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So what is the long term roadmap?


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Affinity has been around for a while now and at this point, it is still not a replacement for Adobe.

There are a lot of good things, but the development is just taking way too long.

There is a golden opportunity that is being missed, because a lot of people are fed up with Adobe.

So what exactly is the long range plan and what are the features that are going to be added?

There is a lot of stuff that is not there (including proper plugin support) and I wonder if any of the developers are actually listening.

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Yes, they listen.

Generally, they do not comment on future developments. And they no longer expose their roadmap to our view as they once did.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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16 minutes ago, nik78 said:

but the development is just taking way too long

Limited human resources can be a factor. So let's hire some more developers and double the sales price or change to subscription. Not good? Thought so.

19 minutes ago, nik78 said:

There is a lot of stuff that is not there (including proper plugin support) and I wonder if any of the developers are actually listening.

They are listening. Adding preflight or collecting content in APu are a sign of actually listening.

21 minutes ago, nik78 said:

Affinity has been around for a while now and at this point, it is still not a replacement for Adobe.

Speaking just for ME, it is a 99% replacement. 1% due to the fact that I still need Illustrator for my vinyl cutter due to the missing plugin support in ADesigner.

------
Windows 10 | i5-8500 CPU | Intel UHD 630 Graphics | 32 GB RAM | Latest Retail and Beta versions of complete Affinity range installed

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Most professionals I know don't see it as a replacement at this point.
It can be used in addition to Adobe, but there is too much missing.

Not telling people what is planned makes no sense to me and limited resources is an excuse.

If they were listening, some basic features that people have been asking for (proper percentage scaling boxes for one)
would be there after, what 4 or 5 long years? Not sure where they are heading with these programs at all.

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4 hours ago, nik78 said:

Most professionals I know don't see it as a replacement at this point. It can be used in addition to Adobe, but there is too much missing.

Not sure where they are heading with these programs at all.

I would gladly pay more for more. Otherwise Serif can just stop here and issue bugfixes for 10 years making users with simple needs happy. If the slow pace of development we have witnessed the last years is telling about things to come, not much will happen anyway. 

I have yet to meet ANYONE in a professional context who even HEARD about the Affinity line. It is budget software for a specific segment of creatives.

Perhaps it will change. I don't have time to wait. I use Designer for digital painting - hobby work - art if you like. I enjoy it very much for that but meet the vector feature limits constantly. Every. Single. Day.

Professionally Illustrator and Photoshop cannot be replaced in my line of work -  of course feature wise - and workarounds are costly time consumers besides being frustrating.

Free updates for FIVE years is probably smart in the establishing proces - but not in the long run.

So much is missing in Designer. And it is impossible to guess where it is heading. I don't expect replacements for Adobes splendid programs. But I expect more than coloured pencils and a few extras.

  • "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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10 hours ago, Jowday said:

If the slow pace of development we have witnessed the last years is telling about things to come, not much will happen anyway. 

Hi @Jowday,

I cannot help but asking where you have been the 'last years'? We have seen the release of iPad versions of Designer and the introduction of Publisher with quite some new additions after it's initial release. This is not something I would call 'slow pace'.

I know that you are a regular at the forum. That makes me wonder why you come to think development of the whole Affinity suite happens at a slow pace? I am not familiar about Adobe's progress nowadays but during the time I was using CS even this suite did not develop much faster (but this may be my subjective point of view I do not want to insist on).

Cheers,
d.

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/9/2020 at 2:57 AM, dominik said:

Hi @Jowday,

I cannot help but asking where you have been the 'last years'? We have seen the release of iPad versions of Designer and the introduction of Publisher with quite some new additions after it's initial release. This is not something I would call 'slow pace'.

I know that you are a regular at the forum. That makes me wonder why you come to think development of the whole Affinity suite happens at a slow pace? I am not familiar about Adobe's progress nowadays but during the time I was using CS even this suite did not develop much faster (but this may be my subjective point of view I do not want to insist on).

Cheers,
d.

No one's asking for my 2 cents, but here I am... It's not a matter of comparing to Adobe (which is a HUGE company that delivers large updates twice a year on every product), but a matter of seeing progress in some fronts. There are features like free distort and meshes which have been asked by the Designer community for over 4 years now. They were in the roadmap, but now the public roadmap is gone, so we can't tell if something is being done about those features or not.

I understand that Designer for iPad and Publisher have been released in the meantime, but it seems that the Serif team can only work on one product at a time. So if they're making Publisher for 3 years and Designer for iPad for 2 years, that's 5 years of no substantial updates in Photo and Designer. This is, of course, my own speculation about how the company works. I can't find another explanation for this. However being in the software industry for almost 16 years I have seen really, really small teams deliver features on a regular base on different products, without entering this - really weird, to me - state of no progress in certain projects. Designer is pretty much left behind, receiving only smaller quality of life improvement updates.

Now, it might not be Serif's goal to have all of Illustrator features and make a replacement for it, but if it's not their goal they haven't stated what their goal is either.

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On 4/8/2020 at 4:20 PM, Joachim_L said:

Limited human resources can be a factor. So let's hire some more developers and double the sales price or change to subscription. Not good? Thought so.

I also see too many important features missing. Now Affinity is a great solution for some amateurs and offers much for this user group. For many professional use cases it is far from being able to replace Adobe products (and they do not have much real competition in the Publishing World, that's why they can force their users to go to a subscription model).

But I think it would be a great idea to hire additional good software developers to speed up the improvements in Affinity. I am sure many would not be willing or able to pay more, but many would be willing. One possibility coming to my mind is the license model Reaper (Audio) is handling. They do not look the programs at all and believe that (at least long term) users will register the program -- which is mandatory after the trial time. This seems to work btw. They charge a modest amount in the same range like Affinity (60 bucks) -- for personal use. As soon one earns money with the program you have to pay a price roughly 4-times higher -- which is still attractive and totally reasonable for commercial use. Updates are included for the same major version. Then you have to pay the full price for the next version. Here I think they could offer an upgrade price, but they don't...

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I think not having the roadmap is worse than having one, because people are now asking for the same features over and over. Even without clear schedules. at least a some sort of acknowledgement checklist would be nice to see. Plus it would give a resource to link to when people make repeated posts for known topics.

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6 hours ago, wtrmlnjuc said:

I think not having the roadmap is worse than having one, because people are now asking for the same features over and over.

People are asking or requesting the same things over and over again wether there is a roadmap or not. It was not different during the time when the roadmap was still public.

This is partly due to the fact that not every forum user does find it (this is not their fault, it's just a huge forum) and partly due to the fact that many users think their request is the most important 'must have' in the world 😉

Basically this is how an open forum like this works. And I think, seeing some feature on a roadmap doesn't help much because the feature is not there and one has to find a different solution in the mean time.

Cheers,
d.

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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