Reggie1958

Thank you very much Artifex, I’ll have fun with these  👏

Hello everyone!
This is a simple gradient set '.afpalette' I created to share with the community. Let me know if it was of any help to you in your projects!
Great places to use will be Website and App UI development (loading bars, background etc) and logos if you'd like.
Have a great day

Sivadharshan Affinty Pallette - Gradient Set 1.afpalette

I use Google Translate for write Engels.

This post concerns Affinity Photo only (Mac installation)
 
I would like to share with you lovely people some methods to create a pencil sketch from a photograph as an opener to more discussion and ideas.
 
Firstly I must credit Affinity Jack for the first method, Ciao Jack :-D

I'm assuming a Mac installation of Affinity Photo

There are a number of ways to create a pencil line drawing effect from a photograph; here are two quick methods as recipes, the fist one I discovered on the web from Affinity Jack; here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srNqGqVBkxA ,
 
I have seen this method in other places so I don't know who created this originally. The second one is a method I developed myself by experimentation.

First method (Gaussian Blur)
1. load the file.

2. If the file is not raw i.e already processed as an afphoto file or a jpg/tiff/png etc go to step 3. Make whatever raw file adjustments you need to do then press develop and proceed with step 3.

3. Duplicate the initial background pixel layer (Cmd J).

4. Make sure you have selected the new duplicate layer; then invert the layer (Cmd I)

5. Select the blend mode of the layer and set the blend mode as Colour Dodge; note the picture will go blank white or you my see a faint outline ... don't worry step 6 will make it it clear ...

6. With the duplicate layer selected choose from the main menu Layer -> New Live Filter Layer -> Gaussian Blur Filter then move the Radius slider slowly to the right to reveal a sketch outline.

7 Once you have your desired sketch effect, make sure you have the duplicated layer selected and press Cmd U to give you the HSL shift adjustment. Move the Saturation Shift slider fully to the left to give you a black and white pencil effect.


Second method (Edge Detection)
1. load the file.

2. If the file is not raw i.e already processed as an afphoto file or a jpg/tiff/png etc go to step 3. Make whatever raw file adjustments you need to do then press develop and proceed with step 3.

3. Duplicate the initial background pixel layer (Cmd J).

4. Make sure you have selected the new duplicate layer; then select Filters -> Detect -> Detect Edges.

5. Invert the layer (Cmd I)

6. Now with the inverted layer selected press Cmd U to create a new HSL adjustment layer and move the Saturation Shift slider fully to the the left to create a black and white pencil sketch effect.
 
I have created these as Affinity Macros too (for non Raw files of course) but doing them from scratch gives you access to modification of layers within the process to give you more creative scope.

The main difference between these two methods is that the fist one uses a Gaussian blur effect which gives you scope to increase the thickness and intensity of the edges but naturally is more blurred of course. The second method using edge detection gives crisper edges; try experimenting with horizontal or vertical edge detection and using adjustments to layers as you go through the process ... go on .. it's fun :-D

I have also been plying with using the sketch to create a watercolour effect too, much fun with the free watercolour brushes. I haven't got a good process yet with the watercolours but I'm experimenting and when I get a reasonable process I'll share it.


Please join in with ideas and or developed processes if you like; I'm having fun anyway :)

Corrected. Thank you, Alfred, and PaulEC.
For those who are interested… The 1900 Union Flag with a proportion of 4:5 that I had used as a model was in fact effectively created by the War Office, and has become obsolete. There are now 2 organizations:
College of Arms and Earl Marshal (Modern Recommendations 3:5 and 1:2): this flag is used in both civilian and official contexts. The proportions are 3:5 on land and 1:2 at sea. The College of Arms and the Earl Marshal are heraldic and vexillological authorities who issue advice on the use of the flag. King’s Regulations (5:8 and 2:3): This flag is used by the British armed forces and has proportions of 5:8 for a large 3.7m×2.3m flag, and 2:3 for a 1.8m×4.2m flag. Note:
When it comes to screens and specifying the aspect ratio, we generally use the width:height ratio, where width is the first number and height is the second number. For example, a screen with a resolution of 1920 pixels wide and 1080 pixels high is often expressed as a ‘16:9 ratio’ or ‘16:9 format’. When it comes to flags, on the other hand, we tend to talk in terms of proportion, use height:width and generally indicate height in relation to width, where height is the first number and width is the second. For example, the flag of France has a proportion of ’2:3’, which means that its height is 2 units for every 3 units of width. The difference in terminology between screens and flags is historical and conventional, and is simply due to the different conventions established to describe these two types of objects. These two presentations should be unified to avoid confusion…

Please include the option to update all 3 programs at once so we don't have to load each one and update separately.
If a user owns Publisher, I assume it can see the file paths for the Designer and Photo installs.
The updater should check each program's version and make sure D and P are at least the same version as A
 

Apps: All
Platforms: macOS, Windows and iPad
 
We have now added a spiral tool which is available from the shape tools flyout. This is something we have had many requests for, but also varying requests as to the type of result wanted. For that reason we have tried to make this as flexible as possible, both offering different types of spiral and variables to adjust.
When you create a spiral you will see from the context toolbar the different options available. Here are some examples of what you can create with the tool:
Spiral Type: Linear

Spiral Type: Decaying

Spiral Type: Semi-Circular
This type replicates the way many people have been creating a spiral in Affinity - effectively by joining decreasing semi circular arcs together.  With this type we also offer a counter Semi-circular option which returns the spiral back on itself:

Spiral Type: Fibonacci

Spiral Type: Plotted

 
 

Hi All,

Below is the list of all new feature and improvements which are included in the 2.2 beta.
To learn more about these features please click on the link to go to each feature's dedicated post. To give feedback or report bugs against any of these features please reply to that same post (also check out bug reporting and feedback tips).
Features and improvements affecting all platforms
OCIO v2 Support (new in build 1931)
Custom text variables (new in build 1903)
Additional keyboard shortcuts for brush tools (new in build 1903)
Alt-click new layer automatically adds selection to that new layer (new in build 1903)
Cross References added to Affinity Publisher
Greyscale and no-FX view mode options added
Change guide colour
Long press tool shortcuts
Custom date formats available in Publisher
All supported image files now available from File->Open in Publisher
Find and replace includes scope and result count
Go to previously viewed spread
Create symbol option added to Layer Menu
Additional options when creating indexes
Windows and macOS features and improvements
Object creation data entry (new in build 1931)
Move data entry (new in build 1931)
Data merge allows fields to set URLs, File locations, emails and anchors (anchors new in build 1931)
Delete node added to right click menu
"Select All on Current Layer" option now available
Grid presets and favourite fonts now sync between apps on device
iPad features and improvements
Decimal place accuracy preferences added to iPad
"Prefer to keep selection" preference added


Getting the 2.2 beta
If you have not enrolled into the beta program yet and would like to take part, you can do so here. This will immediately give you access to the latest 2.2 beta builds to try for yourself.
If you are already enrolled in the beta program you have two options:
If you still have the 2.1 beta installed, you can now run up those beta versions and you will be prompted to update them to the 2.2 beta. If you have uninstalled the 2.1 beta, you will need to go back to Your Account -> Downloads and product keys and find your previous order for the Affinity Beta Software Program, and you can download the 2.2 beta from there. Thanks,
Ash

Here's a list of some of the bugs which have been fixed in beta build 2.2.0. 1881 
Please reply in this forum only to comment on any fixes which are in this list (in particular to let us know if you notice that something we say is fixed isn't!) To report any new bugs please do that against the relevant new feature post, or if unrelated to new functionality in the Other bugs & issues forum.
Bugs affecting all platforms
With the Artistic Text Tool, status bar displays different text when point is over panel versus document view  End note formatting bleeds into note number and next end note. AFB-7551 PDF Export isn't exporting the stroke on some curves/fonts correctly AFB-6868 Frames saved from videos using the Windows photo app import with a DPI of zero  AFP-6228 Initial Words and Notes do not function as expected  AFB-7553 Clicking master page text with the Move tool switches to the Text tool  Multi word text selection is lost if you use Capitalisation options  Crash when doing Break on a curve node  Lens correction for Leica DG Nocticron 42.5 F1.2 not being applied automatically AFP-6170 User File - Nikon RAW Lens profile is applied, but does not correct as expected  Vector Flood Fill Crash  Using Artboard tool. Selecting an object on an unselected artboard. Selects just the object not the artboard on v2.  AFD-6175 Replacing a PDF with the attached one causes Designer to crash  User File - Crash when enabling document Baseline Grid due to Running Headers on Master Pages AFB-7762 Cross-References do not use Endnote number as Note Number value, instead shows 0  Cross Reference can show the wrong page as value AFB-7501 A cross-reference may unexpectedly become invalid when inserting another to the same target  Cross-references should have Display As > Anchor Name.  Crash editing a cross reference in a specific file  It is possible to apply kerning before the first letter of a frame, which then applies it after the letter AFB-7654 Newly placed content is immediately selected in the document view but not in Resource Manager  2 node Curve moves position when Transform >Length is changed on a multi-page document. AFB-7701 Bugs affecting Desktop (Windows and macOS)
Placing RAW file on Master A and opening in Develop crashes app, no crash on other Master pages AFB-7724 Objects move unexpectedly when grouped AFD-2602 On Paragraph panel, text that explains when there are no tab stops is truncated (macOS) or not shown (Windows)  Impossible to move a layer above a picture frame if the frame is at the top of the stack AFB-6974 Crash exporting to PDF when using a specific font  Filter by [No Style] currently filters by all styles  Page re-numbering using Books panel not working AFB-7758 Library Panel: Inconsistencies with Renaming, Deleting and Editing macros  German UI - Stroke flyout - text overlapping icons AFP-2551 When an anchor targeted by a cross-ref is renamed, the cross-ref's name on the Cross-References panel does not update  DOCX - numbering/bullets and list levels not matching word when placed  Crash inserting a page before Page 1 (maybe file specific) AFB-7524 Linked documents not rendering correctly AFB-7663 User File - Preflight from book panel crashes app  New Document dialog: Category title inconsistencies   Non-breaking hyphens no longer render compared to 2.0.4, though does not affect ALL fonts AFB-7739 Crash adding pages into a facing page document with flowing text AFB-7725 Multi Page PDFs with Bleed fail to display correctly when placed. AFD-6559 OK button remains greyed out after entering valid email address AFB-7771 PDF bleed differs when exporting using the Books panel   Changing the DPI of a document causes single pages to inherit size of selection in "Show Dimensions of:" Bugs affecting Windows
Device Independent Bitmap paste is empty if copied from Affinity AFP-6191 Table Stroke via the Context toolbar doesn't work first time AFB-7742 Vector Formats are zoomable in Export Preview using +/- or CTRL + 1-4  Export preview is zoomable using +/-   Dragging a swatch using the Vector Flood Fill tool fails to preview on Windows  "OK" isn't disabled if no valid cross reference exists in the Insert Cross Reference dialog  Large delay when editing a table formats stroke  Studiolink - MSI install - Non default folder  Index - Incorrect  out of date message and doesn't refresh correctly AFB-7577 Selecting a Studio Panel name also selects an option within the studio behind it, when the studio swap causes a change in height PD-705 Layers panel scrolls when dragging layer outside of panel.  AFP-5710 Colour input method from the Context Toolbar well is not retained after restarting the app PD-674 Crash double-clicking colour swatch with custom Windows scaling AFP-5811 Customise Tools discrepancy (macOS vs Windows) AFP-5870 Unable to rename layer by clicking away  Unable to set Matte to white using sliders for formats that don't support transparency  Changing the Opacity of an object via the Colour panel dropdown fails to visually update the object on the canvas  PNG with Selection Only shows white background after toggling Embed ICC profiles  Resource Manager: Show in Explorer is untranslated or blank AFB-7805 Unable to resize Arrowheads with the mouse wheel AFP-6243 Shift modifier to synchronise colour sliders stops functioning when sliders reach '100%' Using the Transparent Swatch as a Matte option causes the next Matte colour selection to fail to apply, but subsequent changes work   Bugs affecting macOS
Crash after deleting a template file AFB-7747 Text Selection when scrolling across multiple pages AFB-7614 Data Merge sources stored on a Cloud drive won't update if the cloud file isn't downloaded  Preflight panel may not display page number containing a placed PDF that has issues and inappropriately show Fix button  An Above Below cross reference to a pinned object always says 'below'  Application (running) doesn't maximize when we click the icon on the dock AFP-4836 After deselecting a cross-reference on the Cross-References panel, it's auto-selected next time the panel is opened  App occasionally crashes when you press Return within Insert Cross-Reference dialog's Filter text field  Cross-References panel and fields do not indicate a cross-reference is invalid if its target has been deleted  Cross references displayed as paragraph numbers may unexpectedly display zero   Buttons on Cross-References panel remain unexpectedly available after deselecting a cross-reference  Context Toolbar value boxes loose focus after the first arrow key press  "Gray" instead of "Grey" in the Levels adjustment dialog.  Alignment dropdown is not aligned correctly  Vector Flood - "Add bitmap from file" button looks different on MacOS  UI menu inconsistencies for Edit in Photo/Designer/Publisher options AFB-6217 CTRL run-up > Clear user data pop-up > Deactivate button > Text has low contrast  Add Master Menu - Entering a Name and then switching between spread/page clears the name field  AFB-7169 Acknowledging the duplicate style name warning dismisses the edit style menu AFB-7170 Multiple languages, UI (Font UI size Large): Keyboard Shortcuts panel issues (overlapping buttons) AFP-4510 On Text Frame panel, tooltips on various stroke-related controls are incorrect or inconsistent  Font UI Size: Large clipped in RAM/Disk usage fields  Layers Opacity % is clipped using Large Font UI Size  Export conflicts dialog in Export Persona is clipped when using Font UI Size: Large AFP-5360 Channel Mixer dialog labels are cut off using Large Font UI Size. AFP-2867 Dragging RGB Hex label causes app hang with Lock Colourspace is disabled AFD-6556 Portuguese - Large Font Issues- Preferences  and Stroke Panel    Localisation - Strokes Panel - Mac AFD-3547 Rename Layer/artboard dialogs not fully translated  Collapsed topics on the Index panel automatically expand when you add a new topic  Stroke join type renders randomly on M1 devices AFB-7760 App lock when closing file AFB-7821 On the Edit Table Format dialog, the Escape key is bound to Reset rather than Cancel 
on iOS Bugs affecting iPad
Guide marks are much harder to see on iPad ruler  On Transform panel's Alignment Options, pop-up menu for alignment scope is disabled  Spelling > Learn spelling learns the next word in the list and not the current selection  Place panel cannot be re-invoked if dismissed  In Settings, the tail of the 'g' in the heading is cut off  Rulers can be re-enabled with preview mode still enabled  Ruler Marks get incorrectly scaled with document zoom  Selecting Preview Mode from menu doesn’t update toolbar button’s state  Tapping the question mark in the bottom right corner does not add labels / tooltips  to items in the context toolbar  Tab Stop Advance studio is missing a couple of labels  When applying a master to specified pages, the on-screen keyboard obscures the field in which you're typing page numbers  Alignment options do not respect the document measurement units and always show px as default.  Styles dropdown is offset slightly  Version number shown in settings is only the last 4 digits of the build number  Picture Frame Context Toolbar doesn't show Anchor tooltip/label when using the help button  Stroke width cannot exceed 100 in any unit in Stroke Panel AFD-6589 On Text panel's Bullets and Numbering section, 'Tab stop' option's label is overset in French and Portuguese App crash when opening section manager - File Specific AFB-7788

For those who will find it useful. Hopefully organised to your linking.
 
AutoCAD Color Palette
Color Palette of 256 *AutoCAD Colors with names as AutoCAD Index numbers.
https://archidolt.gumroad.com/l/cadcolaff

 
RAL Classic Color
Color Palette of all 216 RAL Classic colors with number and name in English.
https://archidolt.gumroad.com/l/ralcolaff

 
NCS Color Palette
Color Palette of all 1950 of NCS (The Natural Color System)  colors  named with their code.
https://archidolt.gumroad.com/l/ncscolaff

I agree with Norbert;
As it happens I too am a retired Software Engineer having worked in Aerospace and then Medical technology industries for over three decades and I know the level of work and dedication  involved in delivering a major project, given the small team I think the Affinity have done exceptionally well.
I don't really need V2 having had V1 (photo) since 2015 and I picked up the other two apps as they came out. In all that time I have enjoyed free upgrades and a very open development team. I value the team, what they are about and their dedication, knowing the complexities of the kind of development involved first hand I'm impressed and want them to succeed. So when V2 arrived I got the universal license out of support for serif.
Of course there are bugs and issues for such a major re-write of the code base and I'm okay with that; I know they will do what is required. As for paid updates I can name a few software companies that will charge for updates every 6 months, I get pestering emails asking me to buy apparently the next shiny thing having purchased a version just a few months previous, so Serif get a massive thumbs up from me.
By all means report bugs and ask for features and timelines for fixes but for goodness sake peeps take it easy on the entitlement; kindness doesn't cost anything. 
 
Reggie
 

I agree with Norbert;
As it happens I too am a retired Software Engineer having worked in Aerospace and then Medical technology industries for over three decades and I know the level of work and dedication  involved in delivering a major project, given the small team I think the Affinity have done exceptionally well.
I don't really need V2 having had V1 (photo) since 2015 and I picked up the other two apps as they came out. In all that time I have enjoyed free upgrades and a very open development team. I value the team, what they are about and their dedication, knowing the complexities of the kind of development involved first hand I'm impressed and want them to succeed. So when V2 arrived I got the universal license out of support for serif.
Of course there are bugs and issues for such a major re-write of the code base and I'm okay with that; I know they will do what is required. As for paid updates I can name a few software companies that will charge for updates every 6 months, I get pestering emails asking me to buy apparently the next shiny thing having purchased a version just a few months previous, so Serif get a massive thumbs up from me.
By all means report bugs and ask for features and timelines for fixes but for goodness sake peeps take it easy on the entitlement; kindness doesn't cost anything. 
 
Reggie
 

In this Affinity Photo v2 tutorial I show how compound masks can be so useful in your workflow. I saw this tutorial done on Photoshop by Mood on YouTube, but without compound masks and thought about how much better compound masks makes it in Affinity.
https://youtu.be/vuRlbRMUA8k
Note I also have an iPad version of this tutorial on y channel

I agree with Norbert;
As it happens I too am a retired Software Engineer having worked in Aerospace and then Medical technology industries for over three decades and I know the level of work and dedication  involved in delivering a major project, given the small team I think the Affinity have done exceptionally well.
I don't really need V2 having had V1 (photo) since 2015 and I picked up the other two apps as they came out. In all that time I have enjoyed free upgrades and a very open development team. I value the team, what they are about and their dedication, knowing the complexities of the kind of development involved first hand I'm impressed and want them to succeed. So when V2 arrived I got the universal license out of support for serif.
Of course there are bugs and issues for such a major re-write of the code base and I'm okay with that; I know they will do what is required. As for paid updates I can name a few software companies that will charge for updates every 6 months, I get pestering emails asking me to buy apparently the next shiny thing having purchased a version just a few months previous, so Serif get a massive thumbs up from me.
By all means report bugs and ask for features and timelines for fixes but for goodness sake peeps take it easy on the entitlement; kindness doesn't cost anything. 
 
Reggie
 

These are no longer the latest macOS Affinity V2 customer beta builds (see last post) in this thread:
Affinity Designer 2 Customer Beta build 2.0.3.3 for macOS (NEW) Affinity Photo 2 Customer Beta build 2.0.3.316 for macOS (NEW) Affinity Publisher Customer Beta build 2.0.3.1674 RC for macOS  (NEW) This is a quick patch which fixes some urgent issues and will be a short beta cycle, so we can release this update as soon as possible. The purpose of this beta is to give you an opportunity to try the fixes and report on any possible regressions we may have introduced since the current release 2.0.0. This forums are not for reporting bugs found in the release builds or for telling us what is not yet fixed in this beta. We are also planning a larger update with more fixes and improvements which will beta here in the New Year.
To get downloads for these beta build and see the release notes and please go to the relevant forum and find the pinned post at the top of the forum.
Please follow this thread for forum notifications of new V2 Mac beta builds

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
This is a duplicate post of a thread that is now locked and moved to the questions forum

I agree with Norbert;
As it happens I too am a retired Software Engineer having worked in Aerospace and then Medical technology industries for over three decades and I know the level of work and dedication  involved in delivering a major project, given the small team I think the Affinity have done exceptionally well.
I don't really need V2 having had V1 (photo) since 2015 and I picked up the other two apps as they came out. In all that time I have enjoyed free upgrades and a very open development team. I value the team, what they are about and their dedication, knowing the complexities of the kind of development involved first hand I'm impressed and want them to succeed. So when V2 arrived I got the universal license out of support for serif.
Of course there are bugs and issues for such a major re-write of the code base and I'm okay with that; I know they will do what is required. As for paid updates I can name a few software companies that will charge for updates every 6 months, I get pestering emails asking me to buy apparently the next shiny thing having purchased a version just a few months previous, so Serif get a massive thumbs up from me.
By all means report bugs and ask for features and timelines for fixes but for goodness sake peeps take it easy on the entitlement; kindness doesn't cost anything. 
 
Reggie
 

I agree with Norbert;
As it happens I too am a retired Software Engineer having worked in Aerospace and then Medical technology industries for over three decades and I know the level of work and dedication  involved in delivering a major project, given the small team I think the Affinity have done exceptionally well.
I don't really need V2 having had V1 (photo) since 2015 and I picked up the other two apps as they came out. In all that time I have enjoyed free upgrades and a very open development team. I value the team, what they are about and their dedication, knowing the complexities of the kind of development involved first hand I'm impressed and want them to succeed. So when V2 arrived I got the universal license out of support for serif.
Of course there are bugs and issues for such a major re-write of the code base and I'm okay with that; I know they will do what is required. As for paid updates I can name a few software companies that will charge for updates every 6 months, I get pestering emails asking me to buy apparently the next shiny thing having purchased a version just a few months previous, so Serif get a massive thumbs up from me.
By all means report bugs and ask for features and timelines for fixes but for goodness sake peeps take it easy on the entitlement; kindness doesn't cost anything. 
 
Reggie
 

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

Could we stop the bickering, please?
There is no reason to fight between us.

Oh, come now. Let's be realistic, and compare Publisher's development progress with InDesign:
InDesign 1: Everything new! (1991) <--> Publisher R1: Everything New! (2019)
Both were products developed from scratch by companies with a deep understanding and experience developing design software.
Either first release lacked footnotes or book support. But Publisher R1 offers a wide range of features that were only introduced in InDesign by version 2 ~three years later in 2022: transparency, TOC, indexes, glyphs panel, tables - to name but a few things.
And MANY features that are part of Publisher R1 only became available after years and years of development later in subsequent InDesign releases: multi-page PDF placing, bullets and numbering, dynamic spelling, IDML format, multiple page sizes in a single file, primary text frame, Hunspell dictionaries, anchored objects, data merging tools, doc info fields, hyperlinks (pdf), smart guides, effects, and so on and so forth.
InDesign 2 <--> Publisher R2
InDesign became somewhat usable compared to QuarkXPress three years later. Rather lacking, but it was the first release that professional users (including myself) began testing the waters with. SO MUCH was missing compared to Publisher R2. But one thing InDesign 2 had going for it: OS X was supported. QXP only supported that OS much later, and it was one reason why Mac users installed it.
The InDesign developers also inexplicably removed useful features such as SVG export in 2008 with CS4, however. (Publisher has been a gods' end in this regard: I have converted quite a few InDesign publications by opening the IDML, fixing a few things, and export the pages to SVG! 🙂 )
Version R2 of Publisher is a far more mature product compared to InDesign 2, 3, or even CS2 (which was released 8 years after version 1).
I am aware it is not possible to compare the development cycles of the two programs directly. Affinity Publisher started development in a time when dev tools have become easier and more efficient to develop with. But still, to state that development is lagging or slow is rather out-of-touch with the realities of complex software development.
In fact, I am quite impressed with what the Affinity devs have accomplished so far with Publisher. They are far ahead of the curve compared to InDesign's development cycle.
All that said, I do agree that there are a few inexplicable omissions in Publisher that seem so foundational to publishing in general that prevent myself from using it - because I simply cannot produce a press ready PDF. My personal pet peeve is the lack of 1bit bitmaps and support to output these properly in a PDF. The lack of spreads beyond two pages is another one. And reflowable epub export would be grand.
Yet as it is said: Rome was not built in a day. Neither was InDesign, and the same holds true for Affinity. Even though I cannot use Publisher yet for much of my work and still rely on InDesign, I position myself as a pragmatic person. I trust these issues will be tackled and solved in the not-so-long term. I am patient. And there is no need to flip over in anger over software or what could have been.
(I continued to use QuarkXPress till 6-7 years later after InDesign's first release).

which has so much to do with Affinity V2, updates, pricing and no subscription

I agree with Norbert;
As it happens I too am a retired Software Engineer having worked in Aerospace and then Medical technology industries for over three decades and I know the level of work and dedication  involved in delivering a major project, given the small team I think the Affinity have done exceptionally well.
I don't really need V2 having had V1 (photo) since 2015 and I picked up the other two apps as they came out. In all that time I have enjoyed free upgrades and a very open development team. I value the team, what they are about and their dedication, knowing the complexities of the kind of development involved first hand I'm impressed and want them to succeed. So when V2 arrived I got the universal license out of support for serif.
Of course there are bugs and issues for such a major re-write of the code base and I'm okay with that; I know they will do what is required. As for paid updates I can name a few software companies that will charge for updates every 6 months, I get pestering emails asking me to buy apparently the next shiny thing having purchased a version just a few months previous, so Serif get a massive thumbs up from me.
By all means report bugs and ask for features and timelines for fixes but for goodness sake peeps take it easy on the entitlement; kindness doesn't cost anything. 
 
Reggie
 

Wow! Version 2 of Affinity is here and with a 40% discount!