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Total Disregard for the Printing Industry


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3 hours ago, Eduardo M said:
16 hours ago, deeds said:

Go for it buddy. Promise to not mischaracterise anymore, too?

Some call this "toxicity"

Bad faith attempts to discredit a person's point of view by deliberately avoiding their overarching points and instead isolating and mischaracterising is a form of straw manning - is what it is. We could take this OP in good faith and face value, ascertain and compile what other aspects of print design and subsequent workings with printers and print technologies are ponderous, impossible and/or difficult within Affinity's suite, thereby forewarning others and putting Serif on notice as to what needs to be done to make their products better.

That'd be positive and lead to vastly better outcomes for everyone.

 

 

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10 hours ago, _Th said:

This [overprint colors issue] is a huge, glaring omission.

And one that I didn't realize existed. (Clearly, I haven't been using Affinity software for commercial printing.) For reference, I have been involved in print design for many years and have designed everything from newspaper ads to books with enormous print runs on offset, web and digital. I have traveled across the country on multi-day press checks.

My affinity for Affinity is, in part, due to my loathing for Adobe and their rental model. I imagine this is true for many of the folks here. I have happily supported and promoted Affinity/Serif for offering a "viable alternative" to Adobe. But I may have to rethink this as this alone makes the software non-viable for anyone involved in print. Having to create multiple versions of the same color to have it overprint is ludicrous makes for a completely unworkable workflow. Overprinting should always be available to set on the object level. Always. Period.

Serif/Affinity Team...
Please take this seriously. We are all rooting for you to be David in a Goliath industry. If you don't get these absolute basics right, you will never have the commercial success that you, and us, want you to have.

Affinity certainly seems most optimized for raster/web works. I'm not surprised. I feel they came into the picture when there was an unfulfilled need in the UI/web design space for a powerful, but intuitive and yet streamlined workflow, particularly with the Windows crowd. Something that felt more pleasant than the Adobe solutions.

Mac users had things like Sketch. We were starving for it by time Designer appeared on Windows... so... I think they found a few underserved markets such as vector + raster mixed media people who want snappy interfaces, web designers and social media people who needed these tools to create instant media. This is why I think other aspects, such as print design and more complicated/delicate workflows have been neglected.

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2 hours ago, debraspicher said:

This is why I think other aspects, such as print design and more complicated/delicate workflows have been neglected.

Actually, Affinity is the only alternative software suite with support for print workflows. Sure, they are not perfect, but they are very much usable. I did some big print projects this year where Designer just flied through tens of big artboards with complex bitmap and vector graphics. I choose to work with Affinity apps whenever I can because they are so damn fast and allow me to mix vector, rasters and text with a freedom I don't have in Adobe apps. And when there is something I can't do in Affinity, because some missing features, or because they're buggy, I go back to Adobe, Corel or VectorStyler. I am fully aware that as a professional designer, I'll never be able to give up my Adobe CC subscription. Simply because I have clients who need Adobe files, I use vector stock artwork that is compatible only with Illustrator, and I need to send INDD/IDML files to some service providers.

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5 hours ago, debraspicher said:

Affinity certainly seems most optimized for raster/web works.

Hm… "most" optimized?. Given how many users obviously still misunderstand pixel aligned workflows in Affinity – judging from ever the same postings on the forum – I'm not so sure about that.
Without meaning it pejoratively: in my opinion the Affinity suite is well optimized to be a "jack of all trades", even though "master of none". Being a pretty good "jack of all trades" is a quality attribute in my book.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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31 minutes ago, loukash said:

Hm… "most" optimized?. Given how many users obviously still misunderstand pixel aligned workflows in Affinity – judging from ever the same postings on the forum – I'm not so sure about that.
Without meaning it pejoratively: in my opinion the Affinity suite is well optimized to be a "jack of all trades", even though "master of none". Being a pretty good "jack of all trades" is a quality attribute in my book.

For light weight vector work, they're unrivalled. Think logo design, illustrative vector work and drafting with vectors. This is a result of getting the node editing right. 


Everything after that is severely compromised compared to the big A and C products, or missing altogether (Blends). 

For reasons I don't quite understand, they haven't got bitmap/pixels done nearly as well, despite the dual mode being a super cool idea. Pity, really, as if they'd pulled that off, they'd have been the default choice for UI design and become the new Fireworks, and then some.

Publisher feels like the half done distraction that grew into a bit of a scope creep time thief that prevented them ever getting near more fully finishing the pixel tooling and non-destructive advanced vector tooling hinted at with the boolean operations, for both Designer and Photo.

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They've expanded to attract other workflows, sure. When I say "neglected", I mean they did not put the same utility into those areas of the applications in which they were focusing in on hardest, those niches. There's nothing wrong with this. It made sense, to capture an audience aka "niche" that was under-served. Similar to how Clip Studio seemed to "rebrand" from just Manga Studio to general illustration and captured the crowd that was less than impressed with Photoshop/"free" app workflows. It has less than precise tools, but serves the needs of its base quite well. Anyway, this part of the market is much more willing to "take the plunge" so to speak and try literally anything but Adobe, whereas going after the bigger fish made no sense at first because they would need every box checked to get them to drop established workflows. It doesn't make monetary sense at a certain point either for the designer to drop one set of tools and move to another simply for a "cause" if their day-to-day workflow would need a total makeover and be less efficient in the process. (It's getting there though)

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On 12/1/2022 at 11:54 AM, PaoloT said:

Can you explain this with the crisis of the small shops, and a concentration of the whole print industry into fewer, bigger, more inaccessible companies?

In my area, there were almost countless printers starting from way back when and lasting long into the 90s.  There's probably only a handful left.  Several years ago, two of our biggest competitors merged.  A couple years ago, they sold out to someone.  We picked up some of their customers because whoever bought them didn't notify customers or even redirect the website to the new owners.  Either that, or they only bothered contacting the larger customers and dropped the rest.  I'm guessing whoever it is isn't local because when the previous owner needed a small printing job, he brought it to us.  At any rate, I'd define that as an inaccessible company.

 

As to files, we prefer PDFs.  PDFs are great.  Years ago, designers would give us Postscript files or PageMaker or Quark files and that was okay, assuming they knew how to put their files together correctly.  But, most people would try to send a Word document.  The worst was Microsoft Publisher.  We even bought a copy of Publisher so we could accept those files and those were always a nightmare.  Microsoft may have claimed it was "professional" software and many people were under the delusion that it was "professional" software, but no.  That's one of the reasons Affinity naming theirs Publisher may have been a bad idea because it just brought back the negative connotations.  Back when Microsoft Publisher was the only software with that name, when you asked a client what the file was in and they answered "Publisher," you just knew you were in for a bunch of problems.  You pretty much wished they had used Word.

Anyway, PDFs have been great.  Don't have to worry about buying and maintaining a wide variety of usually sub-par software solutions to accept files from clients.  (Now they just tend to use obscure fonts.)  Just ask for a PDF.  We can often fix minor problems.  If there's a major problem, we just tell the client what they need to fix, which is nice because if they used Microsoft Publisher, they can have the headache of sorting that thing out.

Maybe they've improved Microsoft Publisher by now.  Either way, I haven't had to deal with it in years.  Fortunately.

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57 minutes ago, dcr said:

That's one of the reasons Affinity naming theirs Publisher may have been a bad idea because it just brought back the negative connotations. 

Haha, that was exactly my thought when Affinity Publisher was announced in 2019…

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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20 minutes ago, _Th said:

Glad I'm not the only one who goes way back. 😅

When I started, we used blue pencils and turned clips of paper over to roll melted wax over them so they would stay in place when they were placed on a sheet.  And transfer letters.  And black tape in different widths, plus some clear tape imprinted with dashed lines so you could make coupons.

And I vaguely remember doing a flyer or two in The Print Shop on an Apple IIe which could then only be printed on a dot matrix printer so the dpi was very very low.

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5 minutes ago, _Th said:

I'm guessing you, like me, may possess the vanishing skills needed to drive a stick shift, read (and fold!) a map and tell the time on an analog clock.

Stick shift, no, unless it's a bicycle.  The rest, yes, including clocks with Roman numerals.

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3 hours ago, dcr said:

In my area, there were almost countless printers starting from way back when and lasting long into the 90s.  There's probably only a handful left.  Several years ago, two of our biggest competitors merged.  A couple years ago, they sold out to someone.  We picked up some of their customers because whoever bought them didn't notify customers or even redirect the website to the new owners.  Either that, or they only bothered contacting the larger customers and dropped the rest.  I'm guessing whoever it is isn't local because when the previous owner needed a small printing job, he brought it to us.  At any rate, I'd define that as an inaccessible company.

 

As to files, we prefer PDFs.  PDFs are great.  Years ago, designers would give us Postscript files or PageMaker or Quark files and that was okay, assuming they knew how to put their files together correctly.  But, most people would try to send a Word document.  The worst was Microsoft Publisher.  We even bought a copy of Publisher so we could accept those files and those were always a nightmare.  Microsoft may have claimed it was "professional" software and many people were under the delusion that it was "professional" software, but no.  That's one of the reasons Affinity naming theirs Publisher may have been a bad idea because it just brought back the negative connotations.  Back when Microsoft Publisher was the only software with that name, when you asked a client what the file was in and they answered "Publisher," you just knew you were in for a bunch of problems.  You pretty much wished they had used Word.

Anyway, PDFs have been great.  Don't have to worry about buying and maintaining a wide variety of usually sub-par software solutions to accept files from clients.  (Now they just tend to use obscure fonts.)  Just ask for a PDF.  We can often fix minor problems.  If there's a major problem, we just tell the client what they need to fix, which is nice because if they used Microsoft Publisher, they can have the headache of sorting that thing out.

Maybe they've improved Microsoft Publisher by now.  Either way, I haven't had to deal with it in years.  Fortunately.

When I was working in printers a decade or so ago, the big hassle was when web designers brought in ‘finished artwork’ for printing. 72dpi RGB .jpg’s, and on a couple of occasions - animated .gifs.

Now I’m mostly working on websites it’s the opposite - ‘ready optimised’ graphics from print/graphic designers that are 400dpi CMYK, .pdf logos where the obscure, missing font hasn’t been converted to paths, and last week, Powerpoint files.

 

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25 minutes ago, monzo said:

When I was working in printers a decade or so ago, the big hassle was when web designers brought in ‘finished artwork’ for printing. 72dpi RGB .jpg’s, and on a couple of occasions - animated .gifs.

Now I’m mostly working on websites it’s the opposite - ‘ready optimised’ graphics from print/graphic designers that are 400dpi CMYK, .pdf logos where the obscure, missing font hasn’t been converted to paths, and last week, Powerpoint files.

 

I think PowerPoint has replaced Word as some people's design tool.  We receive flyers and business cards and other items as PowerPoint files with alarming frequency.

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2 hours ago, _Th said:

I'm guessing you, like me, may possess the vanishing skills needed to drive a stick shift, read (and fold!) a map and tell the time on an analog clock.

I'm so old I can write cursive, hold a conversation, change a washer, recite a prayer, drink at lunch, light a smoke, roll a joint, crack jokes and offend everyone.

 

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PageMaker was king, but then Quark Xpress came along and pushed PageMaker into near obscurity. InDesign came along and knocked Quark off that mountain. Why is it many of you who have defended Affinity of my harsh criticism of V.2 don't think they could do the same to Adobe? Affinity is very good software, but needs to make itself a viable production tool to do just that.

 

This thread was started in the V.2 feedback forum, and all I did was provide that. It generated some positive discussions and some not so positive. I don't think Affinity wanted only praise for the work they did. Also, I don't think I am the only one that is going to stick with V.1.x for awhile.

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16 minutes ago, Serigrafique said:

Why is it many of you who have defended Affinity of my harsh criticism of V.2 don't think

This is the point you could have stopped this sentence, and the more pertinent question.

Those that deign to criticise a critic, rather than the critic's offered critique, deserve critical criticisms of their crap.

 

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22 minutes ago, Boldlinedesign said:

what kind of vector stock art is only compatible with illustrator? Any vector stock art I've used works on everything

Anything that uses its unique blend tools for shapes and gradients, unique effects and other unique features loses its edibility and/or corrupts hopelessly in all other apps.

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6 hours ago, Serigrafique said:

I don't think I am the only one that is going to stick with V.1.x for awhile.

I would rather say that it would be inconsiderate not to keep a version 1 on a secondary computer in case it is needed. After a few books of various kinds, however, I can see that I work much faster with version 2. The same is true with my work involving large Excel databases in Affinity Publisher. However, version 2 should be seen more as a new software than a simple upgrade. It therefore requires learning with the help of the online help and the new videos.

Nevertheless, the colour separation would be highly appreciated by serigraphists. I count no less than sixty of them in my small town. This is what QuarkXPress offers, for example.

 

6 cœurs, 12 processus - Windows 11 pro - 4K - DirectX 12 - Suite universelle Affinity (Affinity  Publisher, Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo).

Mais je vous le demande, peut-on imaginer une police sans sérifs ?

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15 hours ago, Boldlinedesign said:

what kind of vector stock art is only compatible with illustrator? Any vector stock art I've used works on everything

Any EPS files containing objects with transparency, blending modes or gradient meshes. They are broken into bitmaps when opened in other apps. Not to mention layers, blends… all gone.

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20 hours ago, Serigrafique said:

PageMaker was king, but then Quark Xpress came along and pushed PageMaker into near obscurity. InDesign came along and knocked Quark off that mountain.

We used PageMaker up until switching to InDesign.  But, around PageMaker 6 or 6.5, there was a converter available to convert Quark files to PageMaker.  It wasn't perfect but it proved useful when needed.  I would imagine Quark had a similar tool to convert PageMaker files to Quark.  Then, with InDesign, you could open PageMaker files.  I think it only went back to PM 6 or 6.5, so if you had older files, you had to open them in PM 6 or 6.5 to convert them to a newer format that InDesign could open.  Sometimes, you might have to open a PageMaker 4 file in PageMaker 5 and save it so you could open that file in PageMaker 6 or 6.5 to save it so you could open it in InDesign.

Software companies seem to expect that, when you get a new version of software, you will go through all your files and convert them to the new format.  That's not practical.  Many files you will never use again, but some you will, so it's useful to be able to open those files when needed.  And, yes, I still occasionally find myself needing to open an old PageMaker file for clients that haven't needed to print a specific job in many, many years.

All those old versions of PageMaker can still run.  If a computer were to fail, they could be installed on a "new" old computer without a problem.  You just enter the serial number and it's "activated."  But, with newer programs and Internet activation schemes, the likelihood of being able to install a program and activate it in ten or twenty years is fairly low.

And that's why a solid alternative to InDesign and Quark (which now requires checking in every five days to verify your license) is necessary for printers.  I had hoped Affinity Publisher would be that alternative, but with v2 and its activation scheme, that is no longer true.  The only benefit to v2 is that there is no monthly fee, but you could still find yourself being unable to open your files a few years from now if the activation system becomes unavailable or inaccessible.

 

16 hours ago, deeds said:

Anything that uses its unique blend tools for shapes and gradients, unique effects and other unique features loses its edibility and/or corrupts hopelessly in all other apps.

I remember a number of years ago when there were clip art packages/websites that didn't support Illustrator.  You had to have Corel or Freehand or something.

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19 hours ago, tudor said:

Any EPS files containing objects with transparency, blending modes or gradient meshes. They are broken into bitmaps when opened in other apps. Not to mention layers, blends… all gone.

Because by definition, the EPS format doesn't support anything of these gimmicks. PostScript is a technology of the 1980s.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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