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Affinity Publisher Release Date Change!


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Anyone else notice that Affinity updated it's website to list Affinity Publisher as "available 2018" and that it's sad that I'm so excited by this somewhat vague revision to the status of Publisher? It's a whole 12-month window, but I guess some update is better than nothing. Can any Affinity person out there give maybe a little more information?

 

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/about/

 

And... Affinity, do you sell t-shirts yet? Mugs? Stickers?

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Hi taizo,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

There isn't much we can add right now other than Publisher's development is going well. Unfortunately it may take a little more than we anticipated until the public Beta starts. Giving a new eta will only create more expectations than help at this point. Please bear with us while we work on it. We will announce it here and in the social media as soon as there's some news.

Regarding merchandising, as far as i know, no...

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HI! I'm very excited to learn about Affinity Publisher! But for now I have a question on PagePlus X9. I have Designer, and am about to purchase Photo, but I REALLY miss InDesign and need a decent publishing application without doing an Adobe membership. What kind of features does the Legacy PagePlus X9 have? Would it be worth the $25 to tie me over until Publisher is released?

 

Thoughts from anyone?

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2 hours ago, taizo said:

Anyone else notice that Affinity updated it's website to list Affinity Publisher as "available 2018" ...

If you search these forums on "Publisher" or related terms, you will see that a whole bunch of people have not just noticed this but many have also expressed their feelings about the delay rather emphatically! loudlaff.gif

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
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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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1 hour ago, nicklewis said:

HI! I'm very excited to learn about Affinity Publisher! But for now I have a question on PagePlus X9. I have Designer, and am about to purchase Photo, but I REALLY miss InDesign and need a decent publishing application without doing an Adobe membership. What kind of features does the Legacy PagePlus X9 have? Would it be worth the $25 to tie me over until Publisher is released?

 

Thoughts from anyone?

 

I would say yes. PagePlus has a lot of powerful features and Publisher will take a few years to catch up. It is likely to be some time before Publisher would outstrip PagePlus in functionality.

 

$25 is peanuts for such a powerful program.

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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10 minutes ago, R C-R said:

If you search these forums on "Publisher" or related terms, you will see that a whole bunch of people have not just noticed this but many have also expressed their feelings about the delay rather emphatically! loudlaff.gif

 

Well, you can't please 'em all.

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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1 hour ago, nicklewis said:

What kind of features does the Legacy PagePlus X9 have? Would it be worth the $25 to tie me over until Publisher is released?

 

This is an "independent" review of PagePlus X9 and it's features by a plus range user/enthusiast @Bhikkhu Pesala, who is a member here but replies to many users on our forums that deal with the legacy range, including PagePlus. Ask a question on those CommunityPlus forums and a number of forum regulars like @Alfred normally recommend PagePlus X9. It is a tremendous bargain at that price.

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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What would really hold me over until AP is released would be if the people at Serif could work with Quark so that Affinity files could open up natively in xPress. Being able to import files into a page layout program without first needing to export would be really nice and, I would think, minimal work on your behalf.

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1 minute ago, KipV said:

What would really hold me over until AP is released would be if the people at Serif could work with Quark so that Affinity files could open up natively in xPress. Being able to import files into a page layout program without first needing to export would be really nice and, I would think, minimal work on your behalf.

 

Having recently taken up the bargain QXP 2015 offer mentioned by @Tekl, I would love to be able to import Affinity files into it.

 

Alfred spacer.png
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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I'm thinking that Serif is not going to make it easy for what is/will be a competitor as regards importing native Affinity files. Never know, but it really seems unlikely. The only reason QXP can import PSD* files is that Quark has sussed out the file format. The only way QXP can import AI files is if the PDF stream is included.

 

And, I guess this is where I usually insert something about why is this native file format capability even really necessary/needed? The export of a common format to import into a layout application is actually a good thing. That transformation absolutely has to happen in the publishing stream anyway. There's no way around that. Exporting for print to a PDF from Q takes longer when it is dealing with what are relatively simple PSD files compared to a TIFF. Heck, the same holds true for exporting to PDF when the publication contains a PDF versus an EPS. I just don't get it...it is a false economy.

 

Mike

 

*However, not all the layer types can be read and so with complicated PSD files, one really still needs to export out as a flattened file type.

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It is hard to know they will be a competitor when we have no product to compare it to. Native is essential since it lets you pick which layer you need to import; I have an Illustrator file logo file that has a color version, grayscale, one without gradients, a striped version for applications were even greyscale is too much information (printing the logo directly onto a coffee container.) I really don't want to have to keep going back to the illustrator file and exporting out each time I need a variation on the file. I just need to do a search for the logo and then select the specific layers needed; don't make this a ten step process, I don't have time for that. I should point out Adobe has had this feature for 10-15 years. I can't keep wanting however more years it will take Serif to come out with a product that is on par with ID/Quark. Serif themselves doesn't even know how long that will take.

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44 minutes ago, MikeW said:

I'm thinking that Serif is not going to make it easy for what is/will be a competitor as regards importing native Affinity files. Never know, but it really seems unlikely. The only reason QXP can import PSD* files is that Quark has sussed out the file format. The only way QXP can import AI files is if the PDF stream is included.

 

And, I guess this is where I usually insert something about why is this native file format capability even really necessary/needed? The export of a common format to import into a layout application is actually a good thing. That transformation absolutely has to happen in the publishing stream anyway. There's no way around that. Exporting for print to a PDF from Q takes longer when it is dealing with what are relatively simple PSD files compared to a TIFF. Heck, the same holds true for exporting to PDF when the publication contains a PDF versus an EPS. I just don't get it...it is a false economy.

 

Mike

 

*However, not all the layer types can be read and so with complicated PSD files, one really still needs to export out as a flattened file type.

 

As long as Publisher can export to a PDF ISO format that a printer can use, then that's all that matters in my book at this juncture. The native file interoperability can come later...

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I think you misunderstood me. My fault probably for not quoting Kip. Kip expressed a desired that QuarkXPress be able to place Affinity native files.

 

The files among Affinity applications are and will be exchangeable between themselves.  Affinity products do currently export to PDF properly. No reason to think that same capability wouldn't apply to APub.

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Probably would have taken Adobe even longer to work on K2 if Aldus hadn't already begun PM's replacement before the merger. It was about 6 years or so of work by Adobe to finish K2 up.

 

Ever wonder what the landscape would be like if Quark had successfully purchased Adobe back in those days?

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It took Adobe even longer then six years to attain all the features of PageMaker, that is one reason PageMaker wasn't killed off the day ID 1.0 come out. That is why I was saying who knows how long it will take until after Publisher 1 comes out until the product is on the same level of the current industry standards. Certainly too long to wait.

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I agree it is gonna take a goodly amount of time for APub to be a serious contender in that space. And all the while, Adobe and Quark are going to continue advancing, which widens the gap at the same time as Serif is playing catch-up. But even working with Quark would not provide a decent stop-gap.

 

What Serif has going for it is the fact that while the Affinity lineup is touted as professional products, their price point can actually hurt them being taken more seriously. Combined with certain hobbled capabilities, they can be more described as being for the "professionally minded hobbyist." Aside from capabilities that absolutely need to expand across the board, these products need to be in the hands of a much broader audience like in the schools and universities, etc. They need to gain foothold in the larger publishing houses and government offices, not to mention print establishments. Else they will not garner a reasonable market share.

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2 hours ago, Alfred said:

 

Having recently taken up the bargain QXP 2015 offer mentioned by @Tekl, I would love to be able to import Affinity files into it.

LOL, dream on ...!  AFAIK even that long time on Win available Serif PagePlus prog had a proprietary (unspecified?) file format no other software ever supported. The nowadays available Affinity products again have a proprietary file format and beside that, they can't import/convert the previously by Serif Window products used own file formats. - So if they never ever publish their file format specs officially, I pretty much doubt that any other third party software company will spend time, manpower and efforts into adapting their file format here in some way!

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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Well Adobe has once taken over pretty much everything relevant in this regard (PageMaker, FrameMaker) and nowadays with InDesign the strongest marketshare player here. Add to that their long time knowledge about inventing PS, EPS, PDF, Fonts ... etc. and it is clear that they will be hard to beat at all in the publishing world.

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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Well fair alliances/merges and some support of technology exchange might help to get slightly more market share, aka a bigger peace of the cake than usually. Let's see if that will ever happen.

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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A few good merges would do wonders for Serif's placement against Adobe. Adobe's merges are one of the main reason they are in the position they are in. They went overboard merging with companies that they were much in direct competition with but Serif could certainly merge with companies that serve as compliments, it is necessary really.

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15 minutes ago, KipV said:

A few good merges would do wonders for Serif's placement against Adobe. Adobe's merges are one of the main reason they are in the position they are in. They went overboard merging with companies that they were much in direct competition with but Serif could certainly merge with companies that serve as compliments, it is necessary really.

KipV 

No, Just...  NO! 

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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