Old Adobe dog seeks new Affinity tricks

[LastKnockings]

Hello everyone,
As a pre-New Year's Resolution, I'm posting here for the first time in the hope of navigating this incredible software, boosting whatever flagging creativity remains 'in the tank', and hopefully mastering the fathomless waters of Designer and Publisher with the help of the experts. The attached illustration was laboriously laced together in Photo 2 on an antediluvian Macbook, in a desperate attempt to shoehorn Adobe methodology into the brave new world of Affinity, but any advice on levelling the learning curve would be hugely appreciated.

Wishing everyone a happy and productive new year!

[Ldina]

Nice! 

Ttutorials!!! For Designer, check out Artist Wright on YouTube. There are some very good tutorials on this forum for all three apps. Browse > Forums > Tutorials. Plenty of great resources and “how-to’s” on YouTube.

There are many similarities with Adobe menus and features, but some major differences as well. It took me many months of regular practice to make a full transition. 

A few early Adobe -> Affinity stumbling blocks for me were...

How to deal with Alpha Channels, masking, etc...some major differences.
Using the Alpha Channel (in Curves, Levels, Channel Mixer) to adjust transparency
Managing Layer Panel ordering and positioning (clipping, masking, grouping, etc)
The difference between an "Image Layer" and a "Pixel Layer" (definitely not the same)
Learning how best to use the Selection Brush and Refine Tools
Designer brushes are mostly pixel based, even though they follow a vector path

[LastKnockings]

Thanks very much indeed – that's exactly the kind of steer (and cattle-prod) that I need to get started with what seems a daunting task. There's an economic imperative to cross over fully into Affinity, as Photoshop has lost its functionality in the upgrade to Catalina (gggrrrrr), and I realise that I'm on borrowed time with the other CS components. I've struggled in particular with Photo's inability to handle bitmaps, and what seems like a counter-intuitive approach to Layers, but no doubt this will resolve itself when I pluck up the courage to place these elements in Publisher? 

Thanks again.

[dannyg9]

A bit of time and patience. I chose to dive right in. Especially when Publisher was Beta testing. Whatever I couldn't figure out, a quick online search or tutorial helped solve the problem. If there's a feature that adobe has and affinity has yet to employ. . . I do without or concoct a work-around. I'm older so I do remember the days prior to computers and you had to have talent and a knack for figuring things out. Personally, I don't miss anything about adobe products. Publisher and Photo learning curves weren't that bad at all. I HATED Illustrator with a passion, but Designer had me falling in love with computer drawing and it's quick response is the best surprise about the Affinity products.

[Ldina]

James Ritson (Affinity Photo product expert) has some great tutorials on AfPhoto. Check out his Tutorials on this Forum. Don't neglect the "legacy version 1 tutorials" (link at the bottom of the Photo Tutorials page) because they cover some things that aren't always covered in the v2 tutorials. I guess they figured they were already covered, so no need to update to v2. He definitely has tutorials on Managing layers, masking, clipping, alpha channels, etc. Other contributors on YouTube also have good tutorials. 

[Ldina]

4 minutes ago, dannyg9 said:

I HATED Illustrator with a passion, but Designer had me falling in love with computer drawing

Amen!

[LastKnockings]

1 hour ago, dannyg9 said:

A bit of time and patience. I chose to dive right in. Especially when Publisher was Beta testing. Whatever I couldn't figure out, a quick online search or tutorial helped solve the problem. If there's a feature that adobe has and affinity has yet to employ. . . I do without or concoct a work-around. I'm older so I do remember the days prior to computers and you had to have talent and a knack for figuring things out. Personally, I don't miss anything about adobe products. Publisher and Photo learning curves weren't that bad at all. I HATED Illustrator with a passion, but Designer had me falling in love with computer drawing and it's quick response is the best surprise about the Affinity products.

Thank you, Danny – that's sound advice, and I realise that the stumbling blocks in my path have been a CS hangover which I've been unwilling to shake off. I too am a child of the 'paste-up and PMT' age, and these DIY assemblage techniques have undoubtedly left their mark, for better or worse. I'm duly intrigued to see how vectors are handled; accurate previews alone would be a real bonanza!

[LastKnockings]

1 hour ago, Ldina said:

Amen!

Indeed. To this day, Illustrator's Pathfinder is capable of producing 'unexpected' results, and seems to have a (not entirely benevolent) mind of its own.

[Ldina]

Just now, LastKnockings said:

Illustrator's Pathfinder is capable of producing 'unexpected' results, and seems to have a (not entirely benevolent) mind of its own.

Affinity has its share of issues and quirks, but a lot of very nice features too. I find Affinity much more fun to use (once comfortable with the interface). I still have CS6 on my "Pre-antediluvian" Mac Pro (running Mountain Lion, and still working so far), but I find I'm semi-lost using Adobe products now that I am so used to the Affinity way of doing things...and I used Adobe apps for 20 years. Muscle and brain memory. The only time I use CS6 is for Acrobat Pro, to analyze or modify PDF exports. 

I found recreating designs and workflows in various tutorials was the fastest way to come up to speed. It helped my old brain remember and build new "muscle memory".

[dannyg9]

20 minutes ago, Ldina said:

Affinity has its share of issues and quirks, but a lot of very nice features too. I find Affinity much more fun to use (once comfortable with the interface). I still have CS6 on my "Pre-antediluvian" Mac Pro (running Mountain Lion, and still working so far), but I find I'm semi-lost using Adobe products now that I am so used to the Affinity way of doing things...and I used Adobe apps for 20 years. Muscle and brain memory. The only time I use CS6 is for Acrobat Pro, to analyze or modify PDF exports. 

I found recreating designs and workflows in various tutorials was the fastest way to come up to speed. It helped my old brain remember and build new "muscle memory".

I too have an older Mac "dumbed-down" to enable it to still run CS5. Matter of fact, 10 years into the "creative cloud" and I was still using said Mac and CS5 to create without any problems. It's the rest of the apps and utilities that forced me into a machine upgrade AND a switch back to QuarkXpress (yes, Quark!). By this time I was using Photo and Designer so I was over-the-moon when Affinity announced Publisher. Even though they advised caution, I started using the Beta on day one and yes, completing projects and exporting them as PDFs. Haven't looked back since with the exception of one client 3 years ago that requested NATIVE Indesign files because that's what their printer used! Needless to say, it felt like one hand tied behind my back using adobe InDesign for 1 month! 

Again, there's next to nothing that I can't accomplish with the Affinity suite of tools. Nothing but high praise for Publisher, Photo, and Designer and the great folks at Affinity.

[LastKnockings]

Thanks, both. Interesting that you're still able to use Acrobat Pro, as this was the first of applications to be 'lost' to me in an OS upgrade. I'm still generating print-ready PDFs via InDesign, on the increasingly rare occasions that it's called for, but all manner of anomalies occur when I've introduced them to Affinity.

I was issued with a cheerful warning by the engineer who installed Catalina that my apps would be in constant communication with the Cloud. "Just click 'yes' to anything that pops up", he advised, thus rendering Photoshop unusable in perpetuity.

Muscle memory is the key – I've become rather flabby!

[dannyg9]

For 6 years or so I've used PDF Expert. Certainly not as robust (I'd argue bloated) as Acrobat, but I can do everything I need to with it. Give it a try.

I'm not sure what anomalies are occurring, but try this. When you import or place a pdf in Publisher, when the frame is selected with the move tool you'll notice in the menu bar a a spot that says "PDF Passthrough" with a drop down menu. On the drop down menu choose "Passthrough" (Instead of Interpret). Hopefully that will solve your issues. If not, its good to know anyway.

[dannyg9]

4 hours ago, LastKnockings said:

Thanks, both. Interesting that you're still able to use Acrobat Pro, as this was the first of applications to be 'lost' to me in an OS upgrade. I'm still generating print-ready PDFs via InDesign, on the increasingly rare occasions that it's called for, but all manner of anomalies occur when I've introduced them to Affinity.

I was issued with a cheerful warning by the engineer who installed Catalina that my apps would be in constant communication with the Cloud. "Just click 'yes' to anything that pops up", he advised, thus rendering Photoshop unusable in perpetuity.

Muscle memory is the key – I've become rather flabby!

Only able to use my very OLD version of Acrobat (CS5) on the old laptop I've got whose operating system is dumbed down so the CS5 apps work.