Affinity software: heads up

[xiamenese]

Affinity Publisher, Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and a lot if extensions have been on 50% discount for a while, but that ends on the 20th June. Affinity are UK based, so that might influence timing elsewhere in the world. Those three apps are at £23.99 each!



Mark

[mbbntu]

Thanks, Mark. Very glad to get that information. I've invested in Photo, which I already had on the iPad. As to the others, I wouldn't be able to find a use for Publisher, but I suppose I might draw the odd diagram at times, so might consider Designer. At least I have a day to think about it!

Thanks again,
Martin.

[KB]

These really are fantastic apps. Affinity Photo and Designer have completely replaced Photoshop and Illustrator for me (since Adobe went subscription-only). It takes a little time to adjust - there are some things I used a lot in Photoshop that are a bit more roundabout in Photo, while other things are easier - but I haven’t found anything that I can’t do. (Admittedly I’m not a power user though.)

I had no idea they are UK-based - it’s always great to hear of other UK software house doing so well. All power to them.

All the best,
Keith

[xiamenese]

These really are fantastic apps. Affinity Photo and Designer have completely replaced Photoshop and Illustrator for me (since Adobe went subscription-only). It takes a little time to adjust - there are some things I used a lot in Photoshop that are a bit more roundabout in Photo, while other things are easier - but I haven’t found anything that I can’t do. (Admittedly I’m not a power user though.)

I had no idea they are UK-based - it’s always great to hear of other UK software house doing so well. All power to them.

All the best,
Keith

I have all three apps. I haven't used them for anything serious yet. The one that I wanted most was Publisher, because I'd been on the hunt for an InDesign replacement ever since I could no longer afford to keep it up—after CS2—and came across Publisher when it was first in public beta.

Photo is among the many photo editing apps I've bought, again as a replacement for the no longer affordable PhotoShop … Pixelmator, which I found I couldn't get on with, Luminar, which I do use from time to time, LightZone, which I like. But in the end, I always turn to Graphic Converter for most tasks, which I've been using since I first started using Macs around 1990!

As for Designer, again a replacement for Illustrator, but again my immediate go-to app for anything I need to do in the design world is OmniGraffle Pro, which again I've been using for nearly 20 years.

But I'll find a project for Designer, and look into Photo more closely when I have more time. Too busy at the moment trying to get a re-designed website up and running, and using the tools I'm familiar with saves a lot of time.

Hope you and yours have been surviving this lockdown OK. We took the wise decision to be in Exeter when we realised the way things were going. If we'd been locked down in our little flat in London, we'd be stir-crazy by now!

Cheers.

Mark

[KB]

I have all three apps. I haven't used them for anything serious yet. The one that I wanted most was Publisher, because I'd been on the hunt for an InDesign replacement ever since I could no longer afford to keep it up—after CS2—and came across Publisher when it was first in public beta.

I never really got my money's worth out of InDesign anyway. The only thing I really used it for was copying vector graphics into Photoshop. All of our branding icons - the "S", the "LL" etc - are EPS files, and I frequently need to create bitmap graphics from them, either for the site or background images in our apps. So it was just a matter of opening the EPS in InDesign, copying and pasting it into Photoshop and choosing the size. I was very happy to find that I could do exactly the same in Designer and Photo for a lot less money.

Hope you and yours have been surviving this lockdown OK. We took the wise decision to be in Exeter when we realised the way things were going. If we'd been locked down in our little flat in London, we'd be stir-crazy by now!

The South West has definitely been a good place to do lockdown! We've been fortunate enough to have one of the lowest death rates in the country, too - although that may change with tourist season. My normal life is pretty much lockdown, though, so the main difference has only been requests for maths help from my youngest daughter. Glad to hear you've been getting through lockdown okay.

All the best,
Keith

[Astaff]

Like you I’ve completely replaced Photoshop. For vector I’ve always used Corel on a pc. Tried the new Corel on Mac but its rather exe. Used to use Premier but full time FCP now.

One day I’ll get around to trying Designer - have it, just haven’t had/taken the time. Was going to ‘retire’ but was convinced to stay by employers, so the extra spare time I envisaged this year hasn’t happened.

As for lockdown, I’ve worked from home for 15 years with my own companies and current employer so no difference. Helps to have warehouse/office on property.

We’ve been a bit more fortunate here in Qld Aus and are well out of lockdown. About to take a couple of weeks off in motorhome.

As for UK companies, the good ones aren’t just restricted to software. After selling my motorcycle accessory company in 2014 I’ve just started another and my first call to secure distribution was to a UK mfr. World leading product!

Weird career mix, work for tech company, own motorcycle one - owned software distributor distributing UK developed software since 2000, until start of year, sold that as part of ill-fated move towards ‘retirement’.

Oh, and just so I don’t have idle time 2 books in final prep for release.

So much for thoughts of retirement.

[Twolane]

Thanks for the heads up on the Affinity pricing. I picked up all three, and have already produced several covers, both ebook and print, using Affinity

The learning curve was a bit of a struggle in the beginning, but it's behind me now. Considering what I was using before, I'm extremely happy. I shall be updating a few more ebook covers, and producing many more using the software. While I hate wasting time watching instruction videos, I found it essential to learn some functions.

Highly recommended, especially if another sale comes along. If not, it's still an excellent buy.

[InklingBooks]

Affinity has posted an interview with Adam Whitehouse, the lead developer for Publisher and formerly one of the developers for the free page layout software, PagePlus. It is quite informative, including this about the iPad version.

Our roadmap for Publisher is huge. It’s virtually impossible to cherry-pick features to list here and now. It’s not a secret that Publisher for iPad is in development, and I would say development is going well. In fact, we’re not too far off having a technical preview that we might be able to share outside the team. It’s important to us though to keep a balance between iPad and desktop development, so it’ll be a while longer before we have anything to show publicly.

You can find the interview here:
https://affinityspotlight.com/article/i ... -developer

Given Scrivener and Affinity are both in the UK, perhaps they could work together to create a special export/import feature that would make it easy to move from writing in Scrivener to publishing with Publisher. We could enjoy the best of both worlds.

[xiamenese]

<snip>…
Given Scrivener and Affinity are both in the UK, perhaps they could work together to create a special export/import feature that would make it easy to move from writing in Scrivener to publishing with Publisher. We could enjoy the best of both worlds.

In my testing, Publisher imports RTF files generated by Scrivener without problem, and, if I remember rightly respects styles. Though I've then had to go through laying it all out. That is for text-only files; I haven't tried with anything including images or anything arcane.

I presume that automating that process would mean knowing how many pages were needed in Publisher, each with a text-box in place linked to the one on the next page … and I have no idea how you'd cope with images, etc.



Mark

[Login]

Nice that the offer was to support creatives during COVID-19.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/press/ ... -pandemic/

Wonder if many other companies will make similar gestures... a way, perhaps, for L&L to pick up some more customers in these tough months: plenty of people with time on their hands to write.