Experiences so far.

[iMatt]

My experience with Affinity Publisher has been positive so far.  In essence, it appears to be Affinity Designer with a far more robust text capability and multiple pages. A little simplistic, I know. But as Adobe incorporated Illustrator's graphics engine into InDesign, so Serif have done the same with Designer and Publisher. And I think they've probably done a better job given my experiences with Adobe CS in the past.

[imcath]

I, too find Publisher to be very much like Designer, but am disappointed that is the case. As a long time user of Apple's iPages program, I was really looking for a text-based program that could do what iPages does, only a little better and more intuitively. Instead, it's having to work within a designer program, with way more options and features than I could ever need, use or learn. I have to click back from tool to tool just to select or move a text box. I hate that everything is on a different layer. I have to have a layer filter just to make a gradient. I couldn't even find a way to make the gradient run vertically vs. horizontally, without rotating the box itself. I was so looking forward to a better page-layout program, but sadly, Publisher won't be luring me away from iPages. It's too complex for what I need it to do. Admittedly, I'm still new to Designer as well, but I'm not sure what Publisher offers that I couldn't do with Designer.

[jmwellborn]

I used Pagemaker for years for my 1200-page monthly publication, then InDesign for a few more while writing books based on historical research, and then one book while floundering hopelessly through iPages grim and extremely elementary interface.  I cannot wait until Publisher is commercially ready so I can begin re-editing several LONG books using this lovely new publishing software and completely redoing the iPages clunker.  Affinity Publisher has a learning curve, but that is fine with me.   There are magnificent options tucked away in the Studio panels and the context menus.   Keeps one’s brain from atrophy.  Meanwhile, as I chug along with these betas, I am noting all the “bugs” and “suggestions” that relate to my work, and am creating my own Help document, mostly comprised of screenshots of questions and helpful answers.   I am up to 103 pages (lots of white space in those screenshots!) and use them to learn all kinds of things it might have taken me ages to learn on my own.   

Thank you, Affinity, for these forums.   And thank you most of all for this grand Publisher-to-be.

[imcath]

For those us who do NOT have to write books consisting of thousands of pages, it can be needlessly overwhelming. There needs to be something less elementary than iPages, but less difficult to learn and master than inDesign. I was hoping Publisher would fill that void.

[garrettm30]

@imcath, it sounds like you are looking for a word processor rather than desktop publishing/layout. It's true that there is overlap in what each category can accomplish, and I think it might make for an interesting discussion about the philosophical differences between the two. For the purpose of this response, I think it is sufficient to note that the two categories are indeed different in both their market and their workflow approach. Affinity Publisher seems to be positioned to compete in the desktop publishing crowd (along with apps like InDesign, QuarkXPress, Microsoft Publisher) rather than the word processor crowd (Microsoft Word, Writer in OpenOffice). Despite the overlap in some functionality, Affinity Publisher is not positioned to compete with word processors; it isn't really in the same category as Apple Pages (not iPages), so I wouldn't hold it against them if it is not the Pages replacement you were hoping.

 

[Dave Harris]

On 10/14/2018 at 10:46 AM, imcath said:

 have to have a layer filter just to make a gradient. I couldn't even find a way to make the gradient run vertically vs. horizontally, without rotating the box itself.

We recommend you use the Gradient tool to create gradients. You can use the tool to manipulate gradients directly with on-screen handles instead of through a dialog.