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Affinity Publisher - Sneak Preview


TonyB

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I should preface this post by saying that I am not, nor have I ever been, a "power user" of any desktop publishing software. However, I have used QuarkXPress reasonably extensively, and at least had a cursory look at InDesign in the past. One thing that I have always liked about QuarkXPress was the fact that, once added to the document, the items created based on Master Pages were easily edited. In other words, if I had a Master Page that included a text box with some generic text inside, that text was immediately editable in the document page without jumping through hoops. At least in my very limited evaluation of InDesign, editing items brought into the document via Master Pages required additional alterations to the item (explicitly designating it a document item rather than a master page item) - maybe not a deal-breaker, but definitely not optimal.

What I believe I saw in the video of Affinity Publisher aligns it much more closely with Quark than with Adobe. New Page(s) were added and, at some point, at least one of the items brought into the new document page was edited directly without having to change it from a Master Page item to a Document item (or any similar permutation).

If I am correct in this observation, then Hallelujah to that. So far, and in this very limited video, I really really like what I see!

Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2 (latest retail versions) - desktop & iPad
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I've never used Quark so I don't know how it handles this, but how many times have InDesign users experience missing fonts and other program errors because they didn't embed their links or package their file? These are very easy things to miss first time on the go. And so, I am curious to know what Affinity's approach will be to keep everything linked together without errors popping up.

The website is still a work in progress. The "Comics" and "Shop" sections are not yet ready. Feel free to connect with me and let me know what you like or what can be improved. You can contact me here, on my contact page, YouTube channel, or Twitter account. Thanks and have a great day!

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I've been designing and publishing books and magazines for almost 40 years. I remember learning to use Aldus PageMaker on the Mac II oh those many years ago and over the years I've purchased tens of thousands of dollars of Adobe software and been harnessed to the annoying subscription model for not-quite 3 years. Having stuck with Adobe for an awfully long (and expensive) time I grate my teeth every year when my CC subscription comes up for renewal. And one of the primary reasons I haven't explored other options was InDesign. (I hate Quark...)


I learned of Affinity software today through a post about the Publisher preview on YouTube. Combined with Photo and Designer, I can finally see an end to my Adobe sentence.

 

I downloaded the trials for Photo and Designer and am so impressed I'll learn new workflows over the next two months so I can cancel my CC subscription before the March 2 renewal.

 

I have a break between publishing projects until mid-summer so my fingers are crossed Affinity Publisher will be in beta by then. 

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6 hours ago, Bri-Toon said:

I've never used Quark so I don't know how it handles this, but how many times have InDesign users experience missing fonts and other program errors because they didn't embed their links or package their file? These are very easy things to miss first time on the go. And so, I am curious to know what Affinity's approach will be to keep everything linked together without errors popping up.

 

Usually this only happens once...then the person has learned to package if moving a publication and/or to keep publication resources in a relative path beneath the publication path and move/copy the whole shebang. Q is the same as ID. As is PagePlus, Viva Designer, or any other layout/design application that can link resources instead of just embedding them. The same will apply to APub and, if linked resources make it to AD, then to it too.

 

There are plug-ins/XTensions for ID/Q that can assist in relinking missing resources or using it to move/gather assets and relink the publication to them. And they work great. But APub/AD as of yet doesn't have hooks for plug-in developers to build widgets for them so I think we'll be stuck using what appeared in the video to be an asset panel. Which is akin to ID's & Q's libraries. And I don't use them, either.

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7 hours ago, CraigB said:

I've been designing and publishing books and magazines for almost 40 years. I remember learning to use Aldus PageMaker on the Mac II oh those many years ago and over the years I've purchased tens of thousands of dollars of Adobe software and been harnessed to the annoying subscription model for not-quite 3 years. Having stuck with Adobe for an awfully long (and expensive) time I grate my teeth every year when my CC subscription comes up for renewal. And one of the primary reasons I haven't explored other options was InDesign. (I hate Quark...)


I learned of Affinity software today through a post about the Publisher preview on YouTube. Combined with Photo and Designer, I can finally see an end to my Adobe sentence.

 

I downloaded the trials for Photo and Designer and am so impressed I'll learn new workflows over the next two months so I can cancel my CC subscription before the March 2 renewal.

 

I have a break between publishing projects until mid-summer so my fingers are crossed Affinity Publisher will be in beta by then. 


Yep! Same story here (except the 40 years of experience then)

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10 hours ago, KipV said:

That's great Tony, my question would be about the different Personas which were not shown off. The demo most shows features that are already in Photo/Designer/Quark/ID. Personas in a layout tool is new (as far as I know) so that would probably be what I am most interested in.

 

Well spotted. I can't tell you much but you will be both shocked and amazed :)

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3 hours ago, Kev D800 said:

Digital Publishing?

Output to responsive html5 like QuarkExpress?

 

Digital Publishing will be on the roadmap of free features updates. 

 

HTML 5 responsive sounds interesting but I haven't seen it used successfully in publishing yet.

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How does one sign up to become a beta tester with this?  Cheers John

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2.4 for Windows • Windows 11 (23H2 build 22631 3235) Home
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2.4 for iPad Pro 10.5  • iPad OS 17.3.1

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16 hours ago, TonyB said:

 

The swatches will have an overhaul and Dave has made some changes to text styles for 1.7 but not sure if that's inline with your thoughts.

Looking forward to the swatches overhaul. There's a lot of issues with it:

  • Can't select more than one to move
  • Can't group them
  • Editing colour, name, and global status are different windows/menus when it should be all in one (see AI)

As for text styles, haven't used it much since Designer isn't quite there yet for packaging design, but it's missing Figure Style options.

Thanks!

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19 hours ago, Alfred said:

 

We were previously led to expect the beta this winter and the retail version next summer! Oh well....

 

Edit: I've just seen the 'patience' hashtag on the Twitter page. LOL.

 

 

So then I guess we'll see the beta next winter. :(

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2 hours ago, pioneer said:

How does one sign up to become a beta tester with this?  Cheers John

 

No doubt the same way as for AD and APh: via a signup link here or on social media.

 

32 minutes ago, Diller said:

 

So then I guess we'll see the beta next winter. :(

 

No, @TonyB said we’ll see it next summer. But the retail version probably won’t be ready less than six months after the start of the beta, which would be this time next year (i.e. winter for those of us who are in the northern hemisphere, or summer for Aussies, Kiwis and others who live south of the equator).

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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 (iPad 7th gen)

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Any idea what the affinity designer/affinity photo icons were doing in the edit profile area in the top of Publisher? Like on the upper left. Could we expect full vector functionality in Publisher, or is it just a beta app switcher?  

Affinity Designer is my spirit animal 

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