Adobe ® Indesign ® IDML; Microsoft ® Word ® DOCX, RTF or plain text; Spreadsheet data (XLSX) - Microsoft ® Excel ®, Apple Numbers, LibreOffice; Affinity Photo (.afphoto) Affinity Designer (.afdesign) Affinity Publisher (.afpub) Adobe ® Illustrator ® AI (containing PDF stream) PDF; Adobe ® Photoshop ® and Adobe ® FreeHand ® (versions. Moving from InDesign to Affinity Publisher with Mike Rankin - YouTube Affinity Publisher now has the ability to import content from Adobe InDesign via IDML, and a key part of moving your workflow. Affinity Publisher to InDesign. With Serif having released Affinity Publisher on the market, many are asking, well, what about InDesign? How can I use Affini.

The Affinity Publisher is making a tough time to its competitors, especially for Adobe InDesign, and its unique attributes are filling the digital publishing space. Although it lacks certain features, the cost-effectiveness is enough to enter the market and stand against the industry giant – Adobe.

Read further and found out who is the winner in the Affinity Publisher vs InDesign duel.

About The Affinity Publisher

Serif released the full version of Affinity Publisher on June 2019, and it is running on a Mac OS and Microsoft Windows as well.
Publisher works like InDesign and being the part of Serif product line alongside with Affinity Photo, and Affinity Designer makes him a powerful tool, and with the use of the whole family, you can create any type of publishing media imaginable.

Affinity Publisher Making it Hard for InDesign

Tutorial Videos

The Affinity Publisher provides several tutorial videos for the beginners. They help you to understand the essential functions like setting a new document or adding the text etc.

If you are a new user or even an advanced one, you should watch the introductory videos to utilize the program to the maximum.

I cannot merely say that Affinity Publisher is a copy of InDesign. If you are familiar with Adobe InDesign, you would probably know how to set up the master spread, when designing a book or brochure.

The same feature is available in Publisher, but it works a bit differently than in InDesign, so you have to get used to its design process.

Features And Workflow

If you are accustomed to the InDesign, you will immediately see the resemblance between the two. They both have similar tools and features, but the workflow of Publisher is relatively unique, and like with every new program, it takes some time to get used to it.

If you haven’t used InDesign before, you will find Affinity Publisher smoother to use because it has a better UX design compared to InDesign, which makes you find the desired functions with ease and fewer clicks.

Use For Different Media

Affinity designer is not limited only for the use of print media, but you can also use it for making online presentations, e-books, and if you’re a UX designer, you can neven use it for creating wireframes for apps or websites.

What About The Performance?

InDesign lacks in handling power of the workflow and is quite RAM thirsty. Especially users with slightly older computers or the ones who make designs on a laptop can definitely feel how much power InDesign needs for running.

InDesign Fast Display function can resolve the problem to some degree. However, you would have to complete the design without seeing the actual pixel quality, which might lead to a problem later on in a printing process.

On the other hand, Publisher is quicker in handling the document. No matter what workstation you are using, PC or laptop: images will remain sharp, and you will not face any crushing problems which are typical for InDesign.

Imitation of The Interface

To attract the users of InDesign, Publisher had to make the interface looking similar to InDesign, for instance, Strokes, Swatches, and Colors are in their usual positions.

Even though the Publisher imitated some of the InDesign’s features, it improved the overall usability of a program, with the use of the vital commands available right at your fingertips.

Asset Panel

Publisher’s assets panel is an attractive feature for many users. You can choose between different pre-made vector icons, which you can simply drag into your designs. This feature can improve and fasten your design process.

Should You Consider Switching to Affinity Publisher?

If creating magazines, brochures, and other print media daily, Affinity Publisher is brilliant software to use. It has an impressive interface, enough capacity to deal with the complicated task, and has a unique attributes list.
It is also part of the StudioLink, which is one of the most noteworthy things Serif has created. It enables you to alter photographs, make vectors, and create page breaks inside one application.
Best fit for Publisher would be a freelance graphic designer or small designer team, and if you are one of the two you should consider shifting from InDesign.
Despite being a new player in the publishing business, it is still a professional-grade all-in-one publication tool, that will definitely suit all your needs.
On the other hand, if you work in an environment where everyone uses Adobe InDesign, switching to Affinity Publisher most likely isn’t the right choice.

The Publisher Needs Some Essential Nuts and Bolts

When the software was in sill in a Beta form, developers were collecting users feedback to make necessary improvements for the final version. However, there are still some specific features missing, which might be quite unfavorable for some users.

For example, if you want to make a three-fold brochure where you put together three spreads one next to another, you can, for now, forget about it.
Another thing that you can not make with Publisher are interactive presentations, and if you make a lot of those, I suggest you stick with the InDesign for now because Serifs said that they are not planning to take any steps in that direction.

Farewell to Adobe InDesign?

Publisher covers print and in some way also web design, besides it’s made for both Windows and Mac operating system. You will be able to create single or multi-page documents, books, brochures, and magazines with ease, and if you’re looking for processing speed, power, and flexibility, the Publisher is the ideal choice for you.

Before purchasing Publisher, be sure to check out how long your Adobe subscription lasts, so you won’t be stuck with two programs that do the same job.

Final Words: Affinity Publisher Vs Adobe InDesign

With the one-off payment of $49.99 Publisher is an excellent choice if you’re looking for an InDesign substitute, which runs at $239,88/yr, besides being a cheaper alternative Serif also offers free updates on all their programs.
Even though Affinity Publisher is not perfect yet, developers are listening carefully to the design community and are developing new tools that will come with future updates, besides that they are trying to make the program runs smoothly as possible, without any crushes.
If you’re still on the fences, try the Publisher trial version, test it out, and it might convince you to dump InDesign for good (I know I did).

If you’re interested in other Affinity products, you can also read my review about Affinity Designer vs. Adobe Illustrator here on DesignyUp.

Mac

Hardware

• Mac Pro, iMac, iMac Pro, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac Mini
• Mac with Apple M1 chip or Intel processor
• 4GB RAM minimum
• Up to 2.8GB of available hard drive space; more during installation
• 1280x768 display size or better
• Supports regular, retina, and expanded gamut DCI-P3 displays

Operating System

• 10.9 Mavericks
• 10.10 Yosemite
• 10.11 El Capitan
• 10.12 Sierra
• 10.13 High Sierra
• 10.14 Mojave
• 10.15 Catalina
• 11.0 Big Sur

Windows

Hardware

• Windows-based PC (64 bit) with mouse or equivalent input device
• Hardware GPU acceleration^*
• DirectX 10-compatible Graphics Cards and above
• 4GB RAM
• 938MB of available hard drive space; more during installation
• 1280x768 display size or better

^* Requires:

• -Windows 10 April 2020 update (or later)
• -Direct3D level 12.0-capable card

Operating System

Affinity Store version

• Windows^® 10 (1607 Anniversary update or higher)
• Windows^® 8.1
• Windows^® 7 (Service Pack 1; Aero enabled)

Microsoft Store version

• Windows^® 10 (1607 Anniversary update or higher)

Overview

It’s Fast—Really Fast

• Pan and zoom at 60fps
• Stunning scroll speeds as you edit or preview
• Objects respond immediately to transformation
• Real-time gradients, effects, blend modes and adjustments
• 64-bit multi-core optimization and hardware acceleration

Beautiful By Design

• Built from the ground up for page layout professionals
• Stylish and uncluttered interface

Efficient Affinity File Format

• Compact and fast native file format
• Fully editable in Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo

Highly Customizable

• Light or dark user interface
• Create and save your own custom keyboard shortcuts
• Create your own toolbars and toolbar layouts
• Reorganize on-screen panels, float or dock as preferred
• Create and save Studio panel (and toolbar) presets
• Tweak UI tool size and choose monochrome or colored buttons
• Search Preferences and set up Affinity Publisher to your taste
• Work in pixels, points, picas and physical document units

Rich History

• Instantly undo/redo over 8,000 History steps
• Save History so you can undo steps later even on different computers
• Undo actions performed in other Affinity suite apps
• Cycle Futures feature prevents history loss after editing from undos
• A seamless AutoSave protects against unexpected shutdowns

Naturally Easy to Use

• Follows Industry conventions for the most popular shortcuts
• Context toolbar displays options for the active tool only
• Quickly hide all tools and panels for a bigger design preview
• Work with multiple publications and multiple displays
• Document presets or save your own custom document setups
• Tailor tool behaviors and UI settings in Preferences

Professional Samples

• Explore professional samples to trigger your imagination

Learning Made Easy

• Access over 50 categorized video tutorials - every one shot in 4k!
• Comprehensive in-app product Help
• ‘At hand’ Hint Line for help with current actions

No Subscription

• For a single, one-off price you will own the current version (v1) of the app (on your chosen operating system). It’s yours to keep and you’ll even receive free updates of the software until version 2 becomes available (no planned date currently). You can then simply continue using the version you have or choose to upgrade to version 2 for an additional cost.

Registration and Account Access^*

• In-app registration (optional)
• New
  In-app access and viewing of your Affinity account
• Affinity Store content synchronization
• New
  Install free and purchased Affinity Store content

^*For Mac, feature requires macOS Sierra 10.12 or above

Languages

• English (US and UK)
• German
• French
• Spanish
• Portuguese (Brazilian)
• Japanese
• Italian
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Russian

Page Layout essentials

Import

• Adobe^® Indesign^® IDML
• PDF
• Adobe^® Photoshop^® PSD
• Adobe^® Illustrator^® AI (containing PDF stream)

Easy Setup with New Document dialog (for desktop only)

• Thumbnail-based
• Presets for different types of output, e.g. Press Ready
• Create your own custom page presets
• Choose number of pages, facing pages and bleed
• Arrange facing pages vertically/horizontally
• Access Publisher templates (.aftemplate)

Spread Setup

• For current, specific or all spreads
• Override document dimensions and margins
• Scale content when resizing documents
• Lanczos 3, Bicubic, Bilinear and Nearest Neighbor resampling methods
• Mixed spread orientations

Master Pages

• Share page elements across many pages
• Editing master page elements updates all pages simultaneously
• Created pages are auto-linked to default master page
• Edit frame content independently of master page
• Smart master pages preserve edited master frame content when replacing master pages
• Detach text and picture frames from master to independently resize/format
• Transform master page content to spread
• Edit master page from any publication page
• Hierarchical master-on-master page support
• Multiple master pages per page

Sections

• Split publications into logical ‘chapter’ sections
• Create new sections from targeted pages
• Different page numbering styles per section
• Name sections for chapter identification on headers/footers
• Control starting page number
• Reference last page in section or at publication end

Page Navigation and Viewing

• Ultra responsive page scrolling
• Pages panel scrolls with page scrolling
• Page locator
• Instantly switch between favorite zoom levels
• Zoom to Spread
• Navigator Panel for pan/zoom control
• Save favourite view settings in the Panel
• Preview Mode

Text Frame Setup

• Multi-column support with column rules
• Dedicated Text Frame Panel for advanced frame setup
• Control insets, gutter and vertical alignment
• Variable column and gutter widths
• Change column widths by dragging
• Set same gutter values on ≥3-columns simultaneously
• Link text frames to flow text through
• Unlink/delete frames in frame sequence
• Frame sequences intelligently reflow on frame deletion/detachment
• Align to baseline grid
• Initial baseline text advance (sets vertical distance on first line of frame text)

Placeholder Text

• Autofit to frame (non-editable) or normal text behaviour
• Use your own custom filler text
• Language specific

Adding Text to Text Frames

• Place external file directly into new or existing text frame
• Import Word DOCX and RTF files
• Copy/paste from InDesign, Word, RTF and most other text editors
• Paste as unformatted text
• Scale or reflow text directly from text frame
• Vertically align frame text
• AutoFlow creates new ‘framed’ pages from overflowing frame text
• Fit text frame to contained text
• Create text frames from shapes

Artistic Text

• Perfect for a front page headline or chapter title
• Text always scales
• Takes layer effects (blurs, shadows and glows)

Text-on-a-Path

• Type text along a custom curve
• Control start and end points
• Set text on both or either side of lines
• Convert shapes to text paths
• Control all the normal text attributes including baseline
• New
  Path text overflow control

Placing Content

• Images (PNG, JPG, TIFF, SVG)
• PDF
• PDF passthrough for absolute output fidelity (for desktop only)
• Microsoft^® Word^® DOCX, RTF and plain text
• Spreadsheet data (XLSX) - Microsoft^® Excel^®, Apple Numbers, LibreOffice
• Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher documents
• Adobe^® InDesign^® IDML
• Adobe^® Photoshop^® PSD
• New
  PSD flattened image representation
• Import multiple images into Place Images panel then place click-by-click
• Choose page to view for placed documents
• Convert pixel layers to image layers
• New
  DPI/scaling control for placed images and documents

Preview and Place Stock Imagery

• Search for Stock images within Affinity Publisher
• Royalty free providers (Unsplash, Pexels and more)

Picture Frames

• Picture Frame Rectangle and Ellipse tools
• Intelligent image fitting to frame (Scale to Max/Min Fit)
• Create from shapes (geometric or pen drawn)
• Use presets or customize your own frames
• Size picture frame to content
• On-page pan, zoom and rotate controls
• Clear picture frame fills on population
• New
  Convert pixel layers to picture frames

Tables

• Present data in tabular form
• Add, remove and resize columns and rows directly from table
• Autofit/distribute rows and columns
• Comprehensive cell formatting and merging
• Create custom table formats
• Save any table for later use
• Align to baseline grid

Pinned Objects

• Pinned objects move as text reflows
• Intelligent pinning to nearest text
• Float or inline (as character)
• Position by eye or via Pinning Panel (for precision)
• Float in relation to pin, frame, column, margin or page edge

Text wrapping

• Flow frame text around picture frames, text frames, images and tables
• Change distance to text (separate directions or uniformly)
• Edit the wrap outline to tailor wrapping

Interactive links for digital publishing

Affinity Publisher Vs Indesign

• Hyperlinks (to page, web address, file or email)
• Create in-document anchors for hyperlinks to target
• Table of contents and Index entries automatically hyperlink
• Anchors panel to create/manage anchors
• Include PDF bookmarks for TOC entries and anchors

Fields

• Insert document information (Author, Title, Date/Time)
• Add document statistics
• Section fields for headers and footers
• Continued on/from text frame references

Merge Publisher documents

• Import your choice of pages
• New
  Import sections
• Choose page insertion point
• Text style merging
• Import master page(s)
• Import index marks

Table of Contents

• Dedicated Panel for TOC management
• Multiple Tables of Contents
• Create for document or section
• Choose text styles to generate content
• Create different text style sets
• Ignore line breaks and Include inline images options

Index

• Generate index from inserted index marks
• Dedicated Panel for index management
• Find and index additional matching words from panel
• Create cross references

Data Merge

• Merge text and image links from external data sources
• New
  XLSX spreadsheet, TSV, CSV and JSON data sources
• Merge direct to page (certificates, letters, greetings cards)
• New
  Merge into a repeating grid layout (business cards, mailing labels, badges, passes)
• Data Merge Layout Tool for grid layouts
• New
  Repeat same data record or different record per grid cell
• Filter data records

Professional Typography

Pro Font Support

• Create elegant text with OpenType, True Type and Type 1 fonts
• Use OpenType features (ligatures, swashes, stylistic alternates and sets)
• Insert placeholder text while constructing designs
• Insert special characters and symbols
• Copy and paste style between objects
• Font fallbacks

Live Font Previews

• Fonts are previewed instantly while creating or customizing text
• Access fonts by collection for efficiency
• Browse recent, used or favourite fonts (previously set as favourites)

Live OpenType Feature Previews

• Typography panel shows live feature previews
• Easily select the right Stylistic Set every time
• Preview Ligatures, Contextual Alternates, Swashes and more

Affinity Publisher Adobe Indesign 2020

Glyph Browser

• Quickly insert special characters into your text
• Display in glyph or Unicode order
• Browser will track current font selection
• Filter by font subset, e.g. Cyrillic
• Search by glyph name, glyph index or Unicode value

Characters and Paragraphs

• Style text with on-screen panels you can dock, move, and resize
• Adjust kerning, tracking, shear, baseline and other character attributes
• Easily set leading, indents, tab stops and justification
• Multi-language auto-hyphenation
• Optical character alignment (hanging punctuation)
• Paragraph spacing
• Bullets and numbering
• Initial words formatting
• Add decorations (paragraph rules)

Text Ruler

• Visually set tabs and indents
• Displays above any selected text frame
• Use alongside Paragraph Panel
• Reposition ruler vertically onto ‘target’ paragraphs

Checking your work

• Spell checking on the fly, or on demand, and customize the dictionary
• Check against any dictionary installed
• Autocorrect (uses replacement and abbreviation lists)

Text Styles

• Ensure text appears consistent
• Apply character and paragraph styles
• Pre-supplied styles
• Easily update styles cross-document
• Design from scratch or from text selection
• Style hierarchies
• Style groups
• Multi-level numbering schemas
• Import styles from target document
• Delete unused styles
• Delete all styles and create your own

Find and Replace

• Fonts, traits, attributes or text formatting
• Character or paragraph styles
• Search for ‘No style’
• Special characters
• Regular expressions support (Locale Aware)
• Locate found text on page

Management

Resource Management

• Missing resource alert on document load
• Linked/embedded placed image policy at document setup
• Dedicated Resource Manager for image/document management
• Display placed image or document status
• Convert resources from embedded to linked (and vice versa)
• Linked image use offers much reduced file sizes
• Relative resource links are honored
• Collect linked resources into a ‘sidecar‘ folder for project portability

Layer Management

• Each page has its own layers
• Organize using layers, groups and layer naming
• Isolate, rename, lock and hide layers with easy shortcuts
• Unlock all locked objects simultaneously
• Show all hidden objects simultaneously
• Limit the effect of adjustments by drag and drop
• Drag and drop layers from one document to another (Windows only; floated and side by side)

Font Management

• Missing font alert on document load
• Dedicated Font Manager for your document’s fonts
• Displays fonts used and font status
• Show and replace missing fonts
• Locate any fonts used

Packaging

• Share projects easily
• New
  Original document remains unaffected
• Include fonts and linked images
• New
  Show restricted fonts on package opening

Design Aids

Powerful Snapping

• Snap text frames, picture frames, shapes and curves
• Snap to grids, baseline grids, guides, column guides, canvas edges, margins, gaps and more
• Snapping candidate control (last six selected or layer based)
• Dynamic alignment works smoothly on snapping candidates
• Save favorite snapping settings as new presets
• Exclude objects from snapping

Ruler, Ruler Guides and Column Guides

• Switch on vertical/horizontal rulers that use document measurement units
• Spread (ruler) origin repositioned from ruler intersection
• Create ruler guides in any measurement unit or by percentage
• Reposition guides from ruler area when using multiple tools
• Multi-column guides with gutter control
• Customizable bleed and margin colors

Baseline Grids

• Vertically align text baselines for more appealing layouts
• For entire document or specific frames or tables
• Control grid positioning relative to spread/page/margin
• Precision object snapping to grid
• Display grid only at a configurable zoom level
• Set grid color

Layout Grids

• Create standard square and rectangular grids
• Change grid color and opacity
• Snap to grid for accurate layout

Constraints

• Scale and/or anchor objects in relation to the containing shape or picture frame
• Select object edges to be constrained
• Dedicated Constraints Panel for scale/anchor control
• Max/min fit for fixed aspect ratios

Rotate document view

• Rotate the page for easier editing of vertical text and packaging designs
• Maps to popular graphics tablet and keyboard controls

Misc Design Aids

• Inter-object measurement guides
• Switch on pasteboard for off-page storage

Assets for easy access to stored page elements

• Dedicated panel for asset storage
• Store text frames, picture frames, and tables
• Store any object to a custom subcategory
• Easy drag and drop onto the page
• Import/export assets
• Access OpenAsset imagery with ease

Supporting Vector Design Tools and Operations

Adobe Indesign Training

Pen and Node Tool

• Instinctively and quickly create what you want in a few clicks
• Change node types on the fly without interrupting your flow
• Switch between Pen and Node tools with a key press
• Multi-node selection, alignment and transform
• Apply pressure, scaling, drawing, miter and line end settings for organic strokes
• Create custom saveable pressure profiles
• Arrowheads

Tool and Mode Switching

• One tool flexibly selects, moves, rotates, scales, and skews
• Switch to the Move tool any time with a key press
• Toggle between popular tools and temporarily change modes
• Intuitively edit objects within groups without ungrouping
• Optionally move parent objects without their child layers

Editable Shapes

• Regular shapes are naturally smart with unique editing nodes
• Easily customize shapes, achieve neat results with snapping geometry
• Create perfect squares and circles by constraining primitives
• Apply special and rounded corners as absolute or % values
• Customize cogs, stars, arrows, pies, and 14 other smart shapes
• Presets for shapes or save your own shapes

Live Gradient Fills and Transparencies

• Draw gradients live in your design, instantly and smoothly
• Apply color and transparency gradients to fills and outlines
• Easily adjust the nodes and rates of change for gradients
• Use solid, linear, elliptical, radial, conical gradients and apply bitmaps
• Aspect ratio control (bitmap fill/transparency only)
• Linear and radial gradients respond to object scaling/shearing with skewed fill handle editing

Power Duplicate

• Duplicate objects and repeat transforms all in one go
• Create geometric patterns or repeating, scaling, rotating designs

Aligning and Distributing

• Align to left, center, right, top, middle, bottom
• Works to selection bounds, spread (artboard), margins, first/last selected
• Automatically distribute objects horizontally or vertically
• Distribute to your choice of spacing
• Alignment handles for precise alignment of a selection to a position on page
• Change object Z-order

Transforms

• Accurately position and scale objects to specific values
• Use functions like +50% to scale objects relatively
• Apply transforms about an anchor point selected in the Transform panel
• Rotate using dedicated lollipop or from outside corner handles
• Transform Panel is aware of object’s custom transform origin (anchor point will override)
• Set a custom center of rotation
• Reposition objects by their custom transform origin
• Skew using on-screen controls or the Transform panel
• Flip objects with handy buttons

Boolean Geometry

• Join, intersect, subtract, intersect, divide and combine shape outlines
• Boolean operations are editable (Compound Shapes) without using Undo

Clipping

• Add artwork within shapes and layers using Insert Inside and Paste Inside
• Clip to object below with Move Inside and Move Outside
• Also Insert Behind and Insert Above the current layer

Styles

• Save combinations of fill, line and effects settings for reuse
• Apply styles for design consistency, e.g. your favorite letterpress
• Optionally scale styles with objects
• Search for styles by style name

Textured Noise

• Add noise to object fills and outlines, also as a gradient

Program Defaults

• Apply your preferred object settings as defaults

StudioLink for Designer and Photo Interworking

With Designer Persona

Corner Tool

• Neatly round and soften corners on shapes and lines
• For single corners/nodes, a selection, or all nodes at once

Vector Paint Brushes

• Access Texture and Image brush categories
• Texture brushes include Pen, Paint, Watercolor and Pastel styles
• Complete editability of an already applied stroke’s width, color and opacity
• Stroke stabilization for perfectly smooth brush strokes
• See a live preview at the brush tip before you apply your stroke
• Create custom brushes using your own textures

Pencil Tool

• Draw lines with an intuitive balance of accuracy and smoothing
• Adjust weight automatically based on velocity, pressure, or use fixed width
• Use stabilizer for super smooth pencil strokes
• Sculpt mode for repeating and continuing strokes

Symbols

• Simultaneous and automatic editing of repeating design elements
• Create and store symbols in Symbols Panel
• Replicate symbols as individual symbol instances
• Synchronization across instances by default
• Switch off synchronization for isolated edits
• Edit distinct object properties independently of each other

With Photo Persona

Raster Paint Brushes

• Introduce raster texture and shading to your page
• Many brush categories (natural media, sprays, grunge and more)
• Stroke stabilization for perfectly smooth brush strokes
• Retouch images with Dodge, Burn, Smudge and Sharpen brush tools
• See a live preview at the brush tip before you apply your stroke
• Control size, pressure, and speed interactivity with live brush settings

Pixel Selections

• Confine edits to selected regions only
• Adjustments and effects are masked to selection
• Use regular shapes, pixel-width regions, freehand lasso, and selection brush
• Select regions based on color and tonal ranges
• Grow, shrink, feather, smooth and outline selection

Refine Selections

• Select fine detail like hair and fur with advanced refining
• Set refinement border width, smoothness, mode, and feather size
• Output refinement as a selection, mask, new layer, or new layer with mask

Professional image filters

• Full access to non-destructive Live filters
• Enhance your photos
• Blur, sharpen, distort or add color effects

Adobe Indesign Free

Custom Brushes

• Create completely custom vector and raster brushes using your own textures
• Choose behavior for pressure and velocity variance, corners, repeating areas and many other controls

Professional Color, Compatibility, and Output

Professional Color

• True end-to-end CMYK for professional workflows
• RGB, RGB Hex, LAB, CMYK and Grayscale color models
• PANTONE^® color swatches
• ICC color management profiles supported
• Seamlessly jump between color modes
• Lock to prevent color mode switching

Pantone^® Color Matching

• PANTONE^® Goe^™
• PANTONE^® GoeBridge^™
• PANTONE^®+ Formula Guide Solid (V2)
• PANTONE^®+ CMYK
• PANTONE^®+ Color Bridge (V2)
• PANTONE^®+ Metallic, Neon, and Pastels
• Coated and uncoated variants

Smart Color Picker

• Dedicated Tool for sampling color in your Document View
• Accurately pick color using a magnifier over any part of your display
• Point or color averaged sampling
• Sample from current or all layers
• Grab in the source color space including CMYK, RGB and LAB color
• Simple panel-based Color Picker as alternative

Palettes and Swatches

• Use colors and palettes based on all the available color models
• Automatically create palettes based on document colors
• Import Adobe^® Swatch Exchange (.ase) files
• Create complementary, analogous and other color chords
• Generate palette from any image

Global Colors

• Update objects when their base color changes
• Tint levels are retained when base color updates
• Use as solid colors or in gradients

16-bits per Channel Support

• 16-bits per channel mode for accurate color processing
• Works on all supported hardware and operating systems without limits

Preflight checking

• Live, manual or ‘at export‘ checking
• Dedicated Preflight panel for centralised issue management
• Configurable levels - warning or higher-priority error
• Autofix available for many issues
• Error/warning visual indicators (red/amber)
• Save your own custom preflight profiles

Open

• Affinity Photo (.afphoto)
• Affinity Designer (.afdesign)

Import

• Adobe^® Indesign^® IDML
• PDF
• Adobe^® Photoshop^® PSD
• Adobe^® Illustrator^® AI (containing PDF stream)
• EPS

Place

• Adobe^® Indesign^® IDML
• Microsoft^® Word^® DOCX, RTF or plain text
• Spreadsheet data (XLSX) - Microsoft^® Excel^®, Apple Numbers, LibreOffice
• Affinity Photo (.afphoto)
• Affinity Designer (.afdesign)
• Affinity Publisher (.afpub)
• Adobe^® Illustrator^® AI (containing PDF stream)
• PDF
• Adobe^® Photoshop^® and Adobe^® FreeHand^® (versions 9 to 11)
• PNG
• TIFF
• JPG
• GIF
• SVG
• EXR (Open EXR)
• HDR (Radiance)
• Extensive RAW import library (auto-process on import)
• DNG
• HEIF with depth map (as separate layer)
• Optional Artboard conversion to spreads (from Affinity Designer)

Export

• PDF
• Affinity template (.aftemplate)
• PNG
• JPG
• GIF
• TIFF
• Adobe^® Photoshop^® PSD
• SVG
• EPS
• EXR (Open EXR)
• HDR (Radiance)

PDF and PDF/X compatible

• Save designs as PDF for sharing
• Edit and save PDFs for round-trip app compatibility

Desktop Printing/Save as PDF

• Tiled
• N-up (ganged)
• Book printing
• Booklet printing

Professional Printing

• Full CMYK handling and ICC profiles
• Spot colors
• Overprint controls
• Trim, bleed and crop marks
• Bleed preview with bleed setup directly from new document
• K-only grayscale images on CMYK output
• Create CMYK PDF/X files for pro printing
• Compatible with PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, and PDF/X-4

Live Blend Modes, Adjustments and Effects

Non-Destructive Editing

• Apply to any object, layer, group—whether vector or raster
• See effects, blend modes and adjustments instantly with no lag
• Completely finish designs without switching to another app
• Edit any time—all effects, adjustments, and blend modes are non-destructive
• Set blend modes for strokes, layers, objects and groups
• Selectively recolor artwork and designs without laborious reworking

Live Adjustments

• Levels
• White Balance
• HSL
• Recolor
• Black and White
• Brightness and Contrast
• Posterize
• Vibrance
• Exposure
• Shadows/Highlights
• Threshold
• Curves
• Channel Mixer
• Gradient Map with global color support
• Selective Color
• Color Balance
• Invert
• Soft Proof
• 3D LUT (3D Look Up Table for complex adjustments)
• Lens Filter
• Split Toning

Affinity Publisher Vs. Adobe Indesign

Live Effects

• Gaussian Blur
• Outer Shadow
• Inner Shadow
• Outer Glow
• Inner Glow
• Outline
• 3D
• Bevel/Emboss
• Color Overlay
• Gradient Overlay
• Layer Effects now work with global colors

Live Blend Modes

• Normal
• Darken
• Darker Color
• Multiply
• Color Burn
• Linear Burn
• Lighten
• Lighter Color
• Screen
• Color Dodge
• Add
• Overlay
• Soft Light
• Hard Light
• Vivid Light
• Pin Light
• Linear Light
• Hard Mix
• Difference
• Exclusion
• Subtract
• New
  Divide
• Hue
• Saturation
• Luminosity
• Color
• Average
• Negation
• Reflect
• Glow
• Contrast Negate
• Erase

Input Devices

OS X/macOS

• Pressure-sensitive graphics tablet and pen
• Force Touch and regular Trackpad
• Touch Bar
• Mac keyboards
• Magic Trackpad and Magic Trackpad 2
• Magic Mouse and Magic Mouse 2
• Generic multi-button and wheel mouse
• Dictation offered by OS X

Adobe Indesign Tutorials

Windows

• DirectX 11 and Direct 2D rendering with Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP) fallback
• Hardware accelerated for smooth panning/zooming and rendering
• Optimized for Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book (including support for detachable screen)
• Surface Studio with Surface Pen/Surface Dial
• Generic multi-button and wheel mouse
• Wacom (and other WinTab devices) support
• Uses Microsoft Concurrency Runtime to fully utilize/scale across modern CPUs
• High DPI support across multiple monitors