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Very very disappointed with Publisher 2


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40 minutes ago, NewInBoston said:

Some of the complaints are hilarious and almost seem like a desperate attempt by competitors to discredit Serif’s achievements.

Ridiculous complaints based on the price have started early, have been so many, and have even be the argument of a long review on an online magazine after a very short time from the launch – that I've immediately been feeling there was a campaign ready to start since a long time, and only waiting for a topic to debate. I'm a conspiracy theorist by nature. And as a notorious Italian politician of many years ago loved to say, "to think it badly, sometimes you get it right".

Paolo

 

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2 minutes ago, Tia Lapis said:

Well, you don't need feature parity to be able to replace one tool with another. That's at least what I believe. Af Photo ie is at least as powerful as PS cs1 and that is more than enough to work on pictures and paint.

If one has a tool that the other hasn’t then it’s a problem if it’s one you use.  Clearly not everyone needs everything PS or AI offers but some will want features that just aren’t available yet in AP or AD and in some cases there’s no workaround. It’s pointless pretending they’re basically the same, they just aren’t. They are slowly getting closer but will take a good while to get there.

 

Marc

ArtByMarc.me

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28 minutes ago, Tia Lapis said:

Yes there are some rough edges but in the end you can do near everything Adobe can with it.

With Photo and Designer, maybe. But I've been happy with the older version, so what do I know.

With Publisher – no. V2 is a huge step forward, but there is still a ton of things missing.

This doesn't mean that for many it can't already be a very powerful page layout program, that can replace InDesign.

Paolo

 

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1 minute ago, PaoloT said:

With Publisher – no. V2 is a huge step forward, but there is still a ton of things missing.

Paolo

 

Missing compared with what? Af Publisher is already way more powerful than my old InDesign CS1. What functionally (and no I don't mean special feature bla from InDesign) is really missing to create layouts?

Mac mini M1 / Ryzen 5600H & RTX3050 mobile / iPad Pro 1st - all with latest non beta release of Affinity

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3 minutes ago, Tia Lapis said:

Missing compared with what? Af Publisher is already way more powerful than my old InDesign CS1.

InDesign is currently at version 17. Adobe CS is from 2003. I wouldn't want to make Publisher a disservice, by comparing it with a program that is twenty years old.

I personally couldn't use InDesign for my job before it reached version CS5.5, and could use it even less now.

Paolo

 

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1 minute ago, PaoloT said:

InDesign is currently at version 17. Adobe CS is from 2003. I wouldn't want to make Publisher a disservice, by comparing it with a program that is twenty years old.

Paolo

 

So you say you couldn't use InDesign CS1 to create professional layouts? Just trying to understand. It's not like layouting has changed much since then.

Mac mini M1 / Ryzen 5600H & RTX3050 mobile / iPad Pro 1st - all with latest non beta release of Affinity

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Affinity Photo has only fraction of the features of Adobe Photoshop, but in real-world functionality, Photo isn't far behind at all. And if you really learn the software, it's faster. (Try putting a dozen images into an image stack, then switching modes.)

PS's whole Smart Object scheme now seems like a top-heavy, inefficient kludge compared to the Affinity Way😇.

I found the hyped "AI" features in PS ineffectual and unusably slow, and their bugfix for unusable 3D was to put up box telling you 3D is not only unusable now, but will be even more unusable in the future.

I find Affinity's InPainting brush (in V1, I haven't tested V2 extensively) to work as well or better than PS's alternative in typical cases. The border of the repair was often more obvious in PS than Affinity. However, you can't set blend modes in Affinity.

I find Affinity's Refine Selection... Superior and more intuitive all around. I photograph lots and lots of fuzzy little wild animals, and PS's whole refine fur scheme was completely useless. Just running Affinity's matte brush around the perimeter of the little beasty (in Refine... mode) produces a better mask, faster, with less touch-up.

Affinity's Tone Mapping persona is more flexible, faster and has a better UI than PS's clunky alternative.

Photoshop does do video, albeit in the most confounding way possible -- so it's good for animated GIFs, even if the export is deprecated to legacy.

This is not meant to be a slap at Photoshop. It can definitely do useful things Affinity can't (content aware scale, for one), but just comparing alleged features misses the entire point.

This post is based on a trial edition of Adobe CC within the last year or so. I was actually kinda shocked how little, if any, productivity benefit it offered over CS6.

 

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24 minutes ago, ChopperNova said:

PS's whole Smart Object scheme now seems like a top-heavy, inefficient kludge compared to the Affinity Way😇.

Maybe Affinity Photo is better for scaling up or down images with preserving pixel information natively is better than Photoshop Smart Objects. But Smart Objects can help a lot for warping objects for muckups and quick change of logo and other elements. With the Mesh Warp being a live filter now, that's good, but still not as good as Smart Objects. It's really the only feature I miss from Photoshop.

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2 hours ago, VectorVonDoom said:

As much as I like the Affinity apps I don’t agree, perhaps if you are only comparing publisher vs ??? but as you says tools I assume you mean PS and AI too. AP and AD aren’t feature comparable yet. Of course it depends on your requirements, affinity may well be more than enough.

And what Publishing tool does Adobe offer on iPad exactly?

2021 16” Macbook Pro w/ M1 Max 10c cpu /24c gpu, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Ventura 13.6

2018 11" iPad Pro w/ A12X cpu/gpu, 256 GB, iPadOS 17

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I am most disappointed with the fact that Affinity's second suite is not compatible with the earlier version, despite some minor differences. For example, by editing an old .afphoto project in Photo 2 by simply hiding the layer (without using the new features), we will prevent this file from being opened in the old version. Moreover - as it happened in my case - more complicated layers (Compound) could not be displayed properly in the new version.

When the developers mentioned something about version 2 a few years ago, I expected that after its premiere we would actually get a new product with a lot of additional tools that were demanded by users on the forum, but in the meantime we get practically the same product, with the number "2" added, changed icons (the UI is basically the same, with little and unnecessary changes) and with a lot of bugs.

The 40% promotion for the entire Suite (which includes both OS licenses) is tempting, but I got used to the current version, which at least is stable and runs smoother.

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2 hours ago, PaoloT said:

Ridiculous complaints based on the price have started early, have been so many, and have even be the argument of a long review on an online magazine after a very short time from the launch – that I've immediately been feeling there was a campaign ready to start since a long time, and only waiting for a topic to debate. I'm a conspiracy theorist by nature. And as a notorious Italian politician of many years ago loved to say, "to think it badly, sometimes you get it right".

Paolo

 

I like your thought process - it does feel there is an active campaign trying to sway people away from Affinity using price as leverage.

If I were Adobe shareholders, I would be nervous with this release. 

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3 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

There will be customer betas here on these forums very soon. Be as critical as you like and we would appreciate your credentials improving the software.

I may have missed it. I did not see a V2 pre-release beta forum or hear about a beta prior to its release. I'm not familiar with how Serif approaches pre-major release betas. Please help me understand the process.

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I know this message could be a bit off topic here, but...

I want to congratulate the team that makes it possible to have Affinity, and I have just mounted a hardcover book of 315 x240 mm, (not a flyer or brochure for a restaurant only,  but those works also are professional work, right?) in deluxe edition for the Ministry of Culture of my country, the book has 60% high quality photos and 40% texts of 360 pages whose typography of large titles is one that I have designed myself, this book already had much advanced work and was about to close edition, and has not given me any problem to open it in APublisher 2.0 and work it cleanly, with confidence and security in what one knows how to do, we also have a phrase here: Who does not risk. .. does not win!

Being that in my country the vast majority of people in the field use pirated software for almost everything, including Adobe suites, also Corel and Quark, the price of about 80 gringo dollars, it's a bargain for three high quality programs that also work linked, are fast and efficient, plus they can be installed on the damn iPad, get that from other companies, that would cost you an egg ... and the other one too!

Be patients, I´m sure the dev team would fix the issues in the next days.

 

hugs

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11 hours ago, Foucault said:

The changes would have made for a nice update... It seems to me that it is an Upgrade not because of the improvements they made but because Affinity needed a justification to charge some money without switching to a subscription based system.

So changes that V2 has would be a nice upgrade, but somehow hype transformed the same very changes into bad ones?..  Classic "but I was expecting more and you didnt matched these expectations created by my imagination. How dare you?!" 🤭

@ronnyb I would be one of those guys who is making a living using Affinity software since V1. I am a bit annoyed by the fact that Affinity became now Windows App, but it is still fantastic package and I will definitely keep on using it and earning a living with its help. It is fantastic package and hell - I remember how much Affinity grew since v1 - all updates and new options for free in what.. 5 years or so? I mean... thats crazy. This team definitely deserves our support.

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Not exactly. 

They would have made for a nice update, not upgrade.

And yes: Hype can do that😁. Not that I was originally expecting so much more (rather something different); Hype made me to expect much more, ike something "BIG"! And in the end, there was not much else to build your expectations on: no betas, no roadmap...

 

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3 hours ago, CWFII said:

I did not see a V2 pre-release beta forum or hear about a beta prior to its release. I'm not familiar with how Serif approaches pre-major release betas. Please help me understand the process.

For the first time this release was not given a public beta, but going forward all V2 betas both minor and major (2.0.1, 2.1,  2.2 etc) will be done in these forums, prior to public release 

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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6 hours ago, Distill7 said:

Maybe Affinity Photo is better for scaling up or down images with preserving pixel information natively is better than Photoshop Smart Objects. But Smart Objects can help a lot for warping objects for muckups and quick change of logo and other elements. With the Mesh Warp being a live filter now, that's good, but still not as good as Smart Objects. It's really the only feature I miss from Photoshop.

Agree, Serif should make consistent improvements to their useful tools. Though Affinity has smoothier performance and experience, some features in Photoshop still powerful and deserve being added to Affinity.

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1 hour ago, Patrick Connor said:

For the first time this release was not given a public beta, but going forward all V2 betas both minor and major (2.0.1, 2.1,  2.2 etc) will be done in these forums, prior to public release 

It's nice to hear that. Hope to see some features that requested again and again can be added into Affinity suite.

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9 hours ago, Tia Lapis said:

So you say you couldn't use InDesign CS1 to create professional layouts?

I don't know if something like "professional layouts" exists. I know that it was totally unusable for my scopes (professional or not – in any case, something commissioned by a couple relatively big companies, and distributed on large scale).

Adobe greatly improved the program in the following years, including features coming from FrameMaker, a whole company they purchased and from which they took technologies that were indispensable for my job. 

Paolo

 

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9 hours ago, Tia Lapis said:

Missing compared with what? Af Publisher is already way more powerful than my old InDesign CS1. What functionally (and no I don't mean special feature bla from InDesign) is really missing to create layouts?

for me its multipage tables. indesign CS6 (2013) which is last non-subscription version is capable to do this flawlessly, and its old as hell.  Try to do catalogues or scientific documents or even larger manuals without this. Its pain in a** . Im asking for this feature with many professionals since release. So still have to have installed CS6 for some work.

To me personally, version 2 is overhyped, esp. publisher and its more like GUI change, and more like version 1.11 than 2.0. That overmarketinged "something big is comming" only damaged the product. Its not big. its few features that have been asked years, and money request. But on the other side, i have no problem pay them again, even every year, for upgrade. Its not a problem. And as i stated few months maybe years ago, also would pay way more to get fully working professional suite without significant bugs (forexample, on PC, there was no acceleration for AMD high end cards, with information, that its bug in AMD drivers, which was ofc nonsense -  as we see version 2 working accelerated without problems, and in meantime, plenty of graphic programms, using same acceleration also without problems). 

Only thing i was really waiting for ages was designer's warp, even 4 corners skew would do the trick. What suprises me is, that its non destructive and very good designed. Thumbs up.

So yea. A bit salty, but did buy version 2 not because of being big, but to support the devs.

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Grapher has it spot on. I bought the V2 to support Serif in their work, but tables and columns support is vital to me too (and a great many people), which is why I have to use InDesign still for much of my work. It is not a case of someone with a special requirement being negative, it is about someone who is old school and cares about good software at a decent price, being a critical friend. The things that are missing are vital components of a modern DTP product. I have been in the IT business since 1980 (yes - we did have computers then. In fact I programmed my first computer when I was at school in 1962!). It just seems such a shame that something that could be the best is falling at the last hurdle. I wish Serif all the good will in the world - if I didn't, do you think I would be wasting my time writing this?

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8 hours ago, Distill7 said:

But Smart Objects can help a lot for warping objects for muckups and quick change of logo and other elements. With the Mesh Warp being a live filter now, that's good, but still not as good as Smart Objects. It's really the only feature I miss from Photoshop.

I disagree. I am working with both, Affinity Photo/Designer and Photoshop/Illustrator. I personally can't see an advantage of PS SmartObjects over the various ways that the Affintiy apps offer to deal with placed images, scaling by keeping the original resolution, repeating objects while keeping the ability to change them all at once at any time, distorting objects by keeping them editable etc. which are all aspects that SmartObjects are handling.

You can use many different ways to substitude PS SmartObjects: Starting with linked images, live filters on image layers or groups of images/pixel layers, using chaining objects in AP, using Symbols in AD etc.. Each method has its own advantages or shortcommings.

But the best of all is: you can adjust or edit the contents live and in its context. With SmartObject you are always landing in a new separate window if you are going to edit the content. You have to place the original context (the document that contains the SmartObject) in its window side by side with the window of the edited SmartObject to see, what your changes at the SmartObject mean to the main document. Otherwise editing the SmartObject becomes just guesswork and you have always to switch back and forth between the documents.

In the Affintiy apps you can always stay in context an see the changes live. Ok, not in case of editing linked documents.

The great strength of the Affintiy apps is the possibility to combine the tools and functions of all three apps. For example, the live distortions in AP can't handle vector graphics. But you can create the vector part in a separate AD document that can be linked to an AP document and combined with live distortion. If you need, you can edit the vectors in AD again and the updated file placed in the AP document will still be distorted. And the best: you can than open the AP file in AD and go on with vectors. You can even adjust the live distortion in AD, though this is a AP feature.

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I can't say I agree. I think Publisher is a very great app for DTP, but it is not neccesarily a replacement for indesign. indesign has been on the market for 20 years now, so expecting publisher to have the same depth of features is not realistic. Yes, Publisher has it's faults, and tables are not great, but the update did bring several very nice things, like the books feature and the style picker, which have been two features I dearly missed before.

I find it quite bothersome that users fill complete threads of these forums with only negativity. Constructive criticism and disappointment can and should be voiced, but these threads don't offer any of it. Why even bother writing in the forum how bad you think this program is. No one forces you to use it. If you don't like it, get InDesign or Quark or whatever else you hink suits your work better. It is also quite disrespectful to the devs, who did work very hard to create a good program. However not everything works for everybody, and Serif has no obligation to any user to just put in every feature any other program has for a single payment, with free updates, for a price that gets you 2 months of CC... This is just an absurd expectation.

I think the v2 updates are very good, and will be better. There will be bugs and there will be improvements. I am sure the Serif team is already working on them right now. I want to thank them for offering such a great suite of products for a very nice price. It has been a gamechanger for me, and undoubtedly for many others too.

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8 hours ago, NewInBoston said:

I like your thought process - it does feel there is an active campaign trying to sway people away from Affinity using price as leverage. If I were Adobe shareholders, I would be nervous with this release. 

I don't know how much these things are related, but Adobe stock values plummeted at the end of August. Maybe news of the imminent release of Affinity V2 were spreading in the big investors environments. They had to do something to avoid the worse.

The stock value increased rapidly after the announcement, two days ago. It might not be related, but it is a curious coincidence. By following my conspiracy theory, one could say that after seeing that Affinity V2 is not yet ready to replace the Adobe workflow in production, with no way for freelancers and shops to replace InDesign with a compatible product, and no compliance with the accessibility laws, they breathed a sigh of relief.

Paolo

image.thumb.png.f5ea8e7b89a819b96c445718c75b9db6.png

 

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postmaddesign - are you even reading my posts? How is pointing out (time and time again) what Publisher needs to make it world beating, "negativity"? In what way is that not constructive? Or are you suggesting we just offer praise what ever they do? I suggest you read my last post and the one before and then tell me I am being negative. There are so many things that Publisher is missing but most of them are trivial or have quick work arounds and I do not point them out. But as grapher has pointed out, the tables problem and the lack of column span makes it unusable for most print designers, in many situations. I wish it wasn't so. I have tried in this forum ever since Publisher came out to point this out but am ignored. I'll keep on trying to offer this constructive criticism, but I will NOT offer bland congratulations to something that, by listening to real-world users, could be made world class very easily.

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