[Tin Toy Astronaut]

 

[Canva]

39 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

That is the case with most applications. AI is closed format, for example.

There are an awful lot of pessimists around. The glass is nine tenths empty for them, without even seeing the glass.

Plenty read AI files nothing (???) reads afdesign files. Yes in theory Adobe could completely change their format but why would they possibly want to? The more people working with AI files the better.

[Canva]

1 minute ago, Bryan Rieger said:

I recently fired up SheepSaver running MacOS 9.0.4 (on my M1 Pro powered MacBook Pro) and was amazed at the size and performance of many of the apps. Yes, MacOS 9 feels more than a little dated/clunky now, but I was somewhat astounded by how much I liked working in many of those older (Macromedia) applications in a VM. Not sure if it'll become a daily driver, but it's nice to know that it's an option.

I've also rediscovered 'the joy of the progress bar'… it may seem counter intuitive, but when computers became fast enough to perform many operations in real-time the old faithful progress bar largely disappeared. While I welcomed the new realtime responsiveness, I found that I soon missed the contemplative time I had to consider my work while the operation progressed. The progress bar slowed me down a little, but in the process made me much more considerate of the work I was creating, and the work often ended up better for it.

I've system 8 on my machine, almost instantly loads and it is amazing that the graphics apps had so much functionality. Have been tempted to try some stuff with SuperPaint or similar. Shame there's no browser options worth using for these old OS's or it would sort of be tempting to buy an old "proper" mac.

[Affinity is joining the Canva family. RIP ?]

1 hour ago, Sam Neil said:

Why don't you guys get it - Affinity cannot continue in it current form - Simply under-resourced and cash strapped. To survive they need fresh injection of cash and expertise - so you can shout and express until you are blue in the face but you fail to understand Affinity is NOT Adobe or indeed Canva - The list of feature requests are staggering but because they simply have not got the resources (One of the main developers who left), they fall on deaf ears - While Adobe is adding features such as AI powered fills and so on, Affinity is struggling with the never ending list of bugs. So cut them some slack as to move forward they need to rely on external source - What did you expect them to do? A senior programmer gets 60K - where do you think this money is meant to come from? Perpetual licence?

So in short they look like they did the dirty on their users but left's face it V2 is struggling and updates are NOT coming out as frequently as liked or expected.

This is my take on the matter.

They are not cash strapped (before the buyout), where did you get that from? However people saying they are sell-outs makes me laugh. If you had a company are were offered a butt load of money don't pretend you wouldn't bite their hands off and take it.

[Canva]

5 hours ago, Komatös said:

The reason is simple. The V1 was unlocked with a serial number, which was like an invitation to a free banquet for pirates.  

Online verification made it more difficult for pirates to use the software without a valid license. 

v2 may have made it more difficult for pirates to crack it (or not, I've no idea) but didn't do anything to stop them. The only thing it did stop was casual password sharing.

[Affinity is joining the Canva family. RIP ?]

25 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

There is something to be careful of - V1 files once opened and saved by V2 will can no longer be opened in V1.

He was asking about installation problems not operational. I would hope by now that everyone knows about file compatibility or lack of.

[Canva]

2 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

Can we please stop being so condescending and dismissive of others. I'm not a fan Canva, but I know many individuals, business, non-profit orgs, and large brands who absolutely love it, as it enables them to create effective communications/media without having to hire (and wait for) a professional, which they often can't afford anyway. As for large brands, it enables their marketing departments to move at pace assembling their own brand assets and scheduling the publishing of social media campaigns in a much faster, and more coordinated manner than was available before.

It's weird that some people don't understand that not everyone is artistic even more weird when you see some of the efforts posted online, you would think they would understand!

[Affinity is joining the Canva family. RIP ?]

10 hours ago, BeckyM said:

Dumb question but if I redeem the upgrade offer now for V2, will I still be able to concurrently use V1? I remember getting bit by that in the past with other software, even if I was careful not to overwrite the earlier version with the new, sometimes it would deactivate your old product key.

Yes there's no problem running both versions, nothing to be careful of.

[Canva]

49 minutes ago, Canva eats Affinity said:

I promise, you will be overwhelmed. Join the forum there, the community is small but fine. And the one-man-company replies quite quick. If you have any questions, let me know – as long as I am here, I can reply.

The forum whilst generally fine has a few that put me off visiting it again. I didn't notice a ban/ignore option but might have missed it. However for me there's no real requirement to visit any app forum, you can just use it.

[Affinity is joining the Canva family. RIP ?]

2 hours ago, Aging Violinist said:

I plan to do this same thing myself, but I am curious about one thing (since I've only ever installed Affinity Photo once):

What happens if I need to reinstall at some point in the "Brave New Subscription-based World"? Will that license still be able to activate? What happens if (more likely when) the ability to activate old licenses is removed? From what I recall, it needs to authenticate to a serif server when installed, right?

 

v1 is always going to be fine activation wise as far as I'm aware as it just validates the serial number locally. v2 needs the activation server to still be up and running if you need to re-install on a new machine/os re-install. I can't imagine the server going any time soon but if they do ever decide to kill it off, as Adobe did for their old versions, then they could possibly change it to work as v1 did and send out serial numbers to customers. But I don't think that's something to worry about yet.

Probably a bigger worry is if/when an os update breaks things (I'm looking at you Apple!). But that isn't any different to now.

[Canva]

2 hours ago, Boldlinedesign said:

The massive update just came out of beta officially a couple weeks ago. Sounds like you were using the older version. Might be better to try the updated program and not rely on experiences with the older version when assessing the program. Really impressive update a year in the making

I'll have another play with it sometime but like the majority I don't normally try apps every couple of months in the hope that they have improved enough unless perhaps there's some big announcement about how wonderful and non-buggy it is now.

[Canva]

1 hour ago, Boldlinedesign said:

When was the last time you used Vectorstyler? They just released last week a giant update to version 1.2 with a lot of stability fixes and improvements. There are some bugs but I use the program day in and day out each day and rarely have major issues

End of Dec or early Jan, so I don't suppose it's massively better now.

[Canva]

1 hour ago, ADRs said:

maybe it's a sign...

A few people have mentioned that but it's way too buggy for me. Impressive that a one man band can add so much functionality but it's at the expense of quality.

[Questions on Canva acquiring Affinity]

8 minutes ago, OriolFM said:

Look at Open Source Design/Art Software:

 - Blender is probably the best example, but the interface is still a bit clunky and the learning curve is steep. Lot of support and the community is great, though.

 - GIMP is... not bad, but the interface is also quite poor. It's functional for most things, but still not Photoshop by a long shot. Still, you can find add-ons and tutorials easily.

 - Inkscape is absolute hell. I tried using it several times, but the interface is downright unusable and counterintuitive. It looks as if someone deliberately made it more difficult for the user. And I know some people use it regularly and have done great things with it, it is just too painful. If it was more user-friendly, I'd probably be using it instead of buying Affinity Designer.

 - Before purchasing Affinity Publisher, I had also tried Scribus, as an open source publishing software. Scribus may have advanced functions, but it suffers from the same clunky interface as most of the other design open source programs do. Scribus support and documentation is also poor, and it is extremely difficult to use.

 

I love open source software. I used Ubuntu and Libreoffice for years at my desktop, and I only moved back to Windows because I got a Microsoft Surface and Clip Studio Paint did not have a version for Linux. I got back to Microsoft Office instead of Libreoffice because MS365 comes with 1TB Onedrive storage, and that was cheaper than keep using Libreoffice and get a stand-alone cloud storage service. Still, whenever I can I use open source software, and when I need a program that's the first I check. But when it comes to design, OSS does not quite cut it, except maybe for Blender, which despite the UI and learning curve, is a pretty amazing program overall.

If there was a team working in an open-source suite of design software similar to Affinity with well-written documentation and an intuitive UI, I wouldn't even think about subscribing to their Patreon (or whatever) as long as they kept the development going.

As far as vector I did try my best with inkscape but it was a fairly horrible experience, to be fair it's only been going for 20+ years, so early days lol. But there's not a whole lot of choice even with perpetual license commercial vector apps and of that there are none that I'd choose to use. Perhaps I'll do something different like try one of the natural media apps which at the moment none of which are subscription. Or for you enjoying open source that would be krita but I think that has the usual horrible UX too.

[Canva?!????!]

1 hour ago, Hanterdro said:

If they switch in the future to a subscription model, there is no reason not to move to Adobe.

Sort of true but depends what the price difference is. Academic for me as I simply won't be doing it.

 

55 minutes ago, mwilliamanderson said:

Personally, I'm cautious. I use Affinity to design, but as an educator, not as a designer. I used to be a designer and I can remember the days of QuarkXpress, then the fledgling program that was InDesign… programs come, programs go. It is the way of things. So, for me, as long as I can download V2 in perpetuity, it does all I need it to do.

If a subscription model is introduced, I will have to think hard about the cost… at the moment, without discount, the cost of the one-off payment for the suite is £160. If a version last over, say, three years before the next version, then over 36 months, on a subscription model, I would only expect to pay approx. £4.50 per month. So, when you look at it like this, then the prospect of subscription isn't so bad.

However – and this is a BIG however – subscription models don't allow you to own the program as an entity in and of itself. The payment needs to be made to have access to the downloaded program. That is the issue I have with subscription models, mainly because I'm old school – if I'm going to contribute to your pension pot, Mr. Hewson, along with Canva's shareholder profits, I want something tangible, not a license… sorry, terribly old school, but someone has to begin the push back against the subscription model.

If (when) they go subscription I would have thought that's it's pretty unlikely it's going to be that cheap, possibly per app though. Subscription can be bad through to terrible, partly depends what happens if your subscription lapses. Some you just don't get any more updates, others it turns in to read only mode so you can still print, export etc but not edit, then you have the Adobe way where you're locked out of the app. 

[Canva?!????!]

So no change to the pricing model "at this time" and v2 will get free updates (they have to be free, they can't suddenly switch model). So reading between those lines it really sounds as though v3 will be subscription or they would have simply said it will always be a one off payment model. My guess is that v3 will be along fairly quickly in comparison to how long v1 was around. Acquisitions rarely seem to be good news for customers but the acquired do nicely from it. 

Unfortunately when it comes to AD there aren't a whole lot of options to switch to, well not decent ones that are non-subscription. Unless you do simple things I've not come across any that I'd want to use, hopefully that will change. AP on the other hand there's plenty of choice.

Of course until an OS update breaks things, which has happened before, then just keep using what you have and keep an eye on alternatives.

[Limited edition Leica M-P Grip by Rolf Sachs]

1 hour ago, jmwellborn said:

@VectorVonDoom and that table tennis bat rubber must have taken hours to create. Spectacular!

Thanks, it probably did take nearly as long as the main body but wasn't too bad.

[Limited edition Leica M-P Grip by Rolf Sachs]

This one was covered in table tennis bat rubber and the text on the top plate was also red.

[Leica M3, Summarex 8.5cm]

5 hours ago, Malcolm Clark said:

That's awesome.  Thank you for sharing it.

The only problem is that it makes me want (a real) one of my own......

A lot cheaper drawing them than owning them but they are nice to use.

[Leica M3, Summarex 8.5cm]

A bit of tidying up including adding the external viewfinder. That will do.

[Leica M3, Summarex 8.5cm]

A quick one keeping things simple, a few conical gradients etc. Might tidy things up if I decide I like it.

 

 

 

 

 

[Nikon F camera]

1 hour ago, Aammppaa said:

Your work is always so impressive to me, but something about this one is even more remarkable! Perhaps it is the accuracy of the numbers wrapped around all those surfaces, or the grain of the leather, or the soft satin sheen of the brushed metal. Absolutely beautiful. 

Thanks. I got the text pretty much warped correctly using the warp tool just some tweaks. The leather is sort of a bodge. I used one of the few vector textures that I’d created then layered/flipped/set blend modes. Didn’t look quite like I wanted and ended up with a grey gradient at the top set to reflect blend. Whilst the pattern isn’t the same as the real thing it looks pretty much like you’d expect. Didn’t want to spend ages doing it “properly”.

[Nikon F camera]

I don't usually bother showing the wireframe any more but some find it interesting. Turned off the leather texture and background and zoomed in a bit so you can see the camera lines.

[Nikon F camera]

5 hours ago, jmwellborn said:

@VectorVonDoom Stunning!

Thanks, glad you like.

[Nikon F camera]

Decided to do this without blurs again whilst trying to keep it realistic. It made some things trickier but saved the time in not having to set a million blurs. Used AD v2 for the warped text.