Studio link has 95% of the features of the separate apps, could it be 100%? :)

[Fdfd]

When buying the whole suite, the Studio Link feature in Publisher is SUPER powerful. 

 

It would make things even greater if this functionality would encompass 100% of the separate other two apps, now it is only 95%.

 

Such as slices in AD, and Photoshop plugins in AP, and perhaps one or two other features. Its almoost there, it would be great if in the future Affinity would be able to be just 1 super flexible super app thats all that is needed 

 

..Why have 3 apps when most people buy all and could use practically all features in the super app Publisher (maybe better called 'Affinity Suite/Collection' or so..  It is currently not the most logical implementation, that Publisher has Photo and Designer, but Designer does not have Publisher, but does have Photo..

 

Then one could buy the seperate apps and have only that app in the left top corner, if one buys all, one simply has 3 icons in the top left with full features. Or if one buys two one has two icons.. Would be much more clean & intuitive 

 

 

[Alfred]

I’m not convinced that the StudioLink feature in Publisher provides access to 95% of what the other apps have to offer. We can largely ignore Designer for these purposes, since the functions of both the Pixel persona and the Export persona are available in Photo, and StudioLink provides access to the Designer persona. However, Photo offers Liquefy, Develop, and Tone Mapping personas, none of which are available via StudioLink.

[fde101]

14 hours ago, Alfred said:

Develop

Publisher does offer limited access to the Develop persona, but it is slightly hidden.  If you insert a RAW image, the context toolbar shows a "Develop Image" button that switches to the Develop persona for that image.

While Photo does allow access to the Develop persona for non-RAW images, it doesn't really make that much of a difference since just about everything that can be done in the Develop persona with a non-RAW image could be done just as well in the Photo persona.

What is really "missing" in Publisher mostly amounts to the Liquify, Tone Mapping and Export personas.

Personally I think that is fine - I would rather they add a Prepress persona to Publisher and a Tracing persona to Designer.

[Bryan Rieger]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

Personally I think that is fine - I would rather they add a Prepress persona to Publisher and a Tracing persona to Designer.

I really like the idea of a Prepress persona in Publisher, but I'm not sure about 'tracing' persona on it's own—maybe as part of an 'optimization' persona that would include advanced path clean-up tools, conversion, node reduction, and tracing (which often requires clean-up, node reduction, etc).

Having an equivalent of VectorFirstAid and InkQuest in the Affinity apps (along with scripting support) would go a long way to solving a lot of the advanced workflow issues many folks have been reporting for years.

[fde101]

39 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

I'm not sure about 'tracing' persona on it's own

Referring to this:

 

[Pšenda]

16 hours ago, Fdfd said:

maybe better called 'Affinity Suite/Collection'

 

[Pšenda]

3 minutes ago, fde101 said:

Referring to this:

It's a shame that these are just "ideas" that haven't turned into something functional in ten years 😞

[Frozen Death Knight]

This is my wish as well. I use Publisher for this very purpose, but sadly the workflow is incomplete. I still need to use the Liquify Persona and Export Persona on a regular basis, so I still need to keep using Photo. Designer I don't have much use of, but the day auto-trace is added, assuming it becomes a Persona, I will need to starting using all three. 

I hope we'll see Affinity Infinity™ eventually! 

[Alfred]

5 minutes ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

I hope we'll see Affinity Infinity™ eventually! 

I hope that ‘eventually’ doesn’t involve an infinitely long wait!

[fde101]

6 hours ago, Alfred said:

I hope that ‘eventually’ doesn’t involve an infinitely long wait!

It probably will as Serif has consistently indicated over the years that they have no intention of merging the apps; examples:

 

 

[Pšenda]

14 hours ago, fde101 said:

It probably will as Serif has consistently indicated over the years that they have no intention of merging the apps; examples:

I think that the mentioned attitude towards the "all-in-on" application is not very consistent. Let me quote from your first link - "...not to mention a third application for desktop publishing. If all this were included in a single app it would become much more complex and heavy, harder to test and maintain and also harder to learn.", which was created before the arrival of APublisher. But from the point of view of "complexity and hard to learn" APublisher has become a certain all-in-on application. Although it is not "all", but only "95%-in-on" application, but I doubt that the mentioned 5% makes any major difference in terms of the complexity of the application and the difficulty of learning it. The only difference and problem caused by the 5% is the unnecessary disruption of the workflow by switching to another application. Just adding Export Persona, which make APublisher a "97.5%-in-on" application, would be appreciated by many users.

[fde101]

1 hour ago, Pšenda said:

Just adding Export Persona, 

The problem here is that the export persona is decidedly biased toward artboard-based documents, while Publisher is intended primarily toward page-based documents, with rather different requirements for export and publication.

The Photo persona in Publisher makes sense to allow manipulation of photos embedded within publications, and the Designer persona similarly to enhance the ability to work with vector artwork within publications, but while it is possible to work with artboard-based documents (as well as standalone photos) within these personas within Publisher, that does not seem to be the intended function of their inclusion.

Including the Photo and Designer personas within Publisher does not strike me as an inconsistency in these statements as their inclusion does well to support Publisher's primary function of supporting page-oriented print-focused document preparation, but the additional personas (Export, Tone Mapping, Liquify) do not really contribute toward this purpose, and so would be much more out of place within the product.

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

while Publisher is intended primarily toward page-based documents, with rather different requirements for export and publication.

If you open the *.afpub document in ADesigner, you can export partial pages using Export Persona and create Slices on them. So why can't the same thing be done in APublisher? If you open an *.afdesign or *.afphoto document in APublisher, why should it be a problem to export using Export Persona identically to ADesigner/APhoto? - why is it forced to switch to another application when APublisher could do the exact same thing?

 

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

does not strike me as an inconsistency

Regarding consistency, I pointed to the statement, that an all-in-one application would be too complex and too hard to learn, but given the expansion of capabilities and functions with Designer and Photo Persona, this is definitely true for APublisher as well.

Of course, I understand and accept the current concept of APublisher, but I also think that it is just a little bit away from perfection, which is just a shame 🙂

Edited March 20 by Pšenda

[walt.farrell]

31 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

why is it forced to switch to another application when APublisher could do the exact same thing?

Because Serif does not consider this to be a common use case (scenario) for a desktop publishing application, and had chosen which features to include in each Affinity application based on their most common expected usages.

[Alfred]

39 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Because Serif does not consider this to be a common use case (scenario) for a desktop publishing application, and had chosen which features to include in each Affinity application based on their most common expected usages.

^^ This ^^

Any DTP app should essentially be a layout app. Anything else is ‘bells and whistles’.

[Komatös]

Off-Toppic
I wonder how you did it for years with Adobe's programs. If I remember correctly, to make significant changes to pixel or vector material, Photoshop or Illustrator had to be opened, the file to be edited opened, edited and saved. Then tab back to InDesign and 'synchronize' the linked or embedded files.

And in Affinity Publisher? Simply switch to the Photo or Designer Persona or, if more sophisticated editing is required, switch to the corresponding program via the file menu and return to the Publisher after editing. I think that's somehow "smarter". Am I wrong?

[Old Bruce]

25 minutes ago, Komatös said:

Am I wrong?

No. Not at all. 

[Pšenda]

28 minutes ago, Komatös said:

Am I wrong?

Does anyone here claim that? - Really?
Just a question - and does everything have to be so cumbersome and inflexible because Adobe has it that way? And couldn't it be done better and more skillfully?
Isn't this perhaps the principle and meaning of progress?

[Return]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

Any DTP app should essentially be a layout app. Anything else is ‘bells and whistles’.

Only if one is thinking in the old school DTP way but the overlap in so many fields nowadays makes the export persona an essential and valid addition to publisher.
I for one use artboards all the time in publisher.

[Bryan Rieger]

2 hours ago, Alfred said:

Any DTP app should essentially be a layout app. Anything else is ‘bells and whistles’.

Serif somewhat created the problem when they chose to blur the lines between the three apps, and challenging user expectations of what a desktop publishing suite could be in the process. Yes, in the past you had your separate image/photo editor, vector/illustration editor, and layout/publishing editor all with relatively clear separations of concerns. Enter Affinity Publisher where at any moment you could transform your layout/publishing editor to a photo editor, or a vector/illustration editor, and then back again, all while not only staying in the same application, but also the same file(s). This integration between the three apps is somewhat magical once you get used to it, but when you run into limitations, they often feel very arbitrary.

Unfortunately Serif has now begun to change the expectations of creative software for many users, and as such things that seem out of scope in one app for some, may in fact be essential features for another. With no clear separation of concerns, the differences in the apps often appear random, and in the case of Publisher, may feel intentionally limiting for some.

From a UX perspective, Serif really needs to create a clear delineation in functionality between the apps, and ensure the areas where features do overlap feel intuitive, and designed for the context they are used in.

[Old Bruce]

Does anyone remember Canvas? It was all three (Raster, Vector, and DTP) in one. 

[loukash]

7 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Does anyone remember Canvas?

Deneba Canvas. I think I had a Mac demo over 20 years ago.
It still seems to exist.

[Bit Disappointed]

 

[Bit Disappointed]

7 hours ago, IthinkthereforeIam said:

I totally agree, but when (if) will it happen?

I've never quite understood the enthusiasm for Studio link, which requires you to have all three apps anyway, and which only allows you to use a fraction (95%?, I doubt it) of the possibilities of APh and AD in Publisher. What's more, for v.1 at least, it's not possible to share features (UI, brushes, styles etc.), which was nonsense from the start. I hope for the sake of v2 users that it is now.

Yes and notice the "you".

StudioLink presupposes quite a bit a one-(wo)man-army scenario, which also probably fits very well with Serif's customer group.

In my case, all involved are specialized and will, for most adjustments, be asked to make them independently on their own device. For us, it's infinitely more important that the individual applications have contemporary algorithms, features, and usability.

Finally, I must depress the world with the fact that these functions simply are not discovered and used by many customers, and then smart solutions are just as irrelevant if the power of habit controls people away from them. Usability and contemporary algorithms and features are far more secure investments.

I can at least conclude that StudioLink is one of Britain's best-kept secrets today.

[Bit Disappointed]

6 hours ago, IthinkthereforeIam said:

"you" is neutral and general here (could be "one") and represents anyone who wonders what the point of this Studiolink is 🙃

I am well aware. My intention was merely as a prelude to the observation that access to all three applications does not necessarily confer the advantage many imagine. It highlights that there's a broader context enveloping what might appear as a modest publication, and it is improbable that the individual referred to as "you" requires the entirety of functionalities offered by StudioLink.

Undoubtedly, it is a marvel of technological programming, yet I posit that it proffers benefits to a select few, potentially at the expense of the algorithms and user-friendliness for the majority.

In other words, individuals are not likely to opt for Affinity because of StudioLink, but rather to disregard Affinity due to deficiencies or inferior algorithms. And presently, with user-friendliness and AI-supported workflows accelerating, it is imperative to concentrate here. Inadequate algorithms and features are detrimental, both within the applications themselves and through StudioLink, suggesting that Serif ought to deliberate carefully.