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.
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.
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 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.
Top Rated Comments
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.
Paid solutions are IDMarkz ('https://markzware.com/products/idmarkz/') or Output Factory ('http://zevrix.com/outputfactory.php').
Affinity...give us an alternative to Acrobat!