Publisher also allows you to scale groups: if they contain text, then the text box will be scaled but the font size will remain the same, making the text reflow although Artistic Text will scale with the group.

It generated a lot of comment on CreativePro, with users outlining its pros and cons.

Since then the beta has undergone many updates, and the first shipping version of Affinity Publisher is now available at a one-off, no-subscription price of 49.99.

There isnt room to go through all of Publishers tools and menu options; instead, well look at some of the more interesting features of this hugely innovative publishing environment.

This doesnt mean it loads Photo as a separate app: rather, the entire Photo toolset appears right inside Publisher.

The same applies if you own Affinity Designer, although the wide range of vector tools built into Publisher means youre less likely to need to use this for everyday tasks.

There are two novel features: you can retrieve the maximum print size from a connected printer, invaluable for business users; and you can choose to start on a left-hand page, rather than a right.

This is helpful when preparing double-sided leaflets, as you can see both front and back sides next to each other.

You can also use it to place precise, numerically-defined guides; and you can choose whether column guides are shown as outlines, or as blocks of color.

Use the Callout tools either rounded rectangle or ellipse to make speech bubbles, with simple controls for moving anchor points and bubble size.

Use the Donut tool to create donut graphs, right inside Publisher.

And the inclusion of a Boolean Geometry menu the equivalent of the Pathfinder panel found in InDesign and Illustrator allows you to create overlaps and intersections from any pair of objects.

In Publisher, the Layers panel shows thumbnails of every item in the layout, including layers, live filters, and adjustments youve added in the Photo environment.

The panel works on a per-spread basis, so the Layers panel only displays the objects on the spread youre currently working on, and not those in the entire document.

Standard frames can be multi-column, with the novel ability to set columns of different widths within the same frame.

The Artistic Text tool is used for creating standalone headlines, and has the advantage that the text can be scaled just by dragging a corner handle.

And if youve set spacing before a paragraph, you can check a button to make Publisher to apply this space only between paragraphs, and not at the top of a column.

An especially useful feature is the ability to override paragraph leading for selected characters, to prevent oversized text from affecting the leading of the current line.

This is a real bonus if you have many fonts, and want to be able to categorize them for easy identification.

Unlike InDesign, though, these are all contained within a single Text Styles panel; and for ease of identification, the panel shows the text in the style it defines, rather than just its name.

But you can also apply a range of effects to images directly within Publisher, including outlines, blurs and color overlays.

Outlines strokes, to you and me are smoothly drawn on cutout images, featuring none of the raggedness you might expect.

Theres also an intuitive Transparency tool, as well as gradient masks, for further customization of images.

Insert Horizontal Line Publisher