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My thoughts about Affinity apps


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I think that 25+ years of experience with DTP apps like PageMaker, FrameMaker, QuarkXPress, InDesign and DOA (Design Oriented Apps) like FreeHand, CorelDRAW, Illustrator, Xara, Photoshop, give me room to say my opinion about Publisher, Designer and Photo. And this is:

 

  • Publisher should be free of DOA features. All these years I never ever used these kind of features in DTP apps. I always like everthing clean: DTP for finalizing/merging text with design and DOA for design. If you develop separate DOA you don’t need it’s tools in DTP app and vice versa. Quark needs it, but Publisher does not.
  • Publisher file format should not be open in Designer or Photo. Could you open ID files in AI or PS? No? Why? Because it is not supposed to work that way. But opposite is quite OK. It must, which is normal.
  • DTP features must be removed from DOA. Artboards are OK. But pages, text chain, character and paragraph styles... No. Local character and paragraph formating and text effects (warp text effects like in Photoshop?!) is OK. Text effects in PS instead in AI? Video editing in PS? Character and paragraph formating in AI and PS? Adobe totally lost it’s compass.
  • Publisher and Designer. Only 2 apps instead of 3. Designer and Photo must be merged into one app because they share the same purpose, a lot of code and recently -- same bug fixes. It will be also a war against bloatware. As separate apps their instalation size is 500+ Mb and if they are merged I suppose it will be cca 300 Mb or less. Not to mention how much space they take on HD when installed.

 

If you need ideas for another apps then you can make your own Math equation and Chemistry formulae editor(s) and a Music score app.

All the latest releases of Designer, Photo and Publisher (retail and beta) on MacOS and Windows.
15” Dell Inspiron 7559 i7 Windows 10 x64 Pro Intel Core i7-6700HQ (3.50 GHz, 6M) 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600 MHz (8GBx2) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4 GB GDDR5 500 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD UHD (3840 x 2160) Truelife LED - Backlit Touch Display
32” LG 32UN650-W display 3840 x 2160 UHD, IPS, HDR10 Color Gamut: DCI-P3 95%, Color Calibrated 2 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort
13.3” MacBook Pro (2017) Ventura 13.6 Intel Core i7 (3.50 GHz Dual Core) 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB 500 GB SSD Retina Display (3360 x 2100)

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Peter Petrenko,

 

You are welcome to your opinion. If these are your desires then you are not going to get what you want from the Affinity range. This is almost 100% against our philosophy and vision.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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OK. Let's see what others have to say to this. Maybe, if there are a lot of opinions/desires as mine, you will have to rethink once again. I mean if you are really interested what others like. :)

All the latest releases of Designer, Photo and Publisher (retail and beta) on MacOS and Windows.
15” Dell Inspiron 7559 i7 Windows 10 x64 Pro Intel Core i7-6700HQ (3.50 GHz, 6M) 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600 MHz (8GBx2) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4 GB GDDR5 500 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD UHD (3840 x 2160) Truelife LED - Backlit Touch Display
32” LG 32UN650-W display 3840 x 2160 UHD, IPS, HDR10 Color Gamut: DCI-P3 95%, Color Calibrated 2 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort
13.3” MacBook Pro (2017) Ventura 13.6 Intel Core i7 (3.50 GHz Dual Core) 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB 500 GB SSD Retina Display (3360 x 2100)

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Just now, Petar Petrenko said:

OK. Let's see what others have to say to this. Maybe, if there are a lot of opinions/desires as mine, you will have to rethink once again. I mean if you are really interested what others like. :)

 

We are interested in others opinions, but this is not a democracy.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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Nice to hear. :)

All the latest releases of Designer, Photo and Publisher (retail and beta) on MacOS and Windows.
15” Dell Inspiron 7559 i7 Windows 10 x64 Pro Intel Core i7-6700HQ (3.50 GHz, 6M) 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600 MHz (8GBx2) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4 GB GDDR5 500 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD UHD (3840 x 2160) Truelife LED - Backlit Touch Display
32” LG 32UN650-W display 3840 x 2160 UHD, IPS, HDR10 Color Gamut: DCI-P3 95%, Color Calibrated 2 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort
13.3” MacBook Pro (2017) Ventura 13.6 Intel Core i7 (3.50 GHz Dual Core) 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB 500 GB SSD Retina Display (3360 x 2100)

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5 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Designer and Photo must be merged into one app because they share the same purpose, a lot of code and recently -- same bug fixes. It will be also a war against bloatware. As separate apps their instalation size is 500+ Mb and if they are merged I suppose it will be cca 300 Mb or less. Not to mention how much space they take on HD when installed.

 

Nope, not in the slightest, both apps serve different markets. Theres significant crossover, but theres myriad use cases for these being separate applications. Just because it doesn't suit your work, that doesn't mean it applies to thousands of other users. 

 

There is a common code base to these apps(Including Publisher), so they can share bug fixes. That isn't a weakness, it's a huge strength and a hallmark of thoughtful engineering. With average hard disks being around the 500gb-1tb range, a completely presumed saving of 200mb is negligible.

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If you only work on old media, then yes, you won´t need interactive features.

In the DTP field especially the digital publishing area is a clear demand for more ways of adding interactive Elements(Video,embedded 3D ,etc) into the ebooks/apps.
Since QuarkXpress was mentioned, it allows the export of HTML animated eBooks or even converting the output into its own app.

Sketchbook (with Affinity Suite usage) | timurariman.com | gumroad.com/myclay
Windows 11 Pro - 22H2 | Ryzen 5800X3D | RTX 3090 - 24GB | 128GB |
Main SSD with 1TB | SSD 4TB | PCIe SSD 256GB (configured as Scratch disk) |

 

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I think the current Affinity philosophy is by far the most sensible approach, and the shared code base finally gives us the UI consistency that Adobe has never been able to achieve. It's great to be able to create, say, a movie poster in an image editing application and refine some of the typography in a layout application, then go back and work on some of the raster imagery. Being able to work on a single document all the time and being able to show, hide, and move layers instead of splitting the graphics into three files in Photoshop if they have to overlap text in the layout is a huge advantage

 

However, I have to completely agree with the original poster that having both equation editing and sheet music engraving integrated into the Affinity suite would be extremely useful. It's already been discussed in these forums at various points, but publications that integrate lots of equations or music examples, such as text books, are extremely cumbersome to produce with current professional graphic design tools since every single item has to be integrated as a picture and edited in an external application, then exported to PDF or similar, then relinked in the layout, repeat for any changes. Not to mention you don't have the context of your page when editing the embedded graphics.

 

A dedicated persona with scientific tools for mathematical and chemical equations would also open Publisher up to the eduction market – not just the professional scientific publishing world, it would make it the perfect tool for teachers to create worksheets with. Software like InDesign with the InMath plugins is completely unattractive for individual teachers due to its price point and perceived complexity, but the 50€ or so for Publisher would likely be no-brainer. Thus I'd expect that the development resources required for what most designers would consider a relatively niche feature set could probably be more than recovered through the additional sales in that market.

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