AdamRatai

Graphite looks cool. Some Rhino/Grasshopper, Blender, Houdini-style node based stuff are a great addition. I would also love to see a vector art program implement command line, variables, and the plethora of snapping options that are in Rhino3d. I'm not a fan of web apps for graphic, 3D, or CAD, but its nice for lower spec machines. Hopefully will be able to easily run it on your own hardware when it matures.

The more I think and read about it, the greasier this announcement gets. What a pity. But maybe the days of illustration and design as we know (knew?) it, are about to vanish.

My heart truly sank with this news. I've seen a lot of acquisitions like this, and the time from "we don't have any changes planned, everything will stay the same" to "we are excited to announce we now offer pro features on a subscription basis" is usually about 1 year.
I have some amount of trust in Serif. I thought their transition from V1 to V2 was done very well from a business perspective. It's clear paid upgrades are the model its customers want, and it's certainly a requirement for me. But like others have said, I have no love for Canva. In fact, I don't have any feelings about them at all. I heard about them a while back, checked them out, "oh, it's a subscription service, not for me", and never looked again.
I'll say, as long as Serif produce standalone perpetual-license desktop software, at the quality they are known for, I will continue to be a customer. If Canva think adding such a product to their portfolio is a good investment, good luck to them, I'll be their customer too. The moment that they stop that — by seeking rent, or by pivoting to online SAAS or AI or whatever — I'll look elsewhere. It was very painful to extract myself from Adobe, and all the other little software products over the years which have been acquired and changed to suit the business models of their new owners. But I did every time, and I'll do it again if I have to.

I've been in the graphics business since the early 90s and have seen a few of these takeovers. Experience teaches us not to trust the acquiring company, because these companies are primarily interested in the customer base of the acquired company and the money of its users, not in making the products better.
And the announcements about the pricing model are just as similar as the statements made by the CEOs of the acquired companies. "A great future in a great partnership with the new partner. Great things are already shining on the horizon." And so on, and so on. All heard umpteen times before. And the real development has been seen umpteen times.
And the contributions to the discussion are the same every time, including the call to have a little faith in the companies. It's all been done before.

Sorry, I've seen so many acquisitions in the last 20 years, hell 30 years that went downhill for the users and consumers. The chance that this will be any different is very low. Canva spent a lot of of money on this, and they want their money back, this has to come from somewhere (meaning users).

Hi All,

I am thrilled to announce that Affinity is joining the Canva family.
This is a moment of great excitement, anticipation, and profound gratitude for all of you who have been part of our story so far. 
We know that those of you who’ve put your faith in Affinity, some since we launched our very first Mac app, will have questions about what this means for the future of our products. Since the inception of Affinity, our mission has been to empower creatives with tools that unleash their full potential, fostering a community where innovation and artistry flourish. We've worked tirelessly to challenge the status quo, delivering professional-grade creative software that is both accessible and affordable. 
None of that changes today.
In Canva, we’ve found a kindred spirit who can help us take Affinity to new levels. Their extra resources will mean we can deliver much more, much faster. Beyond that, we can forge new horizons for Affinity products, opening up a world of possibilities which previously would never have been achievable. 
Canva’s revolutionary approach to design democratisation and commitment to empowering everyone to create aligns perfectly with our core values and vision. This union is a testament to what can be achieved when two companies that share a common goal of making design accessible and enjoyable for everyone come together. 
I want to express my deepest gratitude to our incredible Affinity team. Your passion, dedication, and relentless pursuit of excellence have been the driving force behind our success so far, and I can’t wait to continue this journey with you all. 
To our loyal users and the creative community, your support and feedback have been invaluable. You’ve inspired us to push boundaries and continuously improve, and we’re excited to embark on this new chapter together. 
The future is bright, and I am incredibly excited to continue our story together and create a world where design is within everyone's reach.
With heartfelt thanks,
Ash
For more information...
We have made four pledges to the Affinity community which you can read here. We have included some FAQs at the bottom of the announcement article here. A video message from me with some more background is on YouTube here. This announcement post is locked, but I have included a duplicate of it in the questions forum here which you can respond to.

Hi All,
We're happy to make the second build of the 2.1 beta available today - 2.1.0.1709. This should now be available for you on auto update.
Here's some of the main changes in this build:
Guides
Had a lot of great feedback on guides - thank you. In this build we have:
Added Alt-Click to delete a guide Made Alt-Shift while dragging snap to delta. We had already made holding shift snap to ruler units from page origin. What this new option gives is if you have a guide placed at, say, 35.3mm from the page origin and you want to move it 10mm - you can now drag while holding Alt-Shift to snap to that difference. Of course this also works if you have alt or cmd dragged a duplicate of the guide If guides are currently set to not visible, then dragging out a new guide from ruler (or moving an existing guide from indicator on ruler) will automatically turn guide visibility on in all OSs Crop Tool
Enter as well as return now commits a crop Escape now resets the crop Brush Panel
Generally tightened panel up somewhat so less vertical space was being used. Brush names if you have chosen to show them are now justified to left Light UI should now hopefully look correct Modifying a brush using drag shortcuts (e.g. ctrl+alt+click drag left and right) keeps brush selection in panel (and shown as modified as appropriate). Raster mesh and perspective live filters in pixel persona
Now added correctly in Windows version so the live versions of these filters are available Have now added to pixel persona in the iPad version of Designer. You will have two new options under the + button in Layers panel where you can choose to add either of these live filter layers. Vector flood fill
New icon has been added for tool to distinguish between the raster flood fill tool in Affinity Photo When you are in tool you can now drag and drop swatches directly from the swatches panel into any area the fill tool recognises from your selection If you are in "In Between" mode the additional shapes / fills which are created are automatically added to your selection so if you subsequently change the fill of them again additional shapes are not created. Bitmap fills are now supported. This means you can pick a bitmap fill swatch from swatches to use as your fill colour (or drag and drop a bitmap fill swatch into the appropriate area). Few notes on this: Currently if the bitmap fill has transparency this will be added as an additional fill (in appearance panel), so can be added as a texture over an existing colour fill. It's a cool feature, but we probably need to add a modifier / option in context toolbar about whether you want that to do that vs. replace the fill altogether.  You will notice in the context toolbar some new options for min, max and stretch to fit. These options are only relevant for bitmap and gradient fills and determines how the gradient or bitmap are scaled within the new fill being created.  A nice thing to try is when you are in fill tool you can drag from assets into your active colour on the toolbar to automatically create a bitmap fill to use - as shown in the video below.   Texture Fills.mov  
Blend mode shortcuts
Erase bend mode now available to configure on macOS and iPad Ordering of blend mode list and default keys should now be consistent between operating systems Close All
Apply to all check box now been added to macOS dialog if you have currently open unsaved / modified documents.
Various bug fixes
Of course there are also various bug fixes - you can find the list of these on the second post in the fix list thread.
Thanks again for all your help.
Ash
 

Hello, an update, I would like to provide an additional reason why a revert feature could be needed. Sometimes a file that you are editing changes on disk while Affinity Photo is editing it, and you want to reset to the version on disk. Currently to do this you must close the entire file and then re-open it.
This could happen if for example images are generated by a script that then get touched up in Affinity Photo. This is what I am doing right now and the lack of a "revert" is definitely hurting me.

The power of this method is that you can edit the mask like a normal layer without any restrictions. 
You can also use a group as a mask! Everything you put in this group automatically becomes a mask, and you can mix them together in Multiply mode, for example.
This way a mask can be a composite of multiple layers of any type (raster, vector, color, grayscale). This gives full creative freedom. 

Hi,
This is a method of creating a completely non-destructive mask that allows you to use a normal layer as a mask, and do with it everything you can do with a normal layer, without any restrictions. 
You can also use a group as a mask! Everything you put in this group automatically becomes a mask, and you can mix them together in Multiply mode, for example. This way a mask can be a composite of multiple layers of any type (raster, vector, color, grayscale). This gives full creative freedom! 
This non-destructive mask method, created with two layer settings, Blend Ranges and Erase Blend mode. This method creates a mask from any Layer type, in a non-destructive way, keeping the original intact. And also apply Live Filters, and Adjustments.
1. Select the layer that should be the mask
2. Change its curve in Blend Ranges
3. Change its blend mode to Erase 
 
Creating a Mask

Mask_1.mp4  
Creating a Composite Mask 

Mask_2.mp4  
Using an image as a Mask

Mask_3.mp4  
Creating a Composite Mask using different layer types

Mask_4.mp4  
Applying the Live Filter

Mask_5.mp4  
An alternative method using Procedural Texture
 

You can use a normal layer as a mask, and do with it everything you can do with a normal layer.
1. Select the layer that should be the mask
2. Change its curve in Blend Ranges
3. Change its blend mode to Erase 
Non-destructive_Mask.afphoto

Non-Destructive Mask.mp4 ---

Thanks for an answer. My question is:  What kind of "artist" deforming font that way? That should not be allowed, or at least not as a default. I vote for renaming  it to "Bad Artist Text Tool" ;).
 

I'm not using Photo at daily basis (I use Designer mostly). It is the second time  I'm here, because doing this is so unintuitive. Thanks Anon1 and Werner fort posts about it and info. Sometimes you really need to filter/adjust mask, and not masking filter/adjustments. And TBH "alpha" isn't what I'm adjusting here - I'm adjusting "alpha mask". Please, it is a step back from Photoshop CS, at least. In every other way I'm very pleased with the software.

Click here to download the latest beta
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post a new thread in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback. 

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.
Changes
Fixed Affinity registration showing in English for some supported locales Fixed EMFs not rendering on non-RGBA documents Fixed inability to disable hardware acceleration, or a crash at startup if the hardware acceleration option hadn't been written to the settings file (introduced in 944 beta) Fixed mirroring objects to transform individually based on tool settings Improved performance of snapping by restricting inner bound snapping to objects with no more than two curves (ie, single holes) Fixed being unable to create custom export presets for PDF export Fixed scaled text frame increasing text size when grouped  Fixed Copy As SVG preventing Affinity data being added to the clipboard  Fixed performance problems when Paragraph Panel was visible  Fixed PDF passthrough failing to work on multi-page documents Fixed TGA import to allow loading of large files 1.9.1.944 release notes

Nevermind. I just noticed you can preserve ratio by holding right button while you are dragging.

Added Mitre Limit to Contour Tool I praised Serif for repairing the Contour Tool. It really works well in this beta. Although I still miss the option scale with object. Please add this button and it will be really fun. This option is also missing from the Corner Tool.

When selecting for example by dragging a rectangular, I do not see the current dimentions of the rectangular. Also I am unable to set a preferred fixed size for my selection e.g. 1024x300px.

I'm having the same issue, the width/height go away when mouse button is released.  This is with the final version (not beta) from the app store.  Is there an option that has to be selected to make it retain the width/height of the selection?

Honestly, I remember times when I abused fonts this way. In this times I rarely merged words "back" and "pain" in one sentence ;).

It's uncommon, but I personally find it very beneficial that way. I like to "start off" with the right size so I can see beforehand how it would match the design. But hey, everyone is different. 😊

On top of what Dan said, you can also convert artistic text to frame text. To do that, highlight the text and copy it, and then use any other tool to paste it. That will maintain the size of the artistic text in a frame.

Hi KCinA2,
Welcome to the forums
This depends on the tool used to insert the text, the Artistic Text Tool will always resize your text to the frame size, however with the Frame Text Tool you can reflow the text if you use the frame bounding box handles or scale it if you use the detached handle on the bottom right of the text frame.
I hope this helps!

I found newest beta much slower than previous. Working, still possible is very painfull and needs lot of patience. I didn't change anything lately, except instaling new beta, file isn't very complicated, computer was restarted. Working  with last beta on same setup was flawless. There in no difference between rendering on GPU or WARP.
Sadly I cannot give say more, but maybe I'm not the only one.

If you have this problem, try to disable in Preferences/Performance/Hardware Acceleration, works for me!

Just worked in the same file switching to WARP and found the performance significantly better than using my GFX 1660 as the renderer.
Something seems very wrong!

WARP should never be faster than a GPU - it's a software rasteriser that we include only for people with severe hardware or driver problems. Can you try disabling hardware acceleration and seeing if that improves things when using your GPU?