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Serif today announced across-the-board updates for its popular suite of Affinity creative apps, including Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and the Apple award-winning Affinity Publisher for Mac.

publisher-1.8-idml-macbook.jpg

The biggest news relates to Publisher, with its first big update since launching in the summer. Version 1.8 of the Mac app brings IDML compatibility, allowing users to import InDesign files for the first time.

The IDML import capability should appeal to businesses and other professional users who want to access older document catalogs, and should make it easier for those who want to make the switch to the Affinity suite.

Affinity-Publisher-1.8-Live-Preflight-Checking.jpg

Publisher now also supports full pre-flight checking that can alert users to possible document errors, including poor image resolutions, bleed hazards, text overflow, spelling errors, missing images or fonts, and more.

In addition, Publisher now offers the ability to save documents as templates for re-use in future projects, as well as the ability to combine multiple Affinity Publisher documents together into a single file, with smart merge of master pages, text styles, table of contents and indexes.

Elsewhere, there's added support for Excel file import to bring in spreadsheet tables and data, PDF export that's up to five times faster than before, and several other improvements and fixes.

Affinity-Photo-1.8-NikCollectionSupport.jpg

Affinity Photo and Designer are also getting v1.8 updates today. Some of the new features include: Smart object support when importing PSD files; a new stock imagery search panel in Designer; customizable keyboard shortcuts in both apps; and Nik plug-in compatibility for Affinity Photo.

Affinity v1.8 apps are available to purchase from the Serif website for a one-off payment with no subscription. Affinity Publisher, Photo, and Designer cost $49.99 on Mac, while Affinity Photo and Designer for iPad cost $19.99. Existing users can download the updates free.

Article Link: Affinity Publisher for Mac Gains IDML Import, Preflight Checking, Template Support, and More
 
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All sound like great features.

Until Designer has the “select same” advanced / bulk selection features it is barely usable for what many need from a vector design/ editor app.
 
All sound like great features.

Until Designer has the “select same” advanced / bulk selection features it is barely usable for what many need from a vector design/ editor app.

Exactly! This is a 100% deal breaker for many, including me.
 
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What about footnotes? Are they supported? Wonder how are they showed and managed when coming from an imported IDML file. Perhaps they are converted simply in text and placed as endnotes.
 
Importing my InDesign work has been the number one reason I still have not used Publisher. I just converted several of my recent layouts to the IDML format, and opened them in Publisher. They worked great, but many of the font sizes had to be reduced to get them to fit properly.

Does anyone know of an easy automation to converting CS6 or newer INDD files to IDML without having to open each file and individually save each? Any if you do, can you give some details :)

Now that I can import, I need to learn the differences between InDesign and Publisher. If anyone has a good reference or Youtube video, please recommend it :)

I've been using the Adobe Suite forever now, and on my personal systems, am still on CS6 - I don't want to pay monthly for that. SO I have been stuck with Mojave due to that 32 bit restriction, since I need to use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Now, once I get a good grasp and feel confident in the Serif Suite, I will upgrade and say goodbye to Adobe.

I did try to install and run CS6 in Parallels in Mojave - but Illustrator and InDesign always crash on load - Parallels support could not figure it out. Only Photoshop worked this way.
 
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Importing my InDesign work has been the number one reason I still have not used Publisher. I just converted several of my recent layouts to the IDML format, and opened them in Publisher. They worked great, but many of the font sizes had to be reduced to get them to fit properly.

Does anyone know of an easy automation to converting CS6 or newer INDD files to IDML without having to open each file and individually save each? Any if you do, can you give some details :)

Now that I can import, I need to learn the differences between InDesign and Publisher. If anyone has a good reference or Youtube video, please recommend it :)

I've been using the Adobe Suite forever now, and on my personal systems, am still on CS6 - I don't want to pay monthly for that. SO I have been stuck with Mojave due to that 32 bit restriction, since I need to use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Now, once I get a good grasp and feel confident in the Serif Suite, I will upgrade and say goodbye to Adobe.

I did try to install and run CS6 in Parallels in Mojave - but Illustrator and InDesign always crash on load - Parallels support could not figure it out. Only Photoshop worked this way.

That's my issue. I have .indd files going back 10 years. Opening and exporting to .idml would take months. I bought Publisher (daft name) to support the developers, but I'm going to be paying Adobe for a few more years it seems. Still great to see Serif developing the software.
 
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Importing my InDesign work has been the number one reason I still have not used Publisher. I just converted several of my recent layouts to the IDML format, and opened them in Publisher. They worked great, but many of the font sizes had to be reduced to get them to fit properly.

Does anyone know of an easy automation to converting CS6 or newer INDD files to IDML without having to open each file and individually save each? Any if you do, can you give some details :)

Now that I can import, I need to learn the differences between InDesign and Publisher. If anyone has a good reference or Youtube video, please recommend it :)

I've been using the Adobe Suite forever now, and on my personal systems, am still on CS6 - I don't want to pay monthly for that. SO I have been stuck with Mojave due to that 32 bit restriction, since I need to use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Now, once I get a good grasp and feel confident in the Serif Suite, I will upgrade and say goodbye to Adobe.

I did try to install and run CS6 in Parallels in Mojave - but Illustrator and InDesign always crash on load - Parallels support could not figure it out. Only Photoshop worked this way.

we’ve been using Publisher for over a year now. We started during the public beta and after a few weeks moved wholesale from InDesign.

I’m now at the point where I genuinely prefer publisher. Getting table of contents working correctly requires something close to a PhD but apart from that, it’s all been pretty straightforward.

There are some really dramatic benefits to Publisher over indesign. The always on wysiwyg display is a bit of a game changer.

My number one complaint? That it’s not possible to disable embedding of documents instead of linking them. You can set it as a preference, but embedding is still there and possible.

There are situations where I can see embedding could be desirable, ie, archiving or for remote working, but in normal day-to-day use as a professional organisation, you should have absolute confidence about how files are working.
 
That's my issue. I have .indd files going back 10 years. Opening and exporting to .idml would take months. I bought Publisher (daft name) to support the developers, but I'm going to be paying Adobe for a few more years it seems. Still great to see Serif developing the software.
I have never used Automator or know anything about it - but I wonder something could be created to do this type of Open files, and Save As IDML format. I would pay for a simple app that did this :)
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we’ve been using Publisher for over a year now. We started during the public beta and after a few weeks moved wholesale from InDesign.

I’m now at the point where I genuinely prefer publisher. Getting table of contents working correctly requires something close to a PhD but apart from that, it’s all been pretty straightforward.

There are some really dramatic benefits to Publisher over indesign. The always on wysiwyg display is a bit of a game changer.

My number one complaint? That it’s not possible to disable embedding of documents instead of linking them. You can set it as a preference, but embedding is still there and possible.

There are situations where I can see embedding could be desirable, ie, archiving or for remote working, but in normal day-to-day use as a professional organisation, you should have absolute confidence about how files are working.
I had not checked to see how linked files worked at all. So it embeds them all the time? or by default. The linking of one asset too hundreds of documents and being able to update it in one place is most important! I need to dig into this to learn more.

Thanks for the user feedback!
 
Similar to when InDesign originally came out and supported QuarkXPress file conversion, you can't really expect the converted files to be exact. You typically have to do some tweaking and adjustments, but it's easier than having to try and rebuild layouts from scratch.
 
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Smart Object support for PSD’s in Affinity Photo? That’s big news and also incredibly useful to me at this moment in time. I didn’t think they were gonna be able to do smart objects in AP as it was some Adobe proprietary thing, looks like I was wrong. Thanks and nice work Serif!
 
I have never used Automator or know anything about it - but I wonder something could be created to do this type of Open files, and Save As IDML format. I would pay for a simple app that did this :)
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I had not checked to see how linked files worked at all. So it embeds them all the time? or by default. The linking of one asset too hundreds of documents and being able to update it in one place is most important! I need to dig into this to learn more.

Thanks for the user feedback!

When you install it, it defaults to embedding (or at least used to). You can set it to default to linking now though.

The big concern I have is that I want to be able to disable embedding unless specifically required.

I wouldn’t let my post put you off, it’s generally working really well for us. The concern is really about if you work in larger teams that someone might accidentally embed instead and that could cause problems.
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Have you tried this script?

Paid solutions are IDMarkz or Output Factory.

the other thing worth mentioning is that Publisher opens PDFs and makes them editable.

Sounds like a terrible idea doesn’t it? But it is actually so good that it can be really useful, especially when transitioning from indesign.
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That's my issue. I have .indd files going back 10 years. Opening and exporting to .idml would take months. I bought Publisher (daft name) to support the developers, but I'm going to be paying Adobe for a few more years it seems. Still great to see Serif developing the software.

see above
 
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I cannot wait for the day when the Affinity Suite (including a PDF app with Acrobat Pro capabilites) is here and knocks some sense into Adobe. PDF has been around for over 20 years and an open standard for more than 10, yet Adobe feels their app is so special they charge $300-$450 for the app (or $20/mo, forever).

Affinity...give us an alternative to Acrobat!
 
I’m really impressed with the Affinity suite. It’s catching up to Adobe CC. I still keep my old CS6 installation for backwards compatibility with old project files but honestly Designer is just so much less frustrating than Illustrator. It may not have all the features (yet) but I can usually find a workaround for these things. And the exporter is just incredible. I often use it for quick SVGs for my web projects.
 
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IDML support is a game-changer for our small publishing house. We've been transitioning to Publisher and the other Affinity applications since the first beta was released, and completely divorced ourselves from Adobe CS in January in anticipation to these update.
 
I haven’t used this suite on the Mac, but they are pretty nice on the iPad.
 
I cannot wait for the day when the Affinity Suite (including a PDF app with Acrobat Pro capabilites) is here and knocks some sense into Adobe. PDF has been around for over 20 years and an open standard for more than 10, yet Adobe feels their app is so special they charge $300-$450 for the app (or $20/mo, forever).

Affinity...give us an alternative to Acrobat!

it doesn’t do everything Acrobat does, but PDF Expert does a fair amount of it. Enough for us anyway.
 
I hope the Windows versions get the same features. I respect the heck out of Serif and will gladly double dip on the software, I will have to do some research. Itching to learn Publisher, but must wait until I get a machine that can handle running it and other stuff at the same time.
 
I hope the Windows versions get the same features. I respect the heck out of Serif and will gladly double dip on the software, I will have to do some research. Itching to learn Publisher, but must wait until I get a machine that can handle running it and other stuff at the same time.

I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that the windows version has the full feature set as the MacOS version.
 
I've been adapting to the Affinity "suite" for several weeks now and from what I've read in the feature lists and seen in the tutorials there is no difference in the feature set between Windows and macOS, with the exception of the macOS specific "unified toolbar" option.
 
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