Aongus Collins

Really appreciate you hopping into the firestorm here and clarifying these items @Ash. I for one will take it at face value and until proven wrong. I look forward to what the future can bring!
*****
I know this isn't the most popular opinion but I just want to say I am willing to give the team at Serif an opportunity to prove themselves. Every one of us on this forum is living a unique life with decisions that need made. We make those decisions using the best information we have at the time, even though they might not make sense to anyone else. It really bothers me to see this barrage of attacks against the leadership at Serif and insinuating that they are only money hungry scrouges looking to make a pile of money. Who is to say each of us wouldn't have made the same decision? 
I do understand too that purchases like the one discussed here have often screwed over the customers. But it isn't necessarily the rule. As someone else pointed out, DaVinci Resolve, was purchased by BMD and the changes that came were great. There is a chance that this merger can have the same results. (If I am wrong in 2 years, I will be disappointed, but then again, there is nothing I could do about it anyway)
Not that I will change anyone's mind for sure, just thought I'd toss my voice into the void to help nudge this forum towards a little more positivity. 😄
Cheers and wishing each person who may read this the very best!

Thank you for your further clarification, and for pointing out that Canva has fully committed to the four pledges on its website. This is as credible as it gets.
As a freelancer, I don’t need collaborative tools currently, and detest subscriptions. 
But if document sync, asset sharing etc means getting work from organisations that have already signed up to Canva (for example, providing customised assets made in Affinity that they could open in the same software), I would reconsider! 
To a glass half-full person, this acquisition/synergy has the potential to create new opportunities for Affinity artists.

To address some of what is being said on this thread...
Firstly to be clear I'm not a founder, but have been with the company for 25 years. I'm officially appointed as Managing Director of the company, but also use CEO as my title as that is my role in terms of how other countries would view it.
Both Canva and us have made 100% clear we are committing to perpetual licences always being available. That will include V3 or any other future major upgrade of our apps which are released. What's more I will say with Canva's backing we are not under the same financial pressure we would have been to release a V3 anytime soon, meaning those of you using V2 will actually benefit from more features as free updates which may previously have been held back for a V3 if that makes sense. This is of great benefit from an engineering standpoint too as we are far better testing and releasing features in smaller chunks than saving them up to package up as a sellable upgrade. 
https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/affinity-canva-pledge/
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/27/24113423/affinity-canva-acquisition-pledge-license-price-subscription
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/press/newsroom/affinity-and-canva-pledge/
As we have made clear there will at some point be a subscription option also which people can take if they choose to. I'm sure there will be additional benefits to that subscription in the future such as asset and document sync, sharing and collaboration and other things which naturally require a subscription as they are features which incur ongoing cost. It may also include other things which can be leveraged with a Canva subscription such as greater stock libraries of images, graphics and fonts. Hopefully that would just be considered reasonable and understandable. There will certainly not be any cynical cutting down of features or limitation of ongoing support in our existing apps just to force a subscription play.
I understand examples of previous acquisitions can make some of you fearful, but they are just historic examples - it has no bearing on what will happen in this case and we are genuinely doing something here which is very different and special. Everything I said on Tuesday, and what both Canva and us pledged yesterday, is 100% true and we are going to stand by it. That includes keeping our entire team here with no layoffs, and continuing to be based in Nottingham. 
If you want to believe this or not is up to you, I'm not sure what more we can say at this point to convince those who doubt it. We'll deliver on this over the coming months and years so whatever is being said right now I know it's going to be all good and assuming you are still using Affinity apps you will be happy with how they have developed and that we have continued to be fair and inclusive with our pricing.
Also to follow on from Patricks point - I can take some of the personal attacks on me, but I have to say some of the conduct on this thread with some of you being very quick to attack other community members just because they hold different opinions is really disheartening to see. You can absolutely give your opinion on this deal for sure, and we are happy to leave this as an open forum within reason, but that does mean being courteous to other forum members and not just repeating the same points over and over.
Thanks,
Ash
 

Agreed, I felt the same way. Hopefully today's announcement will help alleviate concerns.

After binge-reading the forum threads and comments on youtbe for half the day yesterday, and almost getting depressed, I'm glad that Serif has come back here with a few more statements. Although I can fully understand many of the comments and fears.
But: The last statement from Serif makes me feel quite confident, ultimately the future and common sense will show where the journey will take us. Now that I have migrated all my work data to Affinity, I would be happy not to have to switch back to Adobe

Agreed, I felt the same way. Hopefully today's announcement will help alleviate concerns.

I looked in yesterday lunchtime and was saddened by the tone of the comments. I understand the concern over the potential for a move to a subscription model, but not at all the aggressive and confrontational way in which it has been articulated. Today's clarification is much more reassuring.
Remember: change is the only constant!
 
 

Thank you so much for sharing these pledges. My comments below are in regards to #1.
Presonus, the developer of the Studio One music production software started off with perpetual licenses and later announced its subscription plan. No surprise, there was intense vocal concern expressed by those who had paid for a perpetual license and gladly willing to pay for updates.
Presonus wisely offered two paths, perpetual licenses with for pay upgrades, and the subscription model which offered access to range of add-ons at no extra cost beyond the monthly subscription fee.
In this situation, Presonus had cast the widest possible net to keep everyone in the fold rather than losing loyal supporters.
Best wishes for the continued success of Affinity!!!
 

Ash and the folks at Affinity have always done right by me in the past and I take him at his word. They brought us this far and I believe they will bring us more in the future. I don’t like the fact that some people are belittling the honesty and integrity of anyone based on absolutely nothing other than a crazy personal view. Let things work out and then make a decision that suits you. 

I get that people may be concerned about the news, but many of the comments here are completely ludicrous and hyperbolic. Some of them read like a spoof.

This is very reassuring. Thank you.

Like many I was shocked at yesterday’s announcement. These pledges are reassuring and dare I say it, they give me a tiny bit of optimism for what might be possible with greater funding and different skillsets.
More than anything, I hope the Affinity suite stays lean and fast. I’m all for carefully implemented new features, but I hope we don’t get Adobe style bloat.
Congratulations on the merger. I will reserve judgement for now, but there’s a huge opportunity for ‘Canva’ to prove us all wrong and to empower a community that Adobe lost many years ago.

This makes me feel way better. Thanks. I’m still bummed that an independent company had to get gobbled up by the borg, but that’s life these days. 
is there any timeline for items 2 and 3?
wishing the best to the Serif team!

To followup on some of my comments yesterday, we are today enshrining our commitment to the Affinity community in 4 pledges made by the Affinity and Canva teams.
You can read about them here.

We do truly believe the coming together of Affinity and Canva is only going to be a good thing for our customers, staff and the development of our apps. We very much hope you will all continue to be with us on this journey.
All the best,
Ash

MikeTO,
Thank you so much for the work you put into this manual. It reminds me of the early Adobe printed manuals at their very best in terms of style -- written and visual.
I've used Publisher for cards (birthday, seasonal etc) that were printed digitally, with great success. Now I'm considering something more ambitious: a book printed using litho from a Publisher PDF.
Aongus

Updated for Publisher 2.4 (February 2024)
This free in-depth manual is filled with steps, tips, and recommendations for:
Documents, Pages, Master Pages, Sections, and Baseline Grid Character and Paragraph Formatting Text Styles (paragraph and character) Text Frames, Text Flow, and Stories Images and Picture Frames Books and Chapters Cross-References, Table of Contents, and Index Notes - including Footnotes, Sidenotes, and Endnotes Fields - including Page Numbering, Running Headers, and Custom Variables Anchors and Hyperlinks Printing and Exporting Settings This manual does not cover objects, drawing, photo editing, or the other artistic features.
Download:
Publisher Manual Feb 26 2024.pdf
Q&A
Is this really free? Yes, I'm making it available free of charge. It's copyrighted to prevent others from publishing it as their own. Is there a longer manual I can purchase? No, this is it. Is there an iPad version? No, the steps and screenshots are for the macOS and Windows versions. Is there a version for Designer or Photo? No, but many of the features are the same so you should still find it useful. Why does it use a print layout if it's a PDF? It's a demonstration of how to use the features it describes to create a print book. Previous version for 2.3:
Publisher Manual Nov 29 2023.pdf

FWIW, I updated to beta 1742 and can no longer reproduce this issue, so long as hardware acceleration is deactivated in Settings. 
Hardware acceleration has always been problematic on this particular system (Dell Precision 5520 with Intel HD Graphics 630/Nvidia Quadro M1200), so any remaining issue is probably due to my machine.

I've upgraded to beta 1732.
When I switch to basic brushes, there is just a slight delay, as you've described.
With other brushes, the delay is now ~5 seconds, which is an improvement. 

I can't get my head around the enormous fuss being made in some quarters about V2 pricing. Let's say there are two issues, money and principle.

1. Money. A discounted universal licence gets you 9 apps for €120, or €13 each. Pro users will almost certainly be able to claim the vat back, reducing the cost to around €10. Individual upgrades cost €49 (€39 ex-vat). Amazing value.

Even if Serif were able offer an additional  discount to V1 upgraders, it would not amount to much more than a tenner or so. In absolute terms, the sum involved with additional discounts would be very small.

Not enough to justify the fuss.

2. The principle. This seems to be that V1 upgraders should get preferential treatment. Right or wrong, app store policies prevent Serif from doing that. So they have two options: everybody gets a discount or nobody gets a discount. As a V1 upgrader who got a discount, I'm glad they chose first option. It's sign of generosity, not disloyalty to customers.

I wish this forum could get back on track to being a more reasonable space.

In Preferences > User Interface, you can change the icon style to mono. I much prefer this iteration.
Yes, Freehand is sadly missed.

Thanks a lot, Aongus, your tip worked here. Pressing "control+s and cancel" made the program become responsive again. It's a weird behavior of this software, I hope they fix it soon.

I've had the same experience, with hardware acceleration disabled. There was a workaround: if I did a "Save as..." the program became responsive once more. As it happens I do most of my work in other software, using Affinity as a production hub and specialised vector tool. I could not imagine relying on the current version as a primary tool.
Dell Precision, Win 11 Pro, 16GB RAM, Intel HD630/NVIDIA Quadro M1200.

I have a similar problem here, but i don't agree it's a zooming issue. The software slows down and the UI becomes unresponsive after say, 30 minutes of work. At every session. I can access drawing area,  i can zoom in and out, but i can't click on menu items. On the panels, i can't change anything, can't scroll and select layers, can't select other colors or change stroke settings etc. When the software enter in this stucky mode i can select tools with the keyboard shortcuts, but not clicking on the interface. I have then to close the program, but it doesn't close at all, it's still running in task manager, so i can't open it again, only force ending the task. Tried a lot of things: different video drivers and preferences/performance configs, nothing worked. Current config: Win 10 22H2, NVIDIA GeForce 940MX driver 528.02 DCH clean install and Intel onboard HD Graphics 620, WARP selected renderer at this moment, hardware acceleration off, 16GB RAM, Dell i5 Inspiron 7560.

I can't get my head around the enormous fuss being made in some quarters about V2 pricing. Let's say there are two issues, money and principle.

1. Money. A discounted universal licence gets you 9 apps for €120, or €13 each. Pro users will almost certainly be able to claim the vat back, reducing the cost to around €10. Individual upgrades cost €49 (€39 ex-vat). Amazing value.

Even if Serif were able offer an additional  discount to V1 upgraders, it would not amount to much more than a tenner or so. In absolute terms, the sum involved with additional discounts would be very small.

Not enough to justify the fuss.

2. The principle. This seems to be that V1 upgraders should get preferential treatment. Right or wrong, app store policies prevent Serif from doing that. So they have two options: everybody gets a discount or nobody gets a discount. As a V1 upgrader who got a discount, I'm glad they chose first option. It's sign of generosity, not disloyalty to customers.

I wish this forum could get back on track to being a more reasonable space.

Sadly no plugin in Affinity, but a couple of standalone software, these are the only 2 that I know of...
This might help but it is not free...it's like $40 but no subscription.
https://www.pixplant.com/
 
Or the free software...materialize (win only)
https://boundingboxsoftware.com/materialize/