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V2: Save or export document to V1-format?


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I guess this will be a topic for many Users who are collaborating with other Affinity users still on V1. I have both versions of the Affinity suite, and am a bit hesitant to edit v1-documents because of the incompatibility with v1-apps. Is there any way to somehow "save as" or "export" v2-documents from the v2-app to the v1-document-format, perhaps with a friendly warning that one might lose some new features? 

Otherwise this would be a weird situation, Designer can open Illustrator files from all versions (which Illustrator cannot do), but cannot export into its very own format of the predecessor...

Btw: Copying from V2 and paste it into V1 seems to work, even the controls for a cog shape still works.

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7 hours ago, Michael Tietz said:

I am sure you could fix that with the first update for V2 ;-)

How? There are many features in V2 that V1 does not support, so how would you expect that to work -- just omit anything V1 can't handle or what?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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8 hours ago, R C-R said:

How? There are many features in V2 that V1 does not support, so how would you expect that to work -- just omit anything V1 can't handle or what?

Surely this is not an impossible request since most graphic design apps, even subscription based, support saving to earlier native versions or have a specific generic data exchange format or "maximum compatibility save mode" to be used across different versions (and especially different users of different versions). Perhaps a kind of PDF encapsulation would be possible within native Affinity version formats, so that features not supported would be handled similarly as e.g. Warp groups are when copied from version 2 to 1 apps via Clipboard?

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8 hours ago, R C-R said:

How? There are many features in V2 that V1 does not support, so how would you expect that to work -- just omit anything V1 can't handle or what?

I'm not sure if this is meant to be subtle comedy? Anyone who's used design apps in the past decade will know that's exactly what gets done.

It's a shame there's no back-saving, it was already a pain being an Affinity user in an Adobe world, but now we will even have to be incompatible amongst ourselves.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I got V1. And I loved it.
I jumped onto V2 when it came out, allowing me to use the latest version on my Mac, my Windows desktop and my iPad, thinking I was making a great move forwards.

Then I discovered some of the people I know only have v1, and didn't make that leap, and quite simply aren't going to, because of their customers, friends etc.

After all, not everyone is a graphic designer, happy to spend on the latest software. I'm certainly not!
(And if I was in the V1 Camp, I'd be doing my best to discourage people thinking of going to V2, only to be left behind!)


Without some form of backward compatible export, I either have to keep files in V2 and then recreate them using V1, copying across the layers into new documents, or I have to try to put it into an interim non-Affinity format like a PSD, with even more compatibility issues than V2 to V1, which seems counter-intuitive when we all want to live in the world of Affinity!

Backward compatibility is something we all take for granted. Of course V1 files may not support all of the V1 features. Of course some things might be lost in the export. But backwards compatibility is something that not having, splits the world of Affinity users into 2 camps. V1's and V2's, and there's no easy way of sharing or collaborating.

Why ever would a company that rivals Adobe for having a wonderful graphical package choose to alienate existing customers, or restrict new customers in such a terrible way?
Please please please can we encourage Affinity to create a v1 exporter, so that we can share our V2 love with those left behind, and help support V1 users for continuing with the product until it's right for them to invest in the benefits that V2 can bring.

I can see 2 clear ways forward, both of which would show a united front for Affinity software:

1. An export from V2 to V1 compatible files
2. The ability for V1 to open V2 files in read only mode, to then be able to extract/copy the layers into new files.

Let us find a way for Affinity users to unite, share resources, and all grow together.

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  • 3 weeks later...

If Affinity Designer can import an IDML file, so I'm pretty certain it should be possible to reverse the process and export an IDML file too. There will always be new features which aren't exactly rendered as they should be, but it would be a good halfway-house.

https://affinity.help/publisher/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pages/GetStarted/importDocument.html?title=Importing documents

 

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1 hour ago, 3Dshark said:

If Affinity Designer can import an IDML file,

I don't think that Designer can do that. Isn't iDML import limited to Publisher?

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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  • 2 months later...

Hi ! I run a lab with 15 people and everyone has Affinity Photo version 1 on their  laptops. Now a new person has joined and we've installed version 2 on his computer. Are you seriously saying that he will not be able to share his files with the other 15 people in my lab??? There really needs be a way to export a version that is backwards-compatible. This is a game-stopper if I need to update all 15 licenses in my group every time a new version comes out. I guess a solution is an export function that strips the new features from the file...

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  • 3 weeks later...

As @ateleman mentioned my case is similar. I have raised a concern some time ago, without any reasonable response. So here we are. I have many v1 files and many computers with v1 installed without possibility upgrade and no interoperability between v1 and v2... This was and still is a main reason why i can not recommend v2 and will not buy a new licenses till this is resolved somehow.

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Solution to this problem (for Publisher only) would be IDML export. If there is IDML import, implementation of export should not be so hard, should be? 

Another solution for that would be PSD or PDF export that will be compatible to exchange data. But PSD break publisher file by pages to many PSD files and text is rasterised even with changed settings. PSD was not really mentioned for this kind of interoperability anyway. So rather not for Publisher.

PDF is not perfect too. Mainly because text is weirdly separated all the time i tried it. Even with simple text layouts. Also there is many compatibility issues with other features. Not sure why. Editability should be consistent.

So IDML export seems to be the best solution. Any plans for that?

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  • 2 months later...
39 minutes ago, MikeyT said:

this is incredibly unhelpful, I am regretting my purchase of V2 now because I cannot collaborate with colleagues and volunteers on V1.  

As annoying & unhelpful as it is, since V2 supports quite a few new features that V1 cannot, it isn't possible to add a fully functional option to save a file created or edited in V2 to save it in the V1 format.

What this means is to collaborate with V1 users you have to do all the work in V1; otherwise the V1 users won't be able to understand how certain tasks were accomplished, much less be able to open the files.

 While understandably that is quite inconvenient & annoying, it is certainly doable because the V1 & V2 apps both can be installed & used side by side.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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