Mixam Online Editor

LeeRatters

LeeRatters

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Lee
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I have had a few A4 hardback books in the past from My Photobook.

I wanted to try Mixam this time around & ordered a small A5 "perfect bound" book with which the printing, colours etc I was happy with.

Fast forward to now trying to do a hardback 68 page photobook with them & I am finding the layouts very frustrating (in comparison to My Photobook) My Photobook gives nice tight gaps between images, gives 'photo' aspect ratios & keeps the aspect ratio intact when resizing/dragging corners etc whereas Mixam seems to be all over the place - for me at least!

Is it like that? Or is it me being an idiot & doing something wrong....??
 
I might say that I've sampled various on-line & downloadable self-publishing apps and became frustrated in the first ten minutes of trying to use them, and gave up.

No doubt this relates to my temperament! But I've successfully used Blurb's 'PDF to book' protocols - historically using Quark Xpress - and nowadays, since Affinity Publisher is free (!), that's the route I'll stick with. Admittedly, it requires a bit more legwork & more hoops to jump through, but to me it seemed utterly worth it.

I believe that Mixam allows a similar route.
 
I produce a monthly club magazine using Mixam,. Although it took a little getting used to, I certainly found that it worked better if I uploaded a pdf file rather than a Word one, if that's any help?
 
Thanks.

I've been using the online tool. I've got it better after going through things a few times so I'm happier with it now. I don't think I've really got anything to produce a book pdf on the PC though unless LR allows it - I can't remember tbh
 
For the zines, my preference is Microsoft word to PDF, then upload. Online editing can be affected by choice of browser.
 
Okay, so I've just looked in the Lightroom 'Book' module - It appears to be connected/related to Blurb. I'm guessing, if I select the PDF option, I can do the whole thing in PDF & then submit to any printing/book company to print it & not have to use Blurb? That makes sense to me..... But my only concern is the 'book size' selected in LR - one option seems to be for an 8"x10" but the book style I was looking at with Mixam is A4....... :thinking:

I have only had a very quick look though as I don't have time right now this evening.
 
I've just gone through the process with Mixam. It was easy until I wanted to edit the design & layout. And I've used various other designers - on and off line in the past.

Next time I'm just going to use InDesign or Publisher. There'll be more of a learning curve up front but it should make tweaking much easier.
 
juggler said:
I've just gone through the process with Mixam. It was easy until I wanted to edit the design & layout. And I've used various other designers - on and off line in the past.

Next time I'm just going to use InDesign or Publisher. There'll be more of a learning curve up front but it should make tweaking much easier.
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Well, I Googled Affinity Publisher as free, downloaded it & it wanted a license key.....

I've got on a bit better with Mixam with a bit more time....
 
LeeRatters said:
Well, I Googled Affinity Publisher as free, downloaded it & it wanted a license key.....

I've got on a bit better with Mixam with a bit more time....
Click to expand...
Affinity Publisher has never been free, but since being bought by Canva, "Affinity by Canva" is free.

This includes all three programs that Affinity sold; including Affinity Publisher (plus Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer). The original Affinity programs are no longer for sale.

You do however need to sign up to Canva to get the free version.

You will be encouraged to sign up to the paid version of Canva, to get all the tools that Canva offers (unrelated to Affinity) and some of the "extra" AI tools available for Affinity.

The basic Affinity AI tools are included in the free version, and the paid for tools don't work very well.
 
When everyone seemed to be using Pagemaker, I was using CorelDraw, used it for all kinds of books, year books, diaries, annual reports, prospectuses, projects, record books and similar, not really photo based. Most things were printed out single sided for imposition for offset printing, but one copy was always made and bound for proof.

The closest thing I have found to CorelDraw is Affinity, which is what I now use ( on much smaller things now), but it gives me the most important thing that CorelDraw did, complete freedom to place what I wanted where I wanted, on any page size, set or custom, which over 30 years ago was quite rare.

When Corel owned WordPerfect, it came very close. (They also bought the industry standard typesetting software used by magazines and newspapers, and had integrated the features into WordPerfect)

I agree that PDF is the best way to send anything out for printing.

I usually use the new free Affinity, but do sometimes revert to the separate ones as they seem a bit more intuitive to use.
 
I used to use Serif to make a news letter on a weekly basis - IIRC they became affinity.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I used to use Serif to make a news letter on a weekly basis - IIRC they became affinity.
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Yes, Serif were behind the Affinity graphics suite, but Serif was recently bought by Canva and the current product is "Affinity by Canva". As I said above, the original Affinity products are no longer for sale.

The Affinity graphics suite is now part of the Canva suite of graphics tools and is accessible within the "free" version of Canva. So you need to sign up to Canva to use Affinity.

The current free version has the original AI tools that came with Affinity (by Serif), but for newer generative AI tools you need to get a paid membership of Canva. The new AI tools get poor reviews.
 
myotis said:
Affinity Publisher has never been free, but since being bought by Canva, "Affinity by Canva" is free.

This includes all three programs that Affinity sold; including Affinity Publisher (plus Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer). The original Affinity programs are no longer for sale.

You do however need to sign up to Canva to get the free version.

You will be encouraged to sign up to the paid version of Canva, to get all the tools that Canva offers (unrelated to Affinity) and some of the "extra" AI tools available for Affinity.

The basic Affinity AI tools are included in the free version, and the paid for tools don't work very well.
Click to expand...

I'm sure the link I followed said it was free.... Anyway, I uninstall it and installed the "Affinity by Canva" one instead and a quick look at it made me find doing the images direct on Mixam easier :ROFLMAO:
 
LeeRatters said:
I'm sure the link I followed said it was free.... Anyway, I uninstall it and installed the "Affinity by Canva" one instead and a quick look at it made me find doing the images direct on Mixam easier :ROFLMAO:
Click to expand...
That doesn't surpise me. Affinity is a full blown "do everything" graphics suite with the original target of attracting users away from Adobe (photoshop, designer and Indesign). It's a complex program to learn.

Canva have said that their reason for buying Affinity, and the rationale of making it free is to make it easy for professional Adobe users to start using Canva.

It seems that at the moment, Canva is used for a lot of graphics work by non-professionals, but then handed over to a professional graphics person who uses Adobe for finishing.

I believe Canva has very good team/sharing tools, and by bringing Affinity into the Canva family, the plan is that professional users will start to default into doing everything within Canva, and leave Adobe behind.

At least that is how I understood the speech from the Canva CEO.
 
"That doesn't surpise me. Affinity is a full blown "do everything" graphics suite with the original target of attracting users away from Adobe (photoshop, designer and Indesign). It's a complex program to learn."

I think that depends on where you come from. I came from CorelDraw, , but I find Affinity to be one of the easiest, maybe because it feels quite like CorelDraw to me.

My son was using PS for GCSE, now he uses Affinity and likes it. My daughter used PS for A level and varsity, and finds Affinity friendly.

I find PS terrible, but millions love it :)
 
Sangoma said:
"That doesn't surpise me. Affinity is a full blown "do everything" graphics suite with the original target of attracting users away from Adobe (photoshop, designer and Indesign). It's a complex program to learn."

I think that depends on where you come from. I came from CorelDraw, , but I find Affinity to be one of the easiest, maybe because it feels quite like CorelDraw to me.

My son was using PS for GCSE, now he uses Affinity and likes it. My daughter used PS for A level and varsity, and finds Affinity friendly.

I find PS terrible, but millions love it :)
Click to expand...
I was meaning in comparison to a piece of software dedicated to producing Mixam books: Affinity for Canva combines professional level pixel editor, DTP and vector editor into a single program, which gives you a lot more to get your head around.

Even though the three Affinity programs were designed with an eventual "single" integrated graphic editing suite in mind, I've picked up on several people complaining about how complex it has become now that the three programs are one.

My own experience using Affinity Photo and Photoshop is that Affinity Photo seemed much better designed and easier to learn, but you might expect that, given Affinity Photo was designed from scratch, where as Photoshop has evolved over many years.
 
myotis said:
I was meaning in comparison to a piece of software dedicated to producing Mixam books: Affinity for Canva combines professional level pixel editor, DTP and vector editor into a single program, which gives you a lot more to get your head around.

Even though the three Affinity programs were designed with an eventual "single" integrated graphic editing suite in mind, I've picked up on several people complaining about how complex it has become now that the three programs are one.

My own experience using Affinity Photo and Photoshop is that Affinity Photo seemed much better designed and easier to learn, but you might expect that, given Affinity Photo was designed from scratch, where as Photoshop has evolved over many years.
Click to expand...

Yes on all there.

There was a change in the way the tools are accessed between the individual programmes and the combined one, it caught me as well, but now it doesn't seem a problem.

I think you have nailed the head on the hit with PS, when I tried it, I found that to alter an adjustment I had made three operation before, I had to undo and go back to it. Took me a long time of frustration before someone told me what to do, apparently it doesn't happen too often, but I stayed with GIMP :) PS just felt disjointed.

Now I find GIMP hard to use and lacking in features I rely on. :ROFLMAO:
 
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