Used the beta for production level projects

[cgrantmccool]

Just curious if anyone else was also going against recommendation and doing full projects with the Affinity Publisher beta   I believe I've done an annual report booklet, an illustrated children's book, a poster for the state Parks & Rec department, and a run of 1500 wall calendars for a group. I'm still waiting on the annual report to get back in but all of the other projects were done entirely with Affinity software and the final print press files in Publisher beta. 

Frankly, I've been surprised at how long Publisher stayed in beta, especially with every other software developers generally releasing software way too early and with too many bugs still. 

Thank you Serif Affnity and thank you dedicated users who have posted solutions to various design issues I've faced before I even knew I would face them! Every time I needed to find a fix to a problem, someone else had already posted a tutorial or workaround!

[transitdiagrams]

I have used it for some flyers, posters and now using it for a booklet.

So far no real problems - and if I encouter issues I notice them via the forum. For many issues I find work arounds (myself or somewhere online).

They have done a great job! Looking forward to any future versions and new features.

[dominik]

14 hours ago, cgrantmccool said:

Just curious if anyone else was also going against recommendation and doing full projects with the Affinity Publisher beta

Hi @cgrantmccool,

the thing is not that you can't already create something on production level quality. It's more about long term support and stability and workflow. It is possible to do 'one shot' publishings that most likely will not be used at a later time. I did successfully. But it would not be a good idea to start a project that may take several months to completion. There have been reported several cases here in the forum where users where stuck with a broken document.

d.

[Dee]

I've used it for three published projects now, with a fourth on the way. It has some limitations, and bugs, but nothing show-stopping yet.

[Michael117]

I did my wife's doctoral poster with Publisher, but I also did it in Scribus as a backup in case something went wrong with Publisher.  I didn't want to get to the date when she had to turn it in and tell her, uh, can't do it.  Everything worked very well. But I would never trust the app until you get the final production copy.

[qwz]

I have used it in early October for map/booklet.

In general i have almost no problems except missing/duplicate spot colours in imported vector graphics (from Affinity Designer) so i needed to manually clean-up resulting PDF in Illustrator before printing.

Also at this time Russian hypenations didn't work at all.

[cgrantmccool]

On 6/6/2019 at 12:34 AM, dominik said:

Hi @cgrantmccool,

the thing is not that you can't already create something on production level quality. It's more about long term support and stability and workflow. It is possible to do 'one shot' publishings that most likely will not be used at a later time. I did successfully. But it would not be a good idea to start a project that may take several months to completion. There have been reported several cases here in the forum where users where stuck with a broken document.

d.

Hmmm, I count myself as lucky, then. Two of the projects spanned two months and eight months respectively without major hick-ups and issues. I know it wasn't recommended, but I felt it was worth the risk with some extra saving and exports added to the workflow (daily drafts in multiple formats). The alternative was my bosses making me do these projects in Microsoft Publisher.
Actually, they did make me do a recent project in MS Publisher and I sent it to press knowing the proof would fail, then did a one-day one-off fixed file in AP.  Now Affinity Publisher is in the budget  

[dominik]

16 minutes ago, cgrantmccool said:

Hmmm, I count myself as lucky, then.

Brave and lucky. Congratulations 

As we are approaching the initial release of APub (tomorrow!) it is good news to read reports of successful and reliable projects.

My impression is that we can expect a very solid base of features (including a can of  worms/bugs next to it) and a very interesting future to look at. I am very impressed on how the team made efforts for last minute fixes.

d.

[Gilescooperuk]

Since the start of the year I have been using publisher to do a monthly club magazine, as the layout is simple and all the text held in remote documents  a crash wouldn’t affect me much