bici

I would be very happy with robust quality and improved output. Affinity does most of the things I need for what I have used it for. I happily keep other tools in my chest. The benefit of having most tools under one roof is to decomplicate output. Adobe tries to be a swiss army knife with their suite and it doesn't feel pleasant to be locked to a one-size-fits-all workflow. But where it excels, imo, is in final output. Of course it doesn't do everything perfectly. No software does, which is why many of us are still here like *knock knock* Hey...

I am not concerned with Adobe; they can have that high-end market (I opted out of it when it went to a subscription model—my income was not consistent enough to trust that I could comfortably pay that fee for a decade or more).  I do want quality software for those of us with high-quality aspirations but low budgets, and what is important for me is whether Canva will help or hurt that goal.  Time will tell; prediction is difficult.  (Having it free in schools does help train the upcoming work force in it, which is a good thing.)

I know I joked earlier about the abuse of the laugh emoji, but I turned off Reaction Notifications a little while ago. They've become useless anyway. All I want to see in my feed is Patrick sharing the latest updates with all my unicorns achieved.
It's not going to happen. People are better off arranging their own offshoots for software enthusiasts. It wouldn't have to be limited to the industry, though we need the information on that use case the most to encourage competition, because there are a good number of smaller professionals as well who have communicated that they believed Affinity could be going for higher aspirations than it currently does. The messaging from Serif is so difficult that my simple hope is for Canva take over in such a way that we don't have to endure such poor communications ever again.
The navel-gazing that encompasses some of what I think can also be described as "non-serious" has largely been incentivized from Serif's OTT marketing and the speculation that that continuously generates. It sells cheap licenses but it is a far cry from incentivizing more discerning customers to jump onboard for the long haul no doubt when they see the amount of zealotry in the fanbase. Imo, it's toxic longterm for the userbase as some are turned off by the constant hype rather than being given straightforward and realistic expectations. It can leave the sense we stay in the dark as to whether these products remain a dependable platform for their longterm for our individual usecases. The messaging post-acquisition is not nearly enough to answer these questions and other than what we've seen, I've just accepted that for now at least this is not a safe ship for me.

I don't know that Serif ever promised to outright compete directly with Adobe, but the carrot was left out there for so long that it seemed at least a far off aspiration. Now Canva takes over and screams "We're going after Adobe!!!"... there's that hype train again. Can it actually deliver? Canva's market is no where near the industry space and is much larger. How much of the perceived aspirations are legitimate goals or are just clever marketing? And at what point are we just projecting into Affinity what we want it to be?.. those are the important questions for me.

You could start a thread in this forum with a title such as the following.
A thread for serious customers who use the software for serious purposes
You could write the first post in the thread explaining how serious customers and serious purposes are defined for the purposes of the thread.
William

Ya know, I use Publisher daily. It's got great features not found in InDesign that allows me to get work done faster, better and more efficiently.

Would I recommend for other pros to use? YES! The suite has many cool great features that help artists to get work done.

Would I recommend for other pros to leave Creative Suite for it now? No. It's not yet mature enough to handle the myriad of tasks that are required for graphic arts (print in my case).

I think we are all here because we care about the whole environment of Serif/Affinity, and I think you are wholesale selling the whole community as unserious is quite fitting. Perhaps you are the one who is missing out on what drives this community, and in part it's not what drives other communities.

So @Bit Disappointed what makes the suite not professional to you? Also what are the features and things you really dig?

Did you ever work on V1 or InDesign or Illustrator or v3 Pagemaker? LOL, every program needs time to mature to get professional. Quark took to V3 and it was so good they forgot to make it better in good ways and v4 was terrible.

Have you opened a PDF with InDesign to edit it? Can't do it. You can with Affinity Publisher. It's terrifying at times, but once you work out a system, it's pretty nice.. I have edited text and extended bleeds to files that would have otherwise been total failures.


Can you explain the lack of accesibility in PDFS means? I do think they should have an acrobat type of program, but since they don't I use Qoppa PDF Studio and Callas PDF Toolbox desktop and an old (7) of Acrobat.

I have identified issues with Publisher but it still does a good job on a number of items that Adobe will never address. Try this, import a PDF to InDesign, say 24 pages with bleed. Do the same in Publisher. In ID you have to set each page up in the right place each page... it's work. Affinity, make 24 pages bring first page in on first page of doc, set, then copy and past and just switch the page numbers, it's very robust.

On Adobe, well they are the kingpin, everyone should gun for them if they intend to dethrone them. If Affinity went after Quark... well I think you get what I mean.

I really like Affinity programs even though I can't use them all 100% of the time, yet. I hope they continue to mature them and can compete.

LetraStudio, ColorStudio, FontStudio, FreeHand, Quark, Corel, Canvas, Scribus, Inkscape, Gimp, Ready Set Go, Live Picture, Painter, Typestry . . . and a host of many others I have used to get jobs done. Sometimes the top dogs are great, but they don't have all the answers for all the problems.

Adobe, in my, and many other's opinion are too expensive for a good amount of the design community. Affinity is trying to alleviate that problem and we salute them, but we don't give them an easy pass for short falls.

 

I can't see why. Canva is replacing Serif, not Affinity. Affinity is not the company name, but the suite's.
Paolo
 

Why would Canva abandon the Affinity brand name?

I was worried about the acquisition, and I am still some what worried. 
time will tell if serif and Canva will hold there pledge. It would be great to finally see a corporation that is trustworthy on the long run. 
But life tells one to mistrust corporations…. So we will see what happens. 
 
the Opensource alternatives exist, but on the publisher side, the air is thin in that regard (scribus looks so outdated). If all stuff collapses, for layout one can still return to LaTeX…. 
 
We will see. 
I have all V2 affinity apps. I will use them and enjoy the updates we get. Once V3 will come out, it will be time to reassess the situation. 
 
 

upgrade to Affinity v2 totally worth it, I have found it more stable and usable on every front and the little updates aren't as quircky as some 1.x versions were.

What do you do about new spot colors or changes to files with Postcript type 1 fonts?


As far as the past, graphic designers were not content but frightened that if they didn't use particular software that was top dog at the time they would not be respected... I used Illustrator and Freehand, Quark (later InDesign, but that was 2005) Photoshop, Live Picture. I also used cool little programs for vectors LetraStudio. I hated Corel, but I was able to make color bars with slurs for a place I worked at. I try to find what works.  The only adobe product I can say I need professionally is Acrobat, but that's because Pitstop don't stand alone like Callas PDFToolbox that I use. I still have Freehand 10 (the best version) on Windows 10 machine.

Canva has been a thorn in my professional bottom, I told my bosses these customers are so cheap they should buy Affinity! IT's so much better! LOL...

I would not say the community is conservative, rather they are happy and content. I came up when everyone had different versions of Adobe and other software, it was a constant thing, someone would send an Indesign or Illustrator made in a newer version then what we had. And vice versa, would send out working files that were needed. There was a lot of fragmentation with Adobe, as well as the others that were much larger in those times like Quark and Corel. Now, I never even think about those things, everyone is using the same software (for the most part). life is so much easier because of this. As Affinity grows into new versions they will come across this as well. I have no upgraded to V2 of the Affinity suite, but have the full package with V1. Initially I bought them because they were cheap and I wanted to see what the competition was offering over Adobe. Now if I look at files someone uploaded on the forum when asking for help, I can't open many of them as they are in V2 and I am V1. This will grow larger as some people will be fine with what they have now so there is no real incentive to pay for an upgrade. This is not an issue with Adobe, we are all using the same software. 
 
I am not a huge fan of Canva, it is created more headaches for me with clients who think they can prepare print files properly in Canvas. Yes they could if they knew what they were doing, but that is the point, few actually know what they are doing in order to give proper files ready to go. Editing Canvas files was a real pain. Not sure if they have gotten better as it has been a number of years since I have received a file made in Canva. When clients have an inexperienced graphics person I always recommend Affinity simply for the feature set for the price point. People and companies not making their living with graphics are not going to pay a subscription fee for Adobe, but are more willing to pay a low cost once for apps like the Affinity suite. I hope and assume Canva sees value in what was created here, and with their resources will be able to take it to another level. I am not expecting they would simply turn the Affinity apps into offline Canvas apps, there would be much cheaper ways to do that. 

This is partly true and partly an issue within the graphic arts community, which is very conservative (much like the guitar community) in their choices. No one wants to make a mistake.
Aldus/Macromedia Freehand was a great program that did three things very well, .ps fidelity, vector art and page layout. It had a way to make word spaces tighter than the letter spaces, which we used in old typesetting systems. Very nice. It's nowhere in Illustrator but made its way into InDesign.

I am a pro and I use Affinity Publisher a lot, but not exclusively because it has a few nagging issues, one of which is importing spot color pdfs from other programs, most of the time (especially having more than one of the same page to adjust for panels) it processes out. If I worked in an all digital shop, I would def swap out some adobe licenses for Affinity.

I know hi end boutique guys state the type engine will never work with new font technology, but they are crowing in rare air, I have only seen a few files that have those multiple weight fonts. I do a lot of varied work, including with one of the larges printers in the world.

Affinity was never going to smash Adobe because the scale in comparison is crazy! Adobe is huge. Affinity is like Robin Hood and his merry men!! I found my use for the Affinity suite in professional arena. It's a super capable PDF editor and opens IDML files from InDesign pretty darn well. I live with the shortfalls because I have no choice and there is no other viable alternative.

This means that this whole takeover and the reasons given do not add up on both sides.🤡
 
No, to win, all they need to do is deliver one of equal quality at a more affordable price than the competition.💪

Yeah, Logic Pro id da shit!!
Bought it when they reached version 10 back in 2013 ($200), and now, 11 years later, it’s v10.85 and I haven’t paid a penny for Logics updates since then! Incredible!

i enjoyed reading  TidBITS   take on the issue:
Canva Acquires the Affinity Suite
 
 
 
 
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I am really really happy to be using V2. 

i enjoyed reading  TidBITS   take on the issue:
Canva Acquires the Affinity Suite
 
 
 
 
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i enjoyed reading  TidBITS   take on the issue:
Canva Acquires the Affinity Suite
 
 
 
 
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i enjoyed reading  TidBITS   take on the issue:
Canva Acquires the Affinity Suite
 
 
 
 
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i enjoyed reading  TidBITS   take on the issue:
Canva Acquires the Affinity Suite
 
 
 
 
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i enjoyed reading  TidBITS   take on the issue:
Canva Acquires the Affinity Suite
 
 
 
 
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i enjoyed reading  TidBITS   take on the issue:
Canva Acquires the Affinity Suite
 
 
 
 
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Can you translate what it means in regular language? Aside from a bunch of unrelated idioms strung together, I couldn't figure out what it was trying to say. After reading it twice I decided someone was just playing around with an LLM.

They did. The head of Flourish came to Serif recently and recounted a very positive experience when Flourish were purchased by Canva.

I really hope Affinity doesn't go subscription because I need it. I was still using InDesign CS4, and was delighted to discover Affinity. My reason was price, but I found that I prefer Designer  to Illustrator for drawing maps.  And although I struggled a bit with Publisher at first I love it now.  I am currently setting a very big, very academic book which has a great many endnotes, and crucially, cross references to the endnotes. Publisher does a beautiful job of cross referencing, and I was amazed to discover that InDesign still can't do a cross reference like "see noteX on pageY". So Affinity is ahead of the game here, and I sincerely hope I will be able to afford it in a year's time, when the next book in the series needs setting.