Will have to check it out. Although, anyone using an app like this is most likely sending it to a printer - so unless you are adept in pre-press and have your PDF files perfect, your printer will have to have it as well. Will have to see if industry embraces it. Almost every designer has a love/hate relationship with Adobe.
@ $40 a pop, printers would be foolish not to purchase it for their production staff. More flexibility = more profits for them. Kind of a no brainer.
It’s a lot more than $40 a copy. It would take several hours for a production artist to become proficient in a new app, and proficiency is necessary. PAs need to be able to troubleshoot files. We need to know all the traps in a program and all the solutions. If there are ten ways to do something we need to know all ten, plus at least two more. You don’t know who is preparing the files, how proficient they are, of how they might do things the application designers never expected.
All that training and practice will cost at least hundreds of dollars. The sticker price for the download is the tip of the tip of the iceberg.
I suppose now I’ll have to try it and see just how well it brings a true publishing workflow. Up to now, Adobe has been the only company that has a product line that could be called commercially viable. All the competition has fallen to the wayside.
even if this works well, it will have a long haul to be accepted in the industry.
Sounds to me like you're saying (admitting) it's a monopoly. There are other ways to do what Adobe's products do but for whatever reason, they've been able to knock out every other challenger. Now they can charge whatever they want and people/companies/government/etc. will have to pay it. Sounds like what Microsoft was caught doing.
Honestly, you think you’re saying something bad? Even if it were a monopoly, so what? This isn’t a monopoly that was forced down anyone’s throats. If it is, it’s one that’s evolved over decades—despite a lot of competition overvthat time. In fact, Adobe, in many areas, was the underdog for years. But it improved its products that the main competition, such as Quark, just faded away. It’s still here, but while it used to be the gorilla that Adobe wasn’t supposed to topple, it did, because of a better product, and Quark’s clueless management.
that happened in illustration as well, with illustrator. Even PDF wasn’t the first attempt. Other, major companies, including Microsoft, had competing products in the very beginning. A number, including that of a major competitor WordPerfect Corp, were considered better at first, but Adobe improved theirs, whereas their competitors didn’t. Guess what happened? Even Postscript had competitors, and they all failed too.
like it or not, Adobe has proven to be very agile over time, and has listened to its customers, and beta testers. I was one of both categories for a long time.
adobe produces professional products, in a large, and varied line. They’ve become standards, because they are very good, and integrate well, not only with each other, but also within a vast number of third party add-ones. Early on, when Adobe was criticized for only allowing their own plug-ins, they opened that up completely.
we don’t know what the future will bring, no company lasts forever. But Adobe has earned its place.
And that's false. Unless there's a serious problem (involving colour separations etc.) printers do not need and do not get the entire publishing document anymore. This is not a controversial idea. Sending an InDesign document and hoping your fonts and images make the journey is far more tedious than creating a Press Ready PDF. And if Affinity has spent years producing a Page Layout app, I'm presuming they will have sorted out PDF creation. It's not an optional feature for publishers of any size.
The only people who always send full open files to their printer are the ones likely using Microsoft Word.
Nope, sorry, THAT's false. I work in prepress; while we do get in some work as PDFs, the vast majority of our clients send us InDesign files, for one simple reason: quality. Most of the PDFs we get in are for low-end stuff like newsletters. The problem with press-ready PDFs for higher end work is that it puts the onus entirely on the client to get everything right, and very few clients have the expertise. By sending us native files, we can make sure that all colors are set up correctly, nothing causes rip errors, and everything is optimized for the press and the paper stock the piece will be printing on -- including doing extensive color work to placed photos. (In fairness, I am talking about high-end sheetfed printing with an 18-micron stochastic screen that produces images that look continuous tone to the naked eye, so it takes a little extra effort.)
I've worked in pre-press since 2003 and I can only remember a few times being given an InDesign file. Every single high-end press job from big time marketing firms and the like have come in the form of a PDF file. We've rarely had any troubles. I know what to check for in the PDF. We request press-quality PDF's from all our customers because the content is "locked down" and there's little chance of something unknowingly being changed. Also there is a time issue involved in my workflow - PDF greatly reduces the time in setting up for press.
And that's false. Unless there's a serious problem (involving colour separations etc.) printers do not need and do not get the entire publishing document anymore. This is not a controversial idea. Sending an InDesign document and hoping your fonts and images make the journey is far more tedious than creating a Press Ready PDF. And if Affinity has spent years producing a Page Layout app, I'm presuming they will have sorted out PDF creation. It's not an optional feature for publishers of any size.
The only people who always send full open files to their printer are the ones likely using Microsoft Word.
Nope, sorry, THAT's false. I work in prepress; while we do get in some work as PDFs, the vast majority of our clients send us InDesign files, for one simple reason: quality. Most of the PDFs we get in are for low-end stuff like newsletters. The problem with press-ready PDFs for higher end work is that it puts the onus entirely on the client to get everything right, and very few clients have the expertise. By sending us native files, we can make sure that all colors are set up correctly, nothing causes rip errors, and everything is optimized for the press and the paper stock the piece will be printing on -- including doing extensive color work to placed photos. (In fairness, I am talking about high-end sheetfed printing with an 18-micron stochastic screen that produces images that look continuous tone to the naked eye, so it takes a little extra effort.)
I've worked in pre-press since 2003 and I can only remember a few times being given an InDesign file. Every single high-end press job from big time marketing firms and the like have come in the form of a PDF file. We've rarely had any troubles. I know what to check for in the PDF. We request press-quality PDF's from all our customers because the content is "locked down" and there's little chance of something unknowingly being changed. Also there is a time issue involved in my workflow - PDF greatly reduces the time in setting up for press.
That’s all very true. In my company’s work the same situation evolved over the years. It certainly wasn’t true at first.
but of course, when a company tries to get these files right, sometimes it doesn’t happen. I’m not talking about the client. I’m talking about the prepress developer.
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All that training and practice will cost at least hundreds of dollars. The sticker price for the download is the tip of the tip of the iceberg.
that happened in illustration as well, with illustrator. Even PDF wasn’t the first attempt. Other, major companies, including Microsoft, had competing products in the very beginning. A number, including that of a major competitor WordPerfect Corp, were considered better at first, but Adobe improved theirs, whereas their competitors didn’t. Guess what happened? Even Postscript had competitors, and they all failed too.
like it or not, Adobe has proven to be very agile over time, and has listened to its customers, and beta testers. I was one of both categories for a long time.
adobe produces professional products, in a large, and varied line. They’ve become standards, because they are very good, and integrate well, not only with each other, but also within a vast number of third party add-ones. Early on, when Adobe was criticized for only allowing their own plug-ins, they opened that up completely.
we don’t know what the future will bring, no company lasts forever. But Adobe has earned its place.
but of course, when a company tries to get these files right, sometimes it doesn’t happen. I’m not talking about the client. I’m talking about the prepress developer.