Affinity Publisher Quirk

The quirk I am going to write about, I have been reading about on forums as it is something others have been experiencing also when placing images in Affinity Publisher.

I can't update my programs because my computer, even though it is new, just will not do anything but crash or freeze when I try, so I have to live with bugs they are worked out in later versions. And just to be clear, I have experienced the same thing with Adobe products. They have had bugs to be worked out also!

The bug I am going to discuss, I am not sure if it will ever get fixed...well there is more than one, however I will start with one and then the other.

I did my first book, Lake of the Spirit Bear and when I got it out there, I was not happy with the two page spread images. I created them so I know the DPI was high, etc and I could not figure out what the problem was.

Recently I happened to go into the RESOURCE MANAGER and noticed the placed DPI was sometimes MUCH LESS than the DPI it had when I imported the image into the book in publisher.

After reading many forums and playing around experimenting with sizes, I found a few solutions and explanations as to why.

I was making a two page spread which has to be uploaded NOT as facing pages but as singles to be accepted. This means the image either gets stuck on the even or the odd page when turned into single pages. It means there has to be two images when it is in facing pages. One is cropped to one side and the second cropped for the other page.

So when it is put back into single pages, there is an image on each page which is great. What isn't' great is that the Publisher program NOT ONLY CUTS THE IMAGE IN HALF, IT ALSO CHANGES AND LOWERS THE PLACED DPI and pixels !!!!

As you likely know, many places the pixels may change with the sizing but the DPI stays the same. That is NOT the case with Affinity Publisher at this time. When you bring in an image which you can do by using a image box (much like a text box) or by the image placing tool.  They are NOT the same and I can't get into that now it changes things.

How I fixed my images so they STAYED with a decent DPI (300 plus is fine...it doesn't have to be huge!!!-your computer will freeze of crash if it is too much...another reason to LINK and not embed your files unless you have a tendency to forget and move your files around, in which case, definitely embed your images!!!!. It is a royal pain trying to track down images if they are linked and you start moving things around!

So, what I did, was made sure the image size with margins MATCHES the image I am placing in the two page spread. This way, there is a consistency in the cropping process. Then I make sure the DPI is 400 and the file has at least 6000 pixels for one size for the image. Then when I place it and have to cut it in two, it is still a high DPI! It is the simplest way I can find.

Of course you choose the DPI when you do the PDF for upload but it still doesn't change the image quality if it has been lowered. It does it for the entire project but the lost info for the image.  Just be aware of this.

The second issue is sometimes the program has a problem saving images. They go all wonky and blurry when it is opened again. For this reason, I LOCK everything I do! AND I try to close the program as little as possible until I have all the edits and PDFs done!

One thing that sometimes I have noticed is that if the image is wonky, don't despair. Try zooming in and out. Sometimes it is also taking more time than you want to give it for the images to actually open. I have even had to click on blank pages to get the image to come up! So it could be there, just not opening up in a friendly way and labouring over it all. Oh joy, oh bliss!

There are MANY issues with Affinity, and after reading the forum, I realize I have become quite the expert on the whole thing...there is issues for sure, but you can buy Affinity Publisher outright and don't have to rent it like Adobe. The best reason I can think of other than the writing for using Word is spaghetti coding as my son calls it. It is inconsistent, never stays the same, and uses so much on my computer it crashes all the time. Give me Affinity products over Word and Adobe any day!

When I learned to paint, I did so the hard way. It took much longer because I had to learn everything the hard way, but when I was done, I knew things inside out. I expect I shall reach this point with Publisher. I chose difficult first projects expecting problems, and so there are no surprises there.

Don't worry, if you keep taking breaks and plugging away at it. You will get there too! Don't give up! Nothing more satisfying when it all comes together!