Affinity Publisher released

After the recently released Affinity Photo and Designer 1.7 updates, the next major release is now coming. With Affinity Publisher, the development studio Serif is offering a third subscription-free alternative for the market. According to the keynote (below), the number of customers has already doubled to 2 million since last year. As the name suggests, Publisher is geared towards desktop publishing and therefore competes with tools such as Adobe Indesign. What does Publisher have to offer on release?

Affinity Publisher feature overview

With its tidy interface, Publisher has all the usual functions that no software of this type should be without. In addition to document setup, the most important basics are covered with typography, design and layout tools, raster and vector graphics integration, master pages, baseline grid, as well as proper export and import formats. But there are also some exciting additional workflow features.

• Design tools with drawing pen, node tools, Boolean operators, bitmap fill methods, stroke panel, layer effects, automatic alignment,
• Layout tools including double-page layouts, (nested) master pages, customised text frames, text wrapping and wrapping, table options
• Typography features with live preview, path support, styles, OpenType, initials, graphic text, flow options, glyph browser, baseline grid, placeholders and more
• Graphics import for linking, embedding and editing PSD, AI, PDF, JPG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, EXR, DNG, EXR and Affinity file formats
• Colour management with support for RGB, LAB, CMYK and grayscale colour spaces, Pantone, ICC colour management profiles, Smart Color Picker and more
• Adjustment layers for adjustments such as blur, shadows, gradation curves, glow and much more
• Performance with up to 60 fps, real-time preview for object transformations, gradients, effects, font adjustments, aperture modes and more
• Export to PDF, PDF/X, PNG, JPG, GIF, TIFF, PSD, SVG, EPS, EXR and HDR
• Additional features such as a history slider, transparency tool, asset management, smart colour picker and more.

A detailed overview of all functions can be found in the technical data sheet.

For all those who are concerned about compatibility with old templates: It looks like Publisher can’t convert or output InDesign documents yet, but AI files can be imported with PDF Stream and rebuilt accordingly.

StudioLink – Workflow Integration

One of the most exciting workflow functions is“StudioLinK“. With Affinity Publisher, you can directly access the features of the other two software tools in order to use photo editing from Affinity Photo and the vector tools from Affinity Designer. You can see exactly what this looks like in the keynote video above.

Availability

Affinity Publisher is available for Windows and Mac – an iPad version is also planned. The software currently costs €43.99 (20% discount), the regular price is €55. For an introduction to the range of functions, you can watch a selection of over 50 tutorials on the official website.

Further information: To the Serif website and the technical data sheet