Why no slug area Publisher

[fde101]

1 hour ago, Bryan Rieger said:

wonder why you didn't just include a slug

I think what I was getting at was more a question of whether or not the two areas were actually distinct within the PDF itself or whether they were treated together as an extended area outside of the page box.  If the PDF files know the difference that is one thing, but if it is just merged into one larger area then I'm not sure what difference it makes if the design software knows what they are, as it all ends up submitted as a PDF anyway.

Realistically I would expect the printers to add their own slug areas though, so not sure why they would care if the DTP app adds one or not.  Most of the comments I've seen around from the printers is that they tend to chop off any slugs provided with the documents anyway as they have their own standard ones that they use instead.

Bleed is obviously a page layout task, but slug seems more like it belongs in the category of imposition.

[sc300]

5 hours ago, fde101 said:

Bleed is obviously a page layout task, but slug seems more like it belongs in the category of imposition.

The slug is used for much more than imposition information.

As a FMCG packaging designer I'm required by my client to use the slug area for production information. (order information, product and packing information and instructions to the printer). Typically for me it might be an area 25-45mm on one side of the page. The printer will mask that area during imposition, but it's still needed in preproduction so that similar packs aren't confused. Confusion can be a big issue when I send finished art pdfs to my client, who then sends the artwork along with product orders to a factory in another country who then sends the packaging artwork on to their printer. If you have multiple suppliers, then errors can easily multiply.

Yes, you can extend the bleed area to include the slug info, but that will also move the automatic crop marks away from the bleed area, which the printer objects to, so the alternative is to draw in manual crop marks. When you're laying out multiple packs (sometimes 30 - 40 over a few days) manual crop marks become tedious and time consuming.

[Guest]

@sc300 brilliant explanation...

The challenge is Serif/Canva bills the Affinity apps as professional alternatives to adobe but in reality the are hobbyist's tools.

No slug area
No DAM
No dedicated photo editing app (aka, lightroom, capture one, etc)

There are too many other missing features to list, but they add up and clearly puts the Affinity apps into the hobbyist category.

 

[fde101]

22 hours ago, sc300 said:

still needed in preproduction so that similar packs aren't confused. Confusion can be a big issue when I send finished art pdfs to my client, who then sends the artwork along with product orders to a factory in another country who then sends the packaging artwork on to their printer

Interesting.  I would have thought to encode that into the filename somehow, but I can see the value in this in cases like what you are describing.

 

22 hours ago, sc300 said:

hat will also move the automatic crop marks away from the bleed area, which the printer objects to, so the alternative is to draw in manual crop marks

Ok, so basically there is some mechanism within the way the PDFs are encoded that can distinguish between the slug and bleed areas; this is the piece I wasn't finding anywhere.  Yes, in that case it makes perfect sense that this would be a problem.

 

5 hours ago, KC Honie said:

No slug area

Not every professional needs one.  Many don't use them at all.  Just because a feature is missing that some professionals need does not mean that the tool is not suitable for use by other professionals or that it is not a professional tool.

 

5 hours ago, KC Honie said:

No DAM
No dedicated photo editing app (aka, lightroom, capture one, etc)

Lightroom and Caputure One are both dedicated RAW developers with limited DAM functionality built-in, they are NOT photo editing apps.

Affinity Photo and Photoshop are examples of photo editing apps.  Serif DOES have a photo editing app.

Does the fact that BlackMagic Design does not publish a professional vector drawing application mean that Resolve is not a professional video editing app?  Not in the least.  The fact that Serif has not released a professional DAM or RAW developer has no bearing on whether or not the apps they do offer are professional apps.  It only means that if they are professional apps, they are a different kind of professional app - such as a photo editor, a vector design tool, and a desktop publishing tool.

 

5 hours ago, KC Honie said:

in reality the are hobbyist's tools.

I would argue they are a big step up from hobbyist's tools, but I would also agree that they are not quite at the level where I would expect them to be to truly compete with software on the level of QuarkXPress or Resolve when it comes to features or high-end functionality.  They are gradually adding in some of those features over time and I think they have the potential to get there if they stay with it, and already they are suitable for a range of professional applications, but clearly not for all of them.

On the other hand, I do find many things about the user interface to be quite preferable to that of many of the bigger tools in various ways and for many types of projects, and even though I do maintain a QuarkXPress license, I still favor using Publisher for various tasks over using QuarkXPress, depending on the nature of the specific project I am doing.

[Guest]

@fde101

Capture One, Lightroom, On1, et al are all raw developers with some photo editing capabilities. Those of us that EDIT photos with one of these tools would beg to differ with you about your assessment.

They all have DAM functionality.

None of them are a DAM

I firmly stand behind my assertion that the Affinity apps are at best hobbyist tools.  They could be much better, but I don't hold out much hope

[Dazmondo77]

It's so frustrating that Affinity masks slug information. you can even open an Affinity generated PDF, for say a trifold leaflet, in Affinity, where you've set up fold marks, and go to the bottom of the layer stack and move the fold marks to the top of the layer stack and switch off the masks and you have a usable PDF ----- another workaround

[thomaso]

49 minutes ago, Dazmondo77 said:

move the fold marks to the top of the layer stack and switch off the masks and you have a usable PDF ----- another workaround

How do you export such an imported + modified PDF? Doesn't this result in a different PDF page size info or different PDF media boxes (trim, art, bleed…)?

[Meliora spero]

On 10/25/2024 at 2:49 AM, KC Honie said:

I firmly stand behind my assertion that the Affinity apps are at best hobbyist tools.  They could be much better, but I don't hold out much hopeNone of them are a DAM

Precisely. Affinity is aimed at hobbyists, and the market has clearly demonstrated this by attracting the right types of users to the appropriate products available; Affinity has virtually no measurable market share within the professional segment. It’s not because the customers in this market are mindless followers or traditionalists, as some claim - these are very serious and conscious choices being made.

Now we’ll see whether Canva has ever had ambitions to tap into the potential here and there, which would require substantial investments and significant changes, or whether Affinity will become a feature provider within Canva’s main product.

I’m betting on the latter.

[MikeW]

6 hours ago, Deperditus Cliens said:

Precisely. Affinity is aimed at hobbyists, and the market has clearly demonstrated this by attracting the right types of users to the appropriate products available; Affinity has virtually no measurable market share within the professional segment. It’s not because the customers in this market are mindless followers or traditionalists, as some claim - these are very serious and conscious choices being made.

Now we’ll see whether Canva has ever had ambitions to tap into the potential here and there, which would require substantial investments and significant changes, or whether Affinity will become a feature provider within Canva’s main product.

I’m betting on the latter.

Aimed at, maybe. But do know if it was not for the hobbyist market, Adobe's CC market wouldn't garner the market share it has and Adobe would have killed it off as not profitable. Same with many/most software. Hobby/non-professional users are the life-blood of software makers. There's simply far more of them than so-called professionals.

Adobe makes far more money on all their other endeavors than the CC software.

[Meliora spero]

It is precisely because there may be money in the easy but volatile market for hobbyists and small customers that Serif has always delivered products aimed at this grateful segment, targeting the limited needs of smaller customers with all that entails—including that the quality of the programs doesn’t match products designed for the professional segment. However, the rhetoric and the forum’s dreams about the programs’ capabilities have gone far, far beyond reality. Reality is quite important, I can tell you.

Affinity only reaches so far. True professional programs for true professionals go much further. And if we look at the market, the "so-called professionals," who are typically called professionals because they aren’t hobbyists like here but actual professionals, have not chosen programs designed for hobbyists. This is because of the programs themselves. Affinity doesn’t go far enough.

[MikeW]

18 minutes ago, Deperditus Cliens said:

... And if we look at the market, the "so-called professionals," who are typically called professionals because they aren’t hobbyists like here but actual professionals, have not chosen programs designed for hobbyists. This is because of the programs themselves. Affinity doesn’t go far enough.

Yes, and no.

Yes, for X number of users, something like APub doesn't have the capabilities/features they need. I fall into that camp. 

And no. I know of several professionals, people that make their living using APub daily, to churn out work.

Answers are are never black and white. 

[chakko007]

1 hour ago, Deperditus Cliens said:

It is precisely because there may be money in the easy but volatile market for hobbyists and small customers that Serif has always delivered products aimed at this grateful segment, targeting the limited needs of smaller customers with all that entails—including that the quality of the programs doesn’t match products designed for the professional segment. However, the rhetoric and the forum’s dreams about the programs’ capabilities have gone far, far beyond reality. Reality is quite important, I can tell you.

Affinity only reaches so far. True professional programs for true professionals go much further. And if we look at the market, the "so-called professionals," who are typically called professionals because they aren’t hobbyists like here but actual professionals, have not chosen programs designed for hobbyists. This is because of the programs themselves. Affinity doesn’t go far enough.

TBH, that's how I always viewed the Affinity apps.

It's a bit of a catch 22 anyway. Without some features which professionals are used to, you won't appeal to a professional audience. Without a professional audience (i.e. people from the industry who use your apps), you won't know what the professional clientele wants. 

That said, I know what I get when I buy and use the Affinity apps. They even might be complete overkill for me in most use cases, but, I often feel limited by apps which offer less.

Let's just say that it often strikes me as funny when people call the apps the Photoshop or whatever Adobe app killers. They're far from it, but, they also cost far from it.

[Meliora spero]

1 hour ago, MikeW said:

Answers are are never black and white. 

Of course, on the other hand, I have never met a single person besides myself in professional circles who had even heard of Affinity. This also goes for private creatives, by the way. So much for the value of personal experiences that are never backed by science.

But market share... and adoption. It's easier to relate to, and here, I’ve never seen Affinity either.

When I start encountering Affinity in both private and professional contexts, and especially as truly, really, actually, genuinely visible in market share, then I am willing to reconsider. Not before. All the talk in here needs to be reflected in reality, and it isn't.

[Guest]

@Deperditus Cliens I am honestly not sure what reality you are referring to.  I don’t care about market share I care about a product having the basic features required to accomplish the tasks for which the product was marketed…

[PilotBob]

Sadly, I have not been able to wean myself off of Adobe Suite for my professional work, despite the fact that I would desperately like to get away from the monthly expense now that I'm semi-retired. Some of the things I've become accustomed to in my basic work flow simply don't exist in Affinity. For example, to create a gate fold brochure I create six pages arranged in two 3-panel spreads. Each panel is the precise width required for the folding, and making a PDF with crop marks automatically creates the fold marks where they're needed along with trim marks, bleeds and a slug of the print shop. Sadly, not possible in Publisher. Why spend hours creating work-arounds just to get results that InDesign and Quark do so easily. 

I did find a discussion here on how to create multi page spreads in Publisher, but again I have to ask, why invest the hours required to "work around" the limitation when an elegant solution is possible elsewhere?: 

 

That being said, Affinity seeks to gain market share from Adobe. The products are already extremely feature rich and are quite useful as they stand, but miss the mark by just a pica or two... So near, yet so far away...

Edited October 27, 2024 by PilotBob
Add reference to existing Affinity discussion on the topic.

[Guest]

@PilotBob You are spot on with your assessment.  I simply don’t understand why so many of the basics  required to use their products successfully were ignored and appear to be falling on deaf ears…

As an aside I suspect with V3 the dreaded subscription model and price increase will arrive…  Canva has shown that they are willing to do both.

[fde101]

11 hours ago, PilotBob said:

to create a gate fold brochure I create six pages arranged in two 3-panel spreads.

Spreads with more than two pages are currently in beta for the 2.6 versions, just in case you might have missed that.