pinkfluffyunicorn

Hi All,

I am thrilled to announce that Affinity is joining the Canva family.
This is a moment of great excitement, anticipation, and profound gratitude for all of you who have been part of our story so far. 
We know that those of you who’ve put your faith in Affinity, some since we launched our very first Mac app, will have questions about what this means for the future of our products. Since the inception of Affinity, our mission has been to empower creatives with tools that unleash their full potential, fostering a community where innovation and artistry flourish. We've worked tirelessly to challenge the status quo, delivering professional-grade creative software that is both accessible and affordable. 
None of that changes today.
In Canva, we’ve found a kindred spirit who can help us take Affinity to new levels. Their extra resources will mean we can deliver much more, much faster. Beyond that, we can forge new horizons for Affinity products, opening up a world of possibilities which previously would never have been achievable. 
Canva’s revolutionary approach to design democratisation and commitment to empowering everyone to create aligns perfectly with our core values and vision. This union is a testament to what can be achieved when two companies that share a common goal of making design accessible and enjoyable for everyone come together. 
I want to express my deepest gratitude to our incredible Affinity team. Your passion, dedication, and relentless pursuit of excellence have been the driving force behind our success so far, and I can’t wait to continue this journey with you all. 
To our loyal users and the creative community, your support and feedback have been invaluable. You’ve inspired us to push boundaries and continuously improve, and we’re excited to embark on this new chapter together. 
The future is bright, and I am incredibly excited to continue our story together and create a world where design is within everyone's reach.
With heartfelt thanks,
Ash
For more information...
We have made four pledges to the Affinity community which you can read here. We have included some FAQs at the bottom of the announcement article here. A video message from me with some more background is on YouTube here. This announcement post is locked, but I have included a duplicate of it in the questions forum here which you can respond to.

If they turn it into a subscription, then there's no reason for me to not just go back to Adobe. 
This feels like a nail in the coffin.

Well holy sh#t, I was about to post the old "what chu talkin bout Willis" line, but thought I'd do a quick Google first, and wow 😲

This is HUGE news, and I'm a little miffed we didn't hear it first from the company we have supported and trusted for many years. I personally hate what Canva has done to the design industry, however I can only assume they have the $$ and resources to actually give Adobe a run for their money, on top of that we may finally get image tracing!! Speaking of money, we should prepare for the inevitable subscription-based model, and / or price increase to return the unconfirmed billion-dollar acquisition to investors pockets.

Overall, I'm quite torn about this news, yet not surprised.

The honeymoon is over.

Nice catch. I can see the Unlinked icon, barely, but there is nothing there when it is Linked.

This stuff is obviously a major failure, I do not know how else to describe it. Invisible controls are utterly useless.For instance, did you know that you can link/unlink the Spread Origin co-ordinates? Please fix all the various things that have been reported as invisible. We are missing out on tools.
And for the love of all that is good and decent don't suggest I alter the defaults in the Preferences or switch to using the Dark Interface. Just don't suggest that.

I agree Ben, it’s not just about the money; the subscription-only model holds the user to ransom. Stop paying, lose access to your own files. There’s no justification for such a model if the company cares for its users—its 100% motivated by company profits, and the only reason they had the gall to do it, is because they had something off a monopoly when it comes to comprehensive design suites.
More ethical software companies, like Panic and many others, offer a hybrid form of licensing these days, where you pay, at any time, for their  software and get 12 months of updates. The big difference is, if you choose not to renew at the end of 12 months, you can still keep using your aging copy of the software and you still have access to your own files. There’s no practical or technical reason Adobe couldn’t do the same thing—just their own greed.

Hi, I am an advertising graphic designer with 25 years of experience. I have been using the Affinity Suite for 3 years (starting with Photo and Designer and then adding Publisher as soon as it was in beta). In Italy, I have created a course dedicated to Affinity Publisher and numerous Live sessions to help other users understand the differences between Adobe and Affinity workflows. I have helped some graphic studios to make the transition. Unfortunately, I have repeatedly highlighted the significant technical limitations present in both the V1 and V2 Suites, which, from my point of view as a Senior professional, are extremely frustrating and cause significant workflow time losses for graphic agencies. This text will be a bit longer, unfortunately, but I hope effective and understandable.
These are essentially the points you will find below, primarily related to Affinity Publisher:

    •    PDF export is not currently reliable. Depending on the values entered, there is a risk of obtaining terrible unintended effects without realizing it. This includes text rasterizations (which automatically transform a Black K-100 into a Rich Black in part of a text), knockout black instead of overprints, and unwanted effects when certain types of FX are applied at the layer. Not to mention what happens if I work with a text with an FX shadow on a Pantone color (the Pantone becomes a CMYK where the shadow is present, instead of remaining a Pantone and accepting the shadow in overprint).

    •    Color management is terrible. If I assign Fogra39 to a file and then I have to print it at a printing company that uses a different color profile when I load the new color profile, all the colors in the file will have to be reassigned because they will completely lose their real composition (the K100 black will become a rich black again and so on, as if the entire color flow passes through RGB and then returns to CMYK).    

    •    There is no internal control system in the Suite that allows the user to understand in advance when these problems occur. Nor is there a tool to understand it after creating the PDF. An Export Persona is necessary for Affinity Publisher that gives the possibility to see exactly what happens in Color Separation when a certain combination of values is chosen from the PDF export menu.

    •    Swatches management is too slow. On the palette, I have to build my Global Colors, otherwise, I won't be able to modify them intelligently later on. But what happens when I copy an object from one document and bring it to another document? Its color palette is not added to the existing palette (each color has to be manually added one by one), and this creates a considerable loss of time.

    •    Why is there no way to transform a Global Color to which I have given the Spot value into a normal four-color process? It doesn't make sense. Often, in the workflow, the same color is changed several times, from Spot to Non-Spot, and only in the end is it decided what to do based on the printing. Here you cannot. The color must be remade and reassigned to each object.

    •    Why is there no way to replace one color with another? A "replace color" function would be excellent. As well as a function that asks me if I want to replace it with another color when I delete a Global Color from the palette. 

These are the most important and limiting things for me. Although one could list a whole series of minor bugs that have existed for years and have not been resolved.

After accepting that none of this was done in V2, my idea is that I am not part of Affinity's true target audience. I am a professional with extensive experience. I worked with Quark before, and then with Adobe for decades. Why should someone like me switch to an "economic" system like the Affinity Suite? My answer is that I appreciated the great effort made by Affinity to invent a new workflow that is non-destructive by default, more modern, and suitable for the hardware available today. I was bored of using Adobe.
However, after this first step, made years ago, it seems to me that there has been a change of direction. Not surprisingly, most of the Affinity users I talk to are students, enthusiasts, or even mid-level freelancers, but not high-level professionals. This makes sense. It would be a bit absurd to go to war against one of the largest software houses on the planet, we would come out of it with broken bones. Yet I still hope. I hope I am wrong and believe that Affinity can make it.
I have 3 copies purchased of V2 in the drawer. I don't use them because I don't need them, and my workflow now works well on V1, while on V2 I immediately ran into bugs that weren't present in V1. It also happened in Adobe, I'm not scandalized.

But the question to Affinity is: do you plan to address the points mentioned above? Are you aware of them? Do you have any ideas on how to remedy them? Or is it not in your plans?

The answer to these questions would certainly help thousands of professionals like me understand how to orient themselves.
Thank you and sorry for the length.
Sincerely, Beniamino (PS: translated from Italian with ChatGPT)

Hey everyone!
I'm sorry, but after having bought the universal license and done some testing, I deleted V2 Designer, Publisher and Photo from my iPad.
Publisher would have been great to work on files due to using Designer and Photo tools via Studio link (I'm not even doing layout stuff!) and I'd have used Designer for its export persona if I don't need editing the file later on or port .svg to V1 (quite limited, but with knife and shape builder in V2 at least somewhat interesting).
In its current state, however, the suite is a massive downgrade from V1 and even with the knife tool, shape builder and the quick menu being great tools that do work wonders on workflow efficiency, it's still much slower and quite risky to work with:
- No V1 file compatibility
- Online activation required
as well as the following issues:
- Only starts up to my files section if there are files already
- Can't double tap layers to expand and collapse
- Button lower left has to be disabled each time when opening a file
- Bars left and right show last icon only by scrolling even though there is room for displaying them (iPad mini 5)
- Frequent crashes (about 5-7 times per hour) by just using the knife, boolean operations or the shape builder
- Shape outline sporadically creating blobs at start of vertex loop when shape was created by shape builder
- Grouping layers (very basic) takes two taps instead of one, yet I got massive UI for sorting layers (probably rarely needed in general; personally, I never need it)
- Couldn't find vector warp on iPad
I can't remember alpha or beta testing any software that included such a number of huge workflow impairing issues that were regressions from a previous version. And this is a release. Frequent crashes and missing V1 compatibility are the worst ones.
Sad. Not going for a refund, though. Hope it gets better (worthwhile). You did a great job with V1 after all.
Not really going to discuss here any further. For the time being, I'll keep using V1 and be productive.
Best wishes,
Shu
[EDIT:
Two months later, testing again, some issues are solved, others appeared. Current issues:
- No V1 file compatibility
- Online activation required
- Only starts up to my files section if there are files already
- Button lower left has to be disabled each time when opening a file (changed now, but should probably be a per app setting rather than per document)
- Bars left and right show last icon only by scrolling even though there is room for displaying them (iPad mini 5)
- There is a new feature, using a tool by swiping on an icon, yet I need to scroll on the tool bar to get to certain tools. How does that work out? Badly.
- 3D filter still only shows one light source when adding further ones.
- It's great that Designer now has Duplicate when touch & holding by accessing the quick menu, but getting rid of the small menu bar completely isn't optimal either, since when you only need copy or paste (or duplicate in Photo), you now have much more screen travel than before on a funcion that's used quite frequently, making it incredibly exhausting. I'd suggest reinstantiating the old menu, including duplicate for Designer and invoking the new one by other means (maybe touch & hold, then swipe up).]

I apologize for not knowing the correct terms for the symbols in the GUI, but I have fiddled enough with the preferences to do all I can (or at least all that's obvious that I can) to support my vision issues. My point is that in general, tiny symbols with low contrast that can't be picked out from the background or easily distinguished from one another are a real problem for folks with vision issues - and this is not just a matter of "getting used to" a new GUI. I think your designers need to have a hard look at the entire product line with this issue in mind.

I have given Serif quite a bit of criticism for some aspects, especially usability, but never for nefarious intentions or the like. I believe it comes down to the company's lack of understanding of usability and then that features are time and money. I have a feeling many developers and similar use Affinity, as the language here reveals it, and the tolerance among forum users (survivor bias) for clumsy solutions and workarounds is far too high and outdated in my opinion.
Over time, it adds up, unfortunately, for example, the deficiencies, and the migration code does not smell of complexity and scenario control. Fortunately, it worked for me. I know where Affinity hides brushes, but it's in one huge file that allows the wildest slack and which becomes gigantic in the end, gigabytes.
Had it gone wrong for me, I would have had to go through a classic from-scratch installation, and for that, I have saved all originals (purchased and free) brushes in a structured folder structure on a hard disk, and back everything up methodically. It gives a real spring cleaning, but life is too short to do it often. And it is far from for all types of customers. I don't think the forum's regular customers consider how many percent of the customers are signed up here. 1% is probably a high estimate. And it is hardly representative in any way.
So yes, some not too basic config and data backup tool for later import into a new installation could well be meaningful for upgrading or when migrating from an old to a new computer, but if you read the first paragraph of my post again, that's my take on why it's unlikely to happen.

I have to agree to this 100%, I think there are already many people who complain about the situation around 0,0,0,100. I love Affinity programs, but this and Assign and Convert only makes trouble.

Who's going to bed early tonight?

Everyone, who got a special email today will understand what I mean!
(Sorry, didn't find a specific thread for this, to share my enthusiasm).

We think that this time you should give Serif the time to work, and the time to deliver a thorough and important update. Probably more thorough than Serif is aware of.
Remember, too, that quality takes time. And it costs. And it's good that it costs.
Our impression of the Affinity trio is that the programs are made by too few, too busy and sometimes not competent enough programmers (vector algorithms come to mind, but also Photo which we can't use at all).
In particular, the number and type of staff may become Serif's biggest problem. And probably already is. For our part, we don't have the time or the business case to wait so many years for bug fixes or features, as has been the case since 2014. But we are only starting to evaluate now, so we hope the future is not like the past is described here in the forum (and in the release notes).
But beyond that, the programs are incredibly unevenly developed, and the order in which functionality is developed doesn't make much sense to us either.
Overall:
- Designer is an exciting program for bitmap artists, while it's an immensely thin cup of tea for vector designers. There is SO much missing that the program cannot replace real vector programs for professional needs. At all. What does Serif really want with this program?
- Photo is the most messy and mediocre program - we took it out of the evaluation after few days. My staff simply could not achieve the desired quality. Besides, the program is a sinful mess. The user interface, menus and panels have to be completely rebuilt from scratch. Tell us, are there no real usability specialists employed in Serif?
- Publisher is clearly the program Serif is most interested in developing, but it also lacks features that need to come soon, and come in good implementations. And there are serious signs that the user interface is not thought through from the start - the program risks drowning in panels and complexity year after year.
We're also speechless at the lack of accessibility features for PDF and ebook support. It's as if Publisher was designed in 1995. And what type of customer is it really designed for and for what needs - exactly?
So all in all, we hope that this time Serif steps back ten steps again, and fixes the mistakes and bad choices made along the way, and safeguards the architecture of the programs for the long term. And in the process employ expertise where they are on thin ice. This can be done on a project basis.
There is plenty for Serif to do - it will take time, and it must take time. Please don't push them into delivering more hacks. You're all going to pay for that.
/Eddie and co.

Coś w stylu: "Wiem, ale nie powiem".

Same thing happening here, on Big Sur 11.6.2 and Affinity  Designer 1.10.15.
This is very annoying
 

Rozczarowani klienci to ci, którzy czują się niepewnie.
Po prostu napisz na głównej stronie forum, że nie przesyłasz wersji beta lub małych aktualizacji, ponieważ pracujesz nad wersją 2.0.
Każdy to zrozumie i nie podawaj daty, jeśli nie chcesz.
Ale teraz, gdy niektórzy ludzie piszą, że Affinity umarł lub Serif nie ma pracowników, aby uaktualnić linię programów Affinity.
Musisz dobrze przeglądać forum, aby dowiedzieć się losowo, że coś się dzieje z oprogramowaniem.
Jestem przedsiębiorcą, który na co dzień korzysta z oprogramowania Affinity w swojej pracy zawodowej.
Chcę dać ci moje pieniądze, które trzymam za aktualizację CorelDraw (znacznie więcej pieniędzy niż 3 programy Affinity).
Daj mi powód, aby te pieniądze trafiły do Serif, a nie corelDraw.
Naprawdę, chciałbym dać ci dużo pieniędzy na programy, które mam nadzieję, że są tworzone (po prostu powiedz nam o tym) i które nie będą miały wielu błędów.
Nie chcę niczego za darmo - zarabiam pieniądze tworząc za pomocą twojego oprogramowania.

Brilliant! Chapeau!
Do you do requests? I hope so
There is a market for this. Do you know about musicalbrick.com, who has  done some amazing Peter Gabriel/Genesis era lego models? These are on sale.
Other bands are available.
https://www.musicalbrick.com/galleries/
Imagine turning your art into 3d...and seeing the human and the mini figure together.

More often than not I find myself cursing when I check the PDFs for print which I‘ve exported from Affinity Publisher: elements I thought were "Black“ (meaning just 0C/0M/0Y/100K) turn out to be some "RGB-Black“ with variable amounts of CMYK respectively, even though I chose some "real" CMYK colour profile like ISOcoated_v2 when I first set up the document.
Usually I can correct this when I go back the document setup and „Assign“ (seemingly for the second time) my profile (usually ISOcoated_v2 or ISOcoated_v2_300%) that's already listed there as the document's. When I then check my blacks they appear to have changed to 0C/0M/0Y/100K as I thought them to be in the first place...
Does this really mean that it isn't sufficient just to choose the said CMYK colour profile from the list when setting up the document? Do I then actually and expressively have to once more ”Assign" it by pushing that button to make it "really active"?
One would think that just choosing the profile from the pop-up-list on document setup should be enough...
That said, I'm really glad that I have an older version of Acrobat Pro installed on another computer so that I can reliably check the PDF exported by Publisher (and e.g. notice strange Blacks) before sending them off to the printer's. As for now I'm quite unhappy, though, that I seemingly cannot trust Publisher to immediately create correct PDFs from a document that appeared to be correctly set up (whereas InDesign actually DOES this once you've generally set your colour profiles for the whole suite of apps).
Though I generally do love working with the Affinity apps I'm not happy at all about the way the apps deal with colours – be it in respect to colour profiles (as noted above) or in the way swatches can be managed in the corresponding panels. I almost hate to say it, but I think Adobe still does a better job at this...

Hello, i have some suggestion too
 

Over the years, I've been working in Affinity products into my workflow little by little. One of the greatest causes of frustration and friction for me is the UI! It's cumbersome!
The panels take up a ton of space and crowd the interface. Everything looks cluttered. Arranging the interface is a mess. Things don't snap like they should, and be careful when moving panels that you don't accidentally touch other panels, things will get all out of wack!

I do have some suggestions:

Today while messing around with different ways to have everything accessible, but not take up the whole screen I found some useful features. Make shortcut keys for View>Studio>Show Left Studio and Show Right Studio. I use Q and W as those shortcut keys. That alone works great! But, it's not enough! The next thing I did [I think] takes advantage of a bug. I hope by pointing this out I don't loose this bug, but I hope the developers push this as a feature and a work flow. Hide the Left and Right Studios. Now, build a new pseudo Left and Right Studio (this one with more commonly used panels). It's a little glitchy to get things in place, but it works. Now, the beautiful part: With the use of the Tab, Q, and W keys, the interface can be quickly manipulated! It's pretty awesome!

I'm not really sure how to turn that into an intentional feature. I thought about the idea of "Studio Panel Groups" that can be created and called on with a shortcut key or icons on the top panel.

Some suggestions for faster work in Publisher, maybe it would be worth considering.
thank you

Hi pinkfluffyunicorn,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
As Sean P already stated above this issue is already being looked at. Apologies for the trouble caused. We hope to have a fix for it soon.
Thanks for your feedback.

Finally using AD for some commercial work and now using the interface intensely and have numerous frustrations
the subtle colour differences between tools selected or not is really stupid.. for an industry that primary objective is legibility the UI sucks

 
one small sample of a widespread ui problem...
the edit all layers button ,,, is it on of off? 
I have played with all the UI Preference setting , this was the best I could get

I literally took this app off my dock because this new icon design is so horrible. It's something Adobe would have made. Please give us the option again to use your original triangle app icon!  Some iOS apps allow you to choose icons, so I it must be possible for macOS.

Chris_K wrote:
Future? Not bad? That’s outrageous and absolutely unacceptable! Here’s why:
I’ve been working with QuarkXPress since the 90s and InDesign since the 2000s. I was completely surprised when I noticed a Package / Collect for Output feature was missing. So I made a call to a project manager working with various commercial publishers and with contracts at CocaCola, HP, Cannon, Honda, Hallmark, etc.
The basic response was:, “What! There is no way that output process will work or be taken seriously by anyone in ‘The Industry.’”
So Chris, I’d respectfully suggest that instead of moving this to a feature request and thinking about it as something for a future update, Serif get on this immediately and have it working prior to the first release.
And while I understand there is little chance Serif will take my advice, I’ll predict this is one of the biggest blunders ever. Whoever vetoed the Package / Collect for Output feature has little understanding of the final output process of professionals and commercial print houses.
yYM
- - - - - - - - - -
AFFINITY PUBLISHER (BETA) 1.7.0.133
- macOS: 10.13.6
- MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)
- Processor 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7
- Memory 16 GB 1867 MHz DDR3
- Graphics Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536 MB