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Time for a Pro Version?


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Now hear me out before the lynch mob pipes up but....

Is there now a case for considering the release of a Pro version for say £200-£300 to get more funds in to the Affinity team to allow the development of the software further? I note a number of useful tools missing from the likes of designer like Trace and path roughen etc. but realise that development is no where near the resource levels of Adobe. So perhaps like Sketchup, there could be the current £50 entry versions and said Pro versions. those content to use the basic version can do so for nominal cost whilst Pro users can help the software develop via fair increase in the buy in level.

I am no designer but we use Phot & Designer in our workflow to a degree so are therefore creating "professional content" I would consider the above 

Thoughts?

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It is a bit of a chicken and egg situation. In order to develop a Pro version, Serif would need an injection of capital which it would not get until it had a Pro version for sale.

I'm sure that the economists have a solution to this involving massive bank loans.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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19 minutes ago, haakoo said:

I for one hope they pull it through so that it can be good software without to many parties(external licenses/investors) involved.

I am not getting this old, until they substituted all of these:

LIBPng, Independent JPEG Group, LibTiff, GifLib, Zlib, Boost, Fast dynamic cast, Little Color Management System, iMedia Browser Framework, FreeType, The Anti-Grain Geometry Project, WEBP, JXRLib, Expat XML Parser, LibRaw, LibExif, LibOpenJpeg, FLANN, Adobe XMP SDK, exiftool, OpenEXR, lensfun (Engine), lensfun (Database), OpenColorIO, Pystring, TinyXML, yaml-cpp, PTex (Mutex), Little CMS, MD5, argparse, JsonCpp, jbig2dec, X3F Tools

------
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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9 minutes ago, Arun Sarkar said:

PDFlib

Strangely this is indeed missing in the Third party licenses.

------
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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1 hour ago, haakoo said:

From what I gather it doesn't have to much to do with funding purse.
They want to keep things in house with just a minimum of developers working a case/project.
You might think that's strange but they want to make sure its their code and not trying to work with(a lot of) of the shelf libraries or cheap(mostly bad) coding from external parties.
So it takes longer to develop and no meddling from (to many) investors whom only seek a return on their investment.
I for one hope they pull it through so that it can be good software without to many parties(external licenses/investors) involved.

Nothing strange about that at all, just hoping they don't run out of Gas or cash. I wish the software all the best and bought all 3 programs even though I don't "need" Publisher to that end. We took great pleasure in purging all Adobe products with the exception of Acrobat Reader for now. I have no objection to paying a fair price for software and feel that the cost of these is perhaps too fair? I also don't mind maintenance / paid upgrade paths when they occur due to genuine added value from the software, as it remains the users choice to upgrade or not to access improvements. I DO however object to subscription.

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24 minutes ago, fde101 said:

Bingo.

We are already using the pro versions, it is just taking them longer to polish them than some people have patience for.

Let's not split hairs guys, the question posed was to see what the community thought about the possibility of paying a bit more to help forward product development. My use of the term "pro" was to depict a higher tier whilst not blocking entry to those wishing to learn or dabble.

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I very much doubt that there are a great number of people who would be willing to pay several times more now for the current Affinity apps, in the hopes that the software will be improved, to their satisfaction, at sometime in the future. It would take a lot of them to raise significant additional funding. After all Serif are already developing three apps for three platforms, having two versions of each would involve a massive increase in costs and labour.

Personally I rather dislike having pro and amateur versions of software anyway - just compare Photoshop with Elements!!! 

However, at the end of the day this is really a moot point. Whatever the "community" may think about it, Serif are the ones who decide how to run their business. I am sure that Serif did a  lot of research before making the decision to drop their old "legacy" software and  create the Affinity range instead.They made the decision to drop software that was basically aimed at amateurs/enthusiasts and replace it with software aimed at the pro market. I really cannot imagine that they would want to change their business model again now.

Acer XC-895 : Core i5-10400 Hexa-core 2.90 GHz :  32GB RAM : Intel UHD Graphics 630 : Windows 10 Home
Affinity Publisher 2 : Affinity Photo 2 : Affinity Designer 2 : (latest release versions) on desktop and iPad

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2 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

Strangely this is indeed missing in the Third party licenses.

Perhaps the Third-Party list you showed is only for the Open Source components they're required to list by the licenses?

I don't think PDFLib is Open Source, and its license may not require listing it.

-- 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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I’ve often wondered what “Pro” feature/s would never be needed by a non “Pro” in graphics apps that market themselves in that manner?
All I can think of is maybe some kind of “Billable Hours” feature but then I’ve never seen that offered in any other “Pro’’ graphics app.

macOS 10.15.7  15" Macbook Pro, 2017  |  4 Core i7 3.1GHz CPU  |  Radeon Pro 555 2GB GPU + Integrated Intel HD Graphics 630 1.536GB  |  16GB RAM  |  Wacom Intuos4 M

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4 hours ago, John Rostron said:

It is a bit of a chicken and egg situation. In order to develop a Pro version, Serif would need an injection of capital which it would not get until it had a Pro version for sale.

I'm sure that the economists have a solution to this involving massive bank loans.

John

Yup. Business does not work like this where you get some guys online who say they would pay for a pro version to hopefully get Serif to develop a pro version. There is much more than just developing the software and features. They need a big plan, even bigger then what they would have now as they would be splitting their user base with 2 different versions. I am a pro user, I make my living with Adobe CC and Affinity is not a replacement for that at the moment. The reason I bought all 3 apps is the price is insanely cheap for what you get. I could justify the price to keep on top of what is new and what might eventually be something worth replacing Adobe with. I do not see that happening for a very, very long time. I think the way they are going is probably best. Develop, build a strong base core who appreciate the value of their software while being able to live without the functions that most pro's would need. They will eventually be releasing updates and new features that will slowly but surely bring it more in line to what Adobe is offering with their big 3 (Indesign, Illustrator, Photoshop). I would not be surprised to see the price steadily increase with each full new version. I also think it would be justified as you are still getting an amazing value for your dollar.

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22 minutes ago, markw said:

I’ve often wondered what “Pro” feature/s would never be needed by a non “Pro” in graphics apps that market themselves in that manner?
All I can think of is maybe some kind of “Billable Hours” feature but then I’ve never seen that in any other “Pro’’ app.

My take is this, if we want graphics for some of our digital deliverables, our website or to edit imagery we use photo editing and vector creation software which until lately was CS6. We just refused to go sub so stayed on that. I am very much a learn what i need to do the job person when it comes to these BUT we are creating paid for content so the term professional user applies. I am not a Graphic Artist not do i make my living from that, we use these tools in a professional manor but to a limited extent to compliment our products. That being said, as a very basic user, there are a number of things that I have gone "wow, it doesn't do that!?" So I imagine a full on serious user would have a number of other "it doesn't do that features"

Let's start with image trace to Bitmap. This always seems to get the "oh you should manually trace to get professional quality" argument. However that is a very blinkered argument aimed solely at content creation. There are likely many users like us who use this feature a lot because it fits the use case. For example, to fly drones professionally we have to provide Flight Ref Cards for each UAV type. It's basically an idiots guide on how to use said drone safely in a list fashion from setup to shut down. These are 99% text based but we like to put nice professional looking covers on them. To that end we have taken a photo of the drone in question from the internet and "traced" it in seconds in illustrator to create a scalable vector that looks perfectly fine for a cover. So a professional use but not content creation.

Another is the deformation of a path ability. It is soooooo handy to be able to pen up a quick graphic and roughen up the paths to create that rustic look but no comparable option seems to be available at this time. I drew a coffee cup poster a few years ago for the kitchen. Simple black silhouette cup, saucer and steam. Basic pen curves, filled and then paths roughed up to get that printed look in seconds.

Now I'm a big fan of the Affinity suite and we have pinned our flag to its mast so I was just probing to see what the future may hold and potential funding methods / willing of the community to that end etc.

At Brass Tacks, really want them to flourish as great potential.

Capture.JPG

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"I would not be surprised to see the price steadily increase with each full new version. I also think it would be justified as you are still getting an amazing value for your dollar.".. And this type of suggestion is the reason for the thread. I imagine it's nice for the team to see what willing their is to support their continued improvement. Only an idiot would think that "A bunch of guys on the net asking for a pro version" is going to yield that in itself, but talking openly about what users would like to see, timescales and potential costs to schieve that can only be useful to the developers as they continue to evolve their model.

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14 minutes ago, ANGRYMAN said:

"I would not be surprised to see the price steadily increase with each full new version. I also think it would be justified as you are still getting an amazing value for your dollar.".. And this type of suggestion is the reason for the thread. I imagine it's nice for the team to see what willing their is to support their continued improvement. Only an idiot would think that "A bunch of guys on the net asking for a pro version" is going to yield that in itself, but talking openly about what users would like to see, timescales and potential costs to schieve that can only be useful to the developers as they continue to evolve their model.

there are countless threads of users asking and in many cases demanding features. They know what they are competing against, they hear everyday what users want. They can only do so much with what they have on hand. I think in V2 you are going to see some big upgrades, I mean there will have to be if they want people to continue to purchase their software. If the feature set is minimal in V2 I will not be upgrading even at the cheap price point whereas I was happy to buy all 3 at full price to see what is what. They also need to have a timeline of releases, they can't just bring everything out now or in this version, they need reasons for the user to want to upgrade. Serif is not a charity and while they are making good software and have a good rapport with their end users, they are in it to make money. With no inside knowledge, I predict some big feature additions in V2 that will make it much more usable in a pro environment, specifically for Publisher and Designer. 

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9 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

I am not getting this old, until they substituted all of these:

LIBPng, Independent JPEG Group, LibTiff, GifLib, Zlib, Boost, Fast dynamic cast, Little Color Management System, iMedia Browser Framework, FreeType, The Anti-Grain Geometry Project, WEBP, JXRLib, Expat XML Parser, LibRaw, LibExif, LibOpenJpeg, FLANN, Adobe XMP SDK, exiftool, OpenEXR, lensfun (Engine), lensfun (Database), OpenColorIO, Pystring, TinyXML, yaml-cpp, PTex (Mutex), Little CMS, MD5, argparse, JsonCpp, jbig2dec, X3F Tools

WebP? 😄

 

  • "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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I wonder if they still use this one (they did in DrawPlus):

http://www.angusj.com/delphi/clipper.php

  • "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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Of course they already reuse a bunch of third party libraries since otherwise there wouldn't be any Affinity app out yet, if you would have to reinvent the wheel again and again from ground up. In addition, they don't have their own knowledge, let alone the skills, or manpower for all these things addressed in third party code to be developed and covered by themselv. If we also add to the above list all the involved and needed essentiell system libs and frameworks from Microsoft and Apple, even people who are not developers can probably imagine how many dependencies there are overall.

Thoughts? - A Pro version, when should they find the time to do that, beside all the bugfixing they have to do and some new features people are waiting eons for. Then also especially in these difficult times we have now, where ressources and economically earning money etc. is world wide overall pretty limited (where everything around you goes down the drain).

And honestly look who first of all is the largest customer base and audience here, mostly people who don't want to spend much money for such software at all. Those who bought the software mostly due to the 50% cheaper than cheap offers and things like that.

 

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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15 hours ago, ANGRYMAN said:

Now hear me out before the lynch mob pipes up but....

Is there now a case for considering the release of a Pro version for say £200-£300 to get more funds in to the Affinity team to allow the development of the software further? I note a number of useful tools missing from the likes of designer like Trace and path roughen etc. but realise that development is no where near the resource levels of Adobe. So perhaps like Sketchup, there could be the current £50 entry versions and said Pro versions. those content to use the basic version can do so for nominal cost whilst Pro users can help the software develop via fair increase in the buy in level.

I am no designer but we use Phot & Designer in our workflow to a degree so are therefore creating "professional content" I would consider the above 

Thoughts?

I would gladly pay more for more. Not a DAM. Not more programs. But more features exactly where they are desperately needed. The alternative is monitoring deathclock.com and affinity.serif.com respectively. The business model is flawed if Serif slows down to a crawl 70% towards the goal, overburdened.

 

  • "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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9 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Those who bought the software mostly due to the 50% cheaper than cheap offers and things like that.

To me the biggest selling point is not how cheap it is, but the fact that they are offering a tightly integrated and highly performant suite of creative software that does not require a subscription and which has an appropriate balance of usability with simplicity in its user interface design.

The low cost certainly doesn't hurt, but I would probably be using Adobe CS apps if they hadn't gone subscription only right after I bought the full CS 6 master collection - which then sat mostly unused because I didn't see the point in wasting time learning dead-end applications that I would no longer be able to get updates for.

That said, the notion of a "pro version" of these apps as has been suggested here is kind of silly.  It would create more work for them to maintain the additional products (more versions to build, document and keep track of), which I would expect would be likely to create more of a drain on their resources than the added income could hope to supplement.  I can tell you from software development projects I have been involved with, it is frequently the documentation and testing efforts that take MUCH more time than does the coding, and splintering off minor variations of the same product has the potential to almost double the testing efforts, while at the same time adding to documentation requirements, for relatively minor differences between the applications.

Developing applications like the ones in the Affinity suite requires specialized skills that not all developers have.  You can't expect that an arbitrary amount of available funds will mean that the developers needed to help work on these applications will magically become available.  Serif has already indicated several times on the forums that they were bringing new developers on board; it seems like they struggle more with being able to find people with the right skills for the application than they do with finding the funds to pay them.

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45 minutes ago, fde101 said:

...I can tell you from software development projects I have been involved with, it is frequently the documentation and testing efforts that take MUCH more time than does the coding, and splintering off minor variations of the same product has the potential to almost double the testing efforts, while at the same time adding to documentation requirements, for relatively minor differences between the applications...

Add to that a bunch of important bugtickets and usability feature/change-tickets processing with involved afterwards testing etc., which always have higher priority in projects.

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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