But in all honesty, the differences are quite minimal, and if you’ve not spent a lifetime using InDesign, they probably won’t matter to you too much.Ĭrucially, Affinity Publisher allows you to work with Adobe file types, including the ability to import IMDL files, documents created in InDesign. It works on Mac and Windows, and there’s interoperability across all three Affinity apps to allow for a smooth workflow. For example, it lacks document setup presets on launch (although you can find third-party templates for this elsewhere) and the way it works with layers can take some getting used to if you’ve been using InDesign for years. Affinity Designer is, therefore, a close match for Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Photo for Photoshop and, launched in 2019, Affinity Publisher is a direct rival to Adobe InDesign.Īffinity Publisher doesn’t quite match up to InDesign's feature set. They match most of the features of Adobe's software while also including some of their own unique tools. Serif's Affinity range of apps unashamedly offers cheap, subscription-free alternatives to Adobe tools. If your company is paying for that, then no worries, of course, but if you work for yourself, you may want to investigate some of the alternative apps on this list before making your decsion.

The one big downside to InDesign is that you need to pay a monthly subscription, either for the single app or as part of an All-Apps subscription to the Creative Cloud. The software is fully integrated into the Creative Cloud, making it easy to pull in Adobe Fonts, Adobe Stock images, and work you’ve created in other Adobe apps, such as Illustrator or Photoshop. In recent years, Adobe has also added lots of useful digital publishing tools, making it a great choice for e-zines, e-books and pretty much anything else you can add an ‘e-’ to. InDesign has been the go-to software for print professionals for over a decade now. It’s perfectly suited to any design work that requires you to combine images and text.

It’s the indisputable industry standard for desktop publishing, whether you're laying out pages, designing a brochure or creating a poster. If you work in media or publishing, you’re probably already using Adobe's InDesign.

Best free desktop publishing software