Bryan Rieger

Honestly, I'd much rather Serif focus on fixing the many new and long-standing bugs in 2.2 before adding anymore features. Having a shiny new blend tool {or insert your feature request here} which will probably add new bugs, while still having to deal with countless existing bugs and workarounds doesn't exactly fill me with anticipation. As it is I keep seeing comments around social media, the forums, and the web on how folks are getting increasingly frustrated with the bugginess of the Affinity suite. You really don't want "buggy" to be the first thing that comes to mind when somebody mentions Affinity.
Serif please focus on getting the next few upcoming 2.x releases into a stable suite of apps that new and existing users can rely on for years to come.

Honestly, I'd much rather Serif focus on fixing the many new and long-standing bugs in 2.2 before adding anymore features. Having a shiny new blend tool {or insert your feature request here} which will probably add new bugs, while still having to deal with countless existing bugs and workarounds doesn't exactly fill me with anticipation. As it is I keep seeing comments around social media, the forums, and the web on how folks are getting increasingly frustrated with the bugginess of the Affinity suite. You really don't want "buggy" to be the first thing that comes to mind when somebody mentions Affinity.
Serif please focus on getting the next few upcoming 2.x releases into a stable suite of apps that new and existing users can rely on for years to come.

Not necessarily. While global colours work great for compositions with limited colours, they tend to get a bit unwieldy with larger compositions. I recall when I first saw adjustment layers in Designer (in the main Designer persona) I imagined they behaved much like Phantasm from Astute Graphics, allowing for full the adjustment of colours while retaining the vector geometry on export.
Sadly, it doesn't work this way. Hopefully one day, Serif might revisit this decision and provide support for true vector adjustment layers, especially with Adobe now providing the ability to generatively recolour artwork natively in Illustrator.

I'm not asking Serif to implement this today (if ever), as there are far too many significant issues that need to be addressed in the short/mid term. Long term, it might be something worth exploring…
My main point was that by including adjustment layers (much like vector brushes) in a vector drawing application you might end up inevitably setting some user expectations that don't align with your actual product features.

While I do eagerly anticipate new features, I am finding that with each release the Affinity apps are becoming less stable, and generally more buggy. Software will always have bugs, but there comes a point where the number of bugs that impact users on a day-to-day basis becomes so great that continuing to use the tools becomes a liability for many—irregardless of cost. I keep seeing reports of corrupted files and lost work, which has really eroded my confidence in the apps. In 25+ years of using Adobe software I can count the number of times I have actually lost work on one hand (YMMV). With Affinity, it's happened half a dozen times to me in the past six months (the iPad apps are especially bad for it). What's more is that many of the bugs are difficult to reproduce consistently so you don't report them right away, but then the bugs that are reported often don't get fixed for years (if ever).
I do wish Serif would communicate to users some of the challenges they are having, and how they are actively looking to rectify them. I'd much rather have the next few releases be dedicated to fixing many of the long-standing issues than pushing out new buggy features on top of all of the existing bugs, and partially-implemented features. 
Technical debt adds up fast.
As for the beta releases. Testing from users should not replace a rigorous, in-house testing process—something that currently feels lacking within Serif. I stopped running the beta releases long ago as there is still no ability to back-save document versions (I often double-click files to open them, and something will always get opened/saved in the beta), and many of the reported issues were never addressed. Endlessly logging issues with developers that are never resolved isn't progress.
I had always hoped that v2 would have been the chance for Serif to build a modern, stable foundation on which to take the Affinity apps in amazing new directions. Instead, from my perspective, it feels as if things have gone backwards. The UI/UX in v2 is just awful compared to v1 (especially on iPad), and the day-to-day issues and constant workarounds are becoming increasingly frustrating.

This is sort of where I am as well. Why keep reiterating on the same set of issues that go unfixed. I spend less time contributing as a result.
 
I agree with the view rigorous testing is must, user and internal testing. However, I think another angle is being missed:
It is possible that the testing team does their job adequately but the reports just continue to mount.
If the reports are not being dealt with in a timely manner, then any other input they may provide in terms of overall usability/completeness go ignored as well. That really handicaps their capabilities.
I suggest this because 1) The easiest assumption is testing is inadequate. It's not a bad one but it may not be true. One can write reports and provide feedback all day long, but if it is ignored, doing more testing would not resolve anything.
2) We know the testing team pays attention because testing teammembers do post on the board quite regularly and are active with feedback.
It is rather unfair to throw them under the bus for bug issues when they are only the frontlines. They can't say much beyond it is reported and we have checked that the bug is valid. For all we know, their reporting work is quite vigorous, but either nothing is done or not enough follow through to help get to a solution to actually close the issue.
3) To be frank, there are features added in that are or were left unfinished and unpolished for quite some time. That doesn't scream lack of testing to me. Especially when so many of the issues are already quite obvious between user reports and staff reports with reported workarounds discovered between both ends. That suggests to me rather their work is underutilized.
 
This is where the beta program doesn't go far enough. It gives us a sense of momentum, because we can finally see features and improvements that are much needed. This is a great thing and definitely nothing to complain over. However, when important pain points are not addressed in a timely manner, we end up with a different problem. Especially as new bugs are added and left in that degrades everyday functionality. In my case, I still have to regularly minimize the program when doing masking work with a paintbrush because the UI becomes locked. Also changing brushes doesn't always apply correctly. I get brush settings trying to anticipate this by tapping multiple times.
Downgrading is often not an option because of the haphazard way new featuresets are applied and critical/usability-related bugs are left in into the next point release.
If 2.2, as an example, was the most polished, productive and stable the suite ever was.. then I can see that as rewarding users for their patience when work on 2.3  begins as they improve their progress. They have a stable release that they can depend on and the option to hold off at least until the next point release passes a polished state. Most understand bugs happen and that the only way through that sometimes is to keep updating until they find the issue.
Imho, they should continue 2.2. Maybe make it a habit that feature updates have a refinement cycle (2 cycle, add features... major refine). That focuses solely on knocking back reports and mission critical design flaws, building upon a solid UI/UX design philosophy, etc.

While I do eagerly anticipate new features, I am finding that with each release the Affinity apps are becoming less stable, and generally more buggy. Software will always have bugs, but there comes a point where the number of bugs that impact users on a day-to-day basis becomes so great that continuing to use the tools becomes a liability for many—irregardless of cost. I keep seeing reports of corrupted files and lost work, which has really eroded my confidence in the apps. In 25+ years of using Adobe software I can count the number of times I have actually lost work on one hand (YMMV). With Affinity, it's happened half a dozen times to me in the past six months (the iPad apps are especially bad for it). What's more is that many of the bugs are difficult to reproduce consistently so you don't report them right away, but then the bugs that are reported often don't get fixed for years (if ever).
I do wish Serif would communicate to users some of the challenges they are having, and how they are actively looking to rectify them. I'd much rather have the next few releases be dedicated to fixing many of the long-standing issues than pushing out new buggy features on top of all of the existing bugs, and partially-implemented features. 
Technical debt adds up fast.
As for the beta releases. Testing from users should not replace a rigorous, in-house testing process—something that currently feels lacking within Serif. I stopped running the beta releases long ago as there is still no ability to back-save document versions (I often double-click files to open them, and something will always get opened/saved in the beta), and many of the reported issues were never addressed. Endlessly logging issues with developers that are never resolved isn't progress.
I had always hoped that v2 would have been the chance for Serif to build a modern, stable foundation on which to take the Affinity apps in amazing new directions. Instead, from my perspective, it feels as if things have gone backwards. The UI/UX in v2 is just awful compared to v1 (especially on iPad), and the day-to-day issues and constant workarounds are becoming increasingly frustrating.

AdjustmentsLayers.mp4 It's great that adjustment layers allow you to create not-destructive art with the ability to have control at any stage. However, what is missing is the ability to apply these adjustment layers to get vector objects for export. 
For example, I have some vector complex image with many colours and I need to shift the colour tone of the drawing a bit. I can easily do this with a recolour adjustment layer, but after that it will no longer be possible to easily export the vector image. The ability to "bake" the colour change into vector objects without using rasterisation is required.
 

I find it hard to believe that most people, professional or not, don’t care how “buggy” the software is that they use, as long as endless new features are being constantly added! This was one of the problems with the old Plus/legacy Serif software, endless new “bells and whistles” being added in order to have new selling points, while long standing, often serious, bugs just dragged on from release to release. In the end they scrapped the whole range and developed Affinity instead. I really would not like to see Affinity going the same way: the software getting so buggy that it becomes almost unusable, while endless, new features (often with their own new bugs!) are added in the hope of a few more sales!

I think they do care. But marketing works on those who don't know about the bugs.
The irony is that the bugs tend to hurt the most dedicated users. The ones doing the most advanced work. For example, not many here use Artboards. I use exclusively artboards, so most don't encounter the unbelievable number of bugs that are unique to artboards. Almost all of the live filters are broken on artboards. I've been meaning to write something up about it, but haven't had the time and my motivations are low as so far no bugs I've ever opened have been fixed as of yet.

I’m assuming that by “the next few releases” we mean releases of updates to v2, not upgrades to v3, v4 etc, which, going on the first two versions, could be years apart. Obviously very few people would want to pay to upgrade to new versions if there were only bug fixes without any new features. However, I can’t see that concentrating on bug fixes in the next few updates to v2 would be a problem. These are not paid for anyway, so the only affect on profits might be to help sales to new customers by providing a more stable product.

While I do eagerly anticipate new features, I am finding that with each release the Affinity apps are becoming less stable, and generally more buggy. Software will always have bugs, but there comes a point where the number of bugs that impact users on a day-to-day basis becomes so great that continuing to use the tools becomes a liability for many—irregardless of cost. I keep seeing reports of corrupted files and lost work, which has really eroded my confidence in the apps. In 25+ years of using Adobe software I can count the number of times I have actually lost work on one hand (YMMV). With Affinity, it's happened half a dozen times to me in the past six months (the iPad apps are especially bad for it). What's more is that many of the bugs are difficult to reproduce consistently so you don't report them right away, but then the bugs that are reported often don't get fixed for years (if ever).
I do wish Serif would communicate to users some of the challenges they are having, and how they are actively looking to rectify them. I'd much rather have the next few releases be dedicated to fixing many of the long-standing issues than pushing out new buggy features on top of all of the existing bugs, and partially-implemented features. 
Technical debt adds up fast.
As for the beta releases. Testing from users should not replace a rigorous, in-house testing process—something that currently feels lacking within Serif. I stopped running the beta releases long ago as there is still no ability to back-save document versions (I often double-click files to open them, and something will always get opened/saved in the beta), and many of the reported issues were never addressed. Endlessly logging issues with developers that are never resolved isn't progress.
I had always hoped that v2 would have been the chance for Serif to build a modern, stable foundation on which to take the Affinity apps in amazing new directions. Instead, from my perspective, it feels as if things have gone backwards. The UI/UX in v2 is just awful compared to v1 (especially on iPad), and the day-to-day issues and constant workarounds are becoming increasingly frustrating.

While I do eagerly anticipate new features, I am finding that with each release the Affinity apps are becoming less stable, and generally more buggy. Software will always have bugs, but there comes a point where the number of bugs that impact users on a day-to-day basis becomes so great that continuing to use the tools becomes a liability for many—irregardless of cost. I keep seeing reports of corrupted files and lost work, which has really eroded my confidence in the apps. In 25+ years of using Adobe software I can count the number of times I have actually lost work on one hand (YMMV). With Affinity, it's happened half a dozen times to me in the past six months (the iPad apps are especially bad for it). What's more is that many of the bugs are difficult to reproduce consistently so you don't report them right away, but then the bugs that are reported often don't get fixed for years (if ever).
I do wish Serif would communicate to users some of the challenges they are having, and how they are actively looking to rectify them. I'd much rather have the next few releases be dedicated to fixing many of the long-standing issues than pushing out new buggy features on top of all of the existing bugs, and partially-implemented features. 
Technical debt adds up fast.
As for the beta releases. Testing from users should not replace a rigorous, in-house testing process—something that currently feels lacking within Serif. I stopped running the beta releases long ago as there is still no ability to back-save document versions (I often double-click files to open them, and something will always get opened/saved in the beta), and many of the reported issues were never addressed. Endlessly logging issues with developers that are never resolved isn't progress.
I had always hoped that v2 would have been the chance for Serif to build a modern, stable foundation on which to take the Affinity apps in amazing new directions. Instead, from my perspective, it feels as if things have gone backwards. The UI/UX in v2 is just awful compared to v1 (especially on iPad), and the day-to-day issues and constant workarounds are becoming increasingly frustrating.

While I do eagerly anticipate new features, I am finding that with each release the Affinity apps are becoming less stable, and generally more buggy. Software will always have bugs, but there comes a point where the number of bugs that impact users on a day-to-day basis becomes so great that continuing to use the tools becomes a liability for many—irregardless of cost. I keep seeing reports of corrupted files and lost work, which has really eroded my confidence in the apps. In 25+ years of using Adobe software I can count the number of times I have actually lost work on one hand (YMMV). With Affinity, it's happened half a dozen times to me in the past six months (the iPad apps are especially bad for it). What's more is that many of the bugs are difficult to reproduce consistently so you don't report them right away, but then the bugs that are reported often don't get fixed for years (if ever).
I do wish Serif would communicate to users some of the challenges they are having, and how they are actively looking to rectify them. I'd much rather have the next few releases be dedicated to fixing many of the long-standing issues than pushing out new buggy features on top of all of the existing bugs, and partially-implemented features. 
Technical debt adds up fast.
As for the beta releases. Testing from users should not replace a rigorous, in-house testing process—something that currently feels lacking within Serif. I stopped running the beta releases long ago as there is still no ability to back-save document versions (I often double-click files to open them, and something will always get opened/saved in the beta), and many of the reported issues were never addressed. Endlessly logging issues with developers that are never resolved isn't progress.
I had always hoped that v2 would have been the chance for Serif to build a modern, stable foundation on which to take the Affinity apps in amazing new directions. Instead, from my perspective, it feels as if things have gone backwards. The UI/UX in v2 is just awful compared to v1 (especially on iPad), and the day-to-day issues and constant workarounds are becoming increasingly frustrating.

I like this suggestion.
For a single user, you could create style sheets to be used by a number of documents and simply choose the applicable one when creating or editing a document.
In an enterprise environment, you could have a style sheet on the network and configure all devices to use that style sheet for new documents. This would ensure that all documents created across the company were uniformly formatted. Then when your company decided to change fonts or colours, the change could be rolled out across the enterprise by updating the style sheet.
 

Adobe's edge is quickly evaporating as well. Meta is now embedding AI generation directly into their social media apps and many other standalone AI generators are adding their own generative fill. The usefulness in regards to productivity can not be ignored for the users, but the business model for sustainability is going to be very challenging as any advantage is quickly lost. Thus is the nature of rapid AI development.
Therefore, my opinion in these regards is that it would not necessarily be beneficial for Affinity to spend its limited resources in a futile effort to keep up with its own implementation. They also would have to deal with as-of-yet-unresolved legal issues.
However, their scripting API would provide the necessary integration which avoids these limitations. 3rd parties and open source communities are going to be far faster at rapid innovation and keeping up with AI.

While I do eagerly anticipate new features, I am finding that with each release the Affinity apps are becoming less stable, and generally more buggy. Software will always have bugs, but there comes a point where the number of bugs that impact users on a day-to-day basis becomes so great that continuing to use the tools becomes a liability for many—irregardless of cost. I keep seeing reports of corrupted files and lost work, which has really eroded my confidence in the apps. In 25+ years of using Adobe software I can count the number of times I have actually lost work on one hand (YMMV). With Affinity, it's happened half a dozen times to me in the past six months (the iPad apps are especially bad for it). What's more is that many of the bugs are difficult to reproduce consistently so you don't report them right away, but then the bugs that are reported often don't get fixed for years (if ever).
I do wish Serif would communicate to users some of the challenges they are having, and how they are actively looking to rectify them. I'd much rather have the next few releases be dedicated to fixing many of the long-standing issues than pushing out new buggy features on top of all of the existing bugs, and partially-implemented features. 
Technical debt adds up fast.
As for the beta releases. Testing from users should not replace a rigorous, in-house testing process—something that currently feels lacking within Serif. I stopped running the beta releases long ago as there is still no ability to back-save document versions (I often double-click files to open them, and something will always get opened/saved in the beta), and many of the reported issues were never addressed. Endlessly logging issues with developers that are never resolved isn't progress.
I had always hoped that v2 would have been the chance for Serif to build a modern, stable foundation on which to take the Affinity apps in amazing new directions. Instead, from my perspective, it feels as if things have gone backwards. The UI/UX in v2 is just awful compared to v1 (especially on iPad), and the day-to-day issues and constant workarounds are becoming increasingly frustrating.

This is essentially a copy of the (auto) collapsible iconic panels in the Adobe interfaces, which I use a lot, especially with plug-ins that have UI panels. It just helps to get everything out of the way, and not have to remember where the panels are, or what persona they may be in. Not sure if this impinges on any Adobe patents, but it's a nice quality of life improvement, both on the iPad and desktop IMHO.

Hi,
This has been discussed here and there in multiple threads, but I don't think there has been an explicit request. So, here it is:
I would like to be able to set 72dpi as the default resolution of my exported images.
72dpi is a traditional way to match printed points and fractions of an inch. It has been (and maybe still is) the standard on the Mac.
While this may be irrelevant in some applications, where the size of an image is set by pixels, it is relevant in other cases, where an image is not associated to local measurements, and its size depends on the embedded resolution.
Dealing with 96dpi images, while still thinking at 72dpi, means that an image would result too small. This would cause loss of time trying to 'debug' the problem.
Paolo
 

@Callum @Old Bruce @carl123 @Bryan Rieger Guys thanks for the help, turns out all the while I had been using version 1.10.6 then on my move I downgraded to version 1.7.0.15 which for obvious reasons couldn't open files from a later version. I'm sorted and working now.
Thanks again!!

Stop this bullocks. If you can't design, stop stealing from artists who can and learned by putting a lot of effort in their craft.
Watch the video below instead to get that you're a thief when using AI systems to generate your 'art' because you're too lazy to learn it.
And for artists here: there is a way to stand up against the stealing of our art. How and why is all in the video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMykeJm8wJI

There are two great initiatives with fundraisers to make a fist against these greedy exploiting companies to respect our copyrights and stop these illegal activities and theft:
EU:
https://gofund.me/404acacb
US:
https://gofund.me/2df3dc07

I also have a lot of crashes on iPad when adding or removing brushes. Mostly adding.  Some brush packs seem to be more troublesome than others: possibly related to the # of brushes or the overall size. 
Using the Store download option is a little more reliable, but in that case I have a hard time occasionally with specific things inside of a pack.  Sometimes brushes will install but assets won't, for instance.  Or if I remove the Assets and then try to re-download them, they might not download. But in general, the Store down load is much more reliable.

😢
I'm using M1 ipad AIR 8 GB Memory, 64 GB storage

We use the same iPad models in the studio for primary work. 
I agree with you. As a trilogy of cross-platform apps, Affinity is powerful and has much growth potential. I understand that these new versions have been written from the ground up, and it's understandable that many issues might arise as we use them daily.
However, expecting most users to be patient enough to wait for suitably stable versions is quite a challenge. We're crossing our fingers that these issues get fixed as soon as possible because we love using all Affinity tools in our studio.
- Enrique
 

I have two iPad Pro's. 1 x 12.9" 5th generation (primary), and 1 x 11" 2nd generation (for sketching, reading, etc). They both crash regularly while importing brushes, but not always with the same brushes.
I can imagine it's frustrating as for many new users they probably believe that it's your brushes and assets that are causing the issues. I'm disappointed that not only has Serif not address this bug yet, but they've also neglected some of the brush rendering issues that have appeared in v2—particularly with some brushes with wet edges not rendering at all (or even rendering in the brush list). This has actually led me to move more and more of my illustration work to Procreate where the brushes (including 3rd party brushes) are a dream to use, and the app not only feels 'right' on an iPad (not a desktop app shoved into an iPad), but it also is incredibly stable. With the new default iCloud storage coming in Procreate things are only getting better. Sadly, this is not so with Affinity.
Also, Serif are mad to be neglecting their 'developer' (for now brushes, assets, etc) community, or burning their goodwill with long-standing v2 issues. Their apps don't exist in a vacuum, and without a rich, diverse, and thriving ecosystem the Affinity apps will increasingly look less capable than other alternatives.