PhatMonkey

I bet the people at Adobe were saying few months ago "hmm maybe we should consider offering perpetual licenses again as Affinity is taking a large chunk of our customer base" Then after this CANVA announcement Adobe said while laughing their socks off "AH scrap that idea lets keep the subscription model going, Affinity just sunk their own flagship"
🤣

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?

Does this mean Affinity going forward will be SUBSCRIPTION ONLY the very thing that separated Affinity from Adobe that attracted MOST of your customer base to invest in Affinity products? I had a look at CANVA and the first thing that jumps out of the screen is that they are SUBSCRIPTION ONLY....  *sigh*

Does this mean Affinity going forward will be SUBSCRIPTION ONLY the very thing that separated Affinity from Adobe that attracted MOST of your customer base to invest in Affinity products? I had a look at CANVA and the first thing that jumps out of the screen is that they are SUBSCRIPTION ONLY....  *sigh*

Does this mean Affinity going forward will be SUBSCRIPTION ONLY the very thing that separated Affinity from Adobe that attracted MOST of your customer base to invest in Affinity products? I had a look at CANVA and the first thing that jumps out of the screen is that they are SUBSCRIPTION ONLY....  *sigh*

UPDATE: Over the last few days I have been using a different G-Sync monitor, Rog Swift PG48UQ and there are no problems, maybe the G-Sync issue is on older monitors such as my original Rog Z35....

Hi @PhatMonkey,
Many thanks for letting us know!
I'll be sure to inform the team here, as well as let our developers know - who I believe have a contact at NVidia and may be able to speed up this process

It is hard to describe this one so I have attached a video showing it, the problem is same for Designer as well as Photo, I have the latest Nvidia driver and I also tried using CPU for processing as well as the GPU and the problem remains, watch the video, this is a good one lol
PS I have also tried re-installing the software...
UPDATE: I have found the possible culprit, running more tests, its that dam 'Nahimic service' that enabled itself again after my Realtek updated, will leave this post here in case others have same issue.

affinity (1).mp4

Hey PhatMonkey,
It's on the known software conflict list:
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/44770-issues-caused-by-third-party-software/
 

It is hard to describe this one so I have attached a video showing it, the problem is same for Designer as well as Photo, I have the latest Nvidia driver and I also tried using CPU for processing as well as the GPU and the problem remains, watch the video, this is a good one lol
PS I have also tried re-installing the software...
UPDATE: I have found the possible culprit, running more tests, its that dam 'Nahimic service' that enabled itself again after my Realtek updated, will leave this post here in case others have same issue.

affinity (1).mp4

Update: The new NVidia hotfix driver version 461.81 had two promising changelog entries (https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5168?linkId=100000034928969) but no changes at all. I am more and more convinced this is not driver related.

@PhatMonkey: My monitor is not capable of VSync but i normally have VSync in the GPU driver settings globally enabled so i do not need to set it for each game/application individually. Before i used "on", now i use "fast". Aside from the browser, there are no issues with that wether in fullscreen nor in window or windowed mode. However, as explained before, this does not affect the issues with the Affinity applications in any way on my end.
Speaking of it, i found another display glitch which is standing since i use Affinity (not sure, but i guess i started around 1.5): In this example, i just opened a wallpaper for my new mobile phone and resized it a bit in Affinity Photo. As you can clearly see, there is a bright line on the left side of the image which does not really exist but is just a rendering artifact. When you zoom in a bit, it dissappears. When zooming back out, it re-appears. This happens under many different conditions and should be easy to reproduce. Screenshot below.
 

While waiting for any suggestions, i found a interesting detail by chance that MIGHT be interesting:
https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5159
However, the only application i found affected by VSync settings in windows mode on my system was my browser (Vivaldi, a Chromium-based one) which shows tearing when scrolling since some time now when VSync is set to "fast" setting it to "on" instead immediately solves the issue.
Unfortunately, whatever setting is used, the issues in the Affinity applications stay the same. But since they seems to have changed some long standing defaults even affecting applications in windows mode, maybe someone with more insight should check if there maybe is a connection to the latest display issues in Affinity?

The Studio driver is 461.40, the problems began after 460.89, the only fix right now for me is to either use 460.89 or as I am currently doing using the hotfix latest driver but disabling GSYNC in the SET UP GSYNC panel. Note disabling gsync per application or globally in the 3D settings causes flickering in some apps, Affinity Photo for one, but that link gives a reg fix for it but I have not tried it yet as everything is now working fine as long as the steps above are taken

Regarding the drivers: i found the very same informations that both drivers are exactly the same, just more or less frequently updated as PhatMonkey explained already. NVidias support confirmed this meanwhile also.
I was able to at least record two of the issues i described. I was not able to record the issue with the lag on updating the image with the results of editing. Will try to get this on record, too.
There are two GIFs attached to this post:
"Affinity Publisher": Just started the application, created a new A4 file with default settings and created three text boxes, then scrolled the document up and down. As you can see, there is an EXTREMELY annoying flickering going on with the lines of the boxes which happens with all those type of boxes and lines. This is what support told me is "normal" and "as it is", but i am quite sure this was not the case back a few application and/or GPU driver versions (whatever is the cause).
"Affinity Photo": Just started the application, created a new A4 file with default settings and selected the brush tool. A line was drawn next and then i simply do nothing. But as you can see, the brush tip live preview is starting a strange "blinking" or very slow "flickering" also. And this time i am perfectly sure this was NOT the case a few application/driver version back!
I am quite sure that there is some kind of issue with the live preview features of the applications. Since i set the driver settings back to default, this is most likely no simple setting. I also tried OpenCL on/off which makes no difference, but the issues already were there long before version 1.9.
Any help or tips to try would be appreciated! If this is getting worse, it makes working with the applications very hard ...

The Studio driver is 461.40, the problems began after 460.89, the only fix right now for me is to either use 460.89 or as I am currently doing using the hotfix latest driver but disabling GSYNC in the SET UP GSYNC panel. Note disabling gsync per application or globally in the 3D settings causes flickering in some apps, Affinity Photo for one, but that link gives a reg fix for it but I have not tried it yet as everything is now working fine as long as the steps above are taken

I have updated my original post and will copy paste here below also in case u miss it for a possible fix for the flicker after disabling GSYNC:
 
NVIDIA have now got back to me, they are aware of some of these issues and a new Driver addressing them should be available by the end of this month, they also gave me this link for a reg fix for the flicker after disabling GSYNC https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5157/track/AvNKvQrCDv8S~bUtGmwe~yJl4uEqeC75Mv~Q~zj~PP8Z

I have updated my original post and will copy paste here below also in case u miss it for a possible fix for the flicker after disabling GSYNC:
 
NVIDIA have now got back to me, they are aware of some of these issues and a new Driver addressing them should be available by the end of this month, they also gave me this link for a reg fix for the flicker after disabling GSYNC https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5157/track/AvNKvQrCDv8S~bUtGmwe~yJl4uEqeC75Mv~Q~zj~PP8Z

Update: NVidia released a hotfix driver fixing several issues and version 461.51; yet, it is all still the same with the Affinity programs.
I am using the DCH variant of the "Game Ready" driver package by the way, not the "Studio" ones.

Hello,
i also can confirm having several strange issues since a few minor versions. Since Affinity programs are heavily relying on GPU and therefore GPU drivers, i am quite not sure if it is a issue in the programs or in the drivers.
I bought all threee Affinity versions some month ago around version 1.5 or something like that and all was fine It all started some minor versions later that i had more and more issues that are directly related to the rendering of the programs, it seems First thing i saw was a strange flickering of the lines of text boxes and other lines in Publisher whenever i was scrolling the open document (support told me they cannot reproduce and this is "normal" - was not before) Next thing that happened was what is explained above as a "delay" maybe; editing or undoing stuff in an open Photo document are not shown in the main view immediately but on the Navigator panel; switching back and forth or waiting some time somewhen fixes the main view also (support told me they cannot reproduce) Both was not the case a few month ago Some specs on my end:
Microsoft Windows 10 Pro x64 20H2 (all updates including drivers and optionals -> Build 19042.789) AMD Ryzen 3500 NVIDIA GeForce 1660 Super (latest driver 461.40, DCH) And, no, version 1.9 which came out just today did not fix any of those issues.
Aside from the general stuff to try i also reset all the GPU driver settings to see if this is a mere settings issue maybe but it did not make any difference.
My whole system does not shows these problems generally or in any other program.
Greetings!

Glad to see someone else has the same issue, for me the issue is gone by using driver 460.89, anything after this causes the zoom lag, mouse lag, but I have noticed it in other apps too such as Cubase Pro 11 for a brief moment. Try the driver 460.89 and raise a ticket with NVIDIA, I have been trying for weeks and the latest driver came out few days ago and still has the same issue...
I might re-install the latest and disable G-Sync as mentioned above and see what happens...
Good Luck
OS Name    Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version    10.0.19042 Build 19042
System Manufacturer: ASUS
System Type: x64-based PC
System SKU: ASUS_MB_CNL
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz, 3600 Mhz, 8 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date: American Megatrends Inc. 1802, 01/12/2020
BIOS Mode: UEFI
BaseBoard Product: ROG MAXIMUS XI HERO (WI-FI)
Installed Physical Memory (RAM): 64.0 GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (MSI Gaming X Trio)

Hi there, yes I searched the forum and noticed a few other users with the problem so I re-installed the latest driver for an experiment with G-SYNC, HOWEVER, when disabling G-Sync for me the application flashes when performing an action and although the zoom lag is eliminated there is still lag when dragging objects, also tried disabling per application than global.
It is a strange one for sure, gone back to 460.89 few mins ago, no problems.
OS Name    Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version    10.0.19042 Build 19042
System Manufacturer: ASUS
System Type: x64-based PC
System SKU: ASUS_MB_CNL
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz, 3600 Mhz, 8 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date: American Megatrends Inc. 1802, 01/12/2020
BIOS Mode: UEFI
BaseBoard Product: ROG MAXIMUS XI HERO (WI-FI)
Installed Physical Memory (RAM): 64.0 GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (MSI Gaming X Trio)
GSYNC: ACER Z35

I know this is not a clone of DrawPlus, but I cant deny the fact the shadow tool is very limited in 'Designer' and 'Photo' compared to DrawPlus and this is something I would really appreciate being worked on and implemented in the future.
Cheers
Ryan

Hi there, for example: SCALE Y this flattens the shadow, for example creating the effect that the shadow is on the ground, I know I could duplicate the image and create my own shadow, but that is extra work where a tool like in DP would come in handy, I have attached an image, the shadow is also highlighted so you can see the extra controls available in the menu bar above the image...
Cheers
Ryan