5 Ways Affinity Publisher beats Adobe InDesign
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- čas přidán 4. 08. 2024
- Intro to Affinity Publisher Course: skl.sh/2L91Y07
Affinity Publisher is slated as an alternative to Adobe InDesign, but its not just a passable alternative, in some ways it is actually much better than InDesign.
Music: Rumble by Bensound
Note: For InDesign 2020 Adobe suddenly decided that they would add SVG support... hmmm interesting timing on that
The reason adobe hate SVG bcus people can edit it with Inkscape
@@syarifairlangga4608 true, Inkscape and other programs. Adobe likes to keep you in their little bubble
You can edit SVG on any vector based software and its a much more robust file format.
Sucks for them, cause I’m still going for Affinity.
Very good points. I have been working in design since before computers and the affinity stuff is replacing my adobe stuff pretty quickly. I work faster and while i miss a couple, really only a couple, features - that isn't enough to ever make me switch back to photoshop or illustrator for anything. Studio link is so much more useful than i imagined. I do high end work for museums, pbs shows etc. Some people might have specific needs affinity doesn't cover yet (publisher needs another year to get more up to speed for example) but to say they are not professional is simply not true. I actually enjoy my professional work much more now.
Awesome, I really think different professionals just have different needs and different wants and different budgets, but they are still professionals.
Affinity is on sale right now upto April due to the covid crisis.
A 50% discount !!!
yep, I actually did a video about that on Saturday! It's a nice thing for them to do right now
Yeap I'm buying Designer and Photo! Trying to get my GDesigner juices flowing again.
@@Mr.BMC2763 Awesome!
Just bought it! Thanks
I was eyeing Affinity's products for a while and noticed the sudden discount last week! I bought all 3 of their softwares and saved $75!
Ben, I´m a graphic design student and professional illustrator from Brasil. I finally found a true replecement for the adobe circle because the toxic and hard way to do things easier. Since I saw the affinity apps and how intuitive and straight to the point Affinity does, I fully using it on my daily basis and trying to implement at least one of them at the company I work. because everyone turned into Adobe Zombies for so long.
Nice
Everything you mention is the way I felt! Especially color management. In Publisher, it is a summer breeze!
Awesome!
I bought bought the Affinity suite a year ago - one of the best software decisions Ive made - not looked back since.
Awesome, glad it's working well for you
Ben, ... New guy here to your videos. Great stuff! Seriously. I love how quick you are at blowing through these things instead of dragging it out. Keep it up! I just canceled my Adobe subscription, just got two pricey for as little as I used it. Looking for alternatives, and you really got me leaning towards the Affinity stuff. Definitely going to download the trials. And, finally I also subscribed. So thanks!
Awesome, glad I could help out. Remember if you need help learning the Affinity Programs I have lots of courses for them linked in the descriptions of my videos.
Being a bound user (and $,000's poorer) since versions 1 of the unholy adobe trinity, Affinity is truly a breath of fresh air. I have bought the entire Affinity suite and am retraining myself for the coming DTP renaissance. Excellent vid. Interestingly, in the olden days adobe used to buy up potential threats, then kill them off, I pray this wont happen with Affinity.
I'm glad its going well for you. I do have some courses on Affinity Publisher if you are still learning. Affinity is owned by a larger company (Serif) so I doubt Adobe will be buying them up and killing them off.
Adobe cloud client installer is so invasive, slows performance & spies on your files. Horrible.
yeah, its annoying
I cannot stand that you have to be online periodically to even use it.
Is there GREP Styles feature (from InDesign) in the Publisher?
I don't believe so, not that I have seen at least
@@bendesignsmedia is there way to do the same thing in another way in Publisher?
@@Melourgos I did a little hunting around and could not find anything that seemed to duplicate GREP styles functionality, looks like manually applying styles is the only way to go so far
@@bendesignsmedia oh, thank you. But, are there paragraph settings in Publisher that you can set for example which characters will be shown always in another colour?
What about the other way around, if you have old indesign files that you can no longer open but need to open them in Affinity. Is there a way to do that? I have used indesign for around 8 years and I have a lot of files. I cant now afford indesign and am looking for alternatives
You can open IDML files, but not INDD files, so if you saved or can save them in the IDML format you will be able to open them (some features may be lost in the transition though)
Does Afinity Publisher offer ongoing updates or do we have to pay for updates or upgrades.
Updates within versions are free, like the recent 1.8 update. Updates between versions we expect will be new purchases (like when we someday go to 2.0) but since it hasn't happened yet we don't know exactly.
Footnotes? Endnotes?
is there a integration for grep or scripts, otherwise i would be no option for me
I do not believe so, looks like this is not the DPA you are looking for... at least not yet
Hi can you show how to output PDF with video so video plays in PDF
Hi gum tree, that's not something I have done before, I'm not sure if Affinity Publisher has that feature
Hi. Good arguments! Might check out Affinity :-)
Questions to your SVG Workflow:
A: Why not just import the svg file? works just fine with me ... (CC 04/2020)
Questions toward the Video it-self:
A: Why is your volume changing throughout your recordings?
B: Why do you show your text-blend-ins from bottom up against traditioninal reading direction?
Makes it harder to start reading what you are displaying.
Alright ... svg was added lately. my bad :-D
Hi, thanks for commenting! Adobe actually added SVG support in the 2020 update, which I think was a response to Affinity Publisher because they could have added it in anytime in the last several years and have not.
The mics were having trouble the day I recorded this in a school studio, so the audio has some issues.
Yeah, I probably should have gone top down :) thanks for the feedback
Great points! Unfortunately, Affinity Publisher doesn't have a footnotes and endnotes feature or export to tagged PDF. I do mostly large, complex publications and accessibility work, so I cannot switch. 😕
Yes, this is what I have heard from a lot of people in the publishing and printing industry
After trying Affinity Publisher I cannot see why anyone would choose Indesign, unless your workplace requires it and pays for it. So far I find AP to be powerful, easy to learn, enjoyable to use, elegant and stable. Even if were not for the enormous price difference I would still choose AP to avoid the many miseries of dealing with Adobe's subscription system.
Hi Levi, thanks for commenting, I am with you on that, but I have heard from a number of people in the comments of my videos working in the printing and publishing industries that say they would like to use AP but the features they need are not there yet, so I guess it depends on your work and workflow.
I did the move to the Serif's suite some years back but
I have to admit that I miss ID's tool tabs… but only that.
yeah, once you are used to something there will always be some things that you miss.
@@bendesignsmedia
Naaaah… Since I moved to Capture One before that, I never looked
back to Lr. My work goes around CO and the Serif's suite. there is
really only ID's tool tab clarity I miss… none of the rest.
Good review. I just got Publisher and like it much better than InDesign. Thanks for the video.
No problem, thanks for watching!
I think you missed something important in this comparison. InDesign is made for publishing and unfortunately Publisher still can't compete on that field. Missing footnotes, ePub export and ebook preparation in general make Publisher just interesting InDesign future competitor. Even InDesign's color management (although it is something different than just picking color for me) is made to make publishing faster and safer. So, Publisher can't beat my old InDesign CS6.
I didn't miss those things, they weren't the focus of this video. The point of this video was to show 5 things that Publisher does better than InDesign, not to be a full feature comparison of both programs. Different people will have different needs and different programs will support those needs. Unfortunately a lot of people hanging out on CS6 are soon going to have to make a choice about whether to switch to CC or not as support for old operating systems is gradually going away and with that support for older programs.
@@bendesignsmedia Yup. I've been one of those. I haven't felt acutely some of the pain points in ID that you highlighted in the video, but CS6 is going to have to live in a virtual machine soon because of all the other apps that won't update on my Mac until I upgrade the OS. I'm migrating to Publisher 1.8.1 for my everyday work and I'm really liking it.
@@mattmccaffrey3959 Awesome, I hope the transition goes well for you. Be sure to check out my latest video on opening IDML documents in 1.8
100% agree. Affinity Publisher needs open source ePub format export, with sound, animation, video, fixed and flowing formats. This is a huge oversight by Serif. They must think that printed DTP has a future. Sadly, as soon as Barnes and Noble folds in USA, printed media will take its' last breath.
I’m making my first origami book and I have to choose InDesign because Affinity Publisher can’t export ePub3 yet and it doesn’t link pdf and their own native affinity files
Yeah, sometimes we have to go with a specific program because it has a specific feature we need
I agree. I have been pushing Serif on their forums to support the open source digital publishing ePub format. It has the ability for fixed or flowing formats. As well as animations, video, sound. I recommend the free "Pages" app on Mac platform for export of ePub fixed or flowing, multimedia etc. (For Now). Fixed ePub is a great format and an alternative to bloated Adobe Acrobat, PDF and Flash proprietary formats. The one issue I have with Serif is that they seem to be stuck in the dying DTP dark ages. An open source, cross platform ePub reader browser plugin for digital publishers using HTML5 instead of Flash is GOING to happen....
When does affinity publisher go on sale?
It available for purchase now!
today
I'm a huge fan of Affinity Photo and Designer. I wanted to love Affinity Publisher, but I don't. It handles light-weight jobs like brochures okay, but not good for book-length content, in my experience. And I go back to PageMaker and Quark, so I have experience. In my opinion, at this point, AF Publisher is a replacement for MS Publisher, but not Adobe InDesign.
I guess it all depends on what your workflow and needs are. I'm sure they are working to improve features, but I am glad they did not wait to release it until it had everything.
I must say that I do struggle with the colour aspect of AP. I don't fully understand the interface. Can anyone point me at a half decent tutorial please because I would like to do better than simply muddling through!
Hi Tim, can you explain what is giving you trouble in the color? Maybe I can do a tutorial on it
@@bendesignsmedia I think Ben it is about the colour (color) palettes and Global colour and swatches etc, etc, I just don't get it. Indesign is so much simpler. It seems not to do what you expect it to do so an in depth tutorial on how to use swatches and colour palettes for Indesign users would be great. Thanks!
@@timbigger1731 here is a video I did on colors about a year ago, I don't think it answers all your questions but might be a starting place. I will see if I can get something more in depth done, but it might take a while
czcams.com/video/XjW-h4Dr-Ns/video.html
Try making a calendar or diary/planner in Publisher. You’ll be there for days. InDesign just does it out the box. And ePub files. I came over from Quark. Yeah, Publisher is great, but InDesign is not being left on the shelf just yet...
I understand the ePub issue, I'm not sure I understand why a calendar is harder in Publisher, does InDesign have special calendar feature?
I'm graphist in a printshop and i just discover Affinity products a year ago. We all loved it and get used to it so much, that we now use Adobe only for some tasks Affinity cant do. 90% of the time we use Affinity. It is faster, snoother and a lot more fun than In-desing. The main issue of Affinity is that you need to install fonts to place PDF files. But i raster them as TIFF with Preview, so it is not so bad.
I am glad it is working well for you. Most of the issues I have heard with Publisher seem to come around printshop and publishing work, which is ironic. The names would make you think that Publisher was more for printmaking and InDesign was more for graphic design, but it turns out to be the opposite!
One of the best features in Affinity Publisher is the commitment to pushback for several years against exporting to HTML.
My personnal favorite "Affinity Publisher beats InDesign": smart masterpages
Awesome, thanks for sharing!
Excellent
Thanks
I tried Affinty P. Yesterday and after 4 Years with InDesign. It just crashed after 15min . I guess they need to stabilaze it. I would be reallly mad, if that happen after hours of work. Maybe i was just unlucky.
Interesting, I have never had Affinity Publisher crash except when under intense load attempting to turn a complex textured font into paths, in that case the workload was just too much for the computer I was using I think. On the other hand I have had InDesign crash many times (although not with nearly the frequency of Premiere king of crashes).
No Pantone support in Affinty.
Umm...yes there is: czcams.com/video/ApiaL5jPH_o/video.html
does not come close when it comes to footnotes and endnotes
This video was actually about ways Affinity Publisher is better than Adobe InDesign, not ways it is worse. But in regards to your comment you should remember that Affinity Publisher is a very young program and is having new features add as it goes along.
@@bendesignsmedia it is just odd though that its previous incarnation, namely, PagePlus had these features.
@@cyberlizardcouk I'm sure they are working on it, my understanding is that the affinity programs are completely new code base (something by the way that InDesign and other Adobe programs desperately need) so I don't think they could just port features from PagePlus
For the price of 25$ you cant really complain about Publisher. My first impression on it after using it for like a hour last week was it felt a lot smoother and seemed to performed better than Indesign (slightly). Havent tested it with bigger files to see how well it handles. It definitely looks like it can handle a lot of the same things Indesign can.
.
Been using Indesign for 10+ years and I always found Indesign to have the best color management and interface between AI, and PS. AI and PS has too much stuff floating around that I will never use. PS having the worst interface.
Yeah the price right now is too good not to buy
I agree on the price point, but I completely disagree on the UI design. I find it horrible, some tools (eyedropper) work horribly unintuitively, it is also much easier to apply colors within a text frame in InD. I haven't worked with long documents and styles just yet, but I bet there is a whole world of differences.
Another thing is how mousing modifiers work: scaling, zooming, etc. But here I just need to work more to adjust my muscle memory to new habits.
Adobe The Hutt has become a big bloated 800 lb gorilla. I will never pay subscriptions to any software company, EVER! I even dropped Sketchup 3D when they went subscription based after 10 years of use.
I would like to add that Affinity has the ability control the, annoying, intrusive, tooltip, popup in your face, helpers that everyone seems to be using nowadays. These liitle "flies" are freekin everywhere. What an annoyance for pro designers! This should tell you that Serif gets it!
Even the simple slick purchase and install process, before even using the product, will tell you Serif, gets it!
Dude you’re the truth!
Thank you!
One miss for Affinity Publisher is the PERL-based scripting. It seems to be powerful, but the documentation is inadequate. I got two of the books that's supposed to make up for that lack. No so. They're for people who already understand scripting. I don't. I lay out books. I don't write code. I've got about a dozen InDesign scripts that are absolutely necessary for my work. I don't know how to write the Publisher equivalents.
Yeah me either. In some ways it feels like Publisher so far has been built for designers and not for actual publishers and printers.
Affinity please add scripting to Publisher.
The most ugly and disturbing feature in ID is font management. I admire it every day what’s motives has governed the creators to cobble so primitive menus with zero usability and of no convenience. Has AP better font selection tool inbuilt? Thanks for eminently clear terse and spirited review
Hi Kostetskiy, I'm not sure I have been super bothered by ID's font management, so I might not be the one to speak to this. For the most part AP feels very similar to me, but of course it is missing access to Adobe fonts, so you don't get access to anything except fonts you have installed on your machine. I don't use a ton of different fonts in each document though so I might not be aware of the issues you are facing.
For everyone making an argument for Affinity, I think its generally fair. For decades we have been using Adobe with almost no one to compare it to. So when a company decides to sell a competing software for the price of a one month subscription to Adobe All Apps, its easy to get excited and think Adobe has been cheating us this whole time. One can further reinforce their argument by stating all the flaws that Adobe has had over the years, and I am aware of them, heck I have and still am experiencing them all the time. One can say Adobe don’t care or they priorities new features over stability and that will be a fair argument too.
But I think many of the persons making an argument for Affinity ignores the value that Adobe provides within its subscription model. And that’s where the difference is. Affinity is a one time purchase for a reason. They give you just the software and updates to that. But Adobe offers services along with its software and these services add value to that subscription. One of my favourite being access to its full library of fonts, something that has been invaluable to me over the years. Also the $53 you pay every month includes its entire library of over 20 apps.
Don’t get me wrong though, Affinity has been doing excellent work over the years and competition in the space is good because it benefits all of us. But for someone who has depended on Adobe apps beyond PS, AI and ID, its hard to find another company that provides all the applications and included services in a single bundle. It will not work for everyone and that’s true but I think most people on CZcams does an injustice to Adobe by pointing only its flaws but refuse to make an argument for its value.
The issue is that Adobe offers very few options, there are a lot of people that never make use of the cloud services which are really the point of paying the subscription fees, so they aren't getting on going value and would like to just own the software rather than renting it. If you have watched my first video on Adobe and Affinity I talked about the features you are mentioning which make it worth it for some people to stay with Adobe.
Adobe's is about market control and profit maximization. I would not use it again even at a reasonable price because of the invasiveness of the glitchy cloud software.
too true
Affinity publisher isn't great with russian and kazakh fonts yet. 😔
yeah, language support has been a major issue in some regions :(
Affinity: NO SUBSCRIPTION!!! YEAH!!!
Yeah!
As soon as Affinity became a real threat to Abode they'll just buy them. So, enjoy while it last.
Seems unlikely given that Serif has been building Adobe competitors for a long time. However I don't know what would be considered a "real threat" as Adobe would have to lose an enormous amount of market share before they are likely to become concerned.
"Whenever you open a new document you only got the straight hues of RGB and CMYK..." o_O
Dude... What the...? It's a _document designer_ What color model do you _think_ it's going to have? And no, you're not limited to "straight hues", you can produce any tint, tone, or shade you might need. It's just a question of whether you're going to design in the same color space as the printer that's going to print your work is using, or whether you're going to design for the screen and hope the colors come out alright in print.
This is going to sound a lot harsher than it is intended to be, but if you don't understand color management for print, why are you "teaching people InDesign"?
Thanks for watching and sharing your experience
@@bendesignsmedia Thanks for the review - Up until the color quote threw me for a loop, it was mostly quite useful, so, you know, quite useful on balance.
I'm not sure I can use AP for work, but I want to pick it up anyway, to support Serif - It's good to have such a solid alternative out there, and it was really nice of them to offer it at a discount during the pandemic.
Honestly... I really hate Studio Link (I think you are talking about personas). This is a very limiting tool. This is the main reason I still use InDesign.
I'm sorry but I don't understand, how is having more features limiting? StudioLink gives you access to the tools of designer and photo in publisher, but indesign has nothing like that. If you want to make vector or raster edits in indesign you have to open the file in illustrator or photoshop.
@@bendesignsmedia There is a problem with transferring files between projects.
Publisher. I have a big project with many photos. I can retouch photo with layers, but... First. All the time I see elements around my photo. Sometimes it useful, but sometimes not. I need to watch my photo separately. I can't.
Second. I need photo (with all layers made in Publisher-Photo Persona) in other project. I can't import it in very easy way like in InDesign (#D). I need to open one project, copy my photo, open second project and paste it.
Sometimes I need to open this photo directly in Photo, I can do it but without all layers I made in Publisher-Photo Persona. I can't export only one photo with layers to other people. I have access to first version of photo (without layers) form the Photo app. And this is only the one example.
@@saga-malak If you place an affinity photo document in your publisher document it becomes an embedded document. You can then open it separately to work on just that image by double clicking the layer. This is very similar to placing a psd in InDesign only more convenient in my opinion.
@@bendesignsmedia Yes, I can. But without additional layers created in Photo Persona...
@@saga-malak That's no different than what you are doing with InDesign and Photoshop, except that with adobe you have no option except to launch a completely different app to make any edits.
Sadly, printed DTP is a dying format. As soon as the last major, bricks and mortar, Barnes and Noble, closes its' doors, the printed DTP industry COULD take its' last breath. If Serif realizes this and includes the great open source ePub digital publishing format for export, which includes, fixed and flowing, anim, video, sound, then Affinity Publisher has a chance. Otherwise, I doubt if they will cover their costs. They could easily do what Mac "Pages" app does with ePub export, but be more open and work on Windows/Mac platforms. BTW Serif is a great company!
To boring - Sorry!!! Show something instead of the black background....
There are plenty of other videos you can watch on CZcams for entertainment value