Boldlinedesign

@LondonSquirrel it amazes me the things people fixate on to justify their position. The fact that one developer has built Vectorstyler into a powerhouse vector program in just a few short years should expose and in some ways embarrass the affinity designer team. One man has accomplished in three years far more than an entire team at affinity has done in over eight years. Is there some concern about a contingency plan should something happen to him? Sure, but the investment made by a vectorstyler user is minimal and the upside tremendous. The whole cost argument is also baffling. Adobe wants a 650 dollar subscription annually, Corel is several hundred dollars, etc. Here's a program (vectorstyler) that runs circles around affinity and eliminates most every missing feature issue and allows users to get away completely from Corel and adobe, etc, all for a measly 100 dollars. People spend that much on a fancy dinner! Here a 100 dollar purchase gives you the tools and more to use alongside affinity for years to come. Seems like a no brainer to me

If you use any of these programs to design professionally and make money, even the cost of all the affinity apps plus Vectorstyler do not add up to a major cost investment. I've purchased every available affinity app on all the platforms as sell as countless other programs in order to do my unprofessional work. If a program you purchase for less money does not offer a majority of tools needed to do your job, was it a great purchase to begin with? Vectorstyler offers easily ten times the functionality of affinity designer currently and is still priced under 100 dollars. I think the more accurate phrasing is why is affinity cost as much as it does given the lack of many vital features? Vectorstyler offers far more than just a few features beyond designer; vectorstyler is a powerhouse vector program that will far exceed the capabilities of designer for the foreseeable future. I invested in vectorstyler to be the solution to designer's gaping holes and ended up making it my primary vector app and now affinity is the sidecar. Some people prefer the simplicity of designer and only want the major features of Vectorstyler as needed.

If there's a solution to all the problems someone listed, would you not offer to help them solve it? That person was already looking beyond affinity at this point, why not give them another one to consider? Affinity has said many times, you buy their software for what it can do now, not what you hope it can do in the future. Right now, affinity designer is missing a large number of features that most would consider standard in a professional vector program and the pace they've been adding them has been glacial at best. Affinity has an entire team dedicated to advancing each respective affinity software, vectorstyler is built by one developer who's built all the missing tools into vectorstyler in less time. They have removed their roadmap and do not say much on the forum. Certain existing features like Boolean operations do not function well and never have... At some point, the user base is going to have enough frustration that they look for alternative solutions. After all, many turned to affinity when adobe turned to a predatory SaaS and they can turn from affinity if they do not steps up their game soon. As a fan of affinity in many ways, I am optimistic a giant 2.0 release is coming and will close the feature gap in a large way. I can understand why you'd think suggesting a different vector program on the affinity forum is wrong. I would encourage you to think of it differently. Vectorstyler does not have to be a replacement to affinity designer, and instead could be complementary. Affinity users who need features long absent from affinity could purchase vectorstyler and paste vector work interchangeably between the two programs. The struggles of using affinity designer can be alleviated by adding one program. As anxious as I am for affinity designer improvements and feature additions, using vectorstyler alongside designer gives me most of the solutions . I learned of Vectorstyler through the affinity forum years ago when I was losing patience with affinity and if it could help others like it did me, everyone gains.

@dcadint take a look at vectorstyler. It has all the missing affinity features and more. Works great as a standalone vector app but can also work well with designer www.vectorstyler.com

Why would it not come down to cashflow? Right now there's a large portion of users who already paid for the vs1 of the affinity apps. The last several years, they've not contributed further financially. Releasing version 2 of affinity would open that large portion of existing users to extract money from again for the update. Let's not forget affinity has often dropped the price of their programs to half price for extended periods of time which is a temporary solution to refill the bank account. My optimistic and desired hope is that the reason we've seen very little innovation or improvement from affinity in terms of new features is because they've been working on creating and refining them behind the scenes in anticipation of a big launch, perhaps this summer alongside the iPad version of publisher

I think it will come down to cashflow-if they can afford to still add those features to this version and then do another larger set of features to entice users to upgrade to version 2.0

@lacerto just an FYI on your VS tutorial, the small arrows in between the stroke end caps and arrows allow you to transfer the same style to the other side or back again. Click on the right arrow and the info from the left cap will become the same I the right, etc

@Bwood the issue is not that affinity is a bad product. None of us would be on the forum here if we did not believe in affinity. The issue is that there are large gaps of what many would consider as basic features used in professional design - and those gaps have remained for 7+ years. The things affinity can do, it generally does well, the large unanswered darth of common use features makes it a non-professional app in its current state. Affinity indeed had the right to run their business as they please and can communicate with their customer base or not. For every action or inaction there's an opposite reaction. The customer base is going to consider alternative options to get their needs met if affinity chooses to ignore their requests. Just like your grocery store analogy, if they don't offer what you want, you go to another store that does. That's what vectorstyler has been for me personally, another option. I'm still going to push affinity for openness and I'm still going to advocate for missing features. In some ways, I've had to move on from affinity, because I can't wait another eight years to get a trio of professional use programs. I still love what they currently offer, but cannot use it for my work unfortunately. Comparing affinity to other apps is like comparing apples to oranges in many ways. As you pointed out, affinity has developed three apps on three different platforms. That's impressive for sure. Vectorstyler is only one program developed on two platforms. Affinity is also several teams of employees dedicated to their respective programs while vectorstyler was built by one person. the amount of tools and features and the rate of improvement of that one program, vectorstyler, in a short three years, is massive. You'd think in eight years, with a larger team, affinity could accomplish a lot more than they have. Waiting nearly eight years for basic features is beyond frustrating. What affinity did with their discounts during the pandemic was great. I don't know if Adobe did anything. Vectorstyler was in free use beta at that time, so anyone could have used it for free all that year.

Avoiding subscriptions, whether personally or as a company like affinity, would be ideal. The datylon interface looks like it could be added in some way natively to affinity rather than perpetually paying them

@Frozen Death Knight I didn't tag you out of the blue. You initially responded to my comments about how Vectorstyler already has all the features missing in Affinity Designer and more. You listed all these issues you supposedly had with the program, and it was obvious you were mistakenly using some other program or you had not used VS in over a year. You had a long list of criticisms and offered few positives for VS and then said you were going to sit on the sidelines until it improved. It was clear you had not gone more than 10 minutes into using VS. I called you out on your eagerness to criticize and lack of action to help out and you did not reply. I took the time to send in your comments in case they were helpful (I don't often use the windows platform so I'm not fully aware of all specifics on that side). I reminded you later when updates were made that some of them related to your comments. I'm not bothered you had criticism of VS, I was bothered that some did not seem credible and it made no sense to me that someone would use an outdated build to reference problems, and then not be willing to lift a finger to see it improved. All while defending a program that lacks consistent updates, has plenty of it's own bugs and offers a limited number of tools. Then again, you said Affinity does everything you want it to already so.... Even the accurate issues you listed lack perspective. I'd rather have a program that does not remember my screen settings perfectly but can complete every task I need done plus has more tools than any other vector program than defend Designer with a very limited set of tools and years long improvement cycles. The frustration of many with Affinity; not giving much feedback, no hints of updates, a long list of features requested for multiple years running - you'd think more people would welcome an opportunity to help assist a vector program that is robust in features and has a developer who is engaged and open to ideas and offers improvements weekly - even if that program was going to be relegated to being a side app for those who prefer affinity designer as their primary. What I find surprising is the level of hostility people have with mentioning alternative options to fill in the many gaps where Affinity is still lacking. People defending years long glacial development, defending a lack of communication with the customer base, defending calling a program professional when it lacks so much. I should not have to convince you to give feedback. I wanted Affinity to be my main vector program - unfortunately I cannot do all my professional work with it yet. That's what drives me to find solutions and help improve the solutions, wherever they come from. We're all in here on the Affinity forum because we have a mutual interest in seeing Affinity develop. There are certain things Affinity does very well; it has an ease of use, actions are smooth and efficient, it's a lot faster than bloated apps like Illustrator, I love the ease of dragging and dropping into clipping groups and making gradients. The shape tools are handy and I like the pen tool more than most other apps. For those features and the hope of more to come, I stick around and contribute when betas and new releases do come out. For the reality that Affinity is not moving at a pace I can work with, I involve myself in finding productive solutions and sharing them with others, especially here in the forum.

@Frozen Death Knight Facts are bold for sure good luck using Inkscape and Affinity

@Frozen Death Knight Sounds like you are confusing Vectorstyler with another software. Your view of the app is worlds apart from reality. It already outperforms Affinity in almost every area. Keep using Designer though -

@Frozen Death Knight Just an FYI. A new build of Vectorstyler was released today which included some fixes based on the insights you shared a couple weeks ago. I had passed along your comments to the developer to be sure they got noticed and applied as best they could. Meanwhile no serious news on the Affinity front. I hope you reconsider and play an active part in the VS development. Waiting around does not help anyone in either community as we wait for Affinity's next move.

@Johannes Vectorstyler has a free 42 day fully functioning trial. There is also a promo sale going on over at this link where it's essentially half-off the 95 dollar normal cost. it looks like the sale is going on for 11 days more - so you could always test it out free first and buy it before the promo ends Compared to Affinity being a little less than half the cost of VS, I can understand your feelings that the price is steep. At this point, I'd happily pay Affinity another 100 dollars to get Designer with all the features and basic tools we've been clamoring for the last few years! lol I don't know if Affinity can survive longterm on 35-55 per app. We'll see. Compared to the cost of Adobe for a year... VS is cheap!

Pick up a copy of Vectorstyler and use it as an add-on feature for Affinity. It has all the features Affinity lacks and copying and pasting vectors between Affinity and Vectorstyler is easy and efficient. Oh, and it has a blend tool already VectorStyler.com

@KariF The boolean operations in Affinity are in need of some serious upgrades and improvements. Merging (Add) especially needs a lot of focus and attention. You may not get the result you want even if you are already using expanded strokes, etc... hopefully this will get addressed in the next release they put out.

I'm not sure I'm following your thinking - as each update contains a massive number of bug fixes and improvements, I'd welcome as many updates as possible. I get the sense those chipping in with their criticisms here have not spent much time if any using Vectorstyler or contributing to the betterment of the program in the Vectorstyler forum. if they did, they would be posting on the VS forum their concerns and issues with the program and praising it for the many things it does right. Vectorstler is not perfect by any means, but it's actively improved weekly. Why not chip in and help make it better? Especially with a developer eager for input and quick to improve the program. You can be a supporter of both programs. There's a certain irony to people criticizing a program that completely outpaces Affinity in features, code architecture, updates and bug fixes, despite being a one man team and starting development years after Affinity. People claim so many issues with Vectorstyler (many seem unfounded) but I have yet to see their views appear in the forum there. It's in everyone's best interest to see multiple programs develop and be viable options to replace Adobe and weaken their unfortunate monopoly. We should love Affinity enough to call them out on their lack of recent innovation, glacial speed of updates, glaring missing basic tools, their lack of communicating regularly with their customer base. Seeing one man continuously lap the entire Affinity Designer team with his own full featured vector program should reset our expectations of Affinity, not lead to trying to tear down the competition for being better. When Affinity releases another substantial beta, I will actively test it like I always do. I will provide feedback and ideas as I always do. Right now, nothing is happening that the public can be enlightened about. Affinity 1.10 came out a long time ago, the needs of the customer base have been shouted from the rooftops for literally years now. There's not much more we can do but sit and wait for the next release and hope they've listened to the clamoring of their base. Meanwhile, I'm active in a forum for a program that is evolving week after week - that's where the action is right now. I don't know what his plan is longterm (I have not asked) but I do know he takes vacations and I would hope he takes the occasional day off. He runs a very efficient support service. I would like to think as Vectorstyler takes off in popularity and use, he'll have plenty of opportunities to expand the company.

In this case, yes indeed. With vectorstyler being built on newer architecture with a massive number of features and tools and developed by a single person, the need for weekly testing and feedback is critical. It's much better to see weekly improvements than a decade with few improvements and basic tools still lacking

To give a little more perspective, vectorstyler is literally a one man team and updates come out nearly weekly and all the major missing tools in affinity can be found in vectorstyler already. Ideas are heard and implementation is quick. It's still a work in progress like any other app, but the bugs do not sit around like in InDesign.

No need to redo conversations, at this rate all we need to do is copy and paste the same answer every time "no it has not been added yet, yes we realize it's been many many years since it was first suggested, yes many have asked for it, no we don't know why they have not added it, check back next year. thanks!'

@walt.farrell I want to see Affinity do awesome - I own all their available apps on every platform. At some point we can call a spade a spade and hold Affinity to the same standard we expect from other things we purchase and use. In terms of their UI and rendering and studio link approach - they are awesome. When it comes to putting out a well-rounded product with all the basic tools and functions in a timely manner - they stink. We can still love Affinity to be critical of their communication and their efficiency

People are not going to want to dig through literal years of a thread to figure out why these basic features were not already be in the program

So far there has not been much benefit in many years to doing single threads either unfortunately. People are trying to get away from Adobe for example, and if possible, would prefer a one stop option to do all of these things. I cannot understand why it has been a low priority and taken many years for Affinity to implement what it took other apps, like Vectorstyler for example, less than a year to do. Putting off your customer base for many years and not responding to their requests with any sort of roadmap is not going to help keep the loyalty. I want Affinity to succeed, but they're going to need to address these things sooner than later if they want people to stick around to purchase version 2.0

I do think so indeed - There's a collective clamoring from the customer base stretching back 5+ years for Serif to add what are considered basic tools and features found in other vector programs. Taking 5+ years to implement basic vector tools and features is not a good look for Serif. Expecting users to go pull up years old threads to add yet another request to the years long list is not realistic. There's no good reason for multi-year long threads all asking for the same thing

Sadly the joke only reflects poorly on serif.