Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Paul Martin

Members
  • Posts

    157
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Paul Martin

  1. 3 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

    You should have been asked when you started the application if you want to update, where you can say no, and will update quickly and smoothly if you press Update.

    Our applications do not update without you being asked UNLESS you bought from the Microsoft Store (and MS do not give you a choice about being on the latest version)

    Yes, that was how it went. I was just slightly surprised by the new process.

  2. 3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

    If you are talking about MSIX (as you mention in the topic title) then the updates are faster because they are "delta" patches to the existing V2 code you have installed, not complete replacements as was done for V1 (and will still be done for the MSI/EXE-based installers that are now available for V2 if you choose to use them).

    Ta, Walt. That's handy to know.

  3. 18 hours ago, nicolasbulb said:

    Okaay, I've been with Affinity software since day 1, which means 8 years ago for Designer. They have been through a lot and I'd like to be able to use it professionally but I can't. The lack of scripting/batch processing ability and the some simple feature to add like a function in the *Resource Manager* like a "Select All" a "Link to Folder" the selected files is a no go for me. Working on a 200 pages with more than 300 pictures is not manageable that way. Thanks for adding it… soon.
    I've supported all 3 softwares so far and I think I will it too for version 2 but I doubt I'm going to use it for "real" job. I hope and believe Serif can make it right.

    Sounds like you need a corporate-scale feature for your "real job". That probably justifies the corporate-sized price-tag.

  4. On 11/10/2022 at 6:05 PM, Dhillf2w said:

    I am extremely disappointed to see that Affinity requires existing customers to purchase the V2 upgrade to the products they have already purchased. I have always been a fan of Affinity, but this seriously skews my affinity of the company.

    I believe Affinity products are still great and offered at great prices. I love that Affinity hasn't bowed to the greed of more-money with subscription-only services such as the big graphic software companies that moved in that direction, which I believe was a strong reason behind the creation of Affinity, and is most definitely a big reason for it's success. BUT, the decision to make existing customers repurchase all of the products again to get V2 is an extremely poor one. I would suspect many customers will stick with V1 simply because they will not be manipulated to purchase the products again, not because they don't want them, but because they are angry with Affinity.

    I do a lot of music production, and in the music industry there are many users who refuse to pay for subscription services. They want to own what they purchase, just like so many who have purchased Affinity products. But they prefer to purchase software from companies that don't  keep charging them for upgrades. My Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) of choice is Logic Pro X and I have never been charged for an upgrade; in fact, the community of Logic users looks forward with great anticipation and excitement to the new upgrades. This is what makes Logic users such huge fans of the software and the company—when the company rewards its customers with great upgrades at no additional cost; the company supports their customers. There are many third party companies that offer plug-ins for Logic, and some of these companies, such as Waves are getting a bad rap in the music community, because they require purchasing an upgrade license every few years in order to continue getting upgrades for the products they bought; they will lose many customers, but for those they keep, at least they are offered an incentive as a customer. Other companies such as iZotope treat their existing customers to deeply discounted loyalty offers for upgrades and newly released software and their customers are happy to pay a discounted fee to upgrade, and the company retains their admiration and respect. But Affinity, just insulted their entire customer base. Good luck with that.

    Once, a huge advocate of Affinity, my admiration, respect, and excitement for Affinity and it's products has now plummeted. For those who think this is too harsh, please realize, this isn't about customers, like me, saving a buck—it's about Affinity wanting to show appreciation for the loyal customers who made them successful. I mourn the direction Affinity has chosen.

    Sincerely

    Your definition of "loyal" appears to be to buy a cheap product and then expect it to be continually upgraded at no cost to you. Is this a business model worth the name?

  5. 20 hours ago, Distanzia said:

    Here's a thread from 2014...  It's crazy to think that you would have implemented this by now (2022) unless you're going the Reason Studios route, "We know what you need, you don't!"  unless I'm missing something.... 

     

    It rather depends upon the quality of "tracing" that you expect. I bought Vector Magic which sells at £200+ because I often convert pixel to vector. It is a sophisticated product but even so often disappoints. I think your expectation is a little excessive. £200+ for one feature compared to £90 for three excellent programmes? You could always use one of the online conversion products just when you need it, of course.

  6. On 11/9/2022 at 8:18 PM, Rogermcarey said:

    Please tell me I'm wrong. I 've paid good money for the full Afffinity suite, way back. Now I'm being invited to buy Version 2 (so much better, so, by implication Version 1 not so good any more). But I'm being asked to pay the same price as first-time buyers! In the good old days, when apps were called software, existing users got a discount price for an upgrade. That was a logical approach to pricing, which encouraged existing users to move onwards and upwards, when they had less incentive to do that than first-time buyers.

    I'm sorry Affinity can't find it in themselves to thank me for ditching CS whatever it was for their software. That I have previously bought their stuff counts, it seems for nothing. I am of no more interest to them than a new customers.

    Thanks, guys. I'll stick with my existing versions. Even though they don't have a scanner interface. But then, ninety quid's worth of V2 doesn't either.

    Y'know, I liked Affinity a lot. I recommended it to everyone I know.  Now, I feel like a mug.

    Loyalty, guys, is a two-way street.

    Yours,

    Roger

    There's a Bible story about labourers in the vineyard that you might glance at. I'm pretty chuffed at getting three good Xmas presents at a very reasonable price of £90 here in blighty. Your complaint is that your discount isn't greater than a new customer's. Sounds like that old sin of Envy to me.

  7. 2 hours ago, Jim57 said:

    MikeTO,

    I agree with you, my requests are not urgent and there are more important issues to address at this time. However, I did not state my issues were urgent. I did not insist they be done today, tomorrow or a year from now. I merely was posting what I would like to get. I paid my money for the upgrade and I’m entitled to voice my opinions in this forum just like anyone else. Correct me if I’m wrong about that.

    Yeah, I like a good whinge every now and again! I think you are right that a customer should be allowed to dream...

  8. On 11/9/2022 at 12:52 PM, fde101 said:

    I think these are two different tools.  The ability to temporarily measure something is the equivalent of using a ruler on a physical page.

    The ability to add it as an element of the document is more of a CAD feature, and while it would be nice to have that, it is not really the right type of application for it, so I can see how the priority for that would be a bit lower than some of the other things that have been requested.

    This is where I say that I have to keep my old copy of Serif Drawplus X8 (2015) going because all my house plans have saveable, printable dimension lines created in that lovely little programme. I'm just grateful that we at last have word count in Publisher 2, aeons after PagePlus.

    It does help that v2 looks attractive and has very slightly eased v1's "crowded" feel. Of course, my screen is only 24", so maybe all you guys out there on your cinema-sized Macs don't have this problem... 😀

  9. 40 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

    That would require having a whole bunch of new file types, given that we have afphoto, afdesign, afpub, afbrushes, afassets, afpackage, afstyles, afpresets, and more that I can't think of at the moment. 

    A message is needed when opening one of the afphoto, afdesign, or afpub files from V1 in V2, and we should have one shortly.

    But new file types would create more problems, in my opinion.

    One of the things that I enjoy about the Affinity trio is being able to open a file in one programme and switch to another if that seems better suited to the task. If I need forwards compatability (and that would be a very rare thing in my thirty-plus years' experience) I will just have to remember to save a copy with a different name, leaving the version 1 file unsaved in version 2. The real test is, of course, at what point do you decide the new version is stable and you really don't need the old one any more. I've very rarely had a file crash in Affinity v1 - in fact, I can't think of an instance - so I hope to make the transition soon.

  10. 1 hour ago, MEB said:

    Hi @Paul Martin,
    Let's say you have to design some stationary items (envelopes, cards etc) for a company. Without artboards you would have to create a document for each item. With artboards you can use one artboard for each type of item keeping everything in the same document and copy/pasting common elements (logos patterns whatever) easily between them speeding up the whole process of both creating and exporting everything.

    So basically each artboard is used as an "independent canvas" and you can have as much as necessary to design any pieces you may need keeping everything together in a single document/file.

    Aha! Yes, that sounds useful. I think I'm struggling to visualise how I would lay that out/manage it but I can see an advantage. Thank you very much. One thought, does it make any difference to how you use the Assets feature?

  11. Every now and then, I return to Affinity Artboards. I understand a little better how they work but, fundamentally, I still don't see the point.

    So, would some of my kind colleagues here who have entered the necessary higher state of being give an example or two?

    Why, when you started a new document, did you include an Artboard? What does it enable you to do (more easily or at all) that you couldn't do without it?

    Does it have anything to do with commercial printing?

    Is it just something that professionals expect to see?

    Can I just sneak one in when I've finsihed my design to make it look proper?

    Pretty much any suggestions welcome!

  12. On 4/30/2020 at 10:54 AM, Leigh said:

    They appear to be working for me. They're hosted on Vimeo and I know that some countries block this website.

    Here in May 2022, I can't get these videos to actually run. I now find accessing Affinity videos rather confusing. The ones I could previously get to from the programme itself show only as title pages. For instance, I wanted to try the "Same" one without any luck, but then I found it random;y by Googling. It's frustrating because I think I crossed the threshhold into Understanding Affinity in 2021 and I'm trying to fill-in the "corners" of my knowledge but it isn't easy, especilly if you aren't starting from the Adobe worldview of how stuff works!

  13. 10 hours ago, allenbham said:

    Thanks for this topic, y'all, and your answers.  I was just trying to figure out how to "flatten" (?) the layer effects, such as a color overlay, into a pixel layer.  And it turns out that "rasterize and trim" worked just how i needed it to.   I tried it because you started us off, Paul Martin, by saying that you use that command as a fallback when things won't work... it saved me from posting my own separate question.  Cheers!

    The best bit about the forum is that people know about all sorts of details that the Help system simply doesn't recognise. Which is probably just how it should be!

  14. 13 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

    Could you explain why you rate rasterize & trim infamous? For me it is both essential and works just fine.

    Being used to older software (Serif Photoplus) which made no distinction between Image and Pixel, I simply couldn't see the point of an extra factor to handle before you could start editing the picture. I may be wrong, but I can't recall any reference to raterize and trim in the tutorials.

  15. 14 hours ago, Ron P. said:

    I think of them like this.

    • Image Layer is like a container, it holds the pixels that make up the image. It's like having a glass or translucent covering. You can't get to those pixels to really manipulate them.
    • Pixel Layer is having the protective image cover removed. Now you can manipulate those pixels.

    Rasterizing an Image Layer is removing the protective covering.

    Yes, that helps, thank you. Just wonder what the point is to having Image if you can't change it.

  16. 3 hours ago, Alfred said:

    A rather too common cause of “nothing happens” is that you’re trying to do something to an ‘Image’ layer but it only works on a ‘Pixel’ layer. Affinity Photo is unfortunately quite inconsistent in its handling of such situations: sometimes it will rasterize the layer automatically, sometimes it will tell you it needs to be rasterized, and sometimes (you guessed it!) nothing happens.

    The ‘Trim’ function permanently removes unwanted parts of the document layer. For example, if you crop a picture the cropping is non-destructive, but ‘Rasterize & Trim’ will effectively render the crop destructive.

    The indefatigable Alfred to the rescue! Seriously, that explains to me why I have never come across this problem in the 3 previous decades of using photo software. I still don't really get the difference between pixel and image layers, but I'm learning to live with it.

  17. One of the most infuriating experiences that I had early on with Affinity Photo was "nothing happens". By a stroke of luck, I discovered the infamous "rasterize and trim" command which was completely new to me but I guess is a Photopshop equivalent.

    Now, I just use it when stuff won't work, but I would appreciate an explanation of why it is necessary and what is its proper use.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.