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I hope that everyone is doing alright during this difficult time. I wanted to offer some “in the trenches” reporting now that I am working from home. I must use adobe products since that is what my work uses. the adobe cloud software is buggy, laggy and generally fraught with fails, and bugs.

By contrast, whenever I use Affinity software, Its like having a brand-new computer by contrast. And Im not even talking about the superior workflow of Affinity. Im just talking about meat-and-potatoes tasks. One day, Ill upgrade my machine, but only because it will eventually fail as all hardware does. But for now, when I use Affinity Design, Photo and Publisher, my hardware performs so well that I wouldnt hesitate to do any of the things that a designer / illustrator wants or needs to do. I now use adobe, literally, only because I am paid to do so.

I gladly use Affinity software, which provides a far richer, more effective experience than Ive ever had with adobe. Thank you for developing it and please continue!!

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I cannot agree more with you about Affinity products. I mainly use Designer which I find very powerful. Even on this eleven year old laptop with Windows 7, 512 GB SSD, all 3 applications are fast enough. There are features lacking however, Affinity is slowly catching up and has many other functionality which compensate for which is lacking.

I used DrawPlus (up to the latest version) before Affinity. When Designer became available, I didn't look back and just started to draw. In the beginning, I missed the many templates and standard artwork available for DrawPlus but not long thereafter, I was up and running again.

The best feature on Designer recently added is the "Template" creation. This is simply invaluable and very nice to have. Also the re-organized document setup dialog, is a very good idea.

All by all, I can highly recommend Affinity Designer to everyone doing serious illustration work.

Chris

 

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Hi, I am looking at the Affinity products and Ihave been using the Adobe CS3 for many yearsbut suddenly none of them work because I have a Mac with High Sierra - OSX 10.13.6 and there is a conflict which Adobe says I have to upgrade to something called the cloud and pay a monthly fee, and Apple says I can't downgrade to Sierra - OSX 10.12- without a complete system wipe of the hard drive and then do a very complicated procedure to get to Sierra and then go into the terminal and make changes there, and I have a couple of questions before I download and buy the Affinity products, all of which seem adequate for my needs. First off do I get physical discs, DVDs, that have the programs on them, and not something I have to work on in the cloud. I have no interest in the cloud at all since my internet connection is very slow and drops out often due to my seriously remote location. Secondly if I do purchase these programs, can I import and use Adobe products such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, into the appropriate Affinity products and then continue working on them there? Thak you very much, Michael Dunn

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54 minutes ago, Michael Dunn said:

First off do I get physical discs, DVDs, that have the programs on them, and not something I have to work on in the cloud.

The software is provided as downloads, but you're not working in the cloud - once the software's installed it runs from your local drive.  Point updates are are free and are provided the same way.

54 minutes ago, Michael Dunn said:

Secondly if I do purchase these programs, can I import and use Adobe products such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, into the appropriate Affinity products and then continue working on them there?

There is some compatibility, but it's not 100% - it would probably be best to install the trial products and see what they can do for you.  The trial period is currently 90 days, so you've plenty of time to try them out.

AP, AD & APub user, running Win10

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On 4/6/2020 at 9:07 AM, VectorCat said:

I hope that everyone is doing alright during this difficult time. I wanted to offer some “in the trenches” reporting now that I am working from home. I must use adobe products since that is what my work uses. the adobe cloud software is buggy, laggy and generally fraught with fails, and bugs.

By contrast, whenever I use Affinity software, Its like having a brand-new computer by contrast. And Im not even talking about the superior workflow of Affinity. Im just talking about meat-and-potatoes tasks. One day, Ill upgrade my machine, but only because it will eventually fail as all hardware does. But for now, when I use Affinity Design, Photo and Publisher, my hardware performs so well that I wouldnt hesitate to do any of the things that a designer / illustrator wants or needs to do. I now use adobe, literally, only because I am paid to do so.

I gladly use Affinity software, which provides a far richer, more effective experience than Ive ever had with adobe. Thank you for developing it and please continue!!

I would say there is something wrong on your end. I use and have been using Adobe software for along time, think I converted our shop over in the CS2 days, at least for Indesign. We were all Quark back then for layout. I currently use Adobe CC (Indesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop) daily and have no lag, no real bugs and no fails. Sure there will be an issue now and then with a feature, it is rare. Currently the latest version of Photoshop the content aware crop does not work so I stepped back a version. Other then that it is incredibly powerful software that has been well refined over the years. Now Affinity is quick, very snappy and responsive no one can deny that. I would be curious to see how things go though in 5 years when development is still using the same base coding and adding and adding to it. Personally I would not say Affinity provides a richer and more effective experience because there are big issues that make it unusable for pro work. The big one is how Publisher handles PDF's. There are countless threads on the forum about this issue and it has been there since beta. Of all the other things I would like to see to stand up against Indesign this is the biggest one. Affinity has done a great job and price is almost unbelievably cheap and it is still early days for them, but it is not a real adobe substitute for a lot of people yet. Would love it to be a real rival for Adobe as they have not had any competition in a long time. 

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4 hours ago, wonderings said:

I would say there is something wrong on your end. I use and have been using Adobe software for along time,

I've been using Illustrator since it came on a floppy. I recall precisely when Adobe software took their wrong turn, early in 1998. A formerly stable set of software tools began to be the bugfest they are now today. It's the same buggy experience no matter what platform - Mac or PC. It fares better on Mac, naturally, but for my money, it's a shadow of what it once was. I'm very grateful for Affinity's tools, which have utterly leapfrogged Adobe.

You could say that nothing is really quite on-par with Adobe, but...neither is Adobe on-par with what it used to be.   😉

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4 hours ago, wonderings said:

I would say there is something wrong on your end. I use and have been using Adobe software for along time, think I converted our shop over in the CS2 days, at least for Indesign. We were all Quark back then for layout. I currently use Adobe CC (Indesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop) daily and have no lag, no real bugs and no fails. Sure there will be an issue now and then with a feature, it is rare. Currently the latest version of Photoshop the content aware crop does not work so I stepped back a version. Other then that it is incredibly powerful software that has been well refined over the years. Now Affinity is quick, very snappy and responsive no one can deny that. I would be curious to see how things go though in 5 years when development is still using the same base coding and adding and adding to it. Personally I would not say Affinity provides a richer and more effective experience because there are big issues that make it unusable for pro work. The big one is how Publisher handles PDF's. There are countless threads on the forum about this issue and it has been there since beta. Of all the other things I would like to see to stand up against Indesign this is the biggest one. Affinity has done a great job and price is almost unbelievably cheap and it is still early days for them, but it is not a real adobe substitute for a lot of people yet. Would love it to be a real rival for Adobe as they have not had any competition in a long time. 

Indeed. Lets see how Designer behaves when the featureset goes beyond the very limited features we have today.

I too have absolutely no noticeable problems with bugs or instability in my daily work with Adobe CC 2020. Compared to other programs there is no difference. My computer is not top of the line either. Both Affinity and Adobe programs runs without issues. The real difference is what they CAN do and the quality of the OUTPUT. And performance of features that require clever coding and architecture.

Comparing Designer with Illustrator is almost like comparing Wordpad with Word, so no wonder it is a slimmer product resourcewise.

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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13 hours ago, VectorCat said:

I've been using Illustrator since it came on a floppy. I recall precisely when Adobe software took their wrong turn, early in 1998. A formerly stable set of software tools began to be the bugfest they are now today. It's the same buggy experience no matter what platform - Mac or PC. It fares better on Mac, naturally, but for my money, it's a shadow of what it once was. I'm very grateful for Affinity's tools, which have utterly leapfrogged Adobe.

You could say that nothing is really quite on-par with Adobe, but...neither is Adobe on-par with what it used to be.   😉

I would still say there is something wrong on your end if you are finding it unstable. How long you have used it does not matter when stability is in question. It is most likely something to do with your computer if the problems and bugs are not repeatable on other peoples machines running the same version. 

I think the noticeable improvements stopped early in CC's release, but it did not go downhill in anyway I can see and I use Adobe CC daily, it is the tool I use to make my money. Software runs fast, rarely crashes and has all the features and tools I need. Again Affinity is doing a great job, but it is still new and missing many things. Bang for your buck you can't beat it and would say you get more then what you pay for with it, but it is still not on the same level as Adobe and will not be for a while. I look forward to the day when standards come in question, no longer will it just be assumed Adobe is the best way to go. We need competition in this market, it only makes things better for us the end user. 

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My systems and those of my colleagues are fine; we report the same Adobe bugginess. The amount of time I've been using software is important for the same reason that experience is important.

I know that you're trying to promote a good discussion and not just trolling, and I thank you for your continuation of good-discussion practices.

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1 hour ago, VectorCat said:

My systems and those of my colleagues are fine; we report the same Adobe bugginess. The amount of time I've been using software is important for the same reason that experience is important.

I know that you're trying to promote a good discussion and not just trolling, and I thank you for your continuation of good-discussion practices.

Well glad you found a solution outside of Adobe then! I know I hate the subscription model that we have been forced into. I own Publisher, Designer and Photo because the price is insanely cheap and always looking for someone to push Adobe and bring about competition which is only good for us the end user. For me the majority of my work is done in Indesign and Publisher is just not there yet that I could even think about replacing Indesign with it. I have used Designer a little on a few files I have in production and Designer worked well and even simpler achieving some tasks. While I use and am knowledgable in Illustrator and Photoshop my strengths are with Indesign. 

I am in design and print, out of curiosity what field are you in?

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