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Affinity Publisher Release Date Change!


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4 hours ago, KipV said:

The reason I am here is I feel that Designer had the potential to crush Illustrator but we haven't seen a feature update to that program on Mac or Windows in over a year. Instead they are putting the time into developing features that competitors are already doing well.

Agreed. We desperately need updates to AF and AD.  To make it a little more intuitive and add new features to keep it competitive.

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I might not have worded that as well as I meant to. AP and AD can do quite a lot and I use them both for pro work. They even do a number of things better then the Adobe Counterparts. However with Publisher I mostly see Serif desperately trying to play catch up competition that has been working in this field for over thirty years. Layout tools are at a stage where they are more about fine tuning the existing product rather then introducing lots of flashy new features. The fact it is they are behind on features in a mature field and that justifies Publisher being a lower price then it's competition. The other two Affinity products can justify a higher price point today with all the major advancements they have made since version 1.0. In fact I would welcome that so they could build up their staff and marketing.

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16 minutes ago, Guyon said:

Quark is an amazing tool.  But I so disagree with your statement "...Affinity isn't capable of. It's cheaper for a reason."

I disagree with Kip's statement as far as the sentence I highlighted. But probably not the first part concerning the capability/work-flow part of the shortened quote you did.

There's all sorts of reasons to use product A over product B (etc.) if/when I have the choice. But it will always come down to the balance of what format the client wants returned versus, when I can choose, what is most efficient for me. I layout a lot of books (mainly novels). I have few delusions whether APub will be efficient for that task or not. Using a tool that takes more time, more work-arounds, isn't gong to cost the client one penny more. I will just make fewer pennies on the dollar.

A novel is a simple document. I know people that use Xara Designer Pro and CorelDraw for such work. If I had to choose one of those over the other I would opt for CD. And I would feel drained at the end of each day. I can layout a typical novel if I have the assets in hours using Q or ID, not days/weeks in those other applications.

I do not know whether APub will have master pages initially, nor do I know if it will have running headers/footers. I do know it won't have tables initially (maybe I'll be surprised). Or be able to generate a TOC or an index. And the list goes for what I would need in APub for just a simple novel for me to use it for my bread & butter work.

16 minutes ago, Guyon said:

I do pro work with Affinity Photo everyday.  It has completely make Photoshop obsolete in my workflow.  remember it is more the artist than the tool that makes final product.

I know of a person in Japan that does pro-design work in Excel. I wouldn't recommend vector drawing in Excel as regards efficiency. I would think if he switched to AD, maybe Excel would become obsolete in his work-flow. If I tried painstakingly drawing his art in Excel I would fail. And we could say it's not the tool, it's the artist. And in part that would be true...but better tools for various tasks wielded by a competent person trumps a competent person using inefficient tools any day.

I am confident that APub will grow in capabilities over time. But there may be much time involved before it is mature like the market space it seeks to disrupt.

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KipV, there are two things that you do not consider, the first is that it is not important how many times you update a program but the quality of the new features offered.

The second is that even just looking at AD you realize that in addition to the things you can not do yet there are many that Illustrator can not do even today after thirty-one years !!!

So I could expect that APub will do things that XPress does not do in spite of being thirty one years old

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4 minutes ago, Filo63 said:

...So I could expect that APub will do things that XPress does not do in spite of being thirty one years old

We know of at least one thing APub will do that the others cannot...interactive drop caps. ;^)

Whether that has value or not is another thing. But, once available I'm pretty certain there will be a lot of (pent-up) feedback.

Every layout/drawing/image editor application has things "the other guys" cannot do or even just more efficient ways of doing the same things. That's a given. But in the end, most of those things end up on some comparison chart as a means of saying Hey, we can do this and it's absent from X, Y, Z applications. And often enough, they don't matter.

 

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8 hours ago, KipV said:

Is integration enough reason to justify making a whole new app?

 

7 hours ago, R C-R said:

That is something each user must decide for themselves

The users aren’t making the app! It’s something Serif have decided: the raison d’être for the Affinity apps is tight integration.

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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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11 hours ago, MikeW said:

but better tools for various tasks wielded by a competent person trumps a competent person using inefficient tools any day

That is true. Although some very competent people got so used to a tool, that even being what they use highly inefficient for the task, these have often resitance to use other thing, and in the end, they loose productivity the first weeks if they change to sth more standard, or they never get productive as they are too used to a very specific workflow.

I'v known Blender 3D artist which are talented as any CG industry pro (not exaggerating) . And some of them wont use Max or Maya instead, if they can avoid it... In the other side, despite the app not having the fastest/easy UI on earth, its handling has become so natural to them, that they can be really fast using it, and extremely slow using anything else, even being more standard and powerful ( Max, Maya, etc). Heck at several companies they'd let me use Wings 3D, not only that, they'd assign  all the charcater models to me. And I used Wings 3D only, having near seats of Maya and MAx ! In general, a poorer app leads to slower, harder work. In the past people used to do pixel art with just MS Paint...

 

11 hours ago, Guyon said:

Agreed. We desperately need updates to AF and AD.  To make it a little more intuitive and add new features to keep it competitive.

As I mentioned,  to be competitive, you first need to ensure that the existing features and workflows in the apps are rock solid, is key for pro work. Previous to climbing new mountains.

IMO, going for APub makes sense. It does not seem that they aim -at least not in short term- to do a full CC suite equivalent. They are focusing in typical 2D workflows : Vectors, raster and publishing. Is indeed -at least in my country- a very common job profile. Typically one is expected to master one  all of those areas/apps, for a specific job, but usually the profile is centered in one of them, yet though, you are usually required to master the 3 (PS, AI, ID ) . For freelancing, you typically also need to master the 3. (although the work some of us do does not really require publishing apps). Is kind of the magic 3. It makes a lot of sense to close the cycle, even if Apub may take more time to get production ready (or stay non high-end for more time).

About new features not being added, I remember a few that were added along the year, even if not ground breaking for some people. And even so, I think the package what needs less is adding features. This (thinking about Photo, now) is not an experimental app, not like can be Rebelle...It'd better improve the existing features, clean some problems, and make the 2 rock solid. For pro work, that is an absolute must. because both AD and AP do all what a professional needs, and what lacks can be improvised by the graphic worker, the tools are flexible enough. Performance, good behavior of the tools, no bugs, neither problems, stability and compliance with formats and pro specs is what is needed for serious work.  Not so much if there are free assets libraries included, or if there's an auto-tracing tool, or a red eyes fixer in Photo, etc. Both AD and AP have already a larger arsenal of tool and workflows. IMO, what it need is polishing some corners before going for a lot of new features (my 2c) . What I listed, you will all probably agree is more important for working...I can manage and generate a workflow to substitute a feature IF, the software performs well in its main usage. And it does, but what I mean is that the little improves of a young pair of APPs are by far the most important matter. For me, there are very very few things that are a bit more of a show -stopper.  In general, the apps are really solid and complete..

 

Edited by SrPx
Typos and grammar.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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30 minutes ago, SrPx said:

Although some very competent people got so used to a tool, that even being what they use highly inefficient for the task, these have often resitance to use other thing ...

The other side of that is being competent includes considering if the other thing is sufficiently reliable that it really would be more efficient to use it than to stick with something known to be reliable. So as you say, this is something Serif must consider when rolling out updates, & why we should consider updates that improve stability & fix bugs at least as important as ones that introduce new features. They aren't going to create the same buzz, but without them there is no way the Affinity apps could compete with more established products.

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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What I meant is, sometimes (but I am not referring now necessarily to APub), working with slightly under powered software, it can still be worth it due to other advantages (not only price, and purchase method, but to me those are key, just not the only reasons) . There's a thin barrier when for some job profiles or just tasks, it does not cut it (as the workaround would be too long to do). This I find with any tool I try and/or use. I just discard what I can't use for certain job/task with the right balance of time/quality/cost. I typically don't discard them fully, just for specific tasks (IE, for now I wouldn't draw yet with Affinity, but would do anything else with it), or the other way around: I use them only for specific tasks (like, using inkscape if one rare day I need to auto trace a silhouette for 3D, or the like, or for some strange exports. Like once every 5 months...if at all. ). I indeed tend to have a varied set of tools, like some other do around here (probably in other professional areas). Unless it is a terrible scenario where everything is implemented badly (and there are very infrequent cases of this) typically there are no really unusable tools. I'd say, often just better fit for some areas. To me one of the advantages of Affinity is that it serves for a very wide range of needs. Speaking about AP and AD, not APub, as it seems this one, being very young and due to other factors, will take quite longer to reach that level. Surely will worth the wait, IMHO.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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I'm always worried about the core functionality. That one which allows you to do the more complex stuff. Rather than features that simply make things easier (but faster is quite a good reason to have it, I don't deny it), or even worse, just easier for totally non savvy people. (which is nice, but is other focus...the debate of toys/pro tools, and etc....ie, like ye old PSP was that core-functional in the old times... then made it a toy for family photos, then got back to the core good functionality focus). A really great example of this, in PS.  For a very long while, Photoshop has had a long list of filters. A ton of people got used to the abuse of this (specially third party ones), and instead of manually doing certain effects, allowing a much more personal output,  they applied some predefined effect with one or more filters, this shouting from miles that the filter x was used. And often, not very well. Of much more value than the number of filters supported by an app, IMHO, is that PS has a very strong selection system, very flexible and versatile (imho, key for whatever image manipulation, or game/web graphics, etc), this combined with basic, but strong (core) image manipulation operations, often lead to much better results than hitting a filter button after moving some sliders for a pre-defined effect that never vary certain feel.  With brushes: Is super, super cool to have a very varied range of brushes, but anyone who has painted intensively knows that can produce any style of painting and brush feel with even basic brush features (just flow + opacity + size depending (and not) on pressure).  From a solid core (brush engine in that case), with training and knowledge you get a very fast solution. Reason why still a PS CS2 can be extremely good and fast in good hands (heck, even a PS 7, and I don't say 6, as that one was a bit more crashy ). From what we know, APub, being a very first beta, wont have that core functionality for several matters, but I hope it will get them with time.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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I find that using the same file format you have significant advantages.

I give an example that for me is fundamental. If developing a desktop layout with AD where to better manage images use AP exploits the two applications to the utmost.
When I am with the customer, with the iPad PRO, and he asks me to replace a model(girl) in the layout, I can take from the archive already treated images and make a precise outline on AD and replace it by being able to create the print file.

Tomorrow this possibility will also be extended to APub and the trusted AD on iPad will allow me to make changes from the client.

Obviously if I use a notebook as a main machine and I pore it behind all this would not be an advantage but ... with the Affinity suite that unlike Adobe I can open the same file with different software, I consider it a huge professional advantage.

I am increasingly convinced that the fundamentals of the Affinity project are very powerful.

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On 7/17/2018 at 1:52 AM, MikeW said:

better tools for various tasks wielded by a competent person trumps a competent person using inefficient tools any day.

2

I prefer to think of it like this:
A master with a lesser tool, trumps a novice using the best tool.

It's all about the inner artist.
I have dropped all Adobe products, and also switched from MS Office with no regrets at all.

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1 hour ago, Guyon said:

I prefer to think of it like this:
A master with a lesser tool, trumps a novice using the best tool.

Not quite the same thing, but I spent much of my working years touring the US & several other countries as a 'front of house' mixer supplying the live sound for various musical events. This typically involved working with different equipment & crews every day, with everyone under intense pressure to get everything right before the show could begin.

I always preferred working with mediocre equipment & great crews to working with the best possible equipment & inexperienced or indifferent crews.

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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2 hours ago, MEB said:

Hi Guyon,
Affinity Publisher Public Beta will be available before the end of August. You can sign-in to our newsletter here to be notified about its release.

MEB you made my day!

Hope yours is just as good.

 

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