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Affinity Publisher public beta

Awesome!! Can’t wait to give it a go. I am a heavy user of InDesign (and long time Quark user from back in the day) so I am excited to see how Publisher stacks up!
 
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If you're a professional who uses InDesign all day, you're going to be sorely disappointed in Publisher. It's got a lot of really nice little features, (like being able to adjust the width of column guides individually) but overall it's more of a "Apple Pages Killer" than an "InDesign Killer."

Way too many clicks/mousing to do simple things; such as what you have to go through to simply make a text frame background a color.

I Spent 20 minutes or so trying to find a way to adjust the inset of a text frame and never did find a way.

Speaking of text... hitting the T key actually activates the art text tool, not the text frame tool. You have to hit the T key twice to draw out a text frame.

Deselecting a text frame requires you to click outside the text frame before you can switch tools instead of just command clicking it like you can in InDesign.

Like I said, there are a ton of cool little features in it, but for those who use InDesign day-in and day-out, it just isn't there yet. It's missing a LOT of important/powerful features, too.

Of course, it's a beta for a 1.0 release. InDesign wasn't perfect at 1.0 either... but it was miles further along than Affinity Publisher is. I'm really looking forward to seeing how quickly they can implement features.
 
After a couple of days of playing with Publisher, I have to say I'm surprised at how good it is for a first beta release. Affinity Photo wasn't anywhere near this clean. This will take my Adobe needs down to Photoshop only.
 
MacGizmo said:
If you're a professional who uses InDesign all day, you're going to be sorely disappointed in Publisher. It's got a lot of really nice little features, (like being able to adjust the width of column guides individually) but overall it's more of a "Apple Pages Killer" than an "InDesign Killer."...
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I am not the heavy professional, although I am quite pleased with this V1 Beta. I definitely do NOT like to swap programs, I am used to use, looking at the workflow I know. But sometimes you simply have to go that way. Discovering another way for the things you have/want to do - maybe even discovering new possibilities.

Ok, for your daily work this a bit difficult, but I am actually really looking for alternatives for the Adobe Suite - it is a step by step approach.

And I really do like the alternatives, Serif is offering :)
...I am not there yet as well, but we are in the first Beta Version, so: Feedback might help.
 
axantas said:
Ok, for your daily work this a bit difficult, but I am actually really looking for alternatives for the Adobe Suite - it is a step by step approach.
Click to expand...

Understatement of the year. EVERYONE is looking for Adobe alternatives. And Serif's Affinity apps are IT. There really are no other alternatives out there for pro use.

I think AP will get much better than the beta shows today... but it's going to take years of iteration to get there.
 
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I have to say, this application is amazing. I've been using InDesign and Illustrator for more than a decade, and I am sick of Adobe's poop. They are slow to adopt new tech (migration from PPC to x86, then from 32 bit to 64) and then the new pricing which is just unreasonable!

I picked up the beta and was able to get a short book out to print within a couple of days. I found Affinity Publisher to be well laid out, fast, and a general pleasure to use! So thanks Affinity team, and keep making great programs!
 
mryingster said:
I have to say, this application is amazing. I've been using InDesign and Illustrator for more than a decade, and I am sick of Adobe's poop. They are slow to adopt new tech (migration from PPC to x86, then from 32 bit to 64) and then the new pricing which is just unreasonable!
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Uh huh. So you're completely wrong about both of those things, they were actually one of the first major app makers to support both. So is it really just the pricing that bothers you? "Unreasonable" is a matter of opinion. I don't like the pricing, but it's not unreasonable if you use the apps to make a living. I pay for the yearly subscription in less than a day's-worth of billing.

As far as Affinity Publisher, I love where Serif is taking the app, but it's got a long, long, long way to go before it can even be considered for anything more than pet project use by pros.
 
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MacGizmo said:
Uh huh. So you're completely wrong about both of those things, they were actually one of the first major app makers to support both. So is it really just the pricing that bothers you? "Unreasonable" is a matter of opinion. I don't like the pricing, but it's not unreasonable if you use the apps to make a living. I pay for the yearly subscription in less than a day's-worth of billing.
Click to expand...

Adobe CS3 was the first release that was universal in 2007. This was 1 year after Apple started the transition to Intel. As far as 64 bit, this didn't happen for a long time for the Mac version of applications. I believe CS5. I bought CS5 in 2011. That was 4 years after Apple adopted 64 bit machines.

That's not exceptionally fast, but it's also understandable for software as large and as complicated.

For pricing, CC makes sense for people who make their bread and butter with it. I used to work full-time in that line of work. I would have justified it. Now I only part time, and as such, I feel it's too expensive for the level at which I use it. I don't feel like there is a good way to use their software as a part time user or hobbyist.
 
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