debraspicher

This post warms my heart so much. I have both CorelDraw and Vectorstyler on trial atm.

PDF/X file exporting was just added to Vectorstyler today in the newest update to version 1.2. Might be worth looking into and providing feedback for improvement. Vectorstyler and Affinity Designer work well together; it's easy to copy and paste vectors between the two programs. 

Edit: I just hid a wall of text above (still there, but people would have to click it), as was not very on-topic; mostly I was talking about some nice things/tricks/uses I found in Inkscape, replying to Debraspicher about the matter.
My usual take can come as weird, but I got these (bad?) habits of working with any number of tools in a project while in the game jobs. In the morning I'd be constantly switching between Max, Maya, the UV mapping tool, and like 2 or 3 worse than pre-alpha tools (now... those redefined for me the concept of "fest of bugs", geez. But I got used to it) coded by our programmers to integrate stuff in the engine, or engine editors, etc, and maybe in the afternoons, evening, night(some times till crazy hours) PS for the textures while alt tabbing with a 3D painting tool, pixel art for a mobile version, etc...  So, in the end, I see it just as a bunch of pixels, vectors, or polygons that I move around, like in a cheapo tour around Europe. Caring only about the final result. One of the reasons I don't worry much about the Canva thing. I fully understand the small business owner with employees. But I would like to think that even in that case, you could do as I've seen done at some companies I've worked at. They would even lock down (to any exterior contact )  machines with an OS 20 years old, and similarly old software, to ensure the workflows were kept intact, and to avoid new investments in software (back in the day software was a lot more expensive, they would have paid Affinity's licenses yearly, and very happily). They could do that with 2.4 or 2.5 (or etc), if the worst happens (while I don't think it will). Even the more pessimistic assume that a v3 would happen, that's maybe some time ahead of updates and "normal" use. After that, the (small companies') teams with employees could do that "conservative" approach that I mention. I dunno, in my experience, things needed for the job in 2D, DTP, etc, are usually the same for almost decades. Hence why many people and companies could just stick to CS6 and even earlier, for so long.

 

I seem to remember having to pay for 2.0 and being told it was a big upgrade for me and that Affinity was "setting new standards". If the differences here were between 1.2 vs 1.7, etc, I would almost certainly agree, they don't live on the same scale. However arbitrary it can seem, version numbers do give at least some indication to us as to how the developer interprets the current state of their own product. It would be very understandable for 1.x to be missing some very basic functionality. 2.x, we would expect their ducks to be in a row so to speak where at least 1.x's functionality is concerned, but here many of 1.x flaws and bugs made it into 2. Am I really supposed to believe the key bugs will ever be addressed when we have iterated through 2.x updates with no signs that even problems from 1.x will ever be addressed adequately? However if "version numbers mean nothing" then there is nothing left to discuss, frankly.

I seem to remember having to pay for 2.0 and being told it was a big upgrade for me and that Affinity was "setting new standards". If the differences here were between 1.2 vs 1.7, etc, I would almost certainly agree, they don't live on the same scale. However arbitrary it can seem, version numbers do give at least some indication to us as to how the developer interprets the current state of their own product. It would be very understandable for 1.x to be missing some very basic functionality. 2.x, we would expect their ducks to be in a row so to speak where at least 1.x's functionality is concerned, but here many of 1.x flaws and bugs made it into 2. Am I really supposed to believe the key bugs will ever be addressed when we have iterated through 2.x updates with no signs that even problems from 1.x will ever be addressed adequately? However if "version numbers mean nothing" then there is nothing left to discuss, frankly.

Your writing reminds me of my own writing when I was younger. I started on a typewriter. Then I moved to Word 6, which I used for "creative" writing also, but it became more "script-ish" (as in largely dialogue). Very interesting to see another person use a similar style. A traditional writing style can feel too precise. Writing is a lot like painting, which means it can take almost a lifetime to truly master.
I found your post interesting, so thank you for that. I think I tried Scribus way back when it was newly in development and supposedly it's seen big improvements of recent, or at least I've seen written by others by reading in passing. As for the context of the post you are quoting, it is in reference to the technical issue(s) with accurate vectors, hence the "shark bug". VS is not brought up to be a "tit for tat". We can suggest its relevant here because VS is only 1.2 and yet Affinity is 2.4... What Affinity has managed with their line is seriously impressive and current staff should be commended to have made all that possible. None of us would be here nor it possible otherwise. However, clearly there are quality issues with the updates that being put out and their inability to put out the resulting fires is heavily concerning. If Canva is actually listening, they will send Serif a big fat check to hire al the talent they need to fix the quality issues and other developmental obstacles. Otherwise, the horse is long dead...


Re: Inkscape, I want to love the app as it could have been a stellar piece of software, but its development speed is terribly slow (kinda expected with OSS) and its UI is a cry for help. Will more income help? I'm not sure, honestly. I suspect if others are like me, they may be skeptical that adding money to the equation will automatically lead to speedier development and that exacerbates the issues with raising money for long-term OSS projects. At least with companies, we know they rely on steady revenue and are required to make cash to sustain. There's a cash for value too, as what we pay is supposed to be proportionate to what we receive. I do use Inkscape for some things, especially Trace Bitmap, which works really well for converting delicate ink jobs. It's not as user friendly to me as VS, though admittedly that wasn't my first impression when I first tried VS. I can see VS becoming what Inkscape couldn't be in that regard, should it take on inspiration in the development of a solid "user flow" throughout the breadth of the application. Note: I didn't say workflow... nobody wants a UI filled with inflexible/dead end workflows.. *cough* Illustrator *cough*. Both are held back by some cumbersome UX and strange UI decisions. VS has better document management and that's important for my ability to stay organized creatively as it allows me to also work rationally... two things that can come into conflict for me when writing code.

Your writing reminds me of my own writing when I was younger. I started on a typewriter. Then I moved to Word 6, which I used for "creative" writing also, but it became more "script-ish" (as in largely dialogue). Very interesting to see another person use a similar style. A traditional writing style can feel too precise. Writing is a lot like painting, which means it can take almost a lifetime to truly master.
I found your post interesting, so thank you for that. I think I tried Scribus way back when it was newly in development and supposedly it's seen big improvements of recent, or at least I've seen written by others by reading in passing. As for the context of the post you are quoting, it is in reference to the technical issue(s) with accurate vectors, hence the "shark bug". VS is not brought up to be a "tit for tat". We can suggest its relevant here because VS is only 1.2 and yet Affinity is 2.4... What Affinity has managed with their line is seriously impressive and current staff should be commended to have made all that possible. None of us would be here nor it possible otherwise. However, clearly there are quality issues with the updates that being put out and their inability to put out the resulting fires is heavily concerning. If Canva is actually listening, they will send Serif a big fat check to hire al the talent they need to fix the quality issues and other developmental obstacles. Otherwise, the horse is long dead...


Re: Inkscape, I want to love the app as it could have been a stellar piece of software, but its development speed is terribly slow (kinda expected with OSS) and its UI is a cry for help. Will more income help? I'm not sure, honestly. I suspect if others are like me, they may be skeptical that adding money to the equation will automatically lead to speedier development and that exacerbates the issues with raising money for long-term OSS projects. At least with companies, we know they rely on steady revenue and are required to make cash to sustain. There's a cash for value too, as what we pay is supposed to be proportionate to what we receive. I do use Inkscape for some things, especially Trace Bitmap, which works really well for converting delicate ink jobs. It's not as user friendly to me as VS, though admittedly that wasn't my first impression when I first tried VS. I can see VS becoming what Inkscape couldn't be in that regard, should it take on inspiration in the development of a solid "user flow" throughout the breadth of the application. Note: I didn't say workflow... nobody wants a UI filled with inflexible/dead end workflows.. *cough* Illustrator *cough*. Both are held back by some cumbersome UX and strange UI decisions. VS has better document management and that's important for my ability to stay organized creatively as it allows me to also work rationally... two things that can come into conflict for me when writing code.

The "shark teeth" "defect" is from a bug I reported before, obviously never fixed. I'm sure others have reported it. I've cleared my attachments, but the topic is here:
These were the attachments...
231201_stroke-odd-behavior.afdesign


Sadly, this is the result of not polishing up on core functions. One consideration, that some have speculated to in the past, is that they don't fully comprehend the math involved and there's plenty of "tweaking" under the hood to get the desired visual results. I've been playing with (and learning, actually) Vectorstyler which is built by one man and it's amazing to me how much manipulation is feasible with just that one program. Serif has a team of people and decades of experience to hire the correct people, so these kinds of issues in CORE functionality (expansion, pressure curves, anti-aliasing curves, etc) should not be so pervasive. I don't see how Canva can change their thinking that dramatically... horse to water, etc.

FWIW, reading about the exchange of massive amounts of other people's money can feel so inconsequential  😂 Currently re-watching Silicon Valley in the same vein...

FWIW, reading about the exchange of massive amounts of other people's money can feel so inconsequential  😂 Currently re-watching Silicon Valley in the same vein...

While you are at improving the UX by turning the Typography dialog into a panel (thank you very much for that, it is highly appreciated), would you mind reconsidering the overall panels layout too?
I still find that the current approach to draw panel sections is not very apt to visually keep things together that belong together, especially in the typography-related panels that have a lot of sections. The z-dimension (depth) management is not really compelling. Visually, the section headers are one level deeper than the panel surface, which creates a hierarchy problem that has been present from version 1.0.

A section heading should never sit inside a groove, for when you do it this way, you cannot create the impression that the heading starts a section whose contents will be subsumed under the heading. If you need a section inside a panel, there are much better, time-proven ways to do this.
To take a (really just random) example, here is a panel stack from Blender. I hope you can see that the visual depth management that is much clearer than Affinity’s. While it may not be perfect in any respect, it is clear at first glance what contents belong to the sections “Restrictions”, “Instancing”, “Line Art”, and “Custom Properties” respectively:

Now confer this example to your visual depth management in the following example. Can you tell at first glance that “Justification” opens a new section? Or doesn’t it rather seem that the bar in which the section heading lives is the footer of the dark area for tabulator settings above? Especially when the scroll bar is present on the right?

I hope you can see that there is room for improvement in this area. I know it’s not likely that you will overhaul your entire panel layout on occasion of reorganising the Typography panel, but maybe this change is a good occasion to take a step back and make notes for further improvements in future versions. So I just wanted to mention the problem here (again).

I seem to remember having to pay for 2.0 and being told it was a big upgrade for me and that Affinity was "setting new standards". If the differences here were between 1.2 vs 1.7, etc, I would almost certainly agree, they don't live on the same scale. However arbitrary it can seem, version numbers do give at least some indication to us as to how the developer interprets the current state of their own product. It would be very understandable for 1.x to be missing some very basic functionality. 2.x, we would expect their ducks to be in a row so to speak where at least 1.x's functionality is concerned, but here many of 1.x flaws and bugs made it into 2. Am I really supposed to believe the key bugs will ever be addressed when we have iterated through 2.x updates with no signs that even problems from 1.x will ever be addressed adequately? However if "version numbers mean nothing" then there is nothing left to discuss, frankly.

@William Overington - My daughter worked at a well known university in the U.S. as a graphic designer. She was encouraged to get a university funded master degree in communications. It helped her immensely in ways not related directly to her creative abilities and talents. She has now moved on and is working as an art director in New York at an advertising agency owned by one of the "Big Four" media agencies and doing well there. She has gotten raises, the creative directors are competing for her to work on their projects and a person was hired to help her with her work load. I think her Masters Degree has made all the difference.

note, 26 April 2022

Your writing reminds me of my own writing when I was younger. I started on a typewriter. Then I moved to Word 6, which I used for "creative" writing also, but it became more "script-ish" (as in largely dialogue). Very interesting to see another person use a similar style. A traditional writing style can feel too precise. Writing is a lot like painting, which means it can take almost a lifetime to truly master.
I found your post interesting, so thank you for that. I think I tried Scribus way back when it was newly in development and supposedly it's seen big improvements of recent, or at least I've seen written by others by reading in passing. As for the context of the post you are quoting, it is in reference to the technical issue(s) with accurate vectors, hence the "shark bug". VS is not brought up to be a "tit for tat". We can suggest its relevant here because VS is only 1.2 and yet Affinity is 2.4... What Affinity has managed with their line is seriously impressive and current staff should be commended to have made all that possible. None of us would be here nor it possible otherwise. However, clearly there are quality issues with the updates that being put out and their inability to put out the resulting fires is heavily concerning. If Canva is actually listening, they will send Serif a big fat check to hire al the talent they need to fix the quality issues and other developmental obstacles. Otherwise, the horse is long dead...


Re: Inkscape, I want to love the app as it could have been a stellar piece of software, but its development speed is terribly slow (kinda expected with OSS) and its UI is a cry for help. Will more income help? I'm not sure, honestly. I suspect if others are like me, they may be skeptical that adding money to the equation will automatically lead to speedier development and that exacerbates the issues with raising money for long-term OSS projects. At least with companies, we know they rely on steady revenue and are required to make cash to sustain. There's a cash for value too, as what we pay is supposed to be proportionate to what we receive. I do use Inkscape for some things, especially Trace Bitmap, which works really well for converting delicate ink jobs. It's not as user friendly to me as VS, though admittedly that wasn't my first impression when I first tried VS. I can see VS becoming what Inkscape couldn't be in that regard, should it take on inspiration in the development of a solid "user flow" throughout the breadth of the application. Note: I didn't say workflow... nobody wants a UI filled with inflexible/dead end workflows.. *cough* Illustrator *cough*. Both are held back by some cumbersome UX and strange UI decisions. VS has better document management and that's important for my ability to stay organized creatively as it allows me to also work rationally... two things that can come into conflict for me when writing code.

Your writing reminds me of my own writing when I was younger. I started on a typewriter. Then I moved to Word 6, which I used for "creative" writing also, but it became more "script-ish" (as in largely dialogue). Very interesting to see another person use a similar style. A traditional writing style can feel too precise. Writing is a lot like painting, which means it can take almost a lifetime to truly master.
I found your post interesting, so thank you for that. I think I tried Scribus way back when it was newly in development and supposedly it's seen big improvements of recent, or at least I've seen written by others by reading in passing. As for the context of the post you are quoting, it is in reference to the technical issue(s) with accurate vectors, hence the "shark bug". VS is not brought up to be a "tit for tat". We can suggest its relevant here because VS is only 1.2 and yet Affinity is 2.4... What Affinity has managed with their line is seriously impressive and current staff should be commended to have made all that possible. None of us would be here nor it possible otherwise. However, clearly there are quality issues with the updates that being put out and their inability to put out the resulting fires is heavily concerning. If Canva is actually listening, they will send Serif a big fat check to hire al the talent they need to fix the quality issues and other developmental obstacles. Otherwise, the horse is long dead...


Re: Inkscape, I want to love the app as it could have been a stellar piece of software, but its development speed is terribly slow (kinda expected with OSS) and its UI is a cry for help. Will more income help? I'm not sure, honestly. I suspect if others are like me, they may be skeptical that adding money to the equation will automatically lead to speedier development and that exacerbates the issues with raising money for long-term OSS projects. At least with companies, we know they rely on steady revenue and are required to make cash to sustain. There's a cash for value too, as what we pay is supposed to be proportionate to what we receive. I do use Inkscape for some things, especially Trace Bitmap, which works really well for converting delicate ink jobs. It's not as user friendly to me as VS, though admittedly that wasn't my first impression when I first tried VS. I can see VS becoming what Inkscape couldn't be in that regard, should it take on inspiration in the development of a solid "user flow" throughout the breadth of the application. Note: I didn't say workflow... nobody wants a UI filled with inflexible/dead end workflows.. *cough* Illustrator *cough*. Both are held back by some cumbersome UX and strange UI decisions. VS has better document management and that's important for my ability to stay organized creatively as it allows me to also work rationally... two things that can come into conflict for me when writing code.

The reason why you notice lots of posts in these forums mentioning Adobe products is… the fact that the 80lb gorilla snuffed out most of the competition (more on it later), which means there's not much in the way of choice. Yes, I know, there is F/OSS, but its technical limitations and sometimes subpar UX (and that is a hill I'm going to die and rot on, sorry… I've now studied enough UX to find and explain faults even in the relatively user-friendly offerings by Serif and those by Adobe, and I completely understand why F/OSS in the creative industries still hasn't taken off, save for Blender and other notable exceptions) pretty much push people either into those nice, prosumer offerings on the Mac App Store, or to Adobe subscriptions, especially if they've worked with the latter in school (as is so often the case, hence Canva's push into that market).
People don't assume anything; Serif's swagger, and straight up copying of the former Adobe Creative Suite Design Standard product matrix (minus the professional PDF editor, sadly), and now the new and aforementioned post-Canva acquisition free licensing for education markets, solidify that position. It's not a perception, it's a fact.
And let's be fair, Affinity gets users maybe 90% of the way there, but it's those 10% of functionality that it doesn't yet cover, that make Adobe a true “jack of all trades”, which make all the difference. Many of the people you see here either need those extra 10% or anticipate they or their students (as is my case) may need them.
About the only thing most agree(d) on (and I say agreed, because we'll soon see an influx of Canva users who may be very content with their subscriptions) was that they wanted to own their own software, full stop. Again, there are very practical reasons for that, it's not just basic daily economics or a matter of principle (which it also is, of course).
While I agree with you on the market being big enough for everyone, there was ZERO competition against the former “Adobe Creative Suite Design Standard” suite/combo as a whole… But there was, and still is, proper competition when it comes to each of its individual components, albeit less integrated. One could feasibly purchase a perpetual Corel Draw Graphics Suite license, plonk down some extra on one for QuarkXPress, and boom, there you have it, a fully professional pipeline, with no subscriptions. A very expensive and less integrated one, for sure, but a very capable one nonetheless. And, indeed, analogous of what we used in the pre-Creative suite days… I was personally trained in Photoshop, Freehand *and* QuarkXPress, and that was the combo I used for the first two years of my bachelor, only to jump ship to Illustrator – which I still don't enjoy using as much as I did using Freehand, to this day – because of the infamous Macromedia acquisition and to InDesign because, yeah, truth be told, it was always miles ahead of Quark in terms of not just platform support – Quark really shot themselves on the foot with their belated transition to what was then called Mac OS X, oof – but also on UX and features.
Did we get greedy with the advent of Affinity…? Perhaps. But you have to appreciate that it's highly frustrating to see it get all the way to 90% there and then… just remain indefinitely “meh” and effectively incomplete for a lot of users, because the powers-that-be had to pay the bills and realised the only way to do so was to invest in new, sexy features for illustrators (which, as I've said before, are well covered by other tools) rather than tick all the unsexy boxes for classic vector design and DTP. Hence all the incessant comparisons! Of course, Adobe is also catering to those digital-first or even digital-only illustrators, even in Illustrator (ha! It's finally rising up to its name), but that's the thing: there are other tools besides Illustrator and Affinity Designer that also do, and likely do an even better job than either, because they're not jacks-of-all-trades.
As for DTP and print production workflows… the only integrated packages now are Adobe's and Serif's, period. They are, effectively, rivals (and now, with Canva's backing, if Affinity is to thrive as a product under its wing, even more so), and while I can also see code and UX as a quasi-artistic endeavour and as much as I appreciate your “Kumbaya” stance regarding software, at the end of the day they are tools (for artists, yes), not artistic creations in and of themselves. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and do I have to remind you that Adobe eats Serif-sized companies for breakfast? And that whenever Adobe does that and just discontinues products, peoples' livelihoods are affected? And that the same happening at the hands of Canva would make zero difference in that outcome?

Your writing reminds me of my own writing when I was younger. I started on a typewriter. Then I moved to Word 6, which I used for "creative" writing also, but it became more "script-ish" (as in largely dialogue). Very interesting to see another person use a similar style. A traditional writing style can feel too precise. Writing is a lot like painting, which means it can take almost a lifetime to truly master.
I found your post interesting, so thank you for that. I think I tried Scribus way back when it was newly in development and supposedly it's seen big improvements of recent, or at least I've seen written by others by reading in passing. As for the context of the post you are quoting, it is in reference to the technical issue(s) with accurate vectors, hence the "shark bug". VS is not brought up to be a "tit for tat". We can suggest its relevant here because VS is only 1.2 and yet Affinity is 2.4... What Affinity has managed with their line is seriously impressive and current staff should be commended to have made all that possible. None of us would be here nor it possible otherwise. However, clearly there are quality issues with the updates that being put out and their inability to put out the resulting fires is heavily concerning. If Canva is actually listening, they will send Serif a big fat check to hire al the talent they need to fix the quality issues and other developmental obstacles. Otherwise, the horse is long dead...


Re: Inkscape, I want to love the app as it could have been a stellar piece of software, but its development speed is terribly slow (kinda expected with OSS) and its UI is a cry for help. Will more income help? I'm not sure, honestly. I suspect if others are like me, they may be skeptical that adding money to the equation will automatically lead to speedier development and that exacerbates the issues with raising money for long-term OSS projects. At least with companies, we know they rely on steady revenue and are required to make cash to sustain. There's a cash for value too, as what we pay is supposed to be proportionate to what we receive. I do use Inkscape for some things, especially Trace Bitmap, which works really well for converting delicate ink jobs. It's not as user friendly to me as VS, though admittedly that wasn't my first impression when I first tried VS. I can see VS becoming what Inkscape couldn't be in that regard, should it take on inspiration in the development of a solid "user flow" throughout the breadth of the application. Note: I didn't say workflow... nobody wants a UI filled with inflexible/dead end workflows.. *cough* Illustrator *cough*. Both are held back by some cumbersome UX and strange UI decisions. VS has better document management and that's important for my ability to stay organized creatively as it allows me to also work rationally... two things that can come into conflict for me when writing code.

Yes, you are right.
Some people make statements as if they are fact, then if it turns out that it is not always true, they start waffling about "well, in ninety-nine per cent of cases" and so on.
I have no experience of Adobe products. I notice lots of posts in these forums mention Adobe products.
Why do so many people assume that Canva wants to compete with Adobe?
I remember one famous female country music singer said to other female country music singers that there is enough for all of us.
I am reminded that years ago i bought a book that is a collection of early science fiction stories from the late 1800s to early 1900s. The title is Rivals of H. G. Wells. Why Rivals? If I write a science fiction novel and publish it, I am not a rival of some other science fiction writer, it is just that I wrote a science fiction novel.
Would you like to read it ... please?
There is rather a lot so if you just want to dip in, Chapters 5 and 34 are good chapters to do that.
Oh, and Chapter 21.
But the thing is, some people might start on about the novel just being fanciful and unrealistic, but if they say that before having read the whole novel ... well!
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/novel_plus.htm
One of my inventions was particularly successful. Something I devised and for which I coined a new word to describe it and after a while, I wrote a letter to the editor of a trade magazine about it and the letter was published, with the new word in it, openly stating that was what I called it. Well, there was a reply criticising the idea yet using the word that I had coined and the heading of that letter had the word that I had coined in it. One thing followed another and I was invited to jointly author a paper for an international conference of which I had not previously known about and there I saw my invention working. And the word I coined is now in the Oxford English Dictionary and the etymology of the word lists my letter to the editor of the trade magazine as the first use in print of the word that I coined.
William
 

No PDF/X export (not a single version... and before getting quoted, I know, it's said to be coming before 1.3...but IMO, that's a major feature for pro work, should be there already) which a lot of us need for almost every gig/project for serious print output. And having tried it, I have found bugs (and some strange workflows) even in the very first fast try (confirmed later several times). Still, amazing software, with many features for inkers (I'm kind of one), and it is very much worth the bucks (I'm a 'software collector', so it is not "this instead of", but "and"... still haven't bought it, though, that lack was too important). So, a great software with certain lacks and bugs, just like I would define A. Designer (I like more Affinity Photo, but that's me) or how I would also describe Xara Designer Pro. Too many years since I used Corel D. for work, though, and the permanent license price is out of question, with the current competition.  I don't see many advantages (no real winner among all these, imo. Corel, maybe) in one versus the other or the other one, except when/if needing certain workflow or feature for a project or bunch of projects, as to decide one certain route or another. But in that, I find a lot more useful what Inkscape has to offer me, currently. It's in many of my workflows, indeed, working together with Designer, as fast as copy-pasting nodes! (or exporting, etc) and since a very long while. Indeed, would it (Inskcape) have proper (full) CMYK handling and professional PDF/X export, and some other things fixed, and I'd use it a lot more, almost as my main one for vectors. I successfully do the workflow Inkscape-> Scribus-> PDF/X (just as a curiosity, as I don't need it. And always great to get extra ways, that's my motto), which, btw, besides PDF/X-3 and PDF/X-4, includes the arcane but yet strictly required by some companies PDF/X-1a:2001 (happily, seems Ingram now accepts PDF/X-3:2002 as well) , but I recon the workflow is not yet full newcomer friendly, I needed to solve/guess a number of issues. And I have zero probs with uncommon or hard UIs ...I'd say right now it's more uncommon than hard (just like with Blender).
Outside Adobe, I think there's always going to be some kind of trade for no subscription, no monopoly. But yep, those problems in Designer do need to be fixed (and adding the option for "practical" zero smoothing -well, it's always an average, anyway- while drawing with brushes, etc). I suspect that a lot of that will come, step by step.
 

Something tells me you've become all too accustomed to having your suggestions dismissed. (Playfully joking here, not at all meant to be snark)

I'm not against that suggestion, but I think no matter what, something has to change if they ever intend to go after the "big dogs". And that may very well not be their intention if the goal is to target something like Canva's current demographic, which is quite large... and legitimately, there's nothing wrong with this as that is a market that is demanding to be served. It would just be disappointing to a number of people who were hoping to get further away from Adobe's workflow beyond the typical technical, economic, professional reasons, etc. (i.e. creative).. people who were already happy with Adobe will just continue using Adobe.
Theoretically also, Canva can be intending to "buy" the technology to put into the product rather than building it themselves as they seem to be gathering technologies as capital as their habit. Serif's software can be a wrapper for whatever future business aspirations they have down the line for a professional suite... so many possibilities. It doesn't fix preexisting bugs though. Some can say very little will change as far as how Affinity is being developed, but I don't see how that happens the more that I think about it... surely Affinity is worth the $$$ it is because of the possibilities of building atop its foundation. Whether that is good or bad news is subjective to the individual customer.

Items for our consideration... consider these in relation to the Serif acquisition which was in late March:

(Apr 5th) Canva millionaires made as $US1.6b share sale completes
https://www.afr.com/technology/canva-millionaires-made-share-sale-to-hit-3-6bn-first-1-6bn-done-20240405-p5fhmm

Why the $2.43 billion Canva share sale is an epic moment for Australian tech
https://www.startupdaily.net/topic/business/why-the-2-43-billion-canva-share-sale-is-an-epic-moment-for-australian-tech/

(Apr 18th) Pixels and Pictures: Canva challenges Adobe with Affinity acquisition (33%)
https://kstatecollegian.com/2024/04/18/pixels-and-pictures-canva-challenges-adobe-with-affinity-acquisition/


 
Edit: Post below is older but keeping in because the quote is interesting to me. Unfortunately, I can't change text color of date because I am on mobile atm

Edit2: Hail, desktop.
(Apr 26 2022) Investor drastically slashes value of its Canva shares price
https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/other-industries/canva-takes-hit-to-valuation-after-investor-wipes-33-per-cent-off-share-price/news-story/db5c38dde744b4576d52dd11b0e6ffa9

I'm sure there are other articles floating out there that can adjust the picture a bit, but this was all I could find...

The "shark teeth" "defect" is from a bug I reported before, obviously never fixed. I'm sure others have reported it. I've cleared my attachments, but the topic is here:
These were the attachments...
231201_stroke-odd-behavior.afdesign


Sadly, this is the result of not polishing up on core functions. One consideration, that some have speculated to in the past, is that they don't fully comprehend the math involved and there's plenty of "tweaking" under the hood to get the desired visual results. I've been playing with (and learning, actually) Vectorstyler which is built by one man and it's amazing to me how much manipulation is feasible with just that one program. Serif has a team of people and decades of experience to hire the correct people, so these kinds of issues in CORE functionality (expansion, pressure curves, anti-aliasing curves, etc) should not be so pervasive. I don't see how Canva can change their thinking that dramatically... horse to water, etc.

They could try allowing and encouraging staff to try to get a Master degree for their research work. A great incentive for those of the staff who would regard that as a marvellous opportunity and a great opportunity for Canva to benefit from the results of those Master level studies.
I hope that nobody dismisses this suggestion on the basis of not understanding that some universities allow research for a Master degree to be carried out in an industrial setting with only occasional visits to the university. Two supervisors, one in the workplace, a member of the business's staff, and one at the university.
William
 

I know I joked earlier about the abuse of the laugh emoji, but I turned off Reaction Notifications a little while ago. They've become useless anyway. All I want to see in my feed is Patrick sharing the latest updates with all my unicorns achieved.
It's not going to happen. People are better off arranging their own offshoots for software enthusiasts. It wouldn't have to be limited to the industry, though we need the information on that use case the most to encourage competition, because there are a good number of smaller professionals as well who have communicated that they believed Affinity could be going for higher aspirations than it currently does. The messaging from Serif is so difficult that my simple hope is for Canva take over in such a way that we don't have to endure such poor communications ever again.
The navel-gazing that encompasses some of what I think can also be described as "non-serious" has largely been incentivized from Serif's OTT marketing and the speculation that that continuously generates. It sells cheap licenses but it is a far cry from incentivizing more discerning customers to jump onboard for the long haul no doubt when they see the amount of zealotry in the fanbase. Imo, it's toxic longterm for the userbase as some are turned off by the constant hype rather than being given straightforward and realistic expectations. It can leave the sense we stay in the dark as to whether these products remain a dependable platform for their longterm for our individual usecases. The messaging post-acquisition is not nearly enough to answer these questions and other than what we've seen, I've just accepted that for now at least this is not a safe ship for me.

I don't know that Serif ever promised to outright compete directly with Adobe, but the carrot was left out there for so long that it seemed at least a far off aspiration. Now Canva takes over and screams "We're going after Adobe!!!"... there's that hype train again. Can it actually deliver? Canva's market is no where near the industry space and is much larger. How much of the perceived aspirations are legitimate goals or are just clever marketing? And at what point are we just projecting into Affinity what we want it to be?.. those are the important questions for me.

I would be very happy with robust quality and improved output. Affinity does most of the things I need for what I have used it for. I happily keep other tools in my chest. The benefit of having most tools under one roof is to decomplicate output. Adobe tries to be a swiss army knife with their suite and it doesn't feel pleasant to be locked to a one-size-fits-all workflow. But where it excels, imo, is in final output. Of course it doesn't do everything perfectly. No software does, which is why many of us are still here like *knock knock* Hey...