Affinity Publisher as All-in-one app?

[albertkinng]

What you guys think the issue is:

User doesn’t know how to create art boards in Publisher that also can be opened on Designer and Photo. 
 

Real issue:

User want to design a Magazine in Publisher and save it as a Designer document where all pages become art boards.

 

I hope this time I explained this correctly.

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, albertkinng said:

User want to design a Magazine in Publisher and save it as a Designer document where all pages become art boards.

That is not possible, except by:

1. From Publisher, Export document as a PDF, making sure to select the option All Pages in the Export dialog rather than All Spreads.
2. From Designer, Open the PDF.

But really, if you want Artboards, it's best to start with Artboards. Which you can do in either Publisher or Designer.

And another question is: why do you want Artboards instead of Pages? Designer can deal with either, for most purposes.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, albertkinng said:

User want to design a Magazine in Publisher and save it as a Designer document where all pages become art boards.

To be completely clear about this, there no difference between an Affinity Publisher document & an Affinity Designer document so it is not possible to convert an Affinity document that has pages to one that has artboards by saving it in any Affinity app. Like @walt.farrell mentioned, there are clumsy workarounds involving exporting to a different format, but it does not matter if the document has pages or artboards if you want to work on it in Affinity Designer (or in Affinity Photo), for example to use the Export Persona of either of those apps.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

but it does not matter if the document has pages or artboards if you want to work on it in Affinity Designer (or in Affinity Photo), for example to use the Export Persona of either of those apps.

There is one case I know of where it will matter, but it is unclear whether @albertkinng really needs this function.

When you have a document with Artboards, and you switch to the Export Persona, the Slices from all the Artboards are visible in the Export Persona and can all be operated on at once. However, when you have a document with Pages, the Export Persona only accesses the Slices from the current Page. You can still switch between pages, but for exporting via the Export Persona you must work on each page individually.

On the other hand, I am not sure of a good use case for needing the Export Persona when you have a Page-based document.

[R C-R]

6 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

There is one case I know of where it will matter, but it is unclear whether @albertkinng really needs this function.

True. I though we had already mentioned that case but I can't find any reference to it now.

7 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

On the other hand, I am not sure of a good use case for needing the Export Persona when you have a Page-based document.

It should be possible to just use File > Export for this but of course then there is no way to export to multiple formats with a single click. But even if the AP or AD Export  persona is used to make that possible, there is still a lot of setup work involved.

All in all, it still seems simplest to avoid using page-based documents to begin with.

[albertkinng]

35 minutes ago, R C-R said:

All in all, it still seems simplest to avoid using page-based documents to begin with

Simple if it's a personal project but is not when you have documents from client that need elements inside of magazine in different formats and because you can save it/export it/whatever form to have the pages available on artboards, so Export Persona will make your life easier! It can't be done. That's the point! Understand, I've been doing this for a long time the hard way. That's why I started this thread saying IF this feature were available, it's a dream come true for me. Either you don't understand or you just want to create a solution to other need instead of the one I'm presenting to you. I've tried to tell you or moderator to close this thread because we are going to keep going in circles without a solution! There's no solution because it can't be done!

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, albertkinng said:

That's why I started this thread saying IF this feature were available, it's a dream come true for me.

There is a separate forum for feature requests so if you started this topic asking for this feature to be added here in the Questions forum, you started it in the wrong forum.

[albertkinng]

56 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I am not sure of a good use case for needing the Export Persona when you have a Page-based document.

This is one of my daily tasks:

1. Client have 30 magazines created in INDD re-designed and converted in Affinity Publisher, With all file elements linked and well formatted. 

2. Client send me the Affinity Publisher files to make arrangements and fixes to the Publisher docs and also wants specific pages and elements exported in different formats for his marketing art department.

3. Because I don't have other options as saving the document in Designer, so the pages can be Artboards and I can select what I need and start using Export Persona to save all the elements as different formats as client needs, I do it manually.

4. I open Designer and start creating Artboards and pasting the pages from Publisher one by one, so I can start selecting the elements with Export Persona to deliver the files.

Believe me, I've tried just using Publisher, and it can't be done. The files are already made in Publisher, so "Start as Designer blah blah" as other mentioned is not an option. I can't use Export Persona either inside Publisher as I do in Designer because I don't have the same options either. 

This is not about opening any file with any apps because it's the same format, because when I open a Publisher file provided in Designer the pictures are not linked and some files are blurry or pixelated and if I save the document by mistake the next time I will be selecting the linked items one by one. Your workaround is good for a small project and personal tasks, but it seems none of you work on  20+ Publisher documents at the same time with a deadline.

It's ok if there's no workaround, I already managed to deliver my projects. Please stop repeating the same explanations over and over. I already understand about the Affinity files and the artboards inside Publisher, seriously I get it already. 

[albertkinng]

3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

There is a separate forum for feature requests so if you started this topic asking for this feature to be added here in the Questions forum, you started it in the wrong forum.

I didn't know. I'm sorry for that mistake, I don't understand why you point that out now after all this mess. Well done.

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, albertkinng said:

2. Client send me the Affinity Publisher files to make arrangements and fixes to the Publisher docs and also wants specific pages and elements exported in different formats for his marketing art department.

Assuming that it was possible to somehow convert multiple pages in APub documents to artboards, in AD's Export Persona wouldn't you still have to manually select each artboard, make sure that just the desired elements of it were included, & then set each of them up with the appropriate export format options before doing the export?

That I assume is in addition to saving the modified APub files in the original pages format so things like applying & editing its master pages or changing its spread sizes would still be possible.

IOW, maybe I am missing something but it seems like either way this would involve a lot of time consuming manual work.

[prophet]

I wonder if the nifty Export Selection Area would be useful in this situation?

I've used it a few times when designing a full flat package and just needing to export the front panel. I make a simple, no fill, no stroke shape that sits on a locked layer at the top of my stack and then when I need it, unlock, select and choose Selection Area when exporting.

 

[walt.farrell]

55 minutes ago, albertkinng said:

Because I don't have other options as saving the document in Designer, so the pages can be Artboards and I can select what I need and start using Export Persona to save all the elements as different formats as client needs, I do it manually.

You can simply Open the .afpub file on Designer, it use File > Edit in Designer.

Within Designer you can select the Page you want to work on, make changes if needed, switch to the Export Persona, and do all you export work for that page.

Then you can switch to a different page, do the work, and switch back to the Export Persona.

 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

Within Designer you can select the Page you want to work on, make changes if needed, switch to the Export Persona, and do all you export work for that page.

I wonder if @albertkinng hasn't noticed the navigation bar at the bottom left of the AD workspace window that appears only when documents with multiple pages are opened in that AD or AP. Since that is the only way to navigate between pages in them, he may not realize it is possible.

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

Then you can switch to a different page, do the work, and switch back to the Export Persona.

I think what he wants is a way to work on all the pages at once in the Export Persona of AD or AP & thus somehow to avoid having to treat each page individually. But like I said above, i don't think that would buy him anything unless every page had identical content & all of them needed for the same content to be included in the export to each export format. But if every page was identical, then there would be no reason to have more than one to begin with, so I still do not understand what the point would be even if the pages could be converted to individual artboards.

[albertkinng]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

I think what he wants is a way to work on all the pages at once in the Export Persona of AD or AP & thus somehow to avoid having to treat each page individually.

Exactly

[albertkinng]

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

You can simply Open the .afpub file on Designer, it use File > Edit in Designer.

Within Designer you can select the Page you want to work on, make changes if needed, switch to the Export Persona, and do all you export work for that page.

Then you can switch to a different page, do the work, and switch back to the Export Persona.

 

No, that doesn't work. I tried that many times. Understand is specific elements between the pages that need to be exported, Publisher doesn't let me choose elements in Export Persona, but thanks for the suggestion. I would provide one of my projects, but my client didn't give me permission.

[albertkinng]

5 hours ago, prophet said:

I wonder if the nifty Export Selection Area would be useful in this situation?

I've used it a few times when designing a full flat package and just needing to export the front panel. I make a simple, no fill, no stroke shape that sits on a locked layer at the top of my stack and then when I need it, unlock, select and choose Selection Area when exporting.

 

Doesn't work for batch export.

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, albertkinng said:

Exactly

OK, but how would that save you from having to edit & export each page individually unless all the pages had exactly the same content & you wanted to export exactly the same elements of each of them?

IOW, how would the app know what to wanted to do unless it was exactly the same thing for every page (or artboard)?

[albertkinng]

5 hours ago, R C-R said:

Assuming that it was possible to somehow convert multiple pages in APub documents to artboards, in AD's Export Persona wouldn't you still have to manually select each artboard, make sure that just the desired elements of it were included, & then set each of them up with the appropriate export format options before doing the export?

That I assume is in addition to saving the modified APub files in the original pages format so things like applying & editing its master pages or changing its spread sizes would still be possible.

IOW, maybe I am missing something but it seems like either way this would involve a lot of time consuming manual work.

No, you got everything wrong. I will do that manually just one time if somehow I can convert multiple pages in Apub docs to artboards. I do manually many times, one by one right now. That's the issue.

[albertkinng]

As @R C-R mentioned, this is not the correct thread to talk about this. Why keep going with this?

[R C-R]

Just now, albertkinng said:

No, you got everything wrong. I will do that manually just one time if somehow I can convert multiple pages in Apub docs to artboards. I do manually many times, one by one right now. That's the issue.

But unless you are doing exactly the same thing to every artboard to prepare it for export, how could you do that manually just one time & expect it to apply to every artboard?

[walt.farrell]

21 minutes ago, albertkinng said:

Publisher doesn't let me choose elements in Export Persona,

It should, for the currently selected page. If it's not, it would help to have a screenshot demonstrating the problem so we can see what it might be. 

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Hens said:

This may seem a convoluted way for something that should be in publisher from the beginning ,an export persona.

But it sounds like they really want Artboards so the "pages" can be different sizes, which means that it might be better to start in Designer with the Artboards you want, and then switch to Publisher to work on those Artboards, using the additional text-related functions that Publisher provides. Then switch back to Designer at the end for the Export Persona.

But I like your workflow idea; it's not one I had thought of.

[walt.farrell]

4 minutes ago, Hens said:

You know you can have different size pages in a page oriented afpub file

I've never played with that. Thanks.

[albertkinng]

3 hours ago, Hens said:

This may seem a convoluted way for something that should be in publisher from the beginning ,an export persona.

Almost identical as the way I do it now. That’s why I was asking for an easy way or a feature! 

[albertkinng]

11 hours ago, R C-R said:

But unless you are doing exactly the same thing to every artboard to prepare it for export, how could you do that manually just one time & expect it to apply to every artboard?

My friend, the files have the same layout, the only thing that change is the content. In my case, I work directly with the ads on the sponsors pages and… I don’t even know why I need to explain these details to solve the problem? You can’t do it on Publisher. That’s the point.