Oh this is so good to know! I bought the affinity suite a while ago but haven't gotten my feet wet with Publisher. I was starting to play around with CSP for comics but like you I find I do much better when I can write dialogue with sketching things out. Writing a separate non-visual script just doesn't work for my brain. Publisher might be the best option to plan out my thumbnails! I also want to set up a standard comic and webcomic format which was intimidating to me but what you've shown of publisher makes planning out the format look a lot less stressful.
I was creating my whole (20+ page) Pitch Bible in Affinity Designer using ArtBoards. Had a rethink and started again in Publisher. So much better and all in the iPad. Love it.
OMG. I can not tell you how happy I was to find this post. As someone that uses Affinity 100% at our agency this gives me a fuzzy. Affinity is not perfect and if you get lost in their forums you will see very frustrated people saying that Designer does not do this or Pub does not do that. In th end it is what it does for you. Personally I have tried going back to Adobe a couple times and it does not work for me. Affinity feels very flow to me. Feels like it all clicks.
Great to hear your experience and continued successes.
That’s so cool that your agency uses affinity! I think with version 2, affinity really catches up to Adobe, especially for individuals. As more people pick it up, more features will get added
When Canva bought Affinity alot of people kinda freaked out and they were not without concern. It seems like since then Affinity has been pretty quiet on what is going on.
That said the updares have been good but more needs to be done. I used designer more than pub but am starting to use pub more and switch berween ADand AP vs the old adove way of flipping between apps.
When Canva bought Affinity they created an advisory board of some very respecred designers. The biggest prob with Affinity over the yrs quite honestly is the lack of talented designers that actually used it. Watching people like Will Paterson/James Martin use it live you see the same results you see from AI.
That is so important. At the end of it all you should work on your skill. The software has to get you to the end line gut having the skill out does the software in many cases.
Ha! Love the passion in your writing here 😤😂 Yes I too use and love affinity, does everything and more compared to the equivalent adobe programs, and I also love not having to pay a subscription fee for it. Affinity you rock on mightily 🤘😊
I used to mooch off my sister’s Adobe account (since her company provided it) and used Indesign until she quit her job and cancelled the subscription lol. I now use Affinity Publisher to make my comic books for printing. Plus, I’m all for a one-time payment! This was a great read, thank you :D
Thanks for sharing all of this info so clearly. I also work with Affinity for designing and laying out picture books, even though my art is handmade textile collage. I think it’s a great piece of kit.
I love the Affinity apps. I emancipated myself from the yoke of Adobe decades ago and Affinity have been a godsend. That and Procreate are the only digital tools I need.
My biggest gripe with their apps is that they are not intuitive at all and I waste a lot of time and energy looking shit up 🙄, which I hate.
Ack! I purchased the Affinity suite years ago and got overwhelmed deciding which of the 3-pack to use. Adobe jacked up their prices again and I'm back to hand wringing. I'm so comfortable with Adobe and love my limited brushes. I tried to import them to Affinity and they lost all their dynamic traits. What to do?
That’s tough. I’m sure the brush engines are different, unfortunately I think the only thing to do is fiddle with the brush settings until you like them again. I’d look for tutorials
I use gimp for image editing and only have affinity publisher. As I’ve been making more zines and books, I have been wondering whether I should fully jump in or not.
This has swayed me into just biting the bullet. I’ve been waiting for the affinity products to go back on sale before I jump in, but with the Canva buyout, I may just have to snatch at full price!
I’m sure they will have a sale soon! Maybe for Memorial Day or just a summer sale. But yeah it’s def worth being able to use all the programs inside publisher. I haven’t used gimp in years but from what I remember affinity UI is more user friendly
Thank you for the rundown of Affinity. Just needed to upgrade my MacBook and could bring over my stalwart Adobe CS6. Can’t really justify the monthly CC fee.
Oh this is so good to know! I bought the affinity suite a while ago but haven't gotten my feet wet with Publisher. I was starting to play around with CSP for comics but like you I find I do much better when I can write dialogue with sketching things out. Writing a separate non-visual script just doesn't work for my brain. Publisher might be the best option to plan out my thumbnails! I also want to set up a standard comic and webcomic format which was intimidating to me but what you've shown of publisher makes planning out the format look a lot less stressful.
Excellent post. Thanks!
I was creating my whole (20+ page) Pitch Bible in Affinity Designer using ArtBoards. Had a rethink and started again in Publisher. So much better and all in the iPad. Love it.
Omg I can’t imagine doing a whole deck like that especially on iPad!
I’m still finding my feet with it but most of my issues are self inflicted design changes not the app. Loving it.
lol I know how that is!!
😂😂😂
OMG. I can not tell you how happy I was to find this post. As someone that uses Affinity 100% at our agency this gives me a fuzzy. Affinity is not perfect and if you get lost in their forums you will see very frustrated people saying that Designer does not do this or Pub does not do that. In th end it is what it does for you. Personally I have tried going back to Adobe a couple times and it does not work for me. Affinity feels very flow to me. Feels like it all clicks.
Great to hear your experience and continued successes.
That’s so cool that your agency uses affinity! I think with version 2, affinity really catches up to Adobe, especially for individuals. As more people pick it up, more features will get added
When Canva bought Affinity alot of people kinda freaked out and they were not without concern. It seems like since then Affinity has been pretty quiet on what is going on.
That said the updares have been good but more needs to be done. I used designer more than pub but am starting to use pub more and switch berween ADand AP vs the old adove way of flipping between apps.
When Canva bought Affinity they created an advisory board of some very respecred designers. The biggest prob with Affinity over the yrs quite honestly is the lack of talented designers that actually used it. Watching people like Will Paterson/James Martin use it live you see the same results you see from AI.
That is so important. At the end of it all you should work on your skill. The software has to get you to the end line gut having the skill out does the software in many cases.
Ha! Love the passion in your writing here 😤😂 Yes I too use and love affinity, does everything and more compared to the equivalent adobe programs, and I also love not having to pay a subscription fee for it. Affinity you rock on mightily 🤘😊
you have just made me think I really do need to muster up the mental energy to open Affinity and figure out how to use it.
If you’ve used Adobe or other comparable programs you’ll have no problem! And there are plenty of great tutorials online
Thanks for the encouragement.
I love publisher. Much better learning curve than Indesign, and I don’t have to put everything in a fucking box!
Terrific piece (and the book looks great), but AP still needs ePub export support! :)
I was wondering about that! I haven’t had to make an epub in a minute.
So interesting! Thanks for sharing! 😀
Thanks for sharing, I’ll give it a read.
I used to mooch off my sister’s Adobe account (since her company provided it) and used Indesign until she quit her job and cancelled the subscription lol. I now use Affinity Publisher to make my comic books for printing. Plus, I’m all for a one-time payment! This was a great read, thank you :D
Thanks for sharing all of this info so clearly. I also work with Affinity for designing and laying out picture books, even though my art is handmade textile collage. I think it’s a great piece of kit.
I love the Affinity apps. I emancipated myself from the yoke of Adobe decades ago and Affinity have been a godsend. That and Procreate are the only digital tools I need.
My biggest gripe with their apps is that they are not intuitive at all and I waste a lot of time and energy looking shit up 🙄, which I hate.
Ack! I purchased the Affinity suite years ago and got overwhelmed deciding which of the 3-pack to use. Adobe jacked up their prices again and I'm back to hand wringing. I'm so comfortable with Adobe and love my limited brushes. I tried to import them to Affinity and they lost all their dynamic traits. What to do?
That’s tough. I’m sure the brush engines are different, unfortunately I think the only thing to do is fiddle with the brush settings until you like them again. I’d look for tutorials
I just need to commit some time to play around with the program. Change is hard.
I use gimp for image editing and only have affinity publisher. As I’ve been making more zines and books, I have been wondering whether I should fully jump in or not.
This has swayed me into just biting the bullet. I’ve been waiting for the affinity products to go back on sale before I jump in, but with the Canva buyout, I may just have to snatch at full price!
I’m sure they will have a sale soon! Maybe for Memorial Day or just a summer sale. But yeah it’s def worth being able to use all the programs inside publisher. I haven’t used gimp in years but from what I remember affinity UI is more user friendly
You can’t get less user friendly than GIMP! You’re probably right about it being worth it..
Thank you for the rundown of Affinity. Just needed to upgrade my MacBook and could bring over my stalwart Adobe CS6. Can’t really justify the monthly CC fee.
this was really helpful, thank you. I own affinity but haven't d/l'd it yet and this is the push I needed.