Can the old assets of PagePlus X8 or X9 be imported into the Affinity Suite?

[Al Grasso]

I need to use some of the assets from PagePlus X8/X9 into Affinity Publisher or Designer. Can this be done and if so in which vector format can it be done?

I tried exporting in svg format and the Serif Metafile Format but I was unable to load them into Affinity.

Obviously I can export them in pixel format but I prefer to export in vector format.

 

[Alfred]

SVG should have worked, but you can also publish as PDF from PagePlus and then open the PDF file in the Affinity app.

[Al Grasso]

5 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

SVG should have worked, but you can also publish as PDF from PagePlus and then open the PDF file in the Affinity app.

But is pdf a vector export? I thought it was essentially raster export for images and allowed only text to be edited. I need to resize the export without suffering from pixellation. Why do you think SVG does not work? 

[Alfred]

4 minutes ago, Al Grasso said:

But is pdf a vector export? I thought it was essentially raster export for images and allowed only text to be edited. I need to resize the export without suffering from pixellation. Why do you think SVG does not work? 

Any vector objects in the PP file should remain as vector in the PDF (as long as you haven’t applied any filter effects, which are always rendered as bitmap/raster). I’m afraid I’ve no idea exporting to SVG doesn’t work (again, as long as the objects in question are vector in the first place).

[MEB]

Hi Al Grasso,
Does the exported SVG open correctly in other apps or in a browser? If so it may be a bug in our importer. Can you attach the exported SVG here for us to take a look please? As Alfred said, exporting as PDF should also work.

[Al Grasso]

Hi Alfred,

I am having some success. I re-exported the asset as a SVG format by this time I ticked the button "Export Inline Raster Image". With this option enabled I was able to import it both into Affinity Designer and Publisher. In Designer I was able to remove the inline raster image, and now I am left with the bamboo picture frame which is what I was trying to export.

I am now in the process of checking whether this bamboo frame picture asset is truly a vector file that can be manipulated as a vector. My guess is it should but I have not had the time to test as your email arrived and I wanted to tell you about it.

I will add a comment a bit later after doing some tests.

[Al Grasso]

Yes it seems that the export works and I was able to import it as a .svg into other documents as well as the browser Safari. Some file manipulation is required:

1- first export by including the "Export Inline Raster Image" even though I did not have a raster image added tot he painting frame asset. But I guess that may refer to the inner block of the frame which shows the two diagonal lines. I removed them after the export and re-saved the file again as a .svg.

2- Apply some tricks. To ensure that you just export the size of the frame and not any blank document you may open when you launch Affinity Designer, thus having to manage both the document and the asset transferred, I highlighted the frame then put it in the clipboard. Afterwards you can just create a new document from the menu using the: FILE > NEW FROM CLIPBOARD and you have a svg file comprising only the frame asset. Save this as you final .svg file and you are done.

I hope the Affinity Team will make available a rich database of Assets soon. They have got them in their database so why are they not making them available in the Affinity Suite? They seem to have fallen in love with all the Apple icon assets and neglecting those in the older programs which were most useful. Even if it is an Apple requirement to have all the Apple Icon added as assets, they could still make them available as add-ons downloadable from their website rather than the Apple Store. But perhaps I am being malicious and the issue is that they have not yet had time to integrate the other functions.

Another feature they should harry up and do is a favourite drop down menu for fonts. It is frustrating that you have to go through a long list of fonts, hundreds, in order to go back to the selections you are using in your document. I normally use a sans serif and a Japanese serif. One is at the top (Arial say) the other is at the bottom of the list.

Have a great day Alfred and thank you for your help.

 

[dutchshader]

19 minutes ago, Al Grasso said:

 

Another feature they should harry up and do is a favourite drop down menu for fonts. It is frustrating that you have to go through a long list of fonts, hundreds, in order to go back to the selections you are using in your document. I normally use a sans serif and a Japanese serif. One is at the top (Arial say) the other is at the bottom of the list.

 

 

something like this?

 

[R C-R]

48 minutes ago, Al Grasso said:

I hope the Affinity Team will make available a rich database of Assets soon. They have got them in their database so why are they not making them available in the Affinity Suite? They seem to have fallen in love with all the Apple icon assets and neglecting those in the older programs which were most useful. Even if it is an Apple requirement to have all the Apple Icon added as assets, they could still make them available as add-ons downloadable from their website rather than the Apple Store. But perhaps I am being malicious and the issue is that they have not yet had time to integrate the other functions.

I am a bit puzzled by some of this. For one thing, Affinity Photo does not have an Assets panel, just Affinity Designer & now the Publisher beta, which is still being developed.

For another, the iOS assets are not available separately through the Mac App Store. IIRC, the iOS 11 UI Kit is a free download available from the Affinity Store but was never built into Affinity Designer. I'm not sure about the iOS 12 assets; they may be built into the latest Affinity Designer update, & I believe are included in the APub beta. There are also some assets available for download in the Resources forum & a few from other sources -- just search on "Affinity Assets" in your browser to get an idea of what is available.

I am not sure what you mean about a rich set of assets in a Serif(?) database somewhere, but it is easy to create your own assets from scratch or from any vector or even raster bitmap items you can open in Affinity Designer or Affinity Publisher.

[Al Grasso]

Alfred,

A picture is worth a thousand words. But the blindness of some fools cannot be forgiven. Thank you for making this fool aware of a feature that was already available but my blindness could not see!

[MEB]

9 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I am a bit puzzled by some of this. For one thing, Affinity Photo does not have an Assets panel, just Affinity Designer & now the Publisher beta, which is still being developed.

For another, the iOS assets are not available separately through the Mac App Store. IIRC, the iOS 11 UI Kit is a free download available from the Affinity Store but was never built into Affinity Designer. I'm not sure about the iOS 12 assets; they may be built into the latest Affinity Designer update, & I believe are included in the APub beta. There are also some assets available for download in the Resources forum & a few from other sources -- just search on "Affinity Assets" in your browser to get an idea of what is available.

I am not sure what you mean about a rich set of assets in a Serif(?) database somewhere, but it is easy to create your own assets from scratch or from any vector or even raster bitmap items you can open in Affinity Designer or Affinity Publisher.

The Plus line of apps included several content (images, clipart, picture frames, backgrounds, layouts etc) that could be dragged from the Assets panel to the canvas to use in the projects. The Affinity line doesn't include that type of content. That's what Al Grasso is referring to.

[Al Grasso]

7 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I am a bit puzzled by some of this. For one thing, Affinity Photo does not have an Assets panel, just Affinity Designer & now the Publisher beta, which is still being developed.

For another, the iOS assets are not available separately through the Mac App Store. IIRC, the iOS 11 UI Kit is a free download available from the Affinity Store but was never built into Affinity Designer. I'm not sure about the iOS 12 assets; they may be built into the latest Affinity Designer update, & I believe are included in the APub beta. There are also some assets available for download in the Resources forum & a few from other sources -- just search on "Affinity Assets" in your browser to get an idea of what is available.

I am not sure what you mean about a rich set of assets in a Serif(?) database somewhere, but it is easy to create your own assets from scratch or from any vector or even raster bitmap items you can open in Affinity Designer or Affinity Publisher.

I am not aware that Affinity Designers comes with a set of Assets. I do not see an Asset tab anywhere. I've looked into the view Menu and Tools but I have not seen as asset tab or an options which enables me to make it visible. 

In Publisher there is an asset tab which contains the iOS12 assets and this is what I referred to in my earlier post. I was also not aware that there is a Resource site. This information should be more readily available; anyway if that is the case then the blame rests on me. And thanks for your inputs.

Regarding the assets in a Serif database: what I meant is the DrawPLus, and I think also PagePLus, used to contain a set of assets. Since I could not find them in Affinity Publisher or Designers I assumed that they were not embedded. Hence my statement: Serif already owns these assets saved somewhere in their databases or archives hence it would have been an easy task to port them to the Affinity Suite. Anyway, this comment is false if these assets are already available from the Resource site you mentioned. But I was not aware that there was such a Resource site.

Now it is clear except I have not found the Asset Tab in Designer yet.

Thank you for your inputs.

[MEB]

Hi Al Grasso,
Designer and Publisher only include the iOS UI kit (by default) so you can build iOS apps with it. To access the Assets panel go to menu View ▸ Studio ▸ Assets. The Resources "site" R C-R is linking to is just the Resources section in these forums where you can find several types of content created and shared by Affinity users. There's no other graphic assets included/bundled in the Affinity applications. You can also get/download the Grade UI Kit offered in one of the pages in the horizontal slider in the Welcome dialog  (menu Help ▸ Welcome... in Designer) as an extra.

[Al Grasso]

10 minutes ago, MEB said:

The Plus line of apps included several content (images, clipart, picture frames, backgrounds, layouts etc) that could be dragged from the Assets panel to the canvas to use in the projects. The Affinity line doesn't include that type of content. That's what Al Grasso is referring to.

Quite correct MEB. You explained it very well and I am embarrassed for not doing the same myself. This is precisely what I was referring to. Thank for you input and clarification/

 

[Al Grasso]

4 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi Al Grasso,
It only includes the iOS UI kit (by default) so you can build iOS apps with it. To access the Assets panel go to menu View ▸ Studio ▸ Assets.

Found it now and looked at the list:only iOS10 and Grade UI: Basic Elements. Not very attractive unless one is developing for iOS. However, I will go and look now at that Resource site.

Thanks again.

[Al Grasso]

34 minutes ago, MEB said:

The Plus line of apps included several content (images, clipart, picture frames, backgrounds, layouts etc) that could be dragged from the Assets panel to the canvas to use in the projects. The Affinity line doesn't include that type of content. That's what Al Grasso is referring to.

I would be grateful is you could tell me what format needs to be used to create an asset category and populate it with files. I tried to import a .svg file but it seems that this format is not acceptable as an import.

[R C-R]

29 minutes ago, MEB said:

The Plus line of apps included several content (images, clipart, picture frames, backgrounds, layouts etc) that could be dragged from the Assets panel to the canvas to use in the projects. The Affinity line doesn't include that type of content. That's what Al Grasso is referring to.

Thanks for the clarification. I assumed he meant something like that, but my point was that I thought it would be relatively easy for Windows users that own the Plus apps to export at least some of those things from those apps & import them into Affinity Designer and/or Affinity Publisher as assets. Am I wrong about that?

[MEB]

7 minutes ago, Al Grasso said:

I would be grateful is you could tell me what format needs to be used to create an asset category and populate it with files. I tried to import a .svg file but it seems that this format is not acceptable as an import.

Only Affinity can generate its assets files (in .afassets format). So you have to open/import the files you want to import as you do usually so the objects are displayed on canvas, create a new category in the Assets panel to add the objects you want (if you want) then with all object(s) selected click the small menu icon on the top right of the subcategory in the Assets panel and select Add from selection. On the Mac only the objects can also be dragged directly to the Assets panel from the canvas.

[R C-R]

5 minutes ago, Al Grasso said:

I would be grateful is you could tell me what format needs to be used to create an asset category and populate it with files.

It should be possible to add just about anything in an Affinity document to an asset category. Just select it & choose "Add From Selection" from the category's menu.

MEB beat me to it!

[MEB]

19 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Thanks for the clarification. I assumed he meant something like that, but my point was that I thought it would be relatively easy for Windows users that own the Plus apps to export at least some of those things from those apps & import them into Affinity Designer and/or Affinity Publisher as assets. Am I wrong about that?

They can imported but that's not the same as bundled assets which is what Al Grasso was talking about.

[EDIT] Actually the original question was about importing the assets (not bundled). My apologies.

[Al Grasso]

1 minute ago, MEB said:

Only Affinity can generate its assets files (in .afassets format). So you have to open the files you want to import as you do usually, create a new category in the Assets panel to add  the objects you want then drag them to the Assets panel from the canvas or with all object selected click the small menu icon on the top right of the subcategory and select Add from selection.

Understood thanks. I will give it a go. Finally, may be I was not altogether wrong when I said that I wished the Affinity Team had taken it as their onus to include the good stuff that was previously available in the Plus editions to the new Affinity editions. I will now go and look at DrawPlus and see if I can export those useful and multivariate assets and then import them into Affinity.

[MEB]

Yes, you're right sorry. I picked the thread from the middle and missed the thread title/first question you posted.

[Al Grasso]

7 minutes ago, Al Grasso said:

Understood thanks. I will give it a go. Finally, may be I was not altogether wrong when I said that I wished the Affinity Team had taken it as their onus to include the good stuff that was previously available in the Plus editions to the new Affinity editions. I will now go and look at DrawPlus and see if I can export those useful and multivariate assets and then import them into Affinity.

Uhm... I think I will give up. I can export the Asset Pack from PagePlus as a .ppack file. But I have no clue how I can then unpack this file to be able to then import the individual files in Affinity following your suggestion. 

Perhaps you could raise this issue with the Affinity Team and publish in due course a converted file available for importing into Affinity.

[MEB]

You have to place/drag the assets to a regular DrawPlus document first then export that document from DrawPlus to a format that Affinity Designer recognises, like PDF or SVG or a raster format (TIFF, PSD, PNG etc) for images. Then open/import the PDF, SVG whatever in Affinity Designer and add the assets form the document to the Assets panel as i described above. You can't use the .ppack file directly in Affinity.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, Al Grasso said:

Alfred,

A picture is worth a thousand words. But the blindness of some fools cannot be forgiven. Thank you for making this fool aware of a feature that was already available but my blindness could not see!

Don’t thank me, Al! It was @dutchshader who provided that screenshot.