Bit Disappointed

The truly compelling and stark question is: How much of your hard-earned savings would you wager with a bookmaker on the prospect of improvement or change under Canva? When all the free talk in this forum is to be transformed into action with potential and genuine repercussions? Your assertions should result in loss or gain, with nothing in between? The numerous submissive pleas contained within, delicately and nervously wrapped in declarations of affection, have thus far not made a difference. You have now reached a point where you stand in an even more uncertain situation under Canva - like beggars with even more at stake. I can assure you that all your talk has been read and understood by Serif over the years; it's just that it hasn't been acted upon in the way you've dreamed of for the past 10 years. How long will you emphasize a word before you doubt the effect of yet another emphasis? I'm here working to finish projects in Designer, leveraging the strengths of the program (which derive from its initial releases, not much has changed), but I'm currently not starting any new ones. NOW, I damn well need to see results before renewing a license. Results in algorithms, usability, professionalism, and understanding of workflows.

A simple request and the usual, peculiar chaos. Such has been the forum's tradition throughout history. So it has been with Serif and its products, historically. A minuscule group of individuals' input to a microscopic number of employees within the company. An apparently completely random selection of features and bugs addressed in the short and long term. The only constant is the constant counter-pressure from a few enigmatic but steadfast users within. If ever I have experienced a disheartening, demotivating, and hope-draining place to provide input, it is here. As long as I remain a user of the Designer, I am stubborn, yet I have already begun to gradually adopt other products. And what a pleasure it is, where products and professionals converge in a delicate light. Yes, I understand your need, @Intuos5 It is entirely rational and normal. One can hope that Canvas does not sit with its back to the world, and that they desire for ALL products in their portfolio to align with rational standards and logic from the rest of the globe.

If Serif is really struggling with a lack of resources, and we're waiting for the Canva acquisition to bring more resources, why not implement old critical requests that are obvious shortcomings in Affinity, and which customers have been suffering from for nearly 10 years? Believe me, it's really something you notice as a clear and critical deficiency when you come across Affinity after using other programs.

Hi Serif, I no longer monitor or participate in the beta forum as remarkably few of the purported three million Affinity customers contribute, and the input from the small number of frequent contributors is inevitably unrepresentative. In essence, there is a significant survivor bias at play. I strongly recommend that you implement a well-thought-out and professionally presented campaign for the beta forum outside of the forum itself, via email, X, Instagram, and Facebook. I recall that you received over 89,000+ reactions on Facebook to the Canva news, suggesting there are many and valuable customers that could be 'recruited' externally, thus enriching the beta process and the forum with fresh, more representative input. I am aware that there may be immediate concerns about the forum becoming overwhelmed, but there must be a strategy to manage this. Anything is preferable to survivor bias and a small circle of participants whose input everyone must contend with, especially if there truly are three million customers... and more joining. Now that you are part of the Canva club, establishing more formal networks of customers might also be a good idea, where randomness is minimized and broader input is involved. Especially from commercial customers. I recommend that you consider this.

I have NEVER heard of a program that so diligently and frequently destroys its own files as Affinity. Even when you have a good backup regime established, you apparently need to back up non-stop. Every five minutes? What level of paranoia ensures safety? There is something fundamentally wrong with Affinity, and no amount of reports from customers whose data is destroyed seems to be enough to make any significant changes.

I am a fully grown man; my subconscious skips over the aforementioned persons' 'responses'. Cheers!

I have provided plenty of feedback on features in this forum; the root cause of far too many of the issues is, unfortunately, the process behind it, and therefore it's beyond pointless for customers to provide input at a hopelessly late stage. Just like Boeing's customers. It's completely valid criticism. Using the term 'troll' in the context of my posts is also groundbreaking unserious, but classic internet.

Can even the loyal fanbase not just here admit that this beta was released too early with severely unfinished or unimplemented features, and that a normal reaction from normal and rational thinking customers is questions, doubts, and frustration? The wine analogy is completely inappropriately placed. In the context of software, a beta version is a pre-release of a software product that is nearly complete but may still contain bugs. It is not appropriate for a beta version to have half-finished features. Beta versions are released to test and gather feedback from users to identify and fix issues before the final release. I'm beginning to doubt that I will use Serif's QR generator - but that depends on whether there will be an adequate implementation. The totally alpha proof of concept-like implementation leaves everything to the imagination, and it's not a cunning strategy towards customers who are not development sprint testers, but who may have the opportunity to quality assure and provide input in the absolute final stages. Input in earlier stages should occur in the absolute earliest phases, and it is the task of usability experts with involved customers. What we are witnessing here, on the other hand, happens haphazardly in the last weeks, and guarantees half-baked products and maximizes the risk of poor and fundamental architecture.

If you all are really unlucky, then I am right that this curve profile is algorithmic heritage from Serif DrawPlus, i.e., Serif's ancient programs from before Affinity. They looked exactly like this in the interface and worked in exactly the same way. If Serif now tries to build a pen width tool on poor algorithms that precede Affinity, and if Serif neither can nor will deliver better algorithms in 2024, but tries to milk the old ones for the last drop, then the problem we see is incredibly large and fundamental. The moment of reckoning has come for old decisions and business choices.

I'm seeing some pretty bad algorithms at play—if Serif is lucky, it's just bugs, but I don't think so. As I said, I don't want to test this for Serif, but curiosity did drive me to check it out on a rainy Saturday. For example, I notice a terrible lack of beautiful curves and almost sharp node-like edges, which when expanded through the stroke algorithm turn into miserable curves that curve in various ways. Horrible. All the beauty from the bezier universe, gone. One does not work with bezier curves to destroy and spoil their aesthetics. The entire curve becomes overall artificial and inorganic, significantly worse than competing line width tools, not least because of the microscopic interface. However, a note for Serif, when they need to—and they must—refactor the chaos we see today, if I choose 'Fit to curve delete node' on selected nodes on the terrible result after expand stroke, then the curves are somewhat repaired towards what I would expect directly from the tool. So, upgrade the algorithms and make their output consistent, and compare both output and interface with the competitors', please. Or as a first move along with Canva, recruit or book a true bezier specialist. There is no shame in acknowledging one's limitations. Only in not acknowledging them.

It could be pretty cool to be able to modify decorations away from the boring standards, so professional design can significantly stand out from what we might call the gray Canva mass of generic template designs, which millions of people without graphic expertise use indiscriminately (assembly line design look). However, I imagine that this is a significant task implementation-wise, and it will probably require more features and an expansion of architecture and styling logic. Now we'll see which target audience Affinity ends up getting and focuses on in its new 'family'.

Just look at this - introduced in April 2010 in Serif DrawPlus X4 - Serif never implemented this interface in Affinity.

I strongly recommend that the elements adjusted with the line width tool be enlarged, and especially that they are also affected by the tool handle size setting in preferences. I don’t know what it is with Serif and microscopic elements in the interface, but things really need to go together here.

Now, there are limits to how much desktop functionality can be implemented in iPad apps, but I would really appreciate if the very mechanical and algorithm-driven model became truly visual and usable as in the bygone DrawPlus. It just seems incredibly pointless that something so visual and experiment-driven is implemented so primitively in Designer. Implemented correctly and visually, it is an extremely useful tool for all graphic designers who, by the way, know what they are doing with colors. In the desktop version, I would like something feature complete like in DrawPlus, and reasonably, a simpler version in the tablet edition.

That sounds good!

Yes, that is indeed a fundamental principle at Boeing, for example. 🤪 One of many things I learned in my early working life, let's say when I was 20-25, was not to show work to clients too early in youthful arrogance and childlike eagerness. I knew exhaustively everything about what had been made (visible or not), what was coming, and what was not, but clients filled the void of knowledge with uncertainty or excessive expectations. Today, an assessment of timing is critical, and if there is the slightest thing that can cause unrest or worse, that clients go back to their home base and spread unrest, then things are really bad. I only show work in progress after assessment, and always live in a room with time for questions. But fundamentally and basically, show something that looks finished and convincing. Early involvement on a serious basis requires direct dialogue, live.

I don't know why Canvarif was in such a rush to release a beta when it's not really a beta. It clearly lacks features like variable font support, the line width tool is half-finished (or is simply delivered flawed and algorithmically weak), and it also seems like most of the QR code setup isn't ready yet. One of the great gifts of adulthood is indeed gaining wisdom on the importance of... timing. In all aspects. And likewise, learning to wait a bit for deliveries, as a customer.

More relevant now 🤭

Thanks for really well put and structured feedback, @8BIB8 - It almost aligns 1:1 with my own impressions and objections.

Forget it, it's a lost cause. This thread - and many others here - prove that Serif has long lost the battle for the serious and professional market, and has attracted hobbyists and the smallest sole proprietorships, and a number of users who lead these discussions here. Just try to read all the nonsense in the thread again! It's completely surreal for me as an adult to come home from the labor market and the seriousness there, and the type of thorough and insightful people I meet there, and then come home, and just see if there's anything new regarding a rather significant and serious acquisition situation, here. I can, with quite convincing use of enormous understatement, ascertain that this forum is a different genre, and that it is demotivating as a serious customer of Designer to have to navigate this nonsense and hell of postulates. It's like having an evening job at a youth school. The thread about the acquisition was actually one of the few threads where more focused and mature customers contributed their two cents, and I felt like I was among adults, and it has been beneficial for everyone, and I hope, especially for the leadership at Serif. But the illusion that there are serious customers out there in significant numbers quickly collapses when we very quickly end up back in nonsense. This thread (and many others) has ended in a dead end, and it makes me quite clearly state and summarize what I have otherwise reflected on in the analog world, that it's the same for Affinity. 'Revolution' my bare butt. There's explosive energy behind a revolution. This is the last gasp of a leaky beach ball we're witnessing. I do desire we may be better strangers!

It's really a terrible bug to have in a release version for so long. Bugs that so recklessly remove data from documents should be fixed asap, and as someone else says, it's not reassuring or confidence-inspiring that it can happen at all. Then the architecture behind is seriously shaky and insecure.

Example, CorelDRAW File -> Document Properties It illustrates well that in this program for professionals - in collaboration with customers, I assume, and in the style of many other programs - this has been collected in document info that is easy to find and enter. And as mentioned, this is quite important information for everyone, and especially in a serious context.

I have both the latest versions of Illustrator and CorelDRAW, and I don't hate either of them, but I find it disheartening that the interface for a large part of both programs remains stuck in the past. That's how it goes when you have a hundred million users who have decades of routines ingrained in muscle memory and from courses. Illustrator becomes better and more aesthetic, while Corel's interface gets uglier. And Corel as sellers are untrustworthy in a mail-order catalog kind of way. I don't like the company. I don't think Adobe themselves are thrilled about being so tied to the past. It seems like Lightroom has been more open to improvements, and Photoshop here and there too. But Corel... I really don't know what they want. That's probably where Serif has gained the most headwind, aside from the price, in their desktop versions, where the basic functions of the interface are much more pleasant to work with. Unfortunately, not in the iPad versions, which I can barely bring myself to use. And as for usability beyond the basic functions, it's not going well in the desktop versions either. Serif got some fundamental design right in 2014, but from there, the magic disappeared. On the other hand, in Illustrator and CorelDRAW, I've rarely hit a wall or had to use as many workarounds as in Affinity Designer, and output-wise, I also have far fewer problems. When Vectorstyler is developed and maintained by a real company, and when Inkscape is coded from scratch with a genuinely usable interface, then their potential will be realized. Only then. The most important thing for me is that the journey from start to finish is as short as possible, that the output is state of the art, and I don't have correction tasks after delivery. With that approach, it's the tasks that define which product I should choose, not my opinions.