Affinity Publisher is released!

[gordo]

After what seems to have been a long development and beta time Affinity Publisher is finally released.

They now offer the holy trinity of publishing apps. Their price point, functionality, and especially their customer service support should give Adobe cause to pause (IMHO Affinity Photo has already had an influence on Photoshop). In any case, given the response they've had from their customers I think you'll start seeing files created with these apps in a big way in the coming months.
More info here: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/

 

[Macmann]

Very cool Gordo-thanks for sharing.

 

[agmfan3]

I am going t look into it. Finally did the Adobe Cloud and not very happy with it. And support is a laugh, speak English to me or get someone who can!

 

[gordo]

I am going t look into it. Finally did the Adobe Cloud and not very happy with it. And support is a laugh, speak English to me or get someone who can!

You found someone you could speak to?!? LOL

 

[wonderings]

I am not as positive about Publisher. I tried the beta and it was ok, had some serious issues handling certain PDF's that Indesign handled with no problems, I will reserve judgement though to try with the full version and hope it was sorted. Also not having any variable data handling functionality and from what Affinity staff said on the forum it was not something they were planning on implementing. I think it will take a long while before anyone can really match Indesign and the years of experience they have. I do crave competition for Adobe though, I hate the subscription plan and the fact that no matter how long you have been paying for Adobe CC, the day you stop paying you have ZERO applications left, not older versions, nothing. This really keeps a gun to your head once you have been used CC for a few years and have files dependent on Adobe.

Also.... HATE the name. Did they not talk to anyone in prepress who might express a hatred for files that come from Microsoft Publisher???

 

[gordo]

Also not having any variable data handling functionality and from what Affinity staff said on the forum it was not something they were planning on implementing.

Not everyone requires variable data handling. I would speculate that the majority of graphic folks don't need it so that lack isn't a showstopper for most.

The price point is pretty amazing for the functionality.
Subscribing to just PhotoShop and InDesign is $31 USD a month. So, for just those two apps it's $372 USD for 1 year
Buying Affinity Photo and Publisher is a total cost of $82 USD. So, in 1 year you would save $290 USD vs subscribing to Adobe. Pretty simple economics.

Time will tell.

 

[DYP]

I testing Affinity Publisher some today. One thing that impressed was for photo printing. Cropping photos that are 16bit RGB and then being able to create print ready 16bit PDF files. That is something that Indesign or Quark can not do.

 

[Schnitzel]

Does it have support for right-to-left languages (Hebrew, Arabic etc.)? Can't find a trial version to find out myself.

 

[Macmann]

What's Quark? ;-)

 

[wonderings]

Not everyone requires variable data handling. I would speculate that the majority of graphic folks don't need it so that lack isn't a showstopper for most.

The price point is pretty amazing for the functionality.
Subscribing to just PhotoShop and InDesign is $31 USD a month. So, for just those two apps it's $372 USD for 1 year
Buying Affinity Photo and Publisher is a total cost of $82 USD. So, in 1 year you would save $290 USD vs subscribing to Adobe. Pretty simple economics.

Time will tell.

No, but many people do and I would say it is a pro feature that should be there if they really want to try and compete against Indesign.

I tried importing a PDF that I had issues with on the beta and still has issues. It does not seem to want to just import the PDF but wants to make it editable and thus messes up fonts and other things. They are not using Adobe PDF print engines or whatever you call it because that would bring the price of the app up. The PDF's I have trouble with are PDF's made in Microsoft Word. Tried a few PDF's that were properly made in an Adobe app and they seem to be fine. Though usually if the PDF is made fine I do not need to bring it into Indesign, only the troubled files do I muck about with to tweak and fix and Publisher makes it scary not knowing what it is going to do to the file.

You can't argue the price, I just do not see it is a real replacement for Indesign at the moment.

 

[prepressdork]

As wonderings mentioned, I am happy to see competition and while I am sure that the app will continue to season as time goes on, having tested the beta I too have concerns with PDF output where transparency is concerned. The price point is certainly attractive but the app is currently just not there for me. Hopefully my customers (at least for now) won't switch to it.

pd

 

[Joe]

That rustling sound you hear is the Adobe lawyers preparing their buyout offer of Affinity to buy and kill off the product line.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

That rustling sound you hear is the Adobe lawyers preparing their buyout offer of Affinity to buy and kill off the product line.

Valid concern.

 

[wonderings]

Was just trying something in Publisher, took me a bit to figure it out, definitely a learning curve when coming from Indesign use after so many years.

Does Publisher not have a separations view? Tried searching for it and nothing came up. This is another big key item missing. Could probably get away with it if it had some sort of preflight, but again that seems to be missing as well.

 

[wonderings]

An update to my concern regarding Publisher PDF handling. I received a file from a regular client. File was made properly in Indesign and exported as a PDF with crops and bleeds for us to print. Wanting to see how it looks if I dropped it in Publisher gives me horrific results. Not sure how anyone could use Publisher if it handles PDF files so poorly.

Screen Shot 2019-06-21 at 11.48.05 AM by B P, on Flickr

 

[gordo]

An update to my concern regarding Publisher PDF handling. I received a file from a regular client. File was made properly in Indesign and exported as a PDF with crops and bleeds for us to print. Wanting to see how it looks if I dropped it in Publisher gives me horrific results. Not sure how anyone could use Publisher if it handles PDF files so poorly.

Screen Shot 2019-06-21 at 11.48.05 AM by B P, on Flickr

I haven't experienced that problem opening InDesign created PDFs using Publisher.

 

[gordo]

Was just trying something in Publisher, took me a bit to figure it out, definitely a learning curve when coming from Indesign use after so many years.

Does Publisher not have a separations view? Tried searching for it and nothing came up. This is another big key item missing. Could probably get away with it if it had some sort of preflight, but again that seems to be missing as well.

1. You're comparing an app that was released 2 days ago to one that's been on the market for some 25 years.
2. Do the vast majority of creatives care about viewing separations? I doubt it.
3. Do the vast majority of creatives care about preflighting their files? I doubt it.

And don't get me started on the historic stupidity of preflighting files.

 

[wonderings]

1. You're comparing an app that was released 2 days ago to one that's been on the market for some 25 years.
2. Do the vast majority of creatives care about viewing separations? I doubt it.
3. Do the vast majority of creatives care about preflighting their files? I doubt it.

And don't get me started on the historic stupidity of preflighting files.

I am sure there are plenty of people in prepress in small shops using simple tools to check things like separations and preflighting.

The issue was there from the beta and mentioned and replied to by the team at Affinity with no answer or solution and that was more then a few months ago. Publisher makes all PDF's editable which causes the problem. At the very least there should be an option when placing a PDF to not have it editable. Again this was mentioned to them and replied by Affinity staff in the earlier days of beta testing.

I had not experienced this issue with PDF's made from Indesign before either, it always seemed to come from PDF's made with office software. This is the first time I have seen it with a file made from Indesign.

 

[prepressdork]

1. You're comparing an app that was released 2 days ago to one that's been on the market for some 25 years.
2. Do the vast majority of creatives care about viewing separations? I doubt it.
3. Do the vast majority of creatives care about preflighting their files? I doubt it.

And don't get me started on the historic stupidity of preflighting files.

I rely heavily on InDesign's live preflight function to pinpoint issues. I'm sure that in time, Affinity will implement some of the more prepress-centric features into Publisher.

pd

 

[Joe]

An update to my concern regarding Publisher PDF handling. I received a file from a regular client. File was made properly in Indesign and exported as a PDF with crops and bleeds for us to print. Wanting to see how it looks if I dropped it in Publisher gives me horrific results. Not sure how anyone could use Publisher if it handles PDF files so poorly.

Screen Shot 2019-06-21 at 11.48.05 AM by B P, on Flickr

Ran across this in my testing also. Publisher does not recognize or use fonts that are embedded in a PDF. You have to have every font that is embedded in a PDF open on the computer you are using to be able to safely place a PDF into Publisher. Affinity suggests either rasterizing the entire PDF or to outline all fonts before placing it into Publisher. They also have no time frame on when or if this will ever be fixed. This is a complete deal breaker for a page layout application.