🌀 Frustration with Having to Conform to Majority Standards

[RGBear]

I need to vent a bit—something that many fellow Affinity users will probably relate to.

Too often, I'm asked to deliver files in IDML, INDD, or AI formats, with editable text. And every single time, I end up having to put aside my preferred Affinity suite (which I find far more modern, lightweight, and aligned with my workflow) just to dust off the Adobe behemoths and deliver something that’s compatible.

Don't get me wrong—I understand that many studios and teams are still heavily reliant on Adobe. But it's incredibly frustrating to be forced to use tools I wouldn't otherwise choose, just because of proprietary formats and limited cross-compatibility.

I genuinely hope we’ll see a shift in the future—toward more open formats, or at least better interoperability. Because creativity shouldn’t be limited by our tools.

[loukash]

Have you tried some of the markzware.com tools?
Frankly, their apps and services are not exactly cheap…

[PaoloT]

6 hours ago, loukash said:

Have you tried some of the markzware.com tools?

I never used them, but tested them. I didn't find them to produce files that can be considered exact copies of the original. I'm not sure their result goes much further than opening a PDF file, and getting what you can from the source file.

I hope someone had a better experience, and can suggest them as an alternative to an essential missing feature from the Affinity apps. I'm not sure, however, the cost would make them preferable to renting the Adobe apps for one month, apart for the Adobe spyware that is not installed.

I sincerely fear that this perduring lack of opening to the rest of the world is making the Affinity suite become nothing more than what the old Plus suite was: a little known set of software for the occasional hobbyist. With the time passing, I'm feeling that this nightmare is becoming a sad reality.

Paolo

 

[Bound by Beans]

It’s not just about the file formats—it’s fundamentally two different products that operate differently under the hood. Adobe’s products don't just save in their own format; they also understand their own legacy and technical debt. Affinity will never be able to save files in these formats in a way that Adobe’s software or compatible systems expect, and the same goes in reverse—Adobe won’t be able to fully accommodate Affinity’s formats either. Trying to do so would mean locking yourself into mimicking the other’s engine. That’s what StarOffice originally did, later Open/LibreOffice—it was built feature-wise very much like MS Office and has since spent an incredible amount of resources trying to stay compatible and functionally similar. Free to use, but bound in development.

Affinity will never be a cheap alternative within an Adobe-based workflow. So if the goal is to enter the market with real sales figures and ambitions, the only way is to become a complete alternative in some segment of the market—where the majority of all involved parties are using Affinity in a shared workflow. That would, by nature, have to start small and spread gradually, probably from internal use within companies and upwards. I’d expect its only chance would be in countries where economic resources are scarce among many. But here Serif made the choice not to support RTL and full LTR text, cutting themselves off from that opportunity entirely—and excluding a huge number of users in densely populated regions where any seller would otherwise be rubbing their hands at the potential.

That—and Affinity’s current, very real status as not being a true alternative due to chronic shortcomings and poor algorithms—places its fate exactly where Paolo described it so well: as the affordable tool for the occasional hobbyist. More attractively packaged than the old Plus suite, garnered a bit of hype, but never designed to take up a larger role.

It’s exactly like a set of children’s clothes—perhaps too big for a 10-year-old, but too small for a 14-year-old—and will NEVER fit the child again. And you can’t blame the growing child for that.

[loukash]

Also of note is the fact that Affinity is technically just one document format, where the file extension has only the function to set the default app of the three to open a document.
In other words, if you want an afdesign document to always open in Publisher, all you need to do is to change the suffix to afpub. (I do this always when I have an artboard based document but need the advanced typographic tools of Publisher.)
That's a major and deliberate feature. Not a "shortcoming".
But it obviously makes file exchange and conversion to 3rd party formats more complex than we can imagine.

Whereas each Adobe app lives in its own little universe. You can place a PSD or PDF into an INDD, perhaps turning some layers on and off, but that's about it. The last time I checked (admittedly long ago), InDesign still wasn't capable to open PDF, only place them as is. Stuff like that was driving me nuts for almost two decades.

So as a personal side note, I'll take the clever Affinity concept over Adobe's anytime.  

[PaoloT]

1 hour ago, loukash said:

InDesign still wasn't capable to open PDF, only place them as is

An import feature similar to the one in Publisher is currently in beta. Apparently, more an alpha than a beta.

 

[lacerto]

Adobe Illustrator has always been able to open PDFs, but is basically focused on one-page only jobs. Adobe Acrobat Pro has always been able to make isolated edits to PDFs without tampering any critical content (e.g. without messing with embedded fonts), and do a myriad of focused prepress tasks -- a thing that Affinity apps cannot do (and luckily do not even try, as they are totally dependent on a third party in PDF processing). Adobe InDesign has as long as I remember been able to handle faultlessly any placed PDF content and process it truly passed through no matter which PDF versions are involved and to what version they are exported to, something that Affinity apps still cannot do without rasterizing all involved PDF content that has lower PDF version number (and additionally, when producing with PDF/X, all placed non-PDF/X content) -- so that nothing at all gets passed through.

The current InDesign beta has a capability to open PDFs for editing, and while I have not tested the feature, this has been about the last of the reasons (besides complex data merge) I have personally chosen to use an Affinity app. So, after 6 years of serious testing, and after high hopes, I can say that I am more than happy to go back and pay a little (actually very little if you work professionally and earn your living using the suite) for something that works so well, is compatible, and is so strongly developed. Our 11 years sticking to CS6 (refusing to pay for a subscription) was much based on disappointment at very little development that we needed (or so we felt) in the CC Suite during that period, and feeling angry about termination of the activation servers.

But times have changed, and we have also moved multiplatform. The CS6 (Windows) suite still works perfectly on four of our computers, and we make constantly backward compatible backups with CC2025 (hello Serif, ever heard of anything like this?) -- just in case... But we now do most work related projects using the CC2025 suite, and are now content, without being any kinds of "fans".

I still continue using the latest Affinity Suite (and with 2.4.2 installed on one of our computers, to have certain things properly working before they were messed up), and a number of other graphic design apps (e.g. CorelDRAW 2023, QuarkXPress 2018, Xara Pro, Photoline, Pixelmator Pro, Inkscape, GIMP 2 and 3, ClipStudio Paint, etc.). But I think we'll now focus on polishing workflows we have been using successfully for about 35 years and do not look much further... We all have our preferences, and reasons; my personal experience was that Affinity apps are not adequate for the kind of work we do, but I can perfectly understand if they are adequate for many others. Perhaps there will be a positive change in development of the Affinity apps, but I feel relaxed now, and no longer hold by breath...

UPDATE: The just released InDesign 20.3 has now the capability to open PDF files (with certain limitations, and still labelled as "beta"). The feature is still very rudimentary and crashes frequently, and more a kind of a rescue tool than something that could be used to transfer a workable layout. Publisher's equivalent feature is clearly more advanced and robust, but now that Adobe made the feature available in the release version (too early, IMO), it is likely to get much feedback and be improved.

[loukash]

All fair points, @lacerto. For the most parts, we're free to choose the tools that work the best for us.