***** NEWSFLASH ***** Affinity Publisher Page Layout beta has been released

[Joe]

Get it here: (FOR FREE)

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/publisher/

[Slappy]

Downloading Beta now!

[Joe]

Downloaded. It is definitely a beta. :evil:

[Possum]

I'll be trying that out at home if it'll work on my outfit.

[Joe]

[attach width=400]18961[/attach]

[Possum]

I knew my hopes would be dashed. Oh well.

[wonderings]

Downloading....

Curious to see what they have come up with, though my hopes are not even close to high.

ok opened it up for the first time and made a new 8 page document with facing pages. Right off the bat no option for bleed margins??? Really?? I am pretty anal about bleeds and keeping things neat and tidy in my documents, this alone would make this frustrating to use and not be 100% sure I have the amount of bleed I want for a specific job.

[Joe]

You can set it after you create the document by clicking on "Document Setup" here:

[attach width=400]18966[/attach]

And then clicking the "Bleed" tab.

[attach width=400]18968[/attach]

The downside is there is no visual for where the bleed is on the layout like InDesign has...un less I just haven't found how to turn it on.

Also if you want to precise with a guid I see no way of entering in a dimension via the keyboard. Looks like the only way to place a guid is with the mouse.

[Joe]

Maybe it is just me but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to crop a photo. Dragging the handles scales the whole image.

And it is a PITA to not see the bleed lines. You can't even add guides to show your bleed because guides only show up on the pages.

[Slappy]

Maybe it is just me but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to crop a photo. Dragging the handles scales the whole image.

And it is a PITA to not see the bleed lines. You can't even add guides to show your bleed because guides only show up on the pages.

Soooooo, it's a Beta? 

Agreed about the cropping/sizing manipulation though. I tried every combo of keys to proportionally scale a photo before I realized the default of just grabbing a corner handle IS the proportional scale!

For all of our Adobe gripes, it's weird trying to use a totally different app for things we do every damned day.

[wonderings]

Maybe it is just me but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to crop a photo. Dragging the handles scales the whole image.

And it is a PITA to not see the bleed lines. You can't even add guides to show your bleed because guides only show up on the pages.

There is a crop button on the left side toolbar that lets you crop a picture. Looks just like the photoshop button.

I do love how quick Affinity software is, seems much faster then anything Adobe has out.

[wonderings]

One thing I hate about the Affinity software is how they handle colour and swatches. Not sure if I am just so ingrained with the way Adobe does it or what, it just seems counter intuitive. I love how if I bring a PDF into Indesign and the PDF has spot colours or pantones I immediately have them in my swatch panel. Not so with Publisher, did a test with a spot and pantone and I just do not see them there. Also hate how they just show blocks of colour for pantones, I only see the name when I leave the mouse hovering over it. Unless I have missed it there is no option to do a list view that has the colour name beside the colour.

[Joe]

Yeah I had seen the crop tool previously but they named it vector crop tool for some oddball reason so I didn't associate it in my mind with cropping a photo.

I was reading at their forum last night and they are planning on making the bleed lines appear in a future release. All in all it isn't horrible for an early beta. Needs a lot of work. I just can't wait until it gets released so Adobe will buy it and kill it off.

[wonderings]

Not sure if I am doing something wrong but if I am not I hate the way it handles text. If I resize a text box it actually resizes and stretches the text itself. My words did not reflow to fit the text box. This alone would keep me from using it unless they have done something different to accomplish such an easy task.

**edit** guess I am finding all the things I do not know about Affinity. There are 2 text options, one "artistic text tool" and "frame text tool" I was using the wrong one, if I use "frame text tool" it works as it should.

[Joe]

Yeah you can't say they copied the way other page layout apps work. They have their own groove going...