iuli

The following feedback about the new pencil curve algorithm is provided under the assumption that the new pencil curve algorithm also powers the Smooth Curve tool, which needed enhancement. In my opinion, the Smooth Curve should convert an original curve into a simplified version with the fewest nodes necessary, while maintaining a perfect overlay with the original at a 1:1 ratio. This approach not only reduces file size but also optimises curve management, making it easier to modify (add or delete nodes) and use in boolean operations, ultimately improving both functionality and appearance.
I conducted two tests using the 2.5 beta versions of Photo and Designer, starting by creating a sharp shape with the pencil tool. I manually converted some nodes from sharp to smooth and attempted to simplify them using the Smooth Curve Tool. After selecting all nodes (both sharp and smooth) and activating the tool, a section containing sharp nodes was inadvertently removed, which was unexpected (please see left section of attached image)
Although the tool effectively smoothed the remaining nodes, I had to click it approximately 10 times to reduce the node count. This repetitive clicking, necessary in the previous version to simplify the curve, was much more improved in this beta, as fewer clicks were required to achieve a marked reduction in nodes.
However, to further optimize the curve, an additional 15 clicks were needed, which did not always yield the desired nodes. I also noticed some closely duplicated nodes remained, and the altered shape of the curve no longer matched the original at the expected 1:1 ratio. This indicates that the nodes left are neither minimal nor optimal for accurately drawing the original curve.
I am hopeful that refining the curve algorithm will be a priority in future updates, particularly enhancing the pencil tool’s Smooth Curve and Line Width Tools. I look forward to these improvements and the eventual capability to accurately simplify curves with minimal manual intervention.

A5 flier, all done in Designer and Photo apart from the  5 star logo and Chef along with Gary's image. Colour laser printed (20 A5's for double sided Perspex table flier holders)(3 A4's for notice boards) (1 A5 emailed as an attachment to the membership)
 

Enhancement using Bevel/Emboss filter effect. Mainly I used inner bevel.

@AffinityJules @iconoclast @firstdefence @carl123 @v_kyr @TrentL Here is the version of the composite. I updated the look of the fog, updated the outfit on one of the characters. I also fixed a few minor errors I never noticed before from the reflection effects.

Hope you all like it.

Hello! This is my first time posting and using the software. I have been using the alternative for many years and decided to give this a try. I found it challenging at times, but also in love with it too. I will look forward to creating more art in the future. 

Project "Artemisa", coming this April 2024.
Get ready to vote soon...

Thank you @Alfred. I often get dark thoughts with my mental health condition and neurological issues. Last night was a very difficult one and expression through creation was a way to get some distance from my darkness.
No offence was intended but it's expression in creation helped by freeing me, a little, from the overwhelming sense of fear and despair that accompany my condition.
Create something beautiful out of darkness and then take stock of oneself. I am holding on and am practicing self soothing techniques and taking rest.
My state of mind is proving difficult to deal with but I am weathering the storm and allowing it to pass over me.
I may disappear for a while on here but will continue to practice my coping strategies.
I will hide the thread if you think it inappropriate.
@SolidSnake2003 Thank you for your comment. Creating it gave me a little leeway and allowed me to acknowledge the way I felt.
Sometimes creativity can help with voicing ones feelings and allowing a sense of accomplishment which can be part of the process. I will seek support if things do not improve.
I'm glad you think it looks cool. It's nice to know that something simple can still be made in the darkest of times.

Sometimes I use creative outlets to offload how I am feeling and hopefully separate myself from the intensity of negative thoughts and beliefs. This can provide respite for a little bit.
This was created in Affinity Designer using artistic text, clip art, Styles, and Quick FX.
Strangely, looking at the product actually helps, as it externalizes the thought in some way and makes it less overpowering and reminds me to practice some self care.
 

 

Serif is working on a modern version of Fonthill Abbey, but if they don't seriously slow down and correct mistakes, architecture, and refactor a lot, I now truly understand how big the problem is after trying the line width tool in the beta of 2.5.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonthill_Abbey

I agree with you completely, more or less. My question was also more to illustrate my despair.
Agreed. From cringe-worthy to embarrassing and back again. And completely bypassing professionalism and visible market shares in the truly interesting segments of the market. I mean visible, measurable, real, where people outside this forum and the marketing know Affinity, and the programs play a role.
I don't believe so, but the hype created by many without a professional background—especially the numerous online 'reviews' claiming these are Adobe killer programs—has turned the hype into a bunch of bullshit that got out of control, which Serif has ridden without trying to regain control. It seems like it eventually ended with empty words and programs that can't live up to it. If Canva continues with Affinity on this track, then it's definitely not a safe ship.
If Canva doesn't start a professional revolution in Nottingham, then I don't believe the products have a future other than being acquired functionality for Canva, which again are completely irrelevant products for the segment of creatives I'm talking about.
So, I really hope Canva protects Affinity as a suite and elevates it after a thorough self-education on what it takes to break the bubble and improve the programs and reach the customers they've mistakenly believed they were communicating with for years. They missed the mark completely.
And I can see that customers I have had something in common with for a decade have tried to awaken Serif and talk sense into them here. A lot of wasted time for a lot of good people, I hope Canva can make it worthwhile anyway. But I doubt it. Miracles are few and far between, but loud market sellers are just a short distance apart.

Hi All,
I'm pleased to let you know we have now added a Line Width/Pressure Tool and improved stroke/curve drawing and closing to Affinity Designer - available now in the 2.5 beta...
 
 

Apps: Designer
Platforms: macOS, Windows and iPad
We have made some further improvements to the pencil tool.
Firstly we are now using a new curve smoothing algorithm which we believe gives general better, smoother, results when using the pencil tool.
Secondly as has been commonly requested we have now changed the "Auto-close" method so that when you have that option checked in the context toolbar the curve only closes when you are near to the start point of the curve being drawn. You will now get an indicator when you are in range of the start position of the curve so you know when a curve will be auto-closed.

We are adding variable support to 2.5 but is still going through some final internal testing. This should be available in a beta update next week.

@SrPx,
You're right. But it also happens that due diligence is carried out improperly, which may unnecessarily inflate costs. Calculation errors can also result in unrealistic synergy targets being set, and investors and analysts will certainly miss milestones that have not been achieved. This type of pressure makes building a new organization and simultaneous stabilization of existing structures even more difficult.
The decision to merge or take over is usually dictated by specific reasons. Among them, four main groups are most often mentioned. These are the motives:
technical and operational
Technical and operational motives aim to increase the operational efficiency of a given enterprise, including: increasing the efficiency of business management and reducing operating costs.
  financial
The most common financial motives include increasing the debt capacity, tax benefits or the use of financial surpluses.
  managerial
Taking into account managerial motives, the main ones mentioned are realizing the management's ambitions, increasing prestige or greater freedom of action.
  market and marketing
The most common market and marketing motives include eliminating competition and increasing share in a given market sector.  
Now, the Kingdom👑 and the horse🐴 go to whoever knows Canva's real motives in taking over Serif.
Because I'm not particularly convinced by the argument that they want to compete with Adobe on the professional software market by using Affinity programs.
Which, let's be honest, cannot be compared to Ai, Ps, Id in terms of functionality, quality and stability.
It will take many years and a lot of cash and a change of mentality will be needed for Affinity to develop enough to compete with Adobe.
For comparison, a small table↓

The last but not least important thing that is worth mentioning is that the increase in the return on the acquisition investment is very much influenced by the initial market reaction. And I don't see much enthusiasm here after the announcement of Canva's takeover of Serif and the Affinity program line.

This means that this whole takeover and the reasons given do not add up on both sides.🤡
 
No, to win, all they need to do is deliver one of equal quality at a more affordable price than the competition.💪

Wonder why it was changed to this from Serif info bot If the acquisition did not happen yet as there has not been any info from staff about changes on how beta cycles will work once the acquisition does finish.
an email and response from Serif customer service
Hello, Now that Canva owns you, will there be changes to how the beta cycles will work? Will it work like 2.1 and 2.2  or like 2.3 and 2.4?   I hope that things only get better because of this, and the one time purchases remain even a couple of years down the line.   Thank you, Tzvi20   Hi Tzvi,   It is still very early in the acquisition process so we don't have any answers on this just yet I'm afraid. When we have any news on beta tests, the beta forums would be the first place we would update. 

I started out as a trainee designer using Letraset, glue and a scalpel (yes, I’m that old). At college I spent years learning typography, printing techniques etc. in great depth. Paste-up layout involved a lot of maths and good hand-to-eye coordination. Photo editing involved an airbrush loaded with gouache.
All of this stuff filtered through into use with software tools when they arrived and I bought my first Mac (all that maths and typography experience helped me when using Quark, for example).
When the web kicked off I dived into that, and my pre-learned graphic design skills coupled with new coding techniques gave me a edge in creating user-friendly interfaces, clear, fast loading layouts, and crisp graphics. I redesigned several well-known corporate stores, one made an 8x profit increase in 12 months after the redesign. It was a lot of money, though none of it for me.
Why am I boring readers of this with my CV? Because the tools change, but the human skills and accumulated knowledge that make the difference between a good, and a so-so designer will always be there. Or at least that’s the case until AI gets its foot on our necks.
 Despite the bugs and missing features, Affinity has provided freelance designers with an affordable, professional suite of tools that cover the majority of our day-to-day requirements. All the stuff I’ve learned over the last 40-odd years is still relevant when I use their software.
Years of evolution in design tools have helped me to create better design. More options, higher quality work. 
But Canva’s stuff is not aimed at me. It doesn’t incorporate the sophistication and attention to detail included in Adobe and Affinity’s products that I require to be able to apply hard-learned skills into my work, so any ‘enshittification’ of the Affinity Suite will leave just one,  very pricey player in the game. Fortunately I’ll soon be too old to care.
 

Disregarding the font, it seems that there are app-related differences that are fundamental as for rendering of non-antialiased type. I initially (and naively) thought that turning off antialiasing in Blend Options would "simply" just revert to turning off resolution-dependent skeleton glyphs math. That is, that having "None" as an antialiasing method in apps like GIMP, Photoshop and any of the Affinity app trio would give identical rendering, when having the same document DPI.
That it is obviously NOT so, it is a worth of a more fundamental study or declaration!

Here's one example:
https://www.on1.com/plus/forums/
https://www.on1.com/products/plus/
Subscription is regularly $55/year, but on sale at a discount at the moment. That's equal to the full price I paid for ON1 Photo Raw 2024 last month on a special promotional offer. They had sucked me in at the end of January when they were giving away ON1 Photo Effects for free, a fact I was alerted to in these Affinity forums.
It was worth the money as I'm learning a lot about a whole different approach to editing, including AI functions. But community support seems poor.
They have some free community forums, but they are pretty empty of content and would give the impression that no one is using their products.
https://on1help.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/topics
When you participate in the free forums, your actual name gets posted with your question or comments. I told the company I thought this was a deterrent to using those free forums. I don't know how the paid forums work, but why would they be any different.
 

Will Affinity forums remain free or will Canva charge a subscription fee for user forums?
Some Affinity competitors charge a substantial subscription fee to participate in community forums, to access user resources, and to view tutorials. Annual fees for what they call "user support" can equal the cost of the software itself.
Affinity's free forums provide one compelling reason to continue using Affinity. In these Affinity forums there is extensive support for all users--both casual and professional, both new and experienced, both amateur and professional. These free forums constitute a fellowship of users. Here users from all over the world come to understand and benefit from their affinity for one another. 
I hope this free community of users will continue under Canva. 
Edited 4/4/2024
I'm happy to say that @Leigh responded below saying: "things will remain the same i.e the forums and Technical Support will remain free."

I'm disappointed that my simple question about the future of these Affinity forums has not been answered by any forum moderators, Affinity staff, or Canva/Serif principals who might actually know whether Affinity technical support will remain free under Canva ownership.
Sadly, this lack of response is likely to stimulate even more uncertainty and speculation about Affinity's future.
Will there be free user forums for Affinity users? Will Canva/Affinity staff participate in any free forums that might exist? How many of those now paid by Serif to participate in these free forums will still be employed in six months?  How much will Canva charge Affinity users for technical support? 
Responses from knowledgeable people in Canva/Serif would be most helpful.

Why? I'm enjoying every minute of it! You can meet the real hard core fans here! The rest will pay monthly no matter what! 😂

As others have been saying, there may be a race to the bottom happening, and a certain set of Canva users who don't need collaboration features might jump ship after learning how to use Affinity apps. The optimist in me obviously wants to see Canva preserving Affinity instead of butchering it for IP, like Adobe did with Macromedia, because the overlap in user base and features is, indeed, not excessive…
My biggest concerns are with the lack of competition in the “cross-platform, integrated suite, perpetual license-only, low-cost” space, and how that might lead Canva to move to a subscription-only model while just undercutting Adobe by a bit, or by that magical amount that wouldn't push users to Creative Cloud over the lack of certain features… If you think about it, makes a lot of business sense, and I have no qualms in saying it in public; both Serif's and Canva's executives obviously thought about that, and while those at Serif were either truly idealistic or just feigning idealism because they painted themselves into the perpetual license-only corner, the big-wigs at Canva, with their 175-million-user-strong clientele may just take the L and go for it (and nab some less idealistic but still price-conscious Creative Cloud users in the process).
There are, as I've said, really good up-and-coming and historical alternatives which might keep both Canva and Adobe in check, but… VectorStyler stands alone, Pixelmator is Mac-only, and QuarkXPress is so obscenely expensive that it doesn't stand a chance to ever regain its place at the top (it's almost as if they're content with that stupid technical documentation niche, which is just sad). Corel's now once again cross-platform offering is also still lacking a DTP packaging and is on par, pricing-wise, with Quark's, and… well, it's Corel. And the whole FOSS landscape is almost as bad as it was 11 years ago when I sent that infamous e-mail to Serif (yes, even Inkscape, with nominal Apple Silicon support, is buggy and ugly as sin, having been surpassed, UX-wise, by none other than Scribus, yikes!).
By the way, I'm attaching said e-mail here, slightly edited for typos, clarity and added context, so you can appreciate it in its full glory and get a bit more appreciation for my business and technological acumen (down to sheer prescience, as Affinity would only be announced a year later! In fact, I had registered an account in Serif's old forums and got a lot of advertisement in my inbox for the Plus suite, which I only realised now when looking for this e-mail, heh 😆), before this thread is inevitably shut down:
Suffice to say, now that I'm 38 instead of 28, I'm way less of an optimist and more of a realist, if not outright cynical. I still want to be wowed, but I know better.
Also, I'm preparing a similar message to the folks at Pixelmator Team and Numeric Path (from VectorStyler). Not because I want Affinity to falter, but because I want it and Canva as a whole to have competition, as a check and balance and added market segment coverage.
Well, it seems I already have my work cut out for me; I just have to take this template, update the dates and actors and replace that Churchill quote with one from Mannerheim, I guess. 😂

It's become a chat thread at this point. If they want to keep it up, it'll help keep the Canva-related tensions off the rest of the forum as all discussions-related can be pointed to here...

That's what you get when taking things too seriously.
You've completely misunderstood my words. It is because I fully realize how limited our lives are and that planning only goes so far, that I live each day to the fullest I can. That I enjoy every little moment, every experience, every encounter (that includes negative ones). Anyone who knows me in my real life knows me for my unbridled optimism.
And I look at the universe and the world with that same hope and optimism; and awe as if I were still a child. We don't know what we don't know. As conscious beings we are but an infinitesimal part of the whole that is the universe, a part that coalesces like a tiny vortex in a river that appears and seamlessly merges back in a infinitesimal moment, yet we still fill it through our uniqueness and influence the next moments, even if we exist but for that short moment.
Being aware of this interconnection and fragility liberates one to a tremendous freedom. The world is wonderful and existence fragile. If more people would fully realize this, humanity wouldn't make such as mess.
Anyhoo... Back to our regular programming 🙂
Only the future will tell us how this Canva story will unfold for Affinity. As I said, I hope for the best, and expect the worst.
Affinity's continued development falls outside my tiny sphere of influence. I've purchased V1 and V2, and will purchase V3 hopefully (see what I did there?).