Is Affinity Publisher right for this job?

[Steve Haisman]

Hi,

I'm considering Affinity publisher to put together a coffee table/scrapbook for publish.

It will be landscape format, 10x8, and around 120 pages.

Most pages will have 3 layers: image background, central image and text.

Each page will look different.

Is Affinity publisher right for this task, and is there a suitable template?

Thanks!

[Alfred]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, Steve.

I imagine that Affinity Publisher would work well a scrapbook such as yours, although it isn’t supplied with any templates. Why not take it for a test drive?

https://affin.co/publishertrial

Please note that the ten-day trial clock runs continuously from the moment you first launch the app, and it cannot be reset.

Good luck with your project!

[Steve Haisman]

Thanks Alfred.

Can you suggest a suitable template?

 

[Alfred]

I don’t have one, but someone else here may well have, or you might find a PDF template that you can download. If not, it shouldn’t be terribly difficult to set one up from scratch.

[Steve Haisman]

Okay thanks.

As for making one myself...maybe a bit later down the line.

I wanted to make it 10x8 landscape.

Does anybody know a good source of template?

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, Steve Haisman said:

Can you suggest a suitable template?

Given that you said "each page will look different" I'm not sure it makes much sense to use a template.

[Steve Haisman]

I see. Each page will have a full-page background, with a central image and a text box. That's the basic form. The contents will be different.

I just need to make sure the fonts are consistent, same colour.

Would this be easy to achieve in affinity?

[thomaso]

18 minutes ago, Steve Haisman said:

I see. Each page will have a full-page background, with a central image and a text box. That's the basic form. The contents will be different.

You just described your template … and with just 3 objects it is easy to setup, even for beginners.

37 minutes ago, Steve Haisman said:

I just need to make sure the fonts are consistent, same colour.  Would this be easy to achieve in affinity?

How easy is easy? – For text the best combination of flexibilty + efficiency is using saved Text Styles. Just create a text frame with a wanted text appearance, then use the '+' button at the Text Style Panel bottom to add a Paragraph Style. Repeat this preparation for every style which should get used. If you want a certain text colour you ideally create a Global Colour Swatch in a custom Document Palette.

Objects which get placed on a Master Page would require to get detached on every document / book page for certain edits, for instance to move, scale or rotate a master page text frame. For the full page background image (which will not get moved or scaled across the document) it might be more useful to place it on a Master Page. For images in general a Picture Frame is an easy way to crop + scale + rotate an image within a certain layout area. The Picture Frame layer will allow to do these edits to a nested image without the need to detach its Master Page layer. As for the text frame also for the central image it might annoy you if you need to detach its master again and again in case you want to edit its size or position, and thus its Picture Frame might better not get placed on a Master Page.

Alternatively (or additionally) to the use of Master Pages you could just copy document pages which show a layout you want to repeat. Also using certain objects as Assets (via Asset Panel) may be a way to use certain objects repeatedly and drag them to the layout as needed.

[Steve Haisman]

Thomas, that's just great. Thank you so much.

I've been struggling with a Word/Photoshop combo, and whilst the results look fantastic it was such a lot of work!

I'll get started with Affinity after the weekend. Thanks again for your help.