Robby Poole

If you are going to donate money to hire programmers you might as well have them work on existing open source projects (or forks) like GIMP, Inkscape, and Scribus to get a leg up on the development. Otherwise you are probably looking at a 10 year project to get things anywhere close to feature parity with existing Adobe and Affinity apps.

Also this isn't the 1990s or the 00s.
IF these guys do mess with us by going subscription we could pitch in and MAKE OUR OWN.
How?
India.
I've got friends who work with tech companies there.  Think Fiverr prices but legit pros.  Imagine thousands of VERY PO'd people willing to pitch in to develop a new suite software that does what Affinity (and Photoshop) does?  Pool a bunch of $50, $100 notes for shares to get the work done...  We'd make it a low profit company with rules not to be bought out and what we couldn't do.  Mainly no subscription service.  I'm FOR AI - look at how Corel Painter 2021 implemented those features (not image generation) and no complaints.  But frankly you can use Affinity as it is to fix fingers and have the Ai Engine separate.  As it is Affinity is NON-Ai, no data scraping (never got around to it) so that's an edge.
We'd run the company as a kooky mass Democracy with a few (LIMITED %) major stakeholders having slight edge to tie break, maybe a CEO with 1 person (share % minimum but not too minimum) one vote?  $ for advertising, improvement, what features?
Again we have a computer base in the Gigabytes of memory, Gigaherts for speed and incredible graphics cards.  And Ai isn't just making art and data snooping, lots of AIs (learning modules) could be used.  We could put in our ELUA absolutely NO way they could be used to spy on customers and any data collected is anonymized so no way to trace to any party. But we have (by Xer standards / childhood memories) a CRAY supercomputer on our desktops in comparison to way back.  Adobe had an edge of making its software work in the early Megahertz/Kilobyte era -that was like ATARI having people who could program ANYTHING on that system...  Not as complex, time consuming and tons of people cranked out by colleges to then weep as the foreign countries cranked out more so our corporate pigs could cheat them...
Furthermore (privacy paranoia) there are lots of places for a "Canary in the digital mine" if we hire international (India) programmers so any authority (USA/Europe) comes in with a gag order and "You will put spyware in" the alarm sounds and in the company charter its not a breach of trust but ring the bells, call the lawyer.  This is versus a for maximum profit big corporation who goes "Uh, if you have some undeserved tax breaks there we'll welcome you in and keep it secret!"  No need for a gag order even if they are a major VPN and the spyware the govern-NOT forces in is hacked in hours and sold as a backdoor on the darkweb...
 
The need - a Photoshop alternative that can do and use features most need now and again - but most don't want to subscribe.
--that costs $ to justify investment but isn't 
 
For me....
.
I want "Auto-Trace" back.  That was a Serif (Pre Affinity) feature they used to compete with (RIP thanks again to Adobe) Macromedia Flash and it's vectoring - that's why I keep my Draw Plus disk.  I'd like it back and improved so it can both do what we wished but "Poster edges" never does and it did so much better - both for art style effects and legit vector creations for websites that take bytes to kilobytes vs megabytes.
 
Company wants me and most of us to stay?
No subscription or at worse always a "Perpetual" with sane upgrade prices - put in EULA
Bring BACK auto-trace and improve it
Keep AI art a "Subscription" option since the field is changing so rapidly it'd be obsolete in months.
 

I am NOT a professional. I never "studied" design. I am an amateur and learned a few things on my own. I use Affinity to do what I like. Some self publishing with Publisher. Some minor graphics work with Designer. Some photo touch-ups with Photo. I bought into the Affinity Suite, and would continue to buy into the suite based on 1 thing.... NO Subscriptions. The company was providing me the user wonderful tools to do what I enjoy doing.
 
This news is the worst thing I could have heard today. I am such a fan of Affinity. I loved the feel of the company. I loved the independence of the company. Now this is all gone. I have moved all of my projects (minor in comparison to some) into this suite of tools, based on the promise of "No Subscriptions". I have convinced others to purchase these tools, so that we could work together. And today, with this AWFUL news, the run with Affinity ends. Version 2 will still be available in perpetuity (until your computer doesn't work and v2 no longer works with the new operating systems). But version 3 will be subscription, and then we the users will pay for a garbage service with minor updates and very little push forward. "Oh look at what we've done in this month's update.... we finally fixed the kerning of the letters in the Edit menu that didn't look quite right." I've seen it with Adobe, I've seen it with Sibelius, and now I am seeing it with Affinity. What a shame. I feel I have been duped. I feel I have been betrayed. And I feel like I will be on the hunt for another Publisher type app, another Designer type app, and another Photo type app.
 
I just went to look at the Canva website. I felt even more disappointed and betrayed seeing their website, and even more worried about the developers at Affinity. The first thing it asks for without doing anything is to sign up for their subscription. Words cannot express how sad and frustrated I feel about this terrible decision.

* created with love in Canva
 

It was for me too!
Not sure what to do now.

Sigh. Only piece of software I recommend to everyone and the next version is going to be locked behind subscription or closed down. Thanks. I'm glad we get the fake happy corporate double speak too. Enjoy the money and flipping some other company I guess. 

looks like affinity V2 will be the next adobe CS6.

i dont know where to go after that. im running a business off of affinity. 21st century sucks, predatory hypercapitalism everywhere.

I am NOT a professional. I never "studied" design. I am an amateur and learned a few things on my own. I use Affinity to do what I like. Some self publishing with Publisher. Some minor graphics work with Designer. Some photo touch-ups with Photo. I bought into the Affinity Suite, and would continue to buy into the suite based on 1 thing.... NO Subscriptions. The company was providing me the user wonderful tools to do what I enjoy doing.
 
This news is the worst thing I could have heard today. I am such a fan of Affinity. I loved the feel of the company. I loved the independence of the company. Now this is all gone. I have moved all of my projects (minor in comparison to some) into this suite of tools, based on the promise of "No Subscriptions". I have convinced others to purchase these tools, so that we could work together. And today, with this AWFUL news, the run with Affinity ends. Version 2 will still be available in perpetuity (until your computer doesn't work and v2 no longer works with the new operating systems). But version 3 will be subscription, and then we the users will pay for a garbage service with minor updates and very little push forward. "Oh look at what we've done in this month's update.... we finally fixed the kerning of the letters in the Edit menu that didn't look quite right." I've seen it with Adobe, I've seen it with Sibelius, and now I am seeing it with Affinity. What a shame. I feel I have been duped. I feel I have been betrayed. And I feel like I will be on the hunt for another Publisher type app, another Designer type app, and another Photo type app.
 
I just went to look at the Canva website. I felt even more disappointed and betrayed seeing their website, and even more worried about the developers at Affinity. The first thing it asks for without doing anything is to sign up for their subscription. Words cannot express how sad and frustrated I feel about this terrible decision.

I am NOT a professional. I never "studied" design. I am an amateur and learned a few things on my own. I use Affinity to do what I like. Some self publishing with Publisher. Some minor graphics work with Designer. Some photo touch-ups with Photo. I bought into the Affinity Suite, and would continue to buy into the suite based on 1 thing.... NO Subscriptions. The company was providing me the user wonderful tools to do what I enjoy doing.
 
This news is the worst thing I could have heard today. I am such a fan of Affinity. I loved the feel of the company. I loved the independence of the company. Now this is all gone. I have moved all of my projects (minor in comparison to some) into this suite of tools, based on the promise of "No Subscriptions". I have convinced others to purchase these tools, so that we could work together. And today, with this AWFUL news, the run with Affinity ends. Version 2 will still be available in perpetuity (until your computer doesn't work and v2 no longer works with the new operating systems). But version 3 will be subscription, and then we the users will pay for a garbage service with minor updates and very little push forward. "Oh look at what we've done in this month's update.... we finally fixed the kerning of the letters in the Edit menu that didn't look quite right." I've seen it with Adobe, I've seen it with Sibelius, and now I am seeing it with Affinity. What a shame. I feel I have been duped. I feel I have been betrayed. And I feel like I will be on the hunt for another Publisher type app, another Designer type app, and another Photo type app.
 
I just went to look at the Canva website. I felt even more disappointed and betrayed seeing their website, and even more worried about the developers at Affinity. The first thing it asks for without doing anything is to sign up for their subscription. Words cannot express how sad and frustrated I feel about this terrible decision.

I am NOT a professional. I never "studied" design. I am an amateur and learned a few things on my own. I use Affinity to do what I like. Some self publishing with Publisher. Some minor graphics work with Designer. Some photo touch-ups with Photo. I bought into the Affinity Suite, and would continue to buy into the suite based on 1 thing.... NO Subscriptions. The company was providing me the user wonderful tools to do what I enjoy doing.
 
This news is the worst thing I could have heard today. I am such a fan of Affinity. I loved the feel of the company. I loved the independence of the company. Now this is all gone. I have moved all of my projects (minor in comparison to some) into this suite of tools, based on the promise of "No Subscriptions". I have convinced others to purchase these tools, so that we could work together. And today, with this AWFUL news, the run with Affinity ends. Version 2 will still be available in perpetuity (until your computer doesn't work and v2 no longer works with the new operating systems). But version 3 will be subscription, and then we the users will pay for a garbage service with minor updates and very little push forward. "Oh look at what we've done in this month's update.... we finally fixed the kerning of the letters in the Edit menu that didn't look quite right." I've seen it with Adobe, I've seen it with Sibelius, and now I am seeing it with Affinity. What a shame. I feel I have been duped. I feel I have been betrayed. And I feel like I will be on the hunt for another Publisher type app, another Designer type app, and another Photo type app.
 
I just went to look at the Canva website. I felt even more disappointed and betrayed seeing their website, and even more worried about the developers at Affinity. The first thing it asks for without doing anything is to sign up for their subscription. Words cannot express how sad and frustrated I feel about this terrible decision.

There is nothing to say that is not already said from others.
I just want to add my voice that I'm not confident either of what will happen and probably should go get a universal license to keep forever now that is still available...
Funny tho, the reason that I could keep my apps forever was what got me onboard in the first place, I'm not optimistic right now that this will be the case for much longer

Result:

I can see where this is heading, an eternity of (justified) anxiety about subscriptions, but perhaps the most worrying trend is what happens to, for example, Designer, which is a unique tool for specific types of graphic design, and I guess Publisher users and others may find similar advantages now at risk.
You might as well get used to the idea that it will become a subscription in a few months, but as a mental exercise, consider what it means for you as creatives if you have to switch programs, or if the programs end up like plastic toys in a rubber cell for people without skills.

Given the recent history of tech acquisitions, one has to hope that Serif have gone into this with open eyes.
Tech entity becomes big and massively (over)valued, buys up various smaller entities. Market takes a slight turn, new CEO comes in, or shareholders get a bit bored, and the parent company shutters the small one. Just look at the massive job losses in tech at the moment, the closures of smaller games studios, the acquisition (and re-acquisition) of Bandcamp, and on and on...
These small companies are toys for the big boys, bought for a few useful patents, or for some industry kudos. A $40 billion company has a working business model. Let's not pretend tiny Serif can offer Canva a 'new market' or 'new opportunities' that it would be interested in, and let's not pretend corporations care about the 'culture' of their acquisitions. Serif represents a few assets that can be bought at a low cost.
The future of Affinity and Serif seems clear: useful Affinity tech will be folded into Canva. Canva will at some point make cost savings - perhaps Serif will be shuttered, or turned into a skeleton staff, or maintained as a shell in a country with lower wages than the UK. Perhaps Canva will strip the useful IP, 'cost-save' Serif down to a few staff then sell it on in a few years.
This is a sad day for users, and perhaps some members of Serif staff. Something was built, here. Something was done a little differently, and had real value. As said, one has to hope Serif's owners aren't under any illusion as to how this will turn out.

Don't delude yourself, the majority of your user base are here because Adobe embraced the morally bankrupt Software as a Service model and they looked for a perpetual license alternative, and for no other reason. You touted perpetual licenses front and centre, and as someone who works for a multi-national software and services company I know that if you betray your customer base's trust they do not forgive and they do not forget lightly.
I dropped Adobe like a stone the moment they went Software as a Service, the model of "rent your software, pay for eternity, spend thousands, and the moment you stop paying you have NOTHING". I will never RENT my software, software ISN'T a service, it's an end product.
I dropped Abode and never looked back, I dropped Cinema 4D like a stone when they went to a subscription model (after saying they would offer both perpetual and subscription models together... which lasted all of 2 years) and never looked back.
Rest assured I, and quite likely a very large percentage of your user base, will drop you like a stone and move on should Affinity go to a subscription model, because your perpetual licensing is the only thing that attracted us to your software over Abode.

The fact that you sold yourselves (didn't even go into partnership) after only two months of starting a conversation rings alarm bells, you are now a subsidiary, you are no longer the master of your own destiny, you are a servant, only able to doff your cap and say "yes sir" at Canva's command.
Excuse the cynicism, but we have lived this software story FAR too many times before, and it has never ended well. I hope this will be the exception to the rule. Actions speak louder than words. We shall wait to see what SaaS company Canva's actions turn out to be.

Perhaps a written declaration, a "verbal contract" if you will, between yourselves and your customers that your software will NEVER drop its perpetual license model, and that its pricing will never be inflated to such unreasonable levels to try and force people on to a future parallel subscription service?

I'd never used dictation before but I tried it just now with Sonoma and it worked fine with Publisher 2.4 although I found that the keyboard shortcut only worked the first couple of times and then after that I had to use the menu command. So if you're trying to use dictation with the keyboard shortcut try the menu command - it's in the Edit menu.
 

Yes it did. A book that I helped to publish 20+ years ago did a major revision 2-3 years ago. I re-did the entire book in Publisher, and I dictated in most of the paragraphs, as it was easier than retyping everything. Obviously I typed some of it. But certainly I found it helpful to dictate a lot of it.
 
Robby

This video should solve your request.

Seems to be related to metal acceleration according to that crash report
Can you try turning off metal acceleration and see if it becomes more stable

I've recreated something similar and have raised a report for it
 

@Fixx, thanks for your reply. This book will be printed, and I do need the best quality possible. The graphics are Back and White, and I am trying to use greyscale vs RGB.
I am using Dorico as the music notation app. I have tried PDFs, TIFFs, SVGs, and PNGs. I was warned to stay away from PNGs. But all of the others work well in small documents for sure (no crashing). BofG's point to SVG being better, makes sense to me. When I export, the graphic will be "baked" into the file as part of the PDF structure and will no longer be a standalone file.
The PDF files I was using were fabulous for the first half of the book. They were easy, the correct size, looked amazing, etc. After about 400 PDF graphics of music, Publisher kept crashing. It was stated to me by someone that Publisher tries to give you control over the PDF, and that perhaps I was hitting a roadblock with all of the effort trying to give me control over so many PDFs. That is when someone suggested TIFFs with picture frames. 
I will investigate more what you are saying. There is a good chance another book will be done by me, and I need to figure something out.
 
Thanks,
Robby

SVG was created for websites, not for printing. EPS is the analogous printing format. SVG and EPS are vector formats. Vector images can be scaled without loss of quality because they are stored as X/Y coordinates, lines, and curves.
TIFF, PNG, and JPG are raster formats, stored as a series of pixels. They need to be created at the appropriate size for printing or you'll see jaggy edges (too low resolution) or created huge files for no purpose (too high of resolution).
PDF is a document format, intended for an entire page and not a graphic embedded into a page. A PDF can include raster and vector graphics.
Publisher can import all of these but importing hundreds of tiny PDF lines of music into a Publisher document adds a great deal of overhead because each of those lines of music is a complete document. That's why we previously recommended you use a different format.
EPS is actually the ideal format for what you're doing (music scores can easily be defined as lines and curves) but as you were having technical issues I recommended TIFF because it's the simplest format and will give you great quality as long as you pick the right resolution for printing - your printer can advise the resolution to use.
One reason to avoid EPS is that like PDF it can include fonts. If you have text in your music scores with you almost certainly do, using TIFF will convert that text to pixels. But if you export the music as EPS the fonts may be embedded. Publisher should be able to handle importing 500 music score EPS files each with embedded fonts, after all, they're the same fonts over and over again, but why stress out the application if you're already having problems? Linked TIFF files will just work without issues.

@SPaceBar I certainly do have a back-up copy now. Thank you for reminding me. I didn't think too much of it before.
 
Robby

Oh and assuming the music is black and why, look for an option to export as grayscale 8 bit or convert them all with Affinity Photo - this will improve printing and reduce file size further. You don't need 16 bit for music illustrations nor do you need CMYK and you don't want RGB.

THANK YOU!!!! THANK YOU!!!!
You just opened a major door in my thinking about this about this project!
I tried to export the music at 600 dpi, and they were HUGE, 300 dpi quite small. I am to sure what the printer prints, but I will find out. But the picture frame for each example would make life a lot easier.
 
Thanks again,
Robby