Adobe's competitor, Serif, is launching the first major upgrade of its professional creative software since its launch last June (read Affinity Publisher, a newcomer in the world of DTP, wants to destabilize InDesign ).
The main new feature of the layout application Affinity Publisher - which has been voted Mac Application of the Year 2019 - is the import of Adobe's InDesign files (.IDML).
"More and more companies and organisations are deciding to move from the Creative Cloud (from Adobe) to the Affinity suite since the launch of Affinity Publisher, explains Ashley Hewson, director of Serif. The need for a simple way to import InDesign documents was a sensitive issue, especially for those with a large existing catalogue of files, so we are pleased to offer IDML import to ease the transition"
Other new features in Affinity Publisher version 1.8 include real-time preflight alerts (such as too low image resolution, text overflow, background bleed, missing images or fonts...), the ability to save documents as templates, combining multiple Affinity Publisher documents into a single file, importing Excel files, exporting to PDF five times.
