Andy05

I just downloaded the trial. Indeed, looks promising. And even without any further updates and new features, it's pretty much covering almost all needs for a professional vector design tool. Any ideas about how good its exports work for print? Because this is one of the things, which can get a bit tricky in Affinity's apps as well.

Even worse: once you cancel the subscription, you usually lose access to the apps' native file formats. Programs and apps can get replaced with a little bit of effort. But if a client asks you to modify some designs done with an app you no longer have access to, it's becoming a tricky endevour.

I second this. This is even more true, if you use the apps professionally as even one or two low-budget commissions a month should pay multiple times more than a subscription. But especially if one needs an image editing app only, Adobe's Photo offer (~25-26 Euros/month for Photoshop and Lightroom) is a pretty solid one. Assuming image editing is the main focus among the user base, it might be hard to convince them into paying for a subscription for Affinity Photo unless it costs only a fraction of this. But I don't see this happen too soon anyway. A possible transition to a subscription based model will most likely not happen this year anyway, I suppose.

Uhm. You know, that this deal didn't happen just overnight? Serif should have been aware that the press release would create some confusion and should have prepared some statement themselves, and be around when Canva dropped that bomb in order to react on threads like this one.

I was just about posting pretty similar questions. And I share your thoughts (and worries?) about switching to a subscription based model. Taken from the press release, "affordable" can be both. It's not answering the question about the licence model, unfortunately.

Well, it really depends on what you need for your workflow. If AI object selection can save you an hour a day, staying within Adobe's environment might be worth it. Time is money, especially for professional work. The same goes for other AI features like generative fill. But remember, Adobe tends to turn such free features into paid ones after they proved to be very successful. I doubt all the AI goodies will stay free forever. You'll likely get a tiny free taste, but eventually, you'll have to pay. AI features are resource-intensive, even for Adobe.

I interpret "regular updates" more like "several updates per year", which has been a consistent pattern for years now.

It seems so. I have some similar issues on my Win10 system. The bad thing is that I can't reproduce it, it seems to happen randomly. No matter if it's a new or an old document. But when it happens here, it's affecting global colours on a freshly created document palette.

Uhm. Good question. I thought I've read something like that quite some time ago, because Adobe wants to enforce old users paying for the subscription when they change their system or OS. Yeah, it seems so:

I have still Adobe's old ("pre subscription") creative suite installed—this serves mainly as my format conversion tool. Affinity Photo is doing everything I need for pixel based works, same with Publisher for layouts. Just Designer still lacks some very important essentials for me (like, vector brushes!), but for that I have CorelDraw (I think it's a 2019 SE version - also without subscription) installed. The main problem for me is that I will never be able to reinstall my Adobe suite once I change the system or OS. 😕

I love how they make digs against other vector apps.

This kind of illustrations are originally copperplate engravings. You can mimic this effect in Affinity Photo (google for instructions, most of them are for Photoshop, but the workflow is pretty easy to transfer to Affinity's app). I hope you don't mind me advertising myself; unfortunately, the free offer expired, but I created some set of assets and macros for this kind of illustrations.

That's your right. But if you bring "hammers" into the play, you'd have to add those, which lacks basic "hammer-ish" features, or your comparison is just nonsense.

Well, you don't need the most recent version of CorelDraw as a "workaround replacement" for Designer's features. You can find licenses for older versions (OEM) for as low as 75-80 EUR—or even lower, if you use some versions from 4-6 years ago. Also with a perpetual license. That's even cheaper than VectorStyler... I'm not arguing about the user friendliness of VectorStyler. Though, I've been using CorelDraw since Version 1.2/the early 90s - so I'm used to their workflow and UI and that's one of the main reasons, for me personally, why I'd chose CorelDraw over VectorStyler. If a tool is missing basic features and essentials, which every other competitive app provides for ages, it's probably worth checking out if they should get added after a decade of development. In your analogy, one of the hammers has a huge hole in the front side. Yeah, might work, but it might not be the best option to use, because you might miss the nail with some of your hammering attempts. I still can't think of any good reason why a vector app was developed without true vector brushes in first place.

As much as I love the Affinity Suite apps, a 5+ years old CorelDRAW still way ahead in terms of vector design. I still have my licensed version of CorelDRAW SE on my system, got it really cheap at eBay back then. I can only recommend, that everyone who's truly into vector works, might try to get a license of that app without subscription. It will cover all your needs, which Designer lacks. Do the main work in Designer, switch to CorelDRAW for specific tasks and either copypaste or export/import latter app's work into designer...