Affinity V2 is out! (Including Publisher for iPad!)

craft

#1

Greetings, fellow lumpy heads and aspiring self publishers! For those familiar with the Affinity suite of products, they just dropped V2 for sale with a lot of upgrades. Currently $100 (even for pre-existing users), it is a single purchase which allows you to use all 3 apps across all MacOS (including iPads) and windows devices, as many as you own. And yes, this means Publisher for iPad is finally out! There is currently an option to try it for 30 days.

Affinity V2

I plan on trying it out and giving a better yea/nay recommendation later, but I encourage you to get the trial version to see if it works for you.


#2

Just purchased. I know I’m a user of Publisher, already used it on Windows. Now I just switched full-time to Mac, and I have an iPad Pro, this deal was too good to be true.


#3

I snagged Publisher from this deal! I’m considering picking up designer as well, I may try out the trial on it first, it would be good to be able to do vector work at some point.


#4

Yeah, it was something I’ve been waiting for since they claimed Publisher for iPad was to be released in 2020. I already had pub for windows and photo and designer for iPad and was looking to spend ~$50 for those apps on windows when this dropped. It was an easy decision at that point.

@rpgerminator, I had been working on a project inPublisher before getting this. I have some serious editing work to do since there were some issues importing a V1 file to the iPad version, but after I sinc my fonts it should be easy. I’m also really looking forward to doing vector and raster work in the document itself!

Samples of what it looked like after import:


#5

If you got the universal license, Designer and Photo are included! :smiley:


#6

What you have going on there is looking fantastic! This is going to seriously open up some options for me for creating content! I just purchased publisher for $40 so I don’t think the other two are included. I use Photoshop so I went back and forth with spending the extra cash for the whole kit knowing that I would likely not use photo and designer only rarely.


#7

Today is the last day of the sale, and I just purchased the $99.99 Universal License with the last of my Christmas/birthday money, largely based on the fact that Kane uses it. I have access to Adobe Creative Suite via work, but I don’t own a personal license, and ever since Adobe moved to a subscription-only model, I’ve been increasing uncomfortable with the idea that I might no longer be able to afford to access my own work.

I’ve used Scribus for years, and still use it for some simple layouts, but it frankly isn’t good enough to be relied on for professional quality work. I didn’t even know that Affinity existed until I saw it in Kane’s videos, and deciphered the company just from the blurry Affinity Photo logo from a screen capture, but it looks to be the credible alternative to Adobe and Quark that the design sector has needed for decades.


#8

I officially left Adobe Photoshop last week after acquiring all three of Affinity’s products. I was a bit nervous about making the move because I have been using PS for a number of years now but after some initial fiddling I am quite impressed! So far Affinity Photo has been smoother and more streamlined in several aspects and I feel with a little familiarization it is going to be much better than PS for me. The fact that you can seamlessly move between the programs makes it super versatile and useful! I am very happy that I made the switch.


#9

There are some quirks to the interface of Affinity Publisher V2 that make me think this is not really a tool that can completely replace Adobe InDesign, at least, not yet. For one thing, the most egregious missing feature I’ve come across is a lack of a competent “Step and Repeat” function, but the precision does seem to be there sufficient for professional pre-press work, as far as I can tell.

I have so far found there customer support forums less than optimally helpful, as they seem to be populated mainly by fanboys who don’t actually do professional publishing work and take any criticism of their idol very poorly. Or maybe it’s just that they are a European company, I don’t know.

Step and Repeat is a feature that has been a standard part of design software for over 30 years. I know this, because my experience with professional page layout software goes back to 1991, when I began working for a digital printing service bureau. I was one of the team that produced d8 Magazine in the mid-1990s. When I raised this issue in the support forums, I got dogpiled by men who don’t seem to understand the concept of Step and Repeat, who demanded visual documentation of my workflow so they could judge whether or not I was “doing it right”. This is not really something that I think needs to be explained to anyone who has worked with the industry standard software applications for even a short period of time.

One of the things I do is produce personal organizer products, for personal organizers such as the Filofax system. Step and Repeat is pretty crucial to my workflow, to the point where re-creating my designs, which for the past 15 years have been produced in Adobe InDesign, in Affinity Publisher V2 is far more tedious and time-consuming than it really ought to be, simply because this one feature is inexplicably absent.

There are also some pretty severe user interface problems with the iPadOS version, to the point where I don’t really find it particularly useful for serious work, but I hope the app improves with time to the point where I can more confidently travel with just an iPad, in the event that I need to produce some documents on the road, without having to schlep the MacBook Pro all over Hell and Creation. It’s possible an Apple Pencil would help mitigate some of these issues, but I’m not about to spend $100 on a tool that I really shouldn’t need only to find out it’s only marginally better than using a Bluetooth mouse.

Overall, I think the Affinity suite is a good addition to the marketplace, and I am looking forward to seeing how responsive the developers are in the future to professional users who are looking for an alternative to Adobe’s usury.


#10

You are probably looking for POWER DUPLICATE.

https://affinity.help/photo/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pages/LayerOperations/duplicate.html?title=Duplicating


#11

No, I am most definitely not looking for Power Duplicate. I am already aware of Power Duplicate and Quick Grid. They do not do what Step and Repeat does.


#12

In both InDesign and many other graphics programs, I can select any object, or even a group of objects, select “Step and Repeat”, input a precise offset and a number of repeats, and it instantly creates the array.

Power Duplicate in the Affinity Suite does NOT do this without hitting “Duplicate” 38 times, if I want 38 copies. And Quick Grid only works on Shapes, not on Lines, besides which, you cannot specify a precise coordinate offset.

As I said before, I make personal organizer products. A lot of these are made of sheets of paper with various configurations of rulings. I may need to create, for instance, 39 rules on a 171 mm tall page, or even more for page sizes up to ISO B5 (176 x 250 mm) in both horizontal and vertical directions, often in multiple groups with different spacings. There could be over 100 individual rulings on a single page. Creating these using Power Duplicate is very tedious and time consuming, and wears out both my finger and my mouse button.

I have been doing professional graphic design for over 30 years. I’m pretty sure I know what tools I need and what tools have been commonly available in the industry standard software.


#13

My guy, a word of advice:

When someone is trying to help you, don’t be a complete asshole to them if there is a misunderstanding.

“I’m pretty sure I know what tools I need and what tools have been commonly available in the industry standard software.” reeks of arrogance. But don’t worry – I assure you, I won’t go out of my way to log in and try to help you in the future.

AC


#14

With “help” like this, who needs enemies? Thanks for the mansplaining, man.


#15

By the way, the definition of “arrogance” requires the supposedly arrogant person to not have any actual knowledge of the subject upon which they are opining. Just a little thing to keep in mind, the next time you want to mansplain something to a woman with over 3 decades of professional experience in the subject matter at hand.


#16

First, arrogance doesn’t preclude experience. Second, dont worry, I suspect you wont receive much help if thats you treat folks. Finally, you have no idea what my gender is, lmfao. Get the fuck out of here with that nonsense. Blocked.


#17

You are hilarious! At no point in this thread did I ask for help, least of all your help, yet here you are pretending to act as if you are somehow an aggrieved party in this discussion, because your unwanted, unasked for suggestion to an expert user was pointed out as being incorrect and unhelpful. An expert user telling you you are wrong is not “arrogance”, it’s simply superior knowledge. Your difficult coping with that is your problem, not mine, sir.

Believe you me, I am not perturbed in the slightest by your petulant whinging and refusal of future help that wasn’t solicited in the first place. Begone with you, already.

And yes, your gender is patently obvious, man.


#18

You know y’all are fighting over a command (or lack thereof) in a software program, right? I’m just checking, because sharp elbows over something a bit inconsequential in the grand scheme isn’t how we normally relate to one another here on the shieldwall. We are many shields, but we are ONE WALL.

If either of you is still feeling cross, please channel that energy into apologizing to my friend @GmGrizzly for hijacking his helpful thread.