them on these (and many other long-standing and arguably critical) issues is deafening

Yep.
Especially since it's not just the "you're holding it wrong" factor.

[Guest]

@loukash I was being sarcastic (which never translates well on the internet). I'm with you re: freedom from, and competition for that "other company™", and the performance is generally really impressive (although editing text is painfully slow for me in 1.9.1 at the moment).

I do want Serif to succeed, but because they make truly fantastic products—not just fancy marketing. Serif changed their policy for their public roadmap a while back. Perhaps it's time they revisit it and slightly adjust their policy again to avoid looking unresponsive and/or uninterested in their customers concerns.

[loukash]

1 minute ago, Bryan Rieger said:

re: freedom from

To clarify: by "freed myself from the Schmadobe Mindset" I mean that I'm no longer attempting to replicate Adobe's workflows in Affinity. Instead, I'm accepting that various things have to be accomplished differently. And finding that I like it that way.

APhoto's approach to the Crop tool being an example off the top of my head here: It made me crazy literally for years because I wanted it so desperately to work the same as the PS crop tool. Until just last year when I figured out that to crop an image fast and efficiently, I only need to change or switch a few steps in the workflow. Now it does what I want it to do, much better than how was doing it in PS previously.

Or speaking of Publisher vs InDesign, two words: Layers Panel
Finally I have an exact overview and control of my layout in the 3rd dimension.

[Guest]

I got it. I've often been heard ranting to colleagues about 'the (official) Adobe workflow™' in which everything works perfectly as long as you only do things in the approved way™.  With Adobe apps, I've often found myself 'holding it the wrong way' - my mind apparently doesn't see things in the same way that way Adobe does.

I don't want copies of the Adobe apps (or workflows) in Affinity apps, but I do want consistent, well designed mental models and workflows within the Affinity suite. It's not like there isn't a TON of prior art on which to base best-practices and avoid 'things definitely not to do'.

[loukash]

14 minutes ago, loukash said:

Now it does what I want it to do, much better than how was doing it in PS previously.

Hm… thinking of it again, perhaps Serif added some missing features to the crop tool last year, and that was why it suddenly worked for me…

[v_kyr]

Quote

Any essential Indesign features that Affinity Publisher lacks?

Essential in the sense of what, things I personally would have mainly used it for, if it could deal with those things it's missing? - Well, in this case every thing which is essentiell for technical book writing and publications here.

So to say all the good stuff Indesign has knowledge wise (obviously) stolen from their aquirement of FrameMaker, like book projects with seperation of TOC, chapters, abbreviousion-/ citations-/ bibliography - references etc. into single project-files which together build the whole book/publication. General for technical writing essentiell sidenotes/footnotes/endnotes, a formular-/equation generator (math, physics/chemistry), sentence & word count etc. for article writers. ... And so on, to much to list them all here ...!

In it's actual state Publisher lacks all what is needed for more serious academic book and especially technical book publishing here. - So it might actually be more useful for building flyers, hand outs, business cards, fashion articles, non technical brochures, photo booklets & books, maybe novels/simple books and the like, but overall mostly all things advertising agencies and fashion magazines do and play layout wise with. - Another important and urgent point, independent from what you finally use it for, is overall stability, it's sadly still very buggy.

 

 

[thomaso]

The fact that APub is mainly (not only) an app which increases the workflow efficiency of the available design, editing and layout features of AD and APh makes me assume that a feature of "Scriptability" could cause a series of other missed features become available. From this perspective a Script interface is a true essential feature, also for those who don't do coding.

It wouldn't mean that Serif / Affinity couldn't implement features which became real at first as such scripts – rather the use of such scripted features would cause user feedback for preventing bugs and improving a final, native implementation.

[h_d]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

a Script interface is a true essential feature,

+1

[NotMyFault]

+1

I'm not familiar with AI, nevertheless i miss a full features generator / scripting / macro functionality:

1. Able to create any layer (adjustment, filter, vector shape, text, ...)
2. Able to programatically set all parameters and inputs (like 0-100%, RGBA values, ...)
3. Able to loop / iterate, loop variable i from 0 to 99, create 100 layers, and set luminosity to i/99 on every layer
4. Have multiple loop variables, e.g. to set H,S,L, R, G, B, A, ... whatever you like
5. Use several types of loop increments (+x, *x, ...)
6. Ability to set text input from variables
7. Ability to set layer name
8. Ability to set blend mode (same for all, or calculated with loop variable as parameter)
9. Ability to set blend range (same for all, or calculated with loop variable as parameter)
10. Ability to set opacity (same for all, or calculated with loop variable as parameter)
11. Ability to use any color format and translate (RGB, GRAY, LAB, CMYK)
12. Ability to define sequence of layers
13. Ability to create nested adjustment / filter layers
14. ability to create groups, re-arrange group members, ..
15. Ability to do layer geometry operations
16. Ability to create curves (a la pen tool)
17. Ability to selected, copy layers, and adjust their parameters

[cbordey]

I’ve been using affinity publisher but am going back to indesign for future projects. I’ve used both for 2 years each, and I love publisher, but there are 2 things which make it not practical for my workflow.

when applying character or paragraph styles to imported text, it overrides formatting of the imported text such as italicized and bolded words/sentences. The workaround is to search and replace the imported text for all instances of italicized and bolded instances and set them to an italicized/bolded character style first. Very tedious. And though I did that for a recent 360 page project, I missed a few things that should have been italicized.  
 

also there’s no feature to prevent one word lines in paragraphs. You have to manually look at each paragraph and adjust things to prevent that.

for these two reasons I’m moving back to indesign to save myself time and worry. I would go back to publisher if these 2 items were addressed.