In August 2018 Affinity took the unusual decision to launch its page layout program, Publisher, as a public beta. It generated a lot of comment on CreativePro, with users outlining its pros and cons. Since then the beta has undergone many updates, and the first shipping version of Affinity Publisher is now available at a one-off, no-subscription price of $49.99.
As well as being a fully-fledged page layout program, Publisher boasts a huge range of features, with many unique tools not found in InDesign or elsewhere. There isn’t room to go through all of Publisher’s tools and menu options; instead, we’ll look at some of the more interesting features of this hugely innovative publishing environment.
The power of StudioLink
If you own Affinity Photo, then you can make use of a truly extraordinary editing feature within Publisher. Select an image and, at the click of a button, the interface switches to that of Affinity Photo. This doesn’t mean it loads Photo as a separate app: rather, the entire Photo toolset appears right inside Publisher.
This is possible due to the fact that all three programs share the same file format. (They have different extensions purely so that when you double-click one on the desktop your computer knows which app to open it with.)
StudioLink is an astonishingly useful feature: although you’re effectively working in Affinity Photo, you still see the entire page layout, which means you can adapt images perfectly to fit the available space, without any guesswork. The same applies if you own Affinity Designer, although the wide range of vector tools built into Publisher means you’re less likely to need to use this for everyday tasks.
In the screenshot below, the feather is open in the Photo environment, with all its tools: but you can still see – and manipulate – all the Publisher elements on the page.
Making a new document
The New Document dialog closely resembles that of InDesign, except that there’s no facility for setting the number of columns here – that’s done separately on the Master Page, using the Guides Manager (see below). There are two novel features: you can retrieve the maximum print size from a connected printer, invaluable for business users; and you can choose to start on a left-hand page, rather than a right. This is helpful when preparing double-sided leaflets, as you can see both front and back sides next to each other.
The Guides Manager allows you to set up guides either on a master page or an individual page. You can also use it to place precise, numerically-defined guides; and you can choose whether column guides are shown as outlines, or as blocks of color. Of course, you can choose your own colors to display here.
Working with shapes
Publisher includes a range of shapes such as stars and donuts, all easily customized numerically or via intuitive on-screen controls. Use the Callout tools – either rounded rectangle or ellipse – to make speech bubbles, with simple controls for moving anchor points and bubble size. Use the Donut tool to create donut graphs, right inside Publisher.
You can also use the Vector Crop Tool to crop these shapes, or indeed any Publisher object – including text and stroked paths. And the inclusion of a Boolean Geometry menu – the equivalent of the Pathfinder panel found in InDesign and Illustrator – allows you to create overlaps and intersections from any pair of objects.
Layers panel goodness
There’s a Layers panel in InDesign, although many users ignore it unless they’re working on multilingual layouts. In Publisher, the Layers panel shows thumbnails of every item in the layout, including layers, live filters, and adjustments you’ve added in the Photo environment.
You can move individual layers up and down in the stacking order, or turn them off to hide them. The panel works on a per-spread basis, so the Layers panel only displays the objects on the spread you’re currently working on, and not those in the entire document.
Text handling
Publisher can place text either in standard text frames, or using ‘artistic text’ objects. Standard frames can be multi-column, with the novel ability to set columns of different widths within the same frame. The Artistic Text tool is used for creating standalone headlines, and has the advantage that the text can be scaled just by dragging a corner handle.
There’s full support for glyph variants, with the additional ability to implement stylistic sets from those fonts that use multiple font files to create their variations. You can even select obscure type using its Unicode values.
The Paragraph Spacing controls have a couple of useful features. You can tell Publisher to ignore spacing between paragraphs of the same style: if you’ve set a Subhead style to have, say, 12pt space after it, then setting multiple lines with hard returns between them will not implement this spacing. And if you’ve set spacing before a paragraph, you can check a button to make Publisher to apply this space only between paragraphs, and not at the top of a column. An especially useful feature is the ability to override paragraph leading for selected characters, to prevent oversized text from affecting the leading of the current line.
When browsing fonts in the Type or Paragraph Styles panel – if you’re on a Mac – then you can choose from sets of fonts you’ve previously grouped in Apple’s Font Book app. This is a real bonus if you have many fonts, and want to be able to categorize them for easy identification.
As with InDesign, you can define paragraph and character styles to ensure consistency across your documents. Unlike InDesign, though, these are all contained within a single Text Styles panel; and for ease of identification, the panel shows the text in the style it defines, rather than just its name.
Image handling
As explained above, Publisher can call up the Affinity Photo toolset if you want to edit your images. But you can also apply a range of effects to images directly within Publisher, including outlines, blurs and color overlays. Outlines – strokes, to you and me – are smoothly drawn on cutout images, featuring none of the raggedness you might expect.
Frequently-used image assets can be stored in the Assets panel, which can hold multiple image groups for different clients or jobs. There’s also an intuitive Transparency tool, as well as gradient masks, for further customization of images.
Working with groups
It makes sense to group selections of text and images together so they can be moved as a unit. Publisher also allows you to scale groups: if they contain text, then the text box will be scaled but the font size will remain the same, making the text reflow – although Artistic Text will scale with the group. And if you want to edit a single object within a group, double-clicking it will allow it to be edited independently of the group. Clicking away from it will make the group behave as a single unit once more.
A brush with history
Publisher features a History panel, which stores up to 8,000 steps in the creation of your document. You can step back and forth through the history, jump to a particular point – each step is labeled with its action – or use the slider to wind back through the document’s creation. Best of all, you can save the history with the document, so when you reopen it you’ll find all the creation steps preserved for you.
Limitations
Although Publisher can create tables of contents and indexes, it can’t yet handle footnotes or endnotes – and if you’re an educational publisher, this may well be a crunch point for you. There’s also no support for GREP styles or Nested Styles, which many InDesign users find invaluable. These features are due to be implemented in a future update, along with the ability to open IDML documents exported from InDesign – an essential feature if Affinity hopes to woo customers away from Adobe.
There’s also an issue with discoverability, as there is with Photo and Designer. To take just one example, it’s possible to add noise to both text and blocks of color, and you do this by clicking the tiny dot at the bottom left corner of the Color panel. There’s no indication that this is how to turn on this feature, either via pop-up help or in the online manual.
Conclusion
Limitations aside, there’s no doubt that Publisher is a worthy rival to inDesign. The ability to edit images and vector graphics without leaving Publisher is a huge bonus, and the innovative toolset contains many compelling features. The implementation of “missing” features in future updates will be especially welcome.
When Affinity launches its iPad version next year – with the same feature set as the desktop version – the era of mobile editing will truly be upon us. The main benefit, for most users, lies in Affinity’s pricing policy: as a one-off purchase, Publisher is sure to appeal to users unwilling to lock themselves into Adobe’s subscription model.
This article was last modified on April 23, 2021
This article was first published on July 2, 2019
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Giday Steve
Excellent article … have just down loaded the 10 day trial for the photo version and very interested in the Publisher software…. I have a question, is there a way to set up a single platform color sync for the Affinity software package. As Adobe does.
Cheers Raoul
for those looking to break free from InDesign but frustrated by missing features it is worth considering Scribus which is completely free, just with an out of date looking interface.
I’m a high-end InDesign user which is my preferred app at my workplace but I do some personal work at home and have given Adobe the flick (paying a subscription when I may not use any of the software for weeks or even months is a complete waste of money). I have found “good enough” software in Affinity to do my home work and, since it’s a “new kid on the block” there are bound to be continual improvements.
I really like Publisher in combination with the two other tools from Affinity. I bought all of them when they came out a couple of years ago to support their development a bit. I have been testing them over time and can only say that they have become a very attractive alternative to Adobe and its crazy subscription plan.
Hello
Is there a way to sync the Affinity programs together to get a single color profile?
Cheers Raoul
The big omision is not mentioned here: it can not create Tagged Accessible PDF’s! That is a must as it is mandatory for any government etc. related publications…
Also the PDF X/4 print export is as bad as it can be and will flag about everything in Acrobat Pro when checking.
It still had a LONG way to go…
Thanks. Helpful review. Maybe a bit overly optimistic. I’ve been an Adobe InDesign user for years and I’m really happy to have a non-subscription replacement. Well, hopefully, someday Affinity Publisher will be a replacement. Now, lots of bugs. E.g., – have a nice TOC and want to link it with anchors or pages? After you make all the effort to assign hyperlinks, do an update of your TOC. Now, all your hyperlinks are suddenly gone. Yeah, great. Also, hyperlinks to Heading anchors in a TOC do not work on export PDF.
I think version 1.7 should be 0.7 because of the clunks, workarounds, and dysfunctions. It’s not yet a product.
The prairie dogs have risen. https://www.creativeworkflows.co.uk/is-affinity-publisher-the-adobe-indesign-alternative/
When the tables can be split from one page to another, I’ll buy Publisher. Not for now.
I’ve bought all three Affinity programmes. The StudioLink is revolutionary. I’ve used PS for 13 years and did not think I’d ever change, but these Serif products have got me hooked. No subscriptions is but one aspect. The most exciting thing is that it does everything that PS does and more.
I write and illustrate web content in the main but also self-publish books. The features and flexibility of the Affinity trio make me so much more creative. They are brilliant. StudioLink is a tremendous leap forward.
I’ve no connection with Serif, other than being a steady customer over the years with their ‘Plus’ products.
The Affinity products are terrific products, especially given that they aren’t even at version 2 yet. I have used the Adobe Creative suite for over 25 years and while I like the software just fine, it feels very dated, slow and bloated. Aside from the super useful StudioLink feature, Affinity has reimagined how we interact with the software. The little image resizing widget that appears when you place an image into a picture frame is a great example. The Affinity apps are most certainly professional-grade applications! Oh, and I MUCH prefer Affinity’s business model too.
Nice review, thanks
The feature to ‘open’ or convert a PDF into an editable Affinity Publisher document is also a nice new feature of note.
About time you went somewhere besides Adobe, was getting tires of the adulation. At under $50 with free incremental updates for software that never expires and won’t go belly up if there’s some wonky connection to mother, it’s hard not to lie Affinity Publisher or Affinity anything.
Very helpful review. I have this purchased this program but have not done much with it yet, and this points out many useful features that might be easy to overlook. My feeling is that most professional designers who rely on InDesign’s higher-end features (such as the GREP styles or footnotes/endnotes, not to mention the many third-party plug-ins available for more specialized tasks) won’t be able to make the change, as appealing as this program might seem. However, there are a lot of people out there, like my wife, who are not professional designers but have to occasionally create marketing materials for their job, and end up turning to less-than-worthy programs such as (blech!) PowerPoint for the task, rather than invest in a costly CC subscription. It’s painful for me to watch! :) So I have recommended this program to her and plan to help her learn how to use it. Thank you!