- Affinity Publisher Manual
- Is Affinity Publisher Worth It
- Affinity Publisher Templates
- Affinity Publisher Price Uk
Mac
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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 optimisation 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 Customisable
- Light or dark user interface
- Create and save your own custom keyboard shortcuts
- Create your own toolbars and toolbar layouts
- Reorganise on-screen panels, float or dock as preferred
- Create and save Studio panel (and toolbar) presets
- Tweak UI tool size and choose monochrome or coloured 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 behaviours and UI settings in Preferences
Professional Samples
- Explore professional samples to trigger your imagination
Learning Made Easy
- Access over 50 categorised 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)
- NewIn-app access and viewing of your Affinity account
- Affinity Store content synchronisation
- NewInstall free and purchased Affinity Store content
Languages
- English (US and UK)
- German
- French
- Spanish
- Portuguese (Brazilian)
- Japanese
- Italian
- Chinese (Simplified)
- Russian
Page Layout essentials
Import
- Adobe® Indesign® IDML
- 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 Neighbour 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 favourite 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
- NewPath text overflow control
Placing Content
- Images (PNG, JPG, TIFF, SVG)
- 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
- NewPSD 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
- NewDPI/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
- NewConvert 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
Affinity Publisher Manual
- 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
- 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
- NewImport 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
- NewXLSX spreadsheet, TSV, CSV and JSON data sources
- Merge direct to page (certificates, letters, greetings cards)
- NewMerge into a repeating grid layout (business cards, mailing labels, badges, passes)
- Data Merge Layout Tool for grid layouts
- NewRepeat 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 customising 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
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 customise 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 honoured
- Collect linked resources into a ‘sidecar‘ folder for project portability
Layer Management
- Each page has its own layers
- Organise 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
- NewOriginal document remains unaffected
- Include fonts and linked images
- NewShow 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 favourite 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
- Customisable bleed and margin colours
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 colour
Layout Grids
- Create standard square and rectangular grids
- Change grid colour 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
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, mitre 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 customise shapes, achieve neat results with snapping geometry
- Create perfect squares and circles by constraining primitives
- Apply special and rounded corners as absolute or % values
- Customise 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 colour 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, centre, 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 centre 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 favourite 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, Watercolour and Pastel styles
- Complete editability of an already applied stroke’s width, colour and opacity
- Stroke stabilisation 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 stabiliser 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
- Synchronisation across instances by default
- Switch off synchronisation 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 stabilisation 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 colour 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 colour effects
Custom Brushes
- Create completely custom vector and raster brushes using your own textures
- Choose behaviour for pressure and velocity variance, corners, repeating areas and many other controls
Professional Colour, Compatibility, and Output
Professional Colour
- True end-to-end CMYK for professional workflows
- RGB, RGB Hex, LAB, CMYK and Greyscale colour models
- PANTONE® colour swatches
- ICC colour management profiles supported
- Seamlessly jump between colour modes
- Lock to prevent colour mode switching
Pantone® Colour 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 Colour Picker
- Dedicated Tool for sampling colour in your Document View
- Accurately pick colour using a magnifier over any part of your display
- Point or colour averaged sampling
- Sample from current or all layers
- Grab in the source colour space including CMYK, RGB and LAB colour
- Simple panel-based Colour Picker as alternative
Palettes and Swatches
- Use colours and palettes based on all the available colour models
- Automatically create palettes based on document colours
- Import Adobe® Swatch Exchange (.ase) files
- Create complementary, analogous and other colour chords
- Generate palette from any image
Global Colours
- Update objects when their base colour changes
- Tint levels are retained when base colour updates
- Use as solid colours or in gradients
16-bits per Channel Support
- 16-bits per channel mode for accurate colour 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
- 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)
- 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
- 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 colours
- Overprint controls
- Trim, bleed and crop marks
- Bleed preview with bleed setup directly from new document
- K-only greyscale 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 recolour artwork and designs without laborious reworking
Live Adjustments
- Levels
- White Balance
- HSL
- Recolour
- Black and White
- Brightness and Contrast
- Posterise
- Vibrance
- Exposure
- Shadows/Highlights
- Threshold
- Curves
- Channel Mixer
- Gradient Map with global colour support
- Selective Colour
- Colour Balance
- Invert
- Soft Proof
- 3D LUT (3D Look Up Table for complex adjustments)
- Lens Filter
- Split Toning
Live Effects
- Gaussian Blur
- Outer Shadow
- Inner Shadow
- Outer Glow
- Inner Glow
- Outline
- 3D
- Bevel/Emboss
- Colour Overlay
- Gradient Overlay
- Layer Effects now work with global colours
Live Blend Modes
- Normal
- Darken
- Darker Colour
- Multiply
- Colour Burn
- Linear Burn
- Lighten
- Lighter Colour
- Screen
- Colour Dodge
- Add
- Overlay
- Soft Light
- Hard Light
- Vivid Light
- Pin Light
- Linear Light
- Hard Mix
- Difference
- Exclusion
- Subtract
- NewDivide
- Hue
- Saturation
- Luminosity
- Colour
- 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
Windows
- DirectX 11 and Direct 2D rendering with Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP) fallback
- Hardware accelerated for smooth panning/zooming and rendering
- Optimised 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 utilise/scale across modern CPUs
- High DPI support across multiple monitors
Designers working with desktop publishing may want to take a look at Affinity Publisher. The tool, which is now available for Mac and Windows platforms, is emerging as a powerful and flexible design option.
The tool is part of the Serif line of graphic design products, which also includes Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, both super-capable platforms in their own right.
Here’s a look at Affinity Publisher and how it compares to a tool you may already be familiar with – Adobe InDesign.
What is Affinity Publisher?
Affinity Publisher is a professional design software package. It’s made for desktop publishing, including books, magazines, marketing collateral but can also be used for digital materials as well.
The app allows you to manipulate and work with images, graphics, and text to create almost endless layout possibilities with workflow boosts to make large documents easy to work with and manage.
It works with other Serif products as well as native Adobe files and has the power to handle complex vector elements without losing functionality or speed.
The biggest reason Affinity Publisher may be growing in the marketplace is cost. It does not include a subscription model and runs off your local machine. It works on Mac or Windows computers and the download is $49.99 with a free trial available. (You can get it directly from the Affinity Publisher website or in the Mac App Store.)
Affinity Publisher Basics
Affinity Publisher makes it easy to try this tool with a great price and single app download pricing model. It’s robust and includes everything you would want in a desktop publishing app.
The only downsides are that it can feel unfamiliar and a little clunky if you are used to InDesign. Some of that is likely because it is different or maybe because the tool is a little newer and they are still working out some of the finer details.
The Affinity package of tools has a neat feature – StudioLink – that lets you hop between tools in the same app. If you are planning to switch to all Affinity products for design tasks, this is a time-saving option that’s highly functional.
When you get into the software itself, everything is there – you can see some of these key features in the next section – although some things work a little differently than what you may be accustomed to with Adobe products.
Key differences include lack of document setup presets on launch – although you can find third-party templates on design marketplaces – and master pages and layers that require a little more thought until you get used to us.
Designers working on laptops may love this: The software is light and fast without losing render or image quality.
Affinity Publisher Key Features
So, what can Affinity Publisher do? That’s always the big question when it comes to using or switching to a new tool.
Key features include:
- Layout functionality for double page spreads, live master pages, custom shaped frames (including for text), frame linking, tables, and ability to share across apps or devices
- Tons of text manipulation options and control with decorations, drop caps, paths, artistic options, baseline grid, and flow features
- Pixel-perfect graphics that you can link or embed, plus non-destructive layer adjustments
- Pen and node tools, boolean operations, layer effects, and fill options
- Ability to package and export files
- Data merge tools for complex documents with an external data element (supports text/CSV, JSON, and Excel files)
- Live preflight checks
- Color control with end to end CMYK, spot color support, Pantone library, and ICC color profiles
- Asset management tools to help you keep most-used elements at hand
- Preview mode for grids, guides, bleed, and margins
Affinity Publisher vs. Adobe InDesign
The biggest tool comparison is Affinity Publisher vs. Adobe InDesign when it comes to desktop and print publishing. For those not working with either tool on a daily basis, they may seem almost identical at a glance.
Is Affinity Publisher Worth It
They are pretty stiff competitors with the edge going to InDesign because of time on the market and familiarity for so many users. But cost and function could negate that advantage.
Affinity Publisher has all the layout tools regularly use including master pages, spreads, grids, tables, typography options, text flow, presentation or print output settings, and more. You can import IDML files, use the preflight checker, create smart master pages, and work with OpenType fonts. Linking or embedding graphics files is a non-issue.
There are plenty of other similarities as well.
Affinity Publisher Templates
- Works on Mac and Windows desktops
- Have fairly intuitive interfaces
- Allows you to work with native Adobe files
- Ability to create pro quality documents for print or digital publishing
- Plenty of tutorials and templates available
- Include free trials (Affinity Publisher’s is 30 days, compared to 7 for Adobe InDesign)
- Core tools and publishing functionality are similar
- Excellent export capability in a number of file formats
The most obvious difference between Publisher and InDesign is probably price and pricing structure.
Affinity Publisher comes with a one-time fee when you download it, $49.99.
InDesign is part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite of software and comes with a monthly fee, which is based on your plan. The single app price is $20.99 per month.
Conclusion
Affinity Publisher is a powerful design and layout tool that’s highly comparable to Adobe InDesign.
It’s flexible and easy to learn. And the price is hard to beat.
For current Adobe InDesign users, it could be a little tougher to switch software because while it has much of the same functionality and end result, it just feels different to use. Switching will totally depend on your comfort level.
Either way, the download and trial are worth a try!
Affinity Publisher Templates
Affinity Publisher Price Uk
In this feature, we've covered the basics of Affinity Publisher with tutorials and software comparisons, as well as the best Affinity Publisher templates.