blureogroup

Thank you, but yes, I'm fully aware, but keeping a lot of panels side by side (horizontally) results in unreadable titles. An optional vertical solution is needed so that we can have multiple panel columns without compromising screen space. There are different different workflows for design apps, some people love working with all the panels floating, other people like having them all visible al the same time. I like to have all my essential panels visible and as large as possible, while the panels I only use occasionally and for specific tasks remain minimised in a slim vertical bar in order to occupy as little screen space as possible when I don't need them, and as much as possible when I do need them. This is not currently possible, the only way would be to entirely close the panel and reopen it via a shortcut or the Window dropdown menu. Just a nice to have, not a must have. But I see this as very easily implementable, and I started this thread with the pledges in mind. I invite everybody to share their ideas and must-haves in this list in order to keep Affinity Community Driven. 🫡

Just wanted to add to this list for improvements. The panels UI needs some love. Currently, there is absolutely no way to minimise your panels to icons as you would in adobe software, ore even as a vertical row of tabs that could open on click. This kind of functionality is a must for any professional workflow since I need my screen real estate, and also quick access to my panels. I am using publisher since I find it best to organise all typography related panels in the publisher persona, all vector related panels in the designer persona, and all raster related panels in my photo persona. It's a great workflow, but there are still situations like the one in the screenshot below where I need access to my brushes, but also my global colours and layers, three panels that take up a lot of space.

I see that you've edited your response. I definitely agree that in some situations there are too many nodes in some curves, and path smoothing definitely has to be improved, but I feel the need to remind you that recently having switched from Adobe the redundant node situation is muuuuch better in the Affinity suite. Yes, this is definitely missing. I am currently working with Luminar Neo + Affinity Suite, and although Luminar technically has a plugin supported by Affinity, its integration is quite bad. It only launches the app, only works in Photo and not in the other apps, and has issues with transferring work between the apps, even as a simple jpg layer. I think there's a pinned thread by the Serif team in the feature requests that addresses just that. Advanced JS scripting is definitely in the works and already looks quite powerful.

Agreed! Affinity symbols, global colors, assets, styles, and masters are already incredibly powerful! Just imagine what we could do if those would be synced. Only one thing to add: I think that any online syncing and cloud functionality should remain under an opt in since it generally results in slower performance depending on internet speed and server state, and in the long term to subscriptions since cloud infrastructure cannot be maintained on a pay to keep business model. Other than that can't wait to see optional cloud infrastructure to benefit our workflows.

Very good point! I never thought about it since I never use it, but for Affinity's new market expansion goals it should be crucial to implement it!

Hello, Serif team I am a recent member of the Affinity family, but I feel like it's just that. There's a lot of negativity surrounding this new deal, and I wanted to make sure you also get encouragement. I think the pledges are great. If you stay true to them, keep Affinity standalone and professional, and integrate it with Canva in the future in order to allow professional designers create templates in Affinity for marketers to use in Canva, this will be a groundbreaking workflow for the world of design. There isn't a single piece of software out there that solves the problem of professionals who enjoy non-destructive, complex softwares such as Affinity collaborating with marketers who enjoy the simplicity of something like Canva templates. I hope the entire team is as excited as I am for the future of Affinity. Keep Affinity professional, Canva for the beginners or non-designers, and you'll have yourselves the best design suite on the market. This is a web agency owner's (extremely passionate about Studio Link and your design suite) wishlist of features to come from the new Canva resources: Blend tool functionality Real vector brushes, not rasters on vector paths Real vector patterns, not rasters repeating on vector shapes Variable font support Smart object import functionality in Affinity Publisher Canva, please pay for additional developers to handle bug fixing, there are some persistent bug threads here that haven't been solved in 3-4 years Better transfer of Adobe format documents (I know, I know, it's closed-source format and the idea is to bring people over FROM Adobe, but sadly we still live in a world dominated by .ai .psd and .indd) for example the constant non 0 font tracking makes importing large document a real pain Export persona for all Affinity apps (I shouldn't have to open designer to export a batch of 10-20 logos I've been working on in Publisher) Generally way more Studio Link integration. Having a suite is great, but what you've developed in Studio Link is something special. Maybe Develop, Liquify, Export should become Modules rather than standalone personas in other apps. So that people would be able to add modules to their unified app (currently Publisher) just as we would add panels right now. Even if it requires a restart of the app, people would be able to make their one design app as slim or all-encompassing as they want. Some sort of image tracing capability Point-based gradients/Gradient meshes Some sort of vector filters suite (roughen, smoothen curve, distort, background distort, etc.) This is a list I'd been keeping for the past months, working on small business and big corporate website and design projects alike, using exclusively your suite for professional designs. Let's make this thread a place for positivity and genuine recommendations for the future of our favourite design suite. The serif team seem to be very excited and eager to bring the best design tools out there into existence for us. So let's make it happen together. Tudor.

Thank you very much for taking time to reply! I've just now realised that the tags of the post reveal that the bug had been logged. Shockingly, if you click on the tag you will notice as I have just now that this bug has been logged since 2019!!! (So not just one year ago) Hopefully it gets fixed soon since it's incredibly annoying.

This has been reported almost a year ago and no updates yet. Any status update? Is it even being worked on? Basically live filters inside of groups do not work as expected (they stop bieng applying alltogether). I know you can avoid this by not grouping them but one of the things I enjoy most about Affinity is how organised and dynamic I can keep my work. This bug is keeping me from organising or dynamically applying anything that contains live filters. Apps: Affinity Photo, Affinity Publisher latest versions System: Macbook Air, MacOS Sonoma, latest release

Any news? It's been almost a year since this has been reported and I am still struggling with this issue.

Very nice work! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 Could you share the 3D settings you used for the hearts? I haven’t managed to achieve such a well-balanced inflation so far! Or have you applied brushes to make it so realistic? Congrats again.

I use Luminar Neo (paid solution) as a plugin to Photo for that sort of thing, although it launches separately which is inconvenient, the results are amazing!

I never said it is my business. It is Serif's business to take into account amateur or non-designer feedback with a grain of salt. Affinity declares the ambition of a professional graphic design suite so it should behave as such. I do not mean any harm by "relevant minority", it's just a fact that if Affinity or any other professional design software will be developed by mainly taking into account a minority of the use cases instead of their target audience it will sooner or later either go bankrupt or turn into a glorified Canva (which by the way is a great software for running "affordable" marketing materials for small businesses). I truly wish you the best of luck with your business and hope you succeed with it, but once again, Affinity is (by their own standards) a professional design suite, so when we're all here discussing improvements to professional workflows and you come screaming "cheap, old hardware, iPad" I don't think I am the one with the attitude. I never said you or any other person's business is insignificant and I would never disrespect you, your business or your skills, but if you truly wish for the best from this suite as most of us here do you would have no problem telling the staff (not me) what you use this software for so that they can make informed decisions when establishing priorities. Also a great thing about Affinity's licensing, code, and ethics is that if you ever feel like this suite has become too complex or expensive for your personal or business needs you can just stick to 2.0 and keep doing your thing, as most of us here are discussing with a 3.0 release in mind that will hopefully integrate much better with a professional workflow. All the best to you, your team, and your business. Tudor.

I think when people throw out this kind of feedback with little to no justification or with irrelevant arguments they should also mention: 1. How does Affinity help their professional work. 2. What kind of professional work they do relying solely on Affinity. (We are not in the game to switch between 10 apps for a single web/print graphic). 3. Years of experience with Affinity and as a professional in the field where they use Affinity. I keep seeing the same relevant minority pop up with prayers for Affinity to stay “cheap, old hardware compatible, up to date on iPad, etc.” in topics where people talk about actual improvements to a professional workflow. This doesn’t do the software suite justice or the community any good. I sincerely hope the Affinity team take these factors into consideration when evaluating the relevance of given feedback since it would be beneficial to both us and them as a company for the software to be developed with professional users in mind.

Thank you very much for the reply! Can’t wait to see this inside of Publisher at some point.

+1 for gradient meshes

Thank you very much! Glad to know it's going to be fixed at some point and to have contributed a bit. Cheers!

Hello! I'm loving your apps so far. Amazing stuff with StudioLink. I would love to see the setting to "Import PSD Smart Objects where possible" inside of Affinity Publisher as well since it is already present in both Designer and Photo. I would also like to mention that when I do open a file with a smart object in Photo or Designer and the smart object is imported, when I then open it in Publisher it has no problem reading the smart object, so I guess the development is halfway there! (Pardon me if it isn't the case) Since I and many other users often work with mockups and there are many of us who love your Persona workflow for combining raster, vector, and dynamic text/paragraph styles, it would be amazing to not have to open a mockup in another app just to be able to import the smart object! Cheers!

System: Macbook Air M1 running MacOS Sonoma 14.3 Affinity Version: Latest (2.3.1 as of time of this post) I've managed to reproduce this bug in all three applications, all personas, and every document I create. Bug: When editing shortcut configurations, even though I have "use shift modifier to cycle tools" enabled, my newly added cycling shortcut (i.e. "I" key for both Color Picker and Style Picker) cycles just fine without going to the last selected tool in my first session. However, when I quit the app and reopen it, "Shift + I" cycles to the last used tool and there's also a visual bug inside of my shortcut configuration (there are two inputs for the Style Picker tool). This is a bug since this behaviour does not happen for tools that cycle by default (Artistic Text, Text Frame, Table, for example). Steps to recreate: Go to Settings - Shortcuts - Tools submenu Change any of the tools shortcuts to a shortcut that would mean cycling tools (in my case, Style Picker to I key) Works just fine for the first session without cycling back to previously used tool Quit the app Reopen the app The shortcut which previously worked fine now cycles to last used tool If you go back to Settings - Shortcuts - Tools submenu there is now a duplicate shortcut input field for the overwritten shortcut (in my case Style Picker, removing the duplicate and resetting the shortcut gets rid of this issue, but this is an annoying step to take very time you open the app)

This is an unacceptable workflow for graphic design or really any professional work. I think we can all agree that in order to do any professional work we need our apps to move at the speed of our knowledge, experience, and imagination. That is why professionals use shortcuts, that is why professionals use non-destructive workflows, that is why they don't eyeball their design decisions everyday. Having to open a whole other app, work there on a blend (mind you I might have to import swatches, styles and other past design decisions I'd already made in order to see the live consequences of the blend on my design), copy my work from one app to another or even export it and reopen it. This is not a professional workflow. Why on earth are there so many people on these threads going: „Affinity is fine the way it is. Affinity doesn't need to change. As long as it stays cheap and I can use my app forever they can go bankrupt for all I care.” An agency that would offer Serif quite an investment for licenses for example would never work with this suite so long as it lacks: a blend tool, gradient meshes, true vector brushes. You are bringing absolutely nothing to the table by replying: Oh just install these three other apps for features you use every day, than work in all your four apps at the same time for a single web asset. Bring suggestions for improvement, bring ideas, bring helpful information.

Look, you are purposefully missing my entire point. It's not about waiting for the apps to open, it's about the fact that I am three tools away from never needing to open them in the first place. It's about extra steps. Why would I, in order to just apply a bit of liquify, need to open my file inside of a separate application, go into the other persona, apply the changes, save the changes, close this app and go back to my app. I think Studio Link has the potential to mitigate this sort of useless additional actions inside our workflows by going all in with the concept of Personas. With the risk of repeating myself, Affinity's USP is not being cheap, working on older hardware, or existing on iPad. StudioLink is the most innovative feature to come to design apps for maybe the past decade. DaVinci Resolve comes to mind. Instead of taking the Adobe approach and having separate apps for compositing, video editing, encoding, they created one app with something very similar to personas. The consequences? Most professional videographers have long abandoned Premier Pro, After Effects, and Media Encoder, since their workflow is disjointed and archaic.

Affinity Publisher is already not InDesign it is only missing: Liquify, Develop, Export, Smart Object, and Plugin Support (has all other features from the other two apps). If Serif want a bigger pie of the market their main focus should not be keeping their suite cheap and compatible with old hardware. For people who do graphic design combining rasters and vectors every single day, it's the other way around. The annoying switching back and forth happens when I need Liquify for 2 mins and have to open Photo just to use it, or when I want to edit a mockup, and have to first open the file inside of Photo just for it to make the Smart Object connection, even though publisher already supports them.

I know you need to buy the other apps in order to have personas available inside of publisher, but truly the USP of the Affinity Suite is their Studio Link. They have added other features which are interesting or help streamline a design workflow, but in my opinion they intentionally dumb down the capability of their Studio Link because of this fear that you mention of creating an app that is too big. I think that if you like specialist apps in your workflow rather than one superapp with all of your design tools, you are not in any real sense taking advantage of what Studio Link has to offer and Serif should not dumb down Studio Link to appease these people. If people only want to use one or two of the apps let it be what it is meant to be: a raster only editing app, a vector only editing app, or a desktop publishing only app just like Adobe does it. But Studio Link is capable of so much more and if it would be a standalone, more expensive app that contains all the features of the other three in the form of personas I would pay without even thinking about it.

Look, we are all here to have productive talks about what we wish Serif to implement inside the Affinity suite in order for our workflows to improve. Most of us also use Affinity as our standard design tool. You mentioned three apps. I for one also believe it is a bit excessive on the part of Serif since publisher is a few features away from having all the other two offer. I am personally keeping a private list where I add features I am looking for and cannot find every single time I encounter them. The blend tool, true vector brushes, variable font support are features which I've seen plenty threads open for, so yes, maybe they should prioritise those since these three features alone might grab them tons of users from Adobe. I've read a lot of threads on this forum and I must say: I think the amount of confusion and adversity could easily be turned around by serif by publishing a simple dynamic roadmap and being a bit more transparent with what they're working on. Some good example in this regard would Wordpress site builders like Bricks https://bricksbuilder.io/roadmap/ or Cwicly https://roadmap.cwicly.com/ which have made feature requesting and tracking incredibly convenient. Lots of love from Blureo to Serif, who have revolutionised our design workflow with their StudioLink.

Hello! The recent launch of Modyfi saw a very interesting way of doing something similar to blend but with a single object, it's called a Repeater and it's basically Affinity's power duplicate but in the form of a live filter which can be altered. Maybe we should let Serif see this since I for one believe that it might be a good start for implementing a real Blend tool and it might come even sooner since they've already implemented the power duplicate menu. Cheers! Have a great day! Tudor.