CartoonMike

Hi All,
Well, it’s been a pretty crazy week since the launch of V2!
This has been a real labour of love for us over the last year or so, and I can’t even begin to describe how hard the development team have worked on it. Not only getting the V2 apps launched, but also of course finally bringing Publisher to iPad. 
With this being our first paid-for upgrade there has understandably been a lot of feedback / questions around future updates and our pricing policies. I thought it was worth addressing / clarifying our position on some of these personally...
Updates to V2 moving forward
Buying V2 not only gets you all the new features you have seen, but we have various updates planned – including many more new features and improvements – which you will get for free. This will continue until such a time that V3 is released. We’re not sure exactly when V3 will be, but I can confirm we are not going to move to anything as regular as an annual upgrade cycle as has been speculated.
It’s worth saying too that V2 does include many under-the-hood changes to our underlying technology, and we have also been investing in several new areas of research recently. Some of these haven’t manifested themselves into new features yet, but overall V2 does give us a better platform to develop on moving forward and I’m sure you will be pleased with the updates V2 will receive.
Updates to V1 moving forward
While we did say on the FAQ that V1 would no longer receive any updates, I want to clarify that was about new feature updates. We will be updating V1 to fix any critical problems caused by operating system updates in the future. So if the next version of macOS breaks V1 we will endeavour to fix it. There will be a point in time when continuing to maintain V1 in this way will not be tenable, but certainly for the foreseeable future we will continue to patch. In fact, we have an update to V1 queued up for release very shortly with some fixes for Ventura and issues caused by a recent Windows security / quality update. 
We will update our FAQ shortly to make that clearer for everyone.
Offer period
In case you didn’t see, I’m pleased to confirm we have decided to run this initial launch offer until 14th December to give everyone the best chance possible to get it if they wish / have a decent amount of time to trial it. 
Upgrade pricing
It’s been really hard to see some of the comments about us not looking after our existing customers – we’re pretty devasted that anyone feels like that to be honest. But the fact is we felt our hands were tied somewhat with being able to offer upgrade pricing in a fair way. The main reason for this was App Store customers (which make up around 35% of our userbase). The problems with that are two-fold: firstly, we didn’t have a way from within V1 to validate an App Store purchase receipt to reliably ensure customers who were entitled to an upgrade could get one; and secondly, we could not find a good way for people to get that discount via the App Store. Us pushing upgrade customers to go exclusively via our own site (including customers who were previously acquired via the app stores) may also have put us in violation of App Store Ts & Cs which we were obviously concerned about.
I’m not saying that these issues were completely insurmountable, but any solutions we came up with would be messy, and most importantly could have resulted in some bona fide V1 customers struggling to get validated and claim their discount. We certainly don’t have the support resource here if we ended up needing to manually validate tens of thousands of receipts for example.
The only option we felt was safe to move forward with was a general launch offer, which would guarantee that every V1 customer could get the discount, whether they purchased directly through us or the App Stores. We knew a side effect of that would mean some new customers would end up receiving that same discount – but we felt that was a better option than V1 customers missing out. It’s also worth saying that while there has been some good press about V2, all our main marketing has been via email and through social media to our followers. In other words, we felt ok about it because we knew the vast majority of people who would find out about it or take advantage of the offer would be existing customers. I would be surprised if over the offer period customers upgrading from V1 didn’t make up more than 90% of our sales.
Overall I do believe us giving a 40% discount, along with the addition of the new Universal Licence of course, is offering fantastic value for money for those who want to upgrade. 
However, taking on board some of the feedback there is something extra we can do – we will offer a new free bundle of content exclusively for V1 customers upgrading to V2 as an extra thank you for your support. I’ve seen this suggested by a number of customers and it’s a great idea as it does remove the App Store conflict entirely. 
We’ll need a little time to put something together, but all customers who previously registered or purchased V1 and have since upgraded to V2 will receive a voucher code for this via email as soon as we can.
A comment on no subscription
I do want to say that some of the points above are exactly the reason why software companies move to subscription. Whatever you do with upgrade pricing, you still have the issue of customers who bought the previous version 3 months ago vs. those who have had it 2+ years. Offering perpetual licences also gives the additional overhead of needing to maintain the previous version longer than you would if everyone was on subscription / generally always on the latest version.
We are a small team so some of these complications are not ideal — all we really want to do is focus on developing our latest codebase, push out regular updates and continue with our mission to make great creative software accessible to everyone. 
But it does need to be funded somehow. We know you love our no-subscription model, but there also needs to be a level of appreciation that the alternative is having paid-for upgrades from time to time. That unfortunately comes with its own problems.
All of that said, I have to say we have been blown away with the response to V2 - around 3 times as many people have upgraded in the last week than we expected - and we really can't thank you enough for the support you have shown. More than anything the success of this upgrade puts us in a great place to continue investing heavily in development which is ultimately what it's all about, and we’re super excited to crack on with some great updates coming next year!
All the best,
Ash

Well if you look in context … $99 for 3 products for 6-7 years, a darn good deal at which is $5.50 or $4.70 per year per product, without mentioning  that it includes all 3 platforms.
And it was clearly stated when we purchased v1 the updates were free to v1, but the next version would have to be purchased.

I am on the opposite spectrum and rather perplexed by some of the surprised responses I see about the paid upgrade path. Frankly, I would be shocked if Affinity were able to continue dominating Adobe CC simply by slinging books and art packs. 
I paid for copies of all Affinity apps nearly 7 years ago and was happy to purchase supplemental content to support them.
Like you, I refuse to pay for a subscription model on core workflow tools. The alternative to that (the norm of yesteryear) was pay-per-update. Remember how Adobe used to charge 499.00 every few years?
With Affinity, I think I paid maybe 150.00 for all 3 apps, but was happy to pay for them again for my new Mac when moving from my Windows machine because the cost was so affordable. Since I haven't been charged for an app update in 7 years, and ran out of ways to support Affinity in the shop due to purchasing all books and art packs, V2 was an instant buy.
And honestly 99.00 is a deal, yet again. And it's one time payment, with years of updates to come with new tool. New features like live meshwarping are likely only possible because of an entire engine rewrite. 
I do music production on the side as well and I can tell you that Logix Pro X is free because it's subsidized by the price of their computers, which stop receiving updates to the newest OS every few years - forcing users to upgrade. It surely isn't free. Also Logic rarely releases major updates with ground breaking features. Either way, every other DAW save FL studio charges at least 199 / year for point releases. 
iZotope (one of the most expensive luxury plugin companies) sells dozens of different products as single purchases and bundle for hundreds or even thousands of dollars with expensive semi-yearly releases. What was the cost of the latest Ozone 9 suite? 800 bucks? What was the upgrade path? 400? On something like a 2 year release cycle.
Here is Affinity with a 99.00 upgrade path for all core apps with a track record of several years of major upgrades. Since when did "own your software" mean lifetime updates?  
Anyways, I am delighted. Sorry you are not.
 

With all due respect, but your position and arguments are ridiculous. Every software upgrade offered by a commercial company comes with a price. You can now purchase the app(s) at a 40% discount and that's quite generous.

You eventually will be, when the hardware you have no longer supports the newest versions and you need to buy new hardware to run them.  Apple was originally a hardware company, and they have in part become a services company, but they have never really been a software company - they make their money on their hardware and now on their services, and provide the software to support what actually brings them income.
Serif on the other hand is a software company, so that is their primary source of income.  They need to charge for it at some point or they won't be able to continue as a company.
The fact that they are charging for version 2 is not in any way surprising or unexpected - they have told us all along that they would do that, and even now in the FAQs on their site, they spell out that the updates from 2.x to 2.y are free, but there will be a charge again when version 3 comes out.
This is a common practice among most software companies, and is extremely fair.

I am extremely disappointed to see that Affinity requires existing customers to purchase the V2 upgrade to the products they have already purchased. I have always been a fan of Affinity, but this seriously skews my affinity of the company.
I believe Affinity products are still great and offered at great prices. I love that Affinity hasn't bowed to the greed of more-money with subscription-only services such as the big graphic software companies that moved in that direction, which I believe was a strong reason behind the creation of Affinity, and is most definitely a big reason for it's success. BUT, the decision to make existing customers repurchase all of the products again to get V2 is an extremely poor one. I would suspect many customers will stick with V1 simply because they will not be manipulated to purchase the products again, not because they don't want them, but because they are angry with Affinity.
I do a lot of music production, and in the music industry there are many users who refuse to pay for subscription services. They want to own what they purchase, just like so many who have purchased Affinity products. But they prefer to purchase software from companies that don't  keep charging them for upgrades. My Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) of choice is Logic Pro X and I have never been charged for an upgrade; in fact, the community of Logic users looks forward with great anticipation and excitement to the new upgrades. This is what makes Logic users such huge fans of the software and the company—when the company rewards its customers with great upgrades at no additional cost; the company supports their customers. There are many third party companies that offer plug-ins for Logic, and some of these companies, such as Waves are getting a bad rap in the music community, because they require purchasing an upgrade license every few years in order to continue getting upgrades for the products they bought; they will lose many customers, but for those they keep, at least they are offered an incentive as a customer. Other companies such as iZotope treat their existing customers to deeply discounted loyalty offers for upgrades and newly released software and their customers are happy to pay a discounted fee to upgrade, and the company retains their admiration and respect. But Affinity, just insulted their entire customer base. Good luck with that.
Once, a huge advocate of Affinity, my admiration, respect, and excitement for Affinity and it's products has now plummeted. For those who think this is too harsh, please realize, this isn't about customers, like me, saving a buck—it's about Affinity wanting to show appreciation for the loyal customers who made them successful. I mourn the direction Affinity has chosen.
Sincerely

This post is designed to be an aid to knowing if you are using the latest version of Affinity Version 2 applications on your platform.  The thread is now locked so if you "follow" it you will know then we release a new version on any platform. Version numbers are displayed on the About dialog (or preferences in iPad builds)
NOTE: I will update/edit this first post as new releases are added.
Product Name       | Purchase Store  | Platform   | Version | ===============================|=================|===================|===============| Affinity Designer 2 | Affinity Store | Windows 10, 11 | 2.4.2 (.2371) | Affinity Designer 2 | Microsoft Store | Windows 10, 11 | 2.4.2 (.2371) | Affinity Designer 2 | Affinity Store | macOS 10.15-14 | 2.4.2 (.2371) | Affinity Designer 2 | Mac App Store | macOS 10.15-14 | 2.4.2 (.2371) | Affinity Designer 2 for iPad | iPad Store | iPadOS 15,16,17 | 2.4.2 (.2371) | _______________________________|_________________|___________________|_______________| Affinity Photo 2 | Affinity Store | Windows 10, 11 | 2.4.2 (.2371) | Affinity Photo 2 | Microsoft Store | Windows 10, 11 | 2.4.2 (.2371) | Affinity Photo 2 | Affinity Store | macOS 10.15-14 | 2.4.2 (.2371) | Affinity Photo 2 | Mac App Store | macOS 10.15-14 | 2.4.2 (.2371) | Affinity Photo 2 for iPad | iPad Store | iPadOS 15,16,17 | 2.4.2 (.2371) | _______________________________|_________________|___________________|_______________| Affinity Publisher 2 | Affinity Store | Windows 10, 11 | 2.4.2 (.2371) | Affinity Publisher 2 | Microsoft Store | Windows 10, 11 | 2.4.2 (.2371) | Affinity Publisher 2 | Mac App Store | macOS 10.15-14 | 2.4.2 (.2371) | Affinity Publisher 2 | Affinity Store | macOS 10.15-14 | 2.4.2 (.2371) | Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad | iPad Store | iPadOS 15,16,17  | 2.4.2 (.2371) | _______________________________|_________________|___________________|_______________| [Please note that Microsoft Store presents the build number within the store differently so Affinity Store build 2.4.2.2371 appears as a Microsoft Store build number 20402.2371.0.0]
Legacy: For the latest version 1 releases please see this earlier thread
Patch Release notes
The fixes in 2.4.2 are in this post
 
Affinity Designer 2 for Windows (2.4.2)  previous patches: (2.4.1), (2.4.0), (2.3.1) , 2.3.0, 2.2.1, 2.2.0, 2.1.1, 2.1.0, 2.0.4, 2.0.3  Affinity Designer 2 for macOS (2.4.2)   previous patches: (2.4.1), (2.4.0), (2.3.1), 2.3.0, 2.2.1, 2.2.0, 2.1.1, 2.1.0, 2.0.4, 2.0.3   Affinity Designer 2 for iOS (2.4.2)   previous patches: (2.4.1), (2.4.0), (2.3.1), 2.3.0, 2.2.1, 2.2.0, 2.1.1, 2.1.0, 2.0.4, 2.0.3, 2.0.2   Affinity Photo 2 for Windows (2.4.2)   previous patches: (2.4.1), (2.4.0), (2.3.1), 2.3.0, 2.2.1, 2.2.0, 2.1.1, 2.1.0, 2.0.4, 2.0.3   Affinity Photo 2 for macOS (2.4.2)   previous patches: (2.4.1), (2.4.0), (2.3.1), 2.3.0, 2.2.1, 2.2.0, 2.1.1, 2.1.0, 2.0.4, 2.0.3   Affinity Photo 2 for iOS (2.4.2)   previous patches: (2.4.1), (2.4.0), (2.3.1), 2.3.0, 2.2.1, 2.2.0, 2.1.1, 2.1.0, 2.0.4, 2.0.3, 2.0.2   Affinity Publisher 2 for Windows (2.4.2)   previous patches: (2.4.1), (2.4.0), (2.3.1), 2.3.0, 2.2.1, 2.2.0, 2.1.1, 2.1.0, 2.0.4, 2.0.3   Affinity Publisher 2 for macOS (2.4.2)   previous patches: (2.4.1), (2.4.0), (2.3.1), 2.3.0, 2.2.1, 2.2.0, 2.1.1, 2.1.0, 2.0.4, 2.0.3   Affinity Publisher 2 for iOS (2.4.2)  previous patches: (2.4.1), (2.4.0), (2.3.1), 2.3.0, 2.2.1, 2.2.0, 2.1.1, 2.1.0, 2.0.4, 2.0.3, 2.0.2  Installation of Software and Updates
If you’ve purchased from the Affinity Store— each time you start the software it will check for updates and offer to download and install any available update. For the macOS release, in the application main menu there is an option "Check for Updates". Alternatively, you can download the latest installer by logging into the affinity store here and find the order in your account and use the "download" button in there. Updates are installed automatically (or manually by installing the new version over the old) Previous builds do not need uninstalling first. New installations of paid software downloaded from the Affinity Store requires LICENSE ACTIVATION to use.
Software downloaded from the Mac App Store, Microsoft Store and iPad store do not require a license activation and are updated through the relevant store: 
If you’ve purchased from the Mac App Store— updates are done automatically next time you run your software after it is available in the Mac App Store. However, you do need to be logged in with the same Apple ID you used to buy them. If this does not happen for you, open the Mac App Store app and go to the Updates page and then Store > Reload page or press CMD+R. This should hopefully force the update to show. Apple sometimes phase roll outs around the world which can mean it may take up to 72 hours for your update to be available.
If you’ve purchased from the Microsoft Store— Microsoft Store updates are done automatically by the operating system (each time you start the application). If this does not happen for you, open the Windows Store app and click the three dots in the top right corner of the app and then go to Downloads and Updates. Click Get Updates. This should hopefully force the update to show.
If you’ve purchased from the Pad Store— Your Affinity iPad apps should update automatically next time you run them. However, you do need to be logged in with the same Apple ID you used to buy them. If the automatic update does not happen for you, go to the iPad Store app and go to Updates. Once you’re there, tap near the top of the screen where it states 'Updates' and then hold, pull down and then release. This should manually refresh the updates page. However, don’t contact us if the updates are not available for you yet—Apple sometimes phase roll outs around the world and this can take up to 24 hours.
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This thread is locked and will only be posted to by Serif Staff as the released versions change.  Please follow this thread if you want to know about future version changes. If you think this post has got behind and needs updating please PM me.
If you are looking for the beta builds please see these forums 
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/32-beta-software-forums/
 
 

Really?! Then use GIMP!

Being a Mac user from the Palaeolithic era I will say that I still miss Claris the Dogcow.

To your point, I do feel quite bad about users who are left with non-working features or bugs. It's likely they could still go back a little bit in the previous updates and grab a fully working version. Still, that's unfortunate. Especially if they're on setups that are having hardware conflicts, etc. That said, V1 had a really good run at 6-7 years of free updates? The cord has to be cut somehow, somewhere and in some way... also consider (this is me speculating now woo hoo...), it may be that there are such major changes in V2, such as "under the hood"/engine changes, that it may make it easier (and less costly) to address V1 concerns than trying to keep re-adapting the old code when they may have already "redone" things in V2 anyway, which make that easier. So no point updating two different engines to do the exact same thing at that point, they're so far apart. If so, could be critical to their business moving forward. That makes sense anyway given they've promised fixes in the past, going so far to say it was imminent in some cases but which never actually came. I had thought that may have been what was going on. It may be they seriously tried to achieve these changes and fixes from different angles programmatically speaking and ran into issues because the core code was hampering their development of newer features while trying to "fix" older stuff. There was hints of this anyway in some of the comments I read, specifically, things like Vertical text (Asian type) being very difficult to implement because of the way text is handled in Affinity programs, which is supposedly proprietary code. So moving on to V2 in that sense is the best way to remedy the situation, is a breath of fresh air (one would hope) for developers, and for most everyone who has waited so long for portions of the roadmap to be fulfilled... again, all thoughts I've had as I have no real knowledge here, but thought could be happening...

I think customers to see updates as purely iterative design changes, as if there is a linear timeline of one block being placed one after another... not so, especially when working with something made completely from scratch that only a handful of eyes have seen and thus know where to look to place the fancy new blocks, etc... One may run into design issues later with scaling that it makes it necessary to redesign the entire thing to make feature additions smoother (and also reduce bugs...) hence there usually being a need to make changes to the entire engine at that point... that's the downside of not relying on third party libraries, but also critical for programs such as these to remain independent imo. However, it also means requiring foresight to know how code will need to be modified/used later... that's not always humanly feasible...

Thank you for your file, I'm able to replicate this issue and I can confirm this is logged with our developers - currently there is a rendering issue when painting on an artboard within a Group or Layer container.
I will be sure to 'bump' this report with our developers now.
In the meantime I'd recommend moving the Pixel layer outside of the Layer container whilst painting, and then move it once complete. As you've also found, refreshing the canvas by zooming also forces the stroke to draw correctly.
I hope this clears things up 

Funny how you only seem to think about your own industry, which looks like it's print, and act like you're talking for every designer out there in the world.
Affinity isn't only used for print. It's also heavily used for example in the video-, animation- and game industries. By many motion graphic designers, webdesigners, game graphic designers, UI/UX/interaction designers, animation artists, illustrators etc. etc.
EPS might be a standard used a lot for print, but it's definitely not the only standard all over the world when it comes to software for these jobs for example and far from needed. I'm using a lot of tools for both video, internetwork, games and animations and never needed to use any EPS as output from Affinity. In many cases in my case for instance SVG became a real standard to import files in many software programs for vector work for instance. Not EPS. Just to give an example.
Not saying at all that EPS isn't important, I understand it is for certain industries, but try to keep your mind open to the rest of the professional world of graphics professionals out there and please try not to speak for others. It's always pretty difficult to speak 'for all' as that's a pretty huge group. Your industry is not the only industry.

No, version 2 of the Affinity suite will be a one off purchase (perpetual license) and will not be sold as a subscription service (monthly or otherwise)

Version 2 of Affinity Designer will load Affinity version 2 files as well as load Affinity version one files. 😜
Sorry I couldn't resist 

No…
If you’ve seen the fab latest beta version of Publisher for iPad you would not say this, ...... so.... you haven't seen the latest (?or any?) Eric

That is what paid version updates are. The only difference is the point where the "paid upgrade" begins and ends is more arbitrary and it would be harder for them to service that client especially if the "improvement" (read: not a bug, but a feature) is in future releases. They could easily stop servicing that client in other ways to incentivize them to pay in in ways we can't yet foresee.

I don't like a yearly "update pass" as CSP is calling theirs because what exactly are we paying for? We can't "choose" what they focus on while we shell out for their development costs. It felt the same with Adobe. I wasn't receiving more service necessarily as it would depend on what were in the updates, because as we know: Adobe is allegedly perfect, so rather it is supporting the greedy habit of a growing monopoly.
I would be fine paying for paid upgrades every couple of years or so for a program that has its act together. CSP moving to sub is a bad sign about where the pendulum is swinging. I still prefer Affinity's interface, but if they introduce sub I'm choosing between an interface I prefer vs higher functionality & feature set for the cost. It doesn't make sense to pay into something that isn't growing me or my work and I'm continually having to use other programs to fill the gap. Moreover, Serif's roadmap has been like guessing the next moves of a serial killer so much so that I suspect it will keep a portion of people from upgrading anyway.

sorry, I cannot  

We are not commenting on specific features, but suffice to say this is one of those right up there in terms of features we wish to add over those in V1

There are plenty of software monopolists like Adoblow and Autodesk who offer subscription services, if thats what you want, subscribe with them. One of the main reasons Affinity has a huge following is PRECISELY bc of the business model / no subscriptions. Serif has been around for 20+ years, so they know their business. People just need to be patient and let things naturally mature instead of expecting 1.x release software to be at 15.X levels. Affinity suite is making huge leaps and bounds in both performance and stability. I'm sure everyone will be blown away when they release 2.0. It's always calm before the storm.....

Bad news: Not this month, sorry.
Good news: The longer it takes the more new features, improvements, and fixes will be included. Exciting times ahead.

I have no idea why on earth people keep talking about Serif being acquired by Adobe, moving to a subscription model, or going out of business!
There haven't been any Affinity updates for a few months: so what! – Some software is updated more often, some less often.
Serif have made it clear (more than once) that their current priorities are focused on APub for iPad, and new versions of the whole Affinity suite.
These endless "conspiracy theories", with no basis in fact, are not just pointless they are wildly inaccurate fantasies!
If self appointed "experts" want to tell Serif how to develop software and how to run the company, that's up to them! Obviously they have nothing better to do! Personally I prefer spending my time using the software to get work done!
Yes, we are all looking forward to upgrades to the Affinity suite, hopefully with some of the long standing bugs being fixed, and with some great new features: but it's a big job, for a (comparatively) small company, so it's bound to take some time to get it right. Serif have been a successful company, producing excellent software, for quite a number of years: I'm quite happy using the Affinity software, as it stands, until a new version comes along. I'd much prefer Serif take their time getting it right, rather than pushing out substandard products just for the sake of speed!

Just because...

Easy: go to File --> Document setup. In the dialog box, on the middle of the left side, in the colour section, there's a checkbox option: Make background transparent. Check it and click OK. Notice that the bg of the current document has the grey & white checkerboard that represents transparency. Now export image, as PNG. The background is transparent.
 
There's 2 buttons below the Make Background Transparent: Assign and Convert. I don't know what they mean, unfortunately, the Help files has no mention of them or of what Make Background Transparent does.

Really like this. Great job of setting the scene in the first page and escalation of events in the second. I gotta see what happens next. 
 
Only nit is the serif "I" in words, where the san serif "I" should be used. Visit www.blambot.com and download some of the free* fonts there and it'll improve the "look" of the lettering and mesh better with your word balloon style. (*free as in for personal and indie commercial projects). Check out this page, also from Blambot, for some good basic lettering info: http://www.blambot.com/articles_grammar.shtml 

I totally agree that some form of text wrap is important for AD to have. To insist that AD is "merely" for design is like saying that Word Processors are just good for writing advertising copy. 
 
 
 
If text wrap is added to AD toolbox, it doesn't mean that you can't just keep on using it to create illustrations. Just like with the additions of UI tools and such doesn't mean I have to use them for every project. Just like Clip Studio Paint can do comic lettering, I don't use it, I'd rather do lettering in AD (which it is much better than the "standard" app from the Red Brick Haus). However, if one would follow the logic of post #5, I shouldn't use AD for comic lettering. I should "make do" with an inferior result because that app is "meant" to do comic lettering.
 
There's been a number of posters/fliers I had to use AD for and faking word-wrap to complete, as I don't have a desktop publisher app (yet -- waiting on Godot, I mean Affinity Publisher :D ). Adding Text Wrap would save the user a bit of time, allow for more flexibility and really, be a win-win for everybody. I'm not expecting AD to be a DTP app, but don't tell the 64 page comic I'm in the middle of working on, please. It's what I have now and it works, but could work better. And TBH, the method outlined in the OP works really well and is quite simple to do, I actually just create an shape with the pen tool instead of using the outline stroke, as I have a lot fewer nodes to contend with and can make changes easily. Besides, depending on the text alignment and shape of the text "frame" the border of the text "frame" need not be exact.