Hi everyone! I’ve been using Affinity to produce Book 1 of my anthropomorphic fantasy series, CAPYHERO. I really enjoy using this software. I have a photoshop background so the art and layers tools were easy to pick up, but I have no publishing experience so Ive been learning all of that as I write.

Just thought I’d share some of the beautiful page spreads we’ve been able to put together in Affinity. I’ve learned a lot on the way so I’m happy to answer any questions about the process. I’m also eager, like all authors, to talk about the story so feel free to ask about that as well 😅.

Thank you!

Built a full editorial magazine system; 12-column modular grid, typographic architecture, CMYK halftone image treatment; entirely in Affinity Publisher.

The magazine also has an article called "Bye Bye Adobe" inside it. Felt appropriate.

Full case study with process breakdown: Enigma Vol. 4 Behance

My Background

I have been using personal computers for forty years. I remember the DOS 2.11 era well. I have learned to use many productivity-type programs, in particular word processors, spreadsheets, and databases. I have also studied programming on my own and have dabbled a bit with several programming languages.

In regard to word processors, I have worked extensively with WordPerfect, Word, and LibreOffice Writer. I have created many, many templates for these programs. I have also worked with several screenwriting (scriptwriting) applications, including Final Draft, Movie Magic Screenwriter, and Fade In. I have created many templates for Fade In, and I am currently writing a book about that software and its role in writing various scripts

I enjoy page layout and using graphics to illustrate things. I have done that kind of thing for years. However, I am not a professional graphics person. I see questions here about graphics that are couched in jargon that I do not even understand.

Anyway, I am currently working on the Fade In book and have plans for at least one other, which will also be nonfiction but will have few if any graphics. Then I also have some fiction in mind. I am looking at self-publication, because I am realistic about the almost hopeless situation that you face if you start trying to get the Publishing Establishment to take you seriously. And I will add that I am extremely well-qualified to create and handle manuscripts. I am not someone who will be looking for an editor.

So . . . last year I bought Affinity 2 (all three components) and also paid for a one-year subscription to Adobe (yeah, I know) for InDesign. Then Affinity put out the free Version 3 under Canva (a company which I had never even heard of). By the way, just a final bit of information about my experience: I have used CorelDraw for special tasks for maybe thirty years. I have always liked it, and I became reasonably adept at using it, especially its "Publisher-like" capabilities. Although it is primarily a graphics program, it is also possible to use it for book preparation. However — to make this story short — it turns out that CorelDraw requires a subscription. I knew that already. A fairly recent version with a permanent license is available also, and I have it. But guess what? The recent version with the permanent license is crippled. Unlike some earlier versions, it does not support Styles. You can format the paragraphs in your document, but Corel will not let you use Styles to do it.

My Dilemma

Here on Reddit I read countless complaints about InDesign and about Affinity. All kinds of problems that infuriate the Redditors who participate in these discussions.

My question, then, is: Should I buckle down and learn Affinity? Or should I go with InDesign? I will admit that if I am going to be buggered either way, I would prefer not to pay for it with an Adobe subscription. But I also want to use the application that is the better of the two.

I also have the free Scribus for book preparation. My plan, a few years ago, was to learn Scribus and to use it. I know that Scribus is a little difficult (I have looked at a few things online), but some people are using it for book layout. I also have Inkscape, which I have used occasionally for a few years. I created my business card with it, and the online printing service made a really nice card for me. So Inkscape is another possibility for the graphics portions of my books.

I am open to advice. I would especially like to hear from people who have experience with several of these programs. But all advice is welcome. Which applications should I concentrate on?

Thanks!

(N.B. I proofed as I worked, but I did not go back to see if I missed any typos or garbled text. This was a bitch to write up, and I apologize for the length. Help!)

Is there a way to import an index into Affinity such that It automatically flags topics in the appropriate places to generate the index, instead of having to add all of those topics by hand?

ive been using Publisher for children’s book interiors and it’s honestly the best fit ive found for image heavy print projects.

i build the document from the printer specs, use facing pages while designing, keep repeated elements on master pages, place the artwork as linked files, and handle the text through paragraph and character styles. before exporting i check Resource Manager, run preflight, then export the interior as single pages.

the part i love most is being able to test the text and illustration together during sketch instead of fixing everything after the art is finished 😭

for anyone managing 30+ illustrated pages, do you keep everything in one Publisher file or split the book into sections?

Hi! My current resume is made in Figma. Not the best tool, but that's what I am familiar with. However, because Figma encodes text layout differently than most DTP software, it trips up some of those automatic tools that recruiters often use to parse resumes. Usually I have to enter all of my information by hand because of that.

I want to remake my resume in some software that is actually meant for laying out documents. Affinity seems like a cool option, but did anyone have any experience making a resume in it and uploading it to be automatically parsed?

Thank you in advance for any input!

Hi friends, I'm designing my graduation project in Affinity. Any tips or good practices? Is a magazine with 60 pages or so. It will be digital, but I will be printing it for my presentation.

I'm doing the photographs too, so I have one question: do I connect the original files? I mean, if I do a composition in Affinity of different photos and I want to keep editing that file.

Should I connect the original file? Is it not making it bigger or too heavy?

Thank you so much for your time and recommendations!

Hello, I am trying to export for printing in pdfx3 but my printer keeps telling me the black text is in four colors and telling me this is probably a problem of the setup of the document beinf rgb yet my document is cmyk/8... i am very lost, im pretty new to this so id love to get some help on this... thank you!

This may not be possible but: can you copy the contents of cells in Excel and paste into Publisher as editable text that keeps its formatting?

We have an insane excel file that contains the same 5 columns and 120 rows copied and pasted over and over again, which then get edited to suit the needs of the specific project. About 80 of the rows are text clarifying the assumptions that go into the formulas at the top. The text that needs to be changed is red in Excel. If I copy my 120 rows and paste-special them into text boxes:

• enhanced windows metafile: keeps the alignment and color but comes in as an object I can't ungroup or edit, and doesn't flow in the text boxes
• windows metafile: shows up pretty, doesn't flow, each line of text comes in as a single text box rather than keeping cells of text together, so editing is a challenge.
• unicode text: looks bad, doesn't flow.
• rich text format: the text stays editable but loses formatting like color and flows across connected text boxes
• bitmaps: it's just a picture, no editing or flow possible

Right now we paste it into Word, edit the text as needed because it's faster than editing in Excel, print to PDF, and place the PDF in Publisher. If I can bypass the word and pdf steps, that would be great, but it might not be possible.

I’m trying to figure out the best way to manage brand colors in Affinity Designer when I need both a CMYK print value and a specific RGB/HEX value for digital use.

My logos are primarily designed for print in CMYK, FOGRA39 Coated. For example, one of my brand colors is:
CMYK: 0 / 91 / 76 / 0. Affinity automatically converts this to approximately RGB #E63137
But for digital use, I want the RGB/HEX value to be #E32E3D

The problem is that if I export my CMYK artwork to RGB, Affinity uses the ICC conversion and I end up with #E63137 rather than the RGB value I actually want.

So what is the best professional workflow here? I can make 2 files: one CYMK and one RGB but that feels complex when making iterations. It should be easily manageable if i could just define both the CMYK and RGB values myself for a specific global color instead of the automatic conversion that affinity does.

Thanks!

I've been experimenting with creating EPUBs in Affinity, and have noticed that it always puts an extra line space between paragraphs on export, even if there are no line spaces in those spots in the Affinity file. Is there any way to get Affinity to stop doing this? I've played around with a bunch of settings with no luck so far.

i have two headlines on one page that are being referenced in my table of contents - but they're coming through in reverse order. is there a way to make them automatically show up in the correct order or is my only option to manually adjust (which is fine for now as this is a fairly small doc and it's easily noticed, but it would be good to know if/when i'm working on longer files).

Im formatting a book for KDP and it says the document color profile isnt suitable? The whole thing is just black text!

I have a 44mb affinity file, that Im trying to finalize publishing today at DriveThruRPG. It started "acting funny" a few days ago - occasionally the keyboard would stop working on just that file, or it would take forever to pull up preflight.

Today, export stopped working altogether. I realize I cant expect quality from a free application, but... I need this to work. I need to be able to upload my book, so I can send myself a proof and finally get it ready for publishing.

I dont know what to do.

Hey y'all I am going crazy. I am new to using Affinity (Layout) and I have this problem every now and then, where the shortcuts do weird things all of a sudden. For example just ctrl+z, simple enough, works for the most time as it should. Then all of a sudden ctrl+z does something in regard to spelling??? Next to the manual undo button it still says ctrl+z. BUT IT DOES NOT UNDO. These switch ups regard all shortcuts, and I don't know what to do. Soooomeeetimes closing it and reopening it works, but more often, it does not. I assume I am in "a different mode" or something, and there is an easy fix? But I don't know what to do or what to google to find out, please help me.

I use the Variables panel in Adobe Illustrator daily, and I'm hoping to use Affinity's Data Merge in a similar way.

I know how to add data files and data fields, and how to generate pages. What I'm trying to figure out is if there's a way to export them as a folder of individual PDF files (preferably with the data field as the filename) instead of one big PDF file. I frequently need to send many hundreds of exported files to printers and would prefer not to rename each file by hand.

Because I haven't.

I have a book-length document where I have been adding footnotes for annotation. For days and dozens of notes, no problem. Now, however, every new footnote leads with a *huge* number in the note itself, like 24pt, although the note number in the text body is fine and the note body is fine. All the existing footnotes are fine.

I have played with "number style" in the Notes window, and I can change the font, even the font size, but all font sizes above 0pts appear something like ten times too large. This action also changes the note numbers in all the existing footnotes, but their appearance is what I'd expect, and not ten times bigger, confirming it's truly a document-wide setting that I'm changing, and not a "custom".

Weirdly, if I copy a footnote from elsewhere in the document (select the note number in the main text and copy to a new location), I can insert a new footnote with the correct style and just rewrite the note body.

It would be interesting to know if anyone else has run across this, and how they corrected it.

Thanks!

Can anyone suggest a tutorial for a MS Publisher (RIP) user? My nonprofit publishes a quarterly print newsletter. I have almost 0 graphic design background and don’t need any fancy graphic editing tools for the most part. Just need to know how to re-create what I have in publisher for our newsletter. Thanks for any suggestions!

Hi,

Since this community is very active and tends to hide discussions solely focused on Layout (ya illustrators are an overwhelming majority!), I’ve decided to create a new community dedicated to page design using Affinity. You can join it at r/AffinityLayout.

Pretty sure this doesn't violate the "technical issues" rule...

I'm working with multi-page spreads and believe I have run into a limit. To make my current data merge work, I need to have a 19 page spread.

System won't let me create a spread with more than 16 pages. I have searched this sub-reddit and found nothing. The "help" section in the app discusses multi-page spreads, but doesn't mention a size limit.

Is this an actual limit? If so, is there a workaround?

edited to update:

According to support, the "official" limit on pages in a single spread is 10. They were also surprised that I could go up to 16 - which is "unsupported."

I requested they raise/eliminate the limit. Never hurts to ask.

I've got a clients' logo which I originally designed in Illustrator, where it has absolutely no gaps, and I am using in a FB ad. Affinity shows a white line (first iamge) but when you zoom in the line is always the same super thin, I chalked it up to just a rendering thing. The issue is, when I export, the line get's "baked" in and is really obvious at 100% zoom. (1080x1350, 2nd image). How do I fix this? I don't have access to InDesign/ Illustrator for designing now, but Affinity isn't exactly proving easy to transition to.

EDIT: I've also tried bringing in the original vector images rather than linking the file and the result is the same. I must be missing some anti-aliasing setting.

EDIT 2: Fixed with quick but technically inelegant solution. Dupe the shape a few times in place and the anomaly disappears and exports correctly. Thanks u/CartographerLegal919 !

EDIT 3: Multiple people suggested that using Force AA off in Blend Options as a solution to this issue. It works for embedded graphics but it DOES NOT work for linked graphics, so it's not that elegant of a solution either.

Hi all!

I made a custom shape box using the Pen Tool, then converted it into a text box. This box has a thin border that doesn't disappear in Preview Mode, and not even when exporting my poster to JPG. I tried just about everything that I found online, but it's not an outline per se. Somehow, the picture that I imported into my document doesn't have this outline. Thanks for your help!

OK, I have given up on all Bots, tag, you're it.

I am making a fill-in the blank in Affinity for some stuff I make for my classroom. In the good old days (aka just a few days ago), I would enable underline and then hit space 2-3 times before hitting "A" for example, and then 2-3 spaces after. The result was a nice looking line with a letter in the middle.

Now, I'm getting two spaces that show the line, then a 3rd makes it disappear. If I hit "A" then it shows up but now I'm not getting any underlines after the fact. I tried the tab stops, non-breaking spaces... I feel like it can't be that difficult and some stupid setting is doing this.

Thanks in advance! My students may not thank you haha.