dcr

I remember decades when Apple's demise was right around the corner . . .

If Adobe had any marketing geniuses, they would call it the Affinity Sans Serif suite.

I'll +1 for the tail.

Or waiting until after the Black Friday sale to release v2 . . .

No, it's not. If I buy direct from Serif, I can activate Affinity apps on a computer that is completely disconnected from the Internet. VS requires an Internet connection for activation. That means, if Serif/Affinity really were dead and their servers gone, I could still activate and use any of the Affinity apps so long as I have a machine able to run them. I've already been burned by Adobe on "perpetual" licenses. I am actively avoiding a repeat. I don't have any problems with the UI in Illustrator or Affinity Designer. Or Inkscape for that matter.

Sawgrass needs to catch up with the times then because their User Guide says CreativeStudio, Corel or Adobe products are required for "high quality prints and correct color output." The guide also says Sawgrass "may limit support to customers who do not use the specified software." I have an older Sawgrass printer and have been looking at possibly upgrading. Since I want something that will work with Affinity products, I have been looking elsewhere.

I'm another that has both Affinity Designer and VectorStyler. As others have said, one reason I don't use VS more is the UI. Designer is my primary and then I go into VS when I need something Designer can't (yet?) do. I also prefer the licensing/activation process the Affinity suite has over what VS (and many others) use. In any event, the cost of Designer plus VectorStyler is still way cheaper than Adobe.

Maybe you purchased before I did or my memory isn't what it used to be or both. Is it VS's owner promoting it or just users? I only learned of VS because of users in this forum and I appreciate it because VS currently has features that Designer lacks. I am hopeful that Designer v2 adds some or all of the features that I need that Illustrator CS3 had and VS has. If not, I'll continue using both as needed. Of course, one feature VS has that appears doubtful Designer will ever have is the ability to open .AI files (not just the PDF stream).

As far as I can remember, they had that license note up since coming out of beta. Regardless, depending upon what Designer v2 is like, maybe I won't even need VS v2.

Where did you see that? On their purchase page, it says "The license includes free updates for new releases, until version 2."

And then I just saw I posted this in the wrong area. Mods, feel free to move it . . .

Hello, I use Designer with a Wacom tablet on my MacBook Pro. There are four buttons on the Wacom which I have configured for Shift, Control, Option and Command. Occasionally, I will be creating an illustration in Designer and I'll use one of the buttons or a combination. Usually, I am trying to maintain proportions so I usually gravitate toward Shift because that's what that evil illustration program uses. In any event, I'll hit the wrong button and/or combo. Then I am essentially locked out of doing anything in Designer. If I move the cursor over an object on the artboard, it will sort of highlight with something like cropmarks. But, I cannot select anything. I cannot change tools. Pressing buttons on the Wacom tablet doesn't release it. The only way I can get out of it is to Save the file. If the file is new, I cannot name it because it won't let me use the keyboard. Then I either have to Quit or Force-Quit Designer and restart the computer before I can use Designer again. I don't know if I am triggering something in Designer or the OS. I can't get a screenshot of what happens because I'm locked out of that too. I am hoping this sounds familiar to someone and can tell me what I am triggering and how to get out of it easier than what I am currently doing. I mean, if I trigger it with a button or combination of buttons, there must be a release the same way, right? If so, I haven't figured it out yet. I have not encountered this in Photo or Publisher, but I don't use them nearly as often as Designer, so I can't say for certain whether it is a Designer-only thing or just something I've only managed to stumble upon in Designer. And, as I mentioned, it could be something OS-related as well, though I have no idea what kind of feature this would be since it seems to have no practical use. This one has been bugging me for a while. I have tried to track it down but can't seem to intentionally trigger it. Only seems to happen when I don't want it to and then I'm like, dang, which button did I just click? Thanks!

IMHO, if Serif can get the features people want/need in either a future 1.x release or a 2.x release, I think they have a tremendous opportunity. I looked into a number of Adobe alternatives and, for InDesign, I hedged my bets with Affinity Publisher, QuarkXPress and Scribus. QuarkXPress has really dropped the ball and now with their call-home-every-five-days nonsense to check your license, it's a PITA. Scribus seems almost MIA. Granted, it's open source and it looks like the team may be volunteers, but even development releases seem slow. Even lacking some needed features, Affinity Publisher seems like the best alternative to InDesign right now. I hope Serif is able to take advantage of that.

Though I would very likely try the Affinity Suite on Raspberry Pi if they were to make it, it was not a serious request. FWIW, neither was the request for an Atari 2600 version.

Would be interesting to see an Atari 2600 try to emulate Mac OS 7 though. I kind of wish that emulator existed so I could try it. These days, you can emulate Mac OS 6 and 7, the Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, Nintendo and a number of other systems all on a Raspberry Pi. So, I guess that means Serif needs to have a Raspberry Pi version of the Affinity Suite!

My Macintosh PowerBook 180c (1993) with Mac OS 7.x had an Atari 2600 emulator. I tend to doubt the Atari 2600 would have been able to emulate Mac OS 6 or 7. The Atari 2600 was a video game system. There was a Mac emulator for the Atari ST which was a computer system. Also an MS-DOS emulator. I don't think the ST would have needed an emulator chip. It used the same 68000 processor that the early Macs did.

If Affinity doesn't make the suite available for the Atari 2600, I'm going to have to go back to Adobe.

With subscriptions too, the files you create with the software are effectively held hostage and, the longer you subscribe, the more files you probably have, which means the more files that are held hostage which tends to lock you in and also makes you more hesitant to change. Basically, they lock you into a sunk cost fallacy. Also, what happens when they stop offering a tool you need?

Ditto, but I'd like to see more features added to Designer and Publisher before they add additional programs to the mix. That said, I wouldn't mind a Bridge equivalent. I know there are already non-Adobe alternatives, but something that integrates better with the Affinity suite would be nice. But, of course, the Holy Grail would be a Fireworks equivalent. I still have not found anything that has its feature set (and I'm talking Fireworks CS3 -- don't know what new features later versions added) and that does such a good job of doing animated GIFs. Maybe animated GIFs aren't as popular anymore? But, maybe something that could do animated GIFs plus whatever the future equivalent of an animated GIF is.

The flat look frequently feels lifeless and boring. If that's what Illustrator looks like these days, I'm glad I don't subscribe to it. How do you get work done with an interface that was apparently designed to cure insomnia?

I keep thinking about this and wonder where Serif would even set a subscription price at. They only have three applications and, from what I recall, there aren't any additional ones that have been publicly announced. So, three apps. Do you charge $9.95/mo. per app? If you use three apps, that's about $30 per month. For $25 more, you could switch to Adobe and have access to all their apps. If you only need one Affinity app, do you want to pay $9.95/mo. when the more full-featured Adobe alternative is only $21/mo.? And, if Serif goes for $4.95/mo. for all three apps, they'd be further ahead to sell each app at $54 and include a full year of updates. Release a new version each year of each app people can choose whether or not to upgrade. When Adobe still sold software, you might pay $600 to $800 per application. I don't remember the numbers, but I think the Creative Suites were around $1200 and the Master Collection around $2000? And people bought them. I have all three Affinity apps. And they were like $49 each and probably many people, like me, got them during a Black Friday or other sale when they were around $29 or something. And that was one-time for each. People I know that switched to Affinity didn't do it because the apps were $49 but because they didn't want to be locked into a subscription. A good number would probably have paid $99, $199 or whatever (if the apps were more on par with Adobe). I would imagine they could go to $99 per app and still do well. Possibly they could do the regular versions at $54 each and the pro versions at $99 each. Or more. I tend to think they could do better by not going down the subscription route and raise prices and release new paid versions more often (with a discount for existing users). I think a subscription might just send more people back to Adobe. If I were to no longer have a choice but to subscribe to software, why wouldn't I go back to what the majority of people are using?

The only subscription I would consider is one where you get all updates released during your subscription period (not just minor updates, but version updates too) and when your subscription ends, you can (a) renew or (b) keep using the last version you got under the subscription plan. Personally, I would rather pay for upgrades. I would even pay for updates, as long as those are updates that add features. Bug fixes should be free.

In order to learn Designer, I've made it a point to use it daily (since January 1, 2021). When I don't have actual work to do, I will do a simple sketch or something just to practice and/or experiment with different tools and features. I know there are things that cannot be done in Designer (yet) and I know the things I can. But, I don't know what I don't know and I'm thinking maybe others are in the same boat? I know there are tutorials and videos and so on, but I generally use those for reference or help and not discovery. What I've thought might be useful is if there was a weekly challenge (perhaps in the "Share your work" section) that would highlight a specific tool or feature in Designer and present users with a challenge to utilize that tool or feature in an illustration or other project. Not for prizes or anything but just to show off the different features, especially those that aren't readily apparent. This would also be something generally simpler than many tutorials. That is, many tutorials show how to do something but using multiple tools and features. What I'm thinking here is just to focus on one tool or feature and utilizing it to build familiarity. That doesn't rule out the possibility of one week's challenge following up on the previous week's challenge but mainly this would be one thing at a time. This could possibly be done for Photo as well. I'm just thinking this might be an additional learning aid. I remember one or two threads in the "Share your work" section where users have done something similar. Something like this thread: I didn't post in that thread, but I found it useful. I've followed that "challenge" on more than one occasion when experimenting in Designer to create images just using the shape tools. I was already familiar with the shape tool and had already done similar things, but it was fun to see how others did it as well. And, for me, threads like that are useful in learning Designer because you either learn new uses for tools you thought you were familiar with or you might learn about tools or features you otherwise might never have happened upon.

I only have Illustrator CS3 (and earlier) files, so that is the extent of my testing. During the VS beta, I tried opening assorted AI files and reported problems I had. He had them fixed in a day or so as I recall. Since then, I don't remember an AI file of mine that it hasn't been able to open. Granted, I'm only opening ones I need to open and not testing every file I have.

One nice thing is that it can open Illustrator files. The actual whole file, not just the PDF stream. It's one of the few programs I've found that can do that. I wish Designer could do that. If a single programmer can manage it, I don't see why Serif can't do it.