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Does Affinity Designer open/import InDesign files?


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It can import .AI files if they were exported with PDF compatibility   :)

 

It can import PDF-compatible Adobe Illustrator files, but (as @mac_heibu said) it cannot import InDesign files.

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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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And in theory, it can open PDFs created by InDesign.

 

InDesign PDFs can be among the worst PDFs that 3rd-party applications can open for editing, however. So best to test.

 

Do note that a PDF has no concept of paragraph and character styles. Nor does a PDF have a concept of threaded text frames (which AD cannot do anyway). With PagePlus, Serif did a respectable job (better than other applications could do) of stitching frames together where they could figure it out from the page structure. This wasn't perfect, but it went a long way towards being able to reconstruct ID PDFs into a PagePlus document.

 

There's talk of Affinity Publisher being able to open some sort of ID file, but whether that will end up being IDML, tagged text, or native ID file format is anyone's guess. However, whether that makes it in the first version or not is also an unknown and it is also unknown whether that means it would be rolled back into AD or not (however, it doesn't make much sense to do it).

 

Viva Designer can open ID files (and again, I believe it uses IDML as an intermediary but am uncertain) and don't know if it can handle the newest versions of ID or not. With an XTension on a Mac, the latest version of ID2Q can be used to open ID files in the latest version of QXP, the older plug-ins can be used in both Mac & Windows QXP before the current QXP 2017 version. there is also another maker of an XTension for all the more current versions of QXP

 

As regards Affinity products, it's going to be a long wait before if/when it can deal with ID files.

 

Mike

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MikeW, forget it! (But I think, you know this)

InDesign writes very complex PDFs. Especially, when transparencies are involved and the written format is < PDF 1.4, it will be nearly impossible to edit in whatever 3rd party application you can think of.Even Acrobat isn’t able to achieve something, what may be called „editing“ and is more than replacing an image or correcting spelling mistakes. And even this in most cases will not be possible for someone, who isn’t an expert.

InDesign PDFs are not worse, but complex, because it is necessary to represent the complex layout possibilities

The PDF format is developed to have a commonly usable file format, which doesn’t change its appearance on whatever machine with whatever font installed. The fact, that it can’t be modified „on the fly“ without having the source document, it no blemish, but a merit of this format.

We shouldn’t raise hopes, that it is possible to reconstruct a document’s layout and content by simply „opening“ the PDF. If there would exist an application, which could do this, all PDF producing applications would lose their „raison d’être“.

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Mac, I have had reason to open ID pdfs for editing for years. Mainly ad edits and changes. Some applications can do better than others for a given pdf. Sometime XDP wins the day, other times PP has.

 

But for longer, structured documents, PP can do a reasonable job where the document is largely text.

Two things I forgot to add to my list...pdfs also have no concept of master pages and document variables such as running headers. Oh, and table structures may be representational only. And likely I am skipping other things as well.

 

The main point is that if APub has a decent ID import routine, until such time as it supports all of what ID is capable of, it will only be a viable replacement for ID to the extent those features are comparable. Which is going to be years away.

 

Best look to other alternatives if the goal is to transition sooner than (much) later.

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You can (with said tools) open and edit/update content in existing PDF documents. There is no hope that you could open a PDF and use it as "master document" to create new documents with new content. Say like magazine template. You are way better off recreating a new template in your layout application from the scratch.

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On 2017-07-11 at 0:08 PM, ArimatheiaOtto said:

Hi,

I would like to know if Affinity Designer imports Adobe InDesign CC 2017 files. We are tired of Adobe...

Thanks in advance!

It will benefit migration a lot for experienced Indesign users, if you can import Adobe Indesign files to Affinity Designer.

Most Indesign users need to use old Indesign files. For example, to update them or as a template.

Many Indesign users are tired of the program, as many pointed out here on the forum and even on the Internet. Therefore, there is a large market for Affinity Designer. But it will be complicated if you both need to use Adobe Indesign and Affinity Designer.

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  • 2 years later...
9 minutes ago, deadringer said:

Also, see:

 

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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10 minutes ago, deadringer said:

Seems all you have to do is to export IDML from InDeign and the fill will open in Designer...

yes they added IDML support. There is no magic perfect conversion though so anything you are bring into Publisher will need to be checked carefully. Definitely helpful if you are transitioning from Indesign to Publisher and need files you do not want to recreate from scratch. Personally Publisher is not ready to replace Indesign yet but they are on a good path. Indesign just has years of refinement and development behind it, this will take a while to match. 

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