_fluffy

Logic has always been very expensive to upgrade until X came out; 7 to 8, 8 to 9, and 9 to X all cost money to upgrade. (8 to 9 was especially egregious because it was an expensive upgrade that added very little, but it was forced on people who were using the GarageBand Jam Packs!)
X is very much an outlier in that more has changed in any of the individual point releases (10.1 -> 10.2 and so on) than there usually was between the major releases, and that those point releases haven't required upgrade pricing. I'm pretty sure Apple sees Logic as a loss-leader to encourage people to keep on buying new Apple hardware.
And Logic is absolutely an outlier in the audio world, too; I can't think of any other software that doesn't require a paid upgrade for a major functionality change. Even the indie darling Reaper costs money for major version updates, as do Cubase, Bitwig, and Ableton. And ProTools, the "industry standard," charges a subscription.

Hey,
I wonder if a built-in normal map generator is planned for future releases of Affinity Photo such as the plugin asset described in the followng tutorial:
The generator should - like Photoshops "Generate normal map" or GIMPs "Normal map" feature - then create a normal map from a diffuse picture that can be used for bump mapped materials in other tools like Blender or Unity.
Would be great if that could be available in the future as an adjustment layer or the like.
Best Regards
JZ

I could never find those pricing options, probably because Adobe likes to make things seem cheaper than they are to entice people in.
Anyway, regardless, the entire Affinity suite currently costs less than two months of the equivalent products from Adobe.

You are correct, it takes slightly longer to have to pay again than it does for most software. But you still have to pay again, which is the point I was trying to make.
Ongoing software development costs money, and there's only so many people who are going to be buying the software to begin with. You can't rely on a continuous flow of new customers to finance the improvements to the software you rely on.
It would be nice if Affinity had upgrade pricing for loyal customers, but this 40% discount is pretty massive.
Here's an analogy which might make some sense: Many years ago I bought a Mazda vehicle. They had two incentive programs: a discount for loyal Mazda customers, and a discount for new Mazda customers to entice people over.
The discount, as it turns out, was the same for both.
You can see the 40% pricing for Affinity the same way: either you're being rewarded a 40% discount for your loyalty, or you're being rewarded a 40% discount for giving Affinity a try. Either way you're saving 40%.

I also have my little disappointment over V2 - and good surprises too, I expected some features for a long time now and they delivered.
However I did not buy the V2 for its immediate features, but for the support it will get over the year.  And Serif was always pretty good with updates. The current discount + the universal license is good enough for me to buy it immediately and wait for further features. I do hope for some more, especially a better warp ! I consider V2 as a baseline for their future improvements.
If you don't like Affinity 2's current state, just wait. Serif is pretty generous with discounts and another one will come by later. 

Also if someone's happy with V1, nobody's forcing them to upgrade.

I could never find those pricing options, probably because Adobe likes to make things seem cheaper than they are to entice people in.
Anyway, regardless, the entire Affinity suite currently costs less than two months of the equivalent products from Adobe.

In the US, Photoshop+Lightroom is $120/year, and they lock you into an annual contract (charging an early termination fee if you want it for only a month or two). You have to keep on paying this in perpetuity while you continue to use the product.
In the US, Affinity Photo V2 is currently $40, and normally $70. Both of those are cheaper than a year of Photoshop+Lightroom.
The entire Affinity Suite (Photo+Designer+Publisher) is $100 now, or $170 normally. The equivalent Adobe software is Photoshop+Illustrator+InDesign, which costs $60/month, and I believe that's also locked to an annual contract, so you're going to be paying at least $720 for it. And, again, that's per year.
Pricing does vary by country but it's extremely hard to argue in good faith that Affinity ever costs more than anything Adobe produces.

I could never find those pricing options, probably because Adobe likes to make things seem cheaper than they are to entice people in.
Anyway, regardless, the entire Affinity suite currently costs less than two months of the equivalent products from Adobe.

On the actual topic: personally I'm annoyed at having to pay for it again mostly because V1 came with the prospect of replacing Photoshop but it had so many UX issues that I ended up using it very little (and had to keep paying for Photoshop after all). V2 finally fixes most of the issues I had, and the remaining ones I've run into are easy enough to work around. While I wouldn't mind getting a (years late) refund on the V1 purchases (including the iPad version which I bought and used, like, once), the total price on V1+V2 is still less than a year of Photoshop.

I'm glad that Affinity Photo 2 finally has easily-accessible keyboard modifiers for "add" and "subtract" selection modes, but it'd be great if there were also keyboard access for "intersect." Since add is ctrl and subtract is alt, how about ctrl+alt together for intersect?

Oh for sure. I wasn't trying to be contrary (well, apart from maybe on that one aspect :p). Otherwise I agree with everything you're saying.
Yep. I agree entirely. Like I said in another thread - I think some people must have never had to pay for software before if they think they're getting a raw deal. A 40% discount is massive for something that hardly costs anything to begin with. Even at full price, it's cheaper than almost ANY other viable alternative AND cheaper than the upgrade for some software.

You are correct, it takes slightly longer to have to pay again than it does for most software. But you still have to pay again, which is the point I was trying to make.
Ongoing software development costs money, and there's only so many people who are going to be buying the software to begin with. You can't rely on a continuous flow of new customers to finance the improvements to the software you rely on.
It would be nice if Affinity had upgrade pricing for loyal customers, but this 40% discount is pretty massive.
Here's an analogy which might make some sense: Many years ago I bought a Mazda vehicle. They had two incentive programs: a discount for loyal Mazda customers, and a discount for new Mazda customers to entice people over.
The discount, as it turns out, was the same for both.
You can see the 40% pricing for Affinity the same way: either you're being rewarded a 40% discount for your loyalty, or you're being rewarded a 40% discount for giving Affinity a try. Either way you're saving 40%.

Just my 2¢ here. Affinity is charging very reasonable prices for their software, and the 40% off can be called the upgrade path for existing customers.
I'd rather pony up a modest amount every few years than get the painful news that an app I've spent years learning (or its developer) is going away. Been the recipient of that news more than once, and ugh, looking to never again be in that place. 

Totally agree - or worse, get bought out by Adobe who very recently purchased Figma. 

I can understand that. My only small quibble with the V2 release is having to manage backwards compatibility for existing files. I will probably make copies of everything until V2 has my full confidence. 

Logic has always been very expensive to upgrade until X came out; 7 to 8, 8 to 9, and 9 to X all cost money to upgrade. (8 to 9 was especially egregious because it was an expensive upgrade that added very little, but it was forced on people who were using the GarageBand Jam Packs!)
X is very much an outlier in that more has changed in any of the individual point releases (10.1 -> 10.2 and so on) than there usually was between the major releases, and that those point releases haven't required upgrade pricing. I'm pretty sure Apple sees Logic as a loss-leader to encourage people to keep on buying new Apple hardware.
And Logic is absolutely an outlier in the audio world, too; I can't think of any other software that doesn't require a paid upgrade for a major functionality change. Even the indie darling Reaper costs money for major version updates, as do Cubase, Bitwig, and Ableton. And ProTools, the "industry standard," charges a subscription.

Yeah, and I kinda hate to say it, but every time I try using Affinity Serif software I keep on getting just enough little UI papercuts that keep me going back to Adobe products. I really want to love Affinity Photo but I just can't handle all of the little issues that keep on cropping up, and it's especially annoying to post about these to try to see about workarounds or other ways of doing what I'm trying to do only to see people on this forum being all, "That's how this software is, deal with it."
Like I mean, I get that this is a different piece of software and the developers' focus isn't necessarily going to be on the same things that I'm expecting out of it, but I still want to use tools to get stuff done. I am totally willing to learn a different way of doing things, but everything that isn't Photoshop seems to require you to take a dozen extra steps to do a thing that was just 1-2 clicks in Photoshop, and those 1-2 click things are what I've built my entire art workflow around.
If there were alternate approaches that weren't so cumbersome I'd just learn those alternate approaches, but as far as I can tell, Affinity (and many of the other would-be Photoshop competitors like Acorn and Pixelmator) just plain don't see those things as priorities.
I feel silly for having spent money on this software without thoroughly trying to see if I could do things in it. I figured that buying it would show my support for it and do my small part to finance its improvement, but when I try to give my feelings on how it could become the amazing piece of software that it has the potential to be, it's met with snark and attitude from other users and a deafening silence from the developers. How am I supposed to just keep on holding out hope that it will improve for my needs, given that?
Anyway. I'm sorry to rant. I'm just getting frustrated with having to pay $$$ every year to keep Photoshop working, when it's not like I'm even using any of the new features they keep adding (but good luck getting the final non-subscription version installed/working/etc. on a current-gen Mac...)

Yeah, this keeps on bothering me as well - also the fact that my tools keep on getting completely reset (brushes, colors, pressure, etc.) whenever I open a new document. I have "synchronize tools between documents" set which, according to the documentation, should keep my tools settings persistent.

Part of my workflow for doing flat fills on comics and the like is to do a magic-wand selection and then to consistently grow my selection by a fixed amount to "bleed" into the line art, usually by 3 px or so. Every time I open the 'grow / shrink' menu it's reset back to 0, however. I would love a way to always grow by the same amount, either by defining a macro that does it by a specific amount or by having the last amount stay active in the dialog box which comes up.
Additionally, it would be nice if I could use the tab key or similar to change the focus within the dialog box; currently tab just toggles the UI visibility.

Ah, yeah, updating to the latest 13.1 beta seems to have fixed it. Thanks!

Yeah, this keeps on bothering me as well - also the fact that my tools keep on getting completely reset (brushes, colors, pressure, etc.) whenever I open a new document. I have "synchronize tools between documents" set which, according to the documentation, should keep my tools settings persistent.

I think more sticky settings was something that was on the roadmap to be implemented, but I don’t know the current status. You mentioned macros; if you go to [View > Studio] and enable the ‘Macro’ and ‘Library’ panels, you should be able to record a macro in Affinity Photo to grow the selection by say 3px and then save it in the macro library for later use.

In the layers panel right-click the layer and select Rasterise.
Or from the menus Layer > Rasterise