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Two Questions About Affinity Publisher


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2018. :-( Bad news indeed.

I could make my simple photobooks with an Affinity Photo "Book Module" Persona.

I don´t want to go back to Adobe. Maybe Quark; anyone is still using Quark?

 

Not 'Definately' 2018, but 'Hopefully' 2018…. Definitely Maybe 2019 !!!  :wacko:

I think Affinity possibly made a big error announcing the product too early.

 

I used to use Quark, until I switched to InDesign at version 1 all the way up to CS6. Quark looks a little dated these days.

 

My CC account (for Flash) with Adobe expired in Novemeber, and they asked me to renew it. I didn't, so they renewed it anyway !!! and carried on charging me £14.95 a month.

I asked to cancel it again and they charged me a penalty of £57. "It's in the terms and conditions" they said !

 

I SO never want to go back to Adobe !!!

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I think that it is refreshing that Tony is being upfront with the users. How many other software companies are like that? Not many if any at all. Am I disappointed that Publisher won't be available for a while? Sure but I understand the difficulty of producing quality things and I think that they are doing the right thing by waiting until things are working right before releasing it. I'm incredibly impressed by Affinity Designer and Photo and it gives me confidence that Publisher will be a worthy addition to my graphic design tools. In the meantime, I can use Quark Xpress or an older pre-subscription version of Indesign to get things done. Consider at how fast Designer and Photo have progressed in such a short amount of time. Be patient, I'm sure that when they finally do get Publisher done, it will be worth the wait. 

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Sorry but I don't see anything giving a reason for hope. And being forced to go the Indesign cc way now doesn't improve my mood and feelings towards Serif a lot...

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

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Scribus works very bad on macOS (like all gtk based programs imo), Xara doesn't work at all.

 

The eBay way sadly doesn't help either because I would need at least Cs 6 to be able to use it on a current macOS. And sellers know that - this version is seldom available and when very expensive.

 

From what I read Windows users have way less pressure for an alternative as there are already a lot useable tools. On the Mac it's currently junk or pay your arse off :(

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

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I think that it is refreshing that Tony is being upfront with the users.

 

I usually agree with your posts Hokusai but this time I strongly disagree. Serif folks have held a carrot in front of our eyes for the last 3 years. So there is nothing refreshing about it. They've know for a long time that the revealed timeframe for the Publisher won't be met. I know it wasn't a deadline or a promise but nevertheless.

 

Also, the only reliable way to get quality programmers to augment the Serif engineering team is to poach them. I'm sure they (the Serif team) are aware of that too.

Best regards

2017 27” iMac 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 • Radeon Pr 580 8GB • 64GB • Ventura 13.6.4.

iPad Pro (10.5-inch) • 256GB • Version 16.4

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Seneca,

I can understand your thinking, and I'm sure that there are many others who share your feeling. I just don't think it does much good to think negatively and blame them for not releasing something that they thought would be ready by now. For me I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt. For a small company they have done some amazing things and I'm willing to stay with them to see what else they can bring to the market. In the end I just look at my overall experience with the Affinity products and the staff and I'm very happy with them. I'm very happy with Designer and Photo. Sure there are things that could be improved but I have confidence that they will improve and I think that they will do their best to get Publisher to us as soon as they can. As I mentioned before, I too was hoping for Publisher to be released or at least in beta by now but it appears that it isn't going to happen and lots of negativity isn't going to speed it up. That's just how I see it. Plus in my opinion, them missing a date isn't nearly as bad as another unmentionable company forcing all of its users to switch to a subscription. 

 

Hokusai

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Serif folks have held a carrot in front of our eyes for the last 3 years. So there is nothing refreshing about it. They've know for a long time that the revealed timeframe for the Publisher won't be met. I know it wasn't a deadline or a promise but nevertheless.

But nevertheless what? If you understand that no promises were made, what is your point?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I already posted this it in a different thread: iCalamus is a fully featured(!) very powerful and fast publisher. The developers have plenty of experience by creating the old and well known Calamus SL.

iCalamus incorporates all necessary features for professional publishing: CMYK, spot colours, text piping, master pages and, and, and.

The GUI is very effective, although not so "cool" and "stylish" as some users may expect

Just look here: https://www.icalamus.net/icalamus/index.php?lan=en

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Scribus

iCalamus

Xara

Swift

 

Thanks for your feedback.

 

Swift, looks like the most affordable solution for the very simple use I need.

This is the kind of photobooks I´m designing: 

 

95% images/5% text; a cover/hardcover and maybe a dust jacket cover in some cases.

Offset printing.

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I already posted this it in a different thread: iCalamus is a fully featured(!) very powerful and fast publisher. The developers have plenty of experience by creating the old and well known Calamus SL.

iCalamus incorporates all necessary features for professional publishing: CMYK, spot colours, text piping, master pages and, and, and.

The GUI is very effective, although not so "cool" and "stylish" as some users may expect

Just look here: https://www.icalamus.net/icalamus/index.php?lan=en

 

Perhaps I don't see it on their page, but it appears to be missing a very important feature for me: automatic TOC generation...

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

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Thank you MagicDesign .-)

So, I must use TIFF/CMYK with Swift, in order to export the books in CMYK? I see no problem, as long as I can deliver my final PDF file for the printing house as a CMYK file.

I´ve another doubt: can I place my images directly from the Mac system folders (import/place or drag and drop?) into the Swift pages. It´s because I only use the Mac folders, as my system to store and edit my photography. No Photos, no iPhoto, etc. Just the Mac folders and Affinity Photo.

Thanks.

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System folders should be fine. Regarding cmyk, if you want swift to do your cmyk conversion for you, you export to tif. A lot of printers accept tif (it predates PDF as a file type they originally used I think).

 

Swift handles most file types, so if you insert cmyk images, you can just export to PDF - and it maintains cmyk colours.

 

Sorry, gone quite off topic here!

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The eBay way sadly doesn't help either because I would need at least Cs 6 to be able to use it on a current macOS. And sellers know that - this version is seldom available and when very expensive.

 

There are issues but CS packages should be usable under El Capitan and Sierra. See https://blog.conradchavez.com/2016/06/16/macos-10-12-sierra-will-adobe-software-work/#preCC

 

I think I will try El Capitan soon and see if CS5 works.

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I already posted this it in a different thread: iCalamus is a fully featured(!) very powerful and fast publisher.

 

At 129 € it's also in a very different price bracket from the Affinity apps, and it's only available for the Mac.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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