What will the the next Affinity program?

[Starfy Stars]

So I don't think 3 is too much. What will be the 4th program from Affinity?

[dominik]

6 hours ago, Starfy Stars said:

So I don't think 3 is too much. What will be the 4th program from Affinity?

Hello @Starfy Stars, welcome to the forum.

it is known that they are working on a DAM (digital asset management). But there is no clue at all about the progress of it nor a release time. My guess is you won't see an addition to the suite in the near future. They are very busy at fixing bugs and improving what they have already.

Cheers,
d.

[Pšenda]

8 hours ago, Starfy Stars said:

So I don't think 3 is too much.

Yes, you are absolutely right. 3 programs (Affinity Suite) for Windows. 3 programs (Affinity Suite) for MacOS. 2 programs (the third is being worked on) for the iPad. Serif should start doing something :-)

[Starfy Stars]

Like Affinity Editor (video editing) or something like that.

[Pšenda]

 

 

[Snapseed]

Hopefully, there won't be any new software packages for quite some time but that the existing ones will be improved and developed instead. 

All these ongoing calls and requests for new software packages are unrealistic for two main reasons. Firstly, Serif would be introducing new equivalent softwares into crowded markets where there are already Grade A standard software packages already available. Secondly, and this is invariably forgotten, Serif is two orders of magnitudes smaller than the giant Adobe corporation. Serif at this time do just not have the resources of their huge competitor and we should all take that into account. 

Right now, we should be grateful for their three excellent and great value software products. It would be much better instead, and far more realistic, to suggest how features and aspects of the existing software packages can be improved and refined. 

[tallrob]

On 8/15/2020 at 12:50 AM, Snapseed said:

Hopefully, there won't be any new software packages for quite some time but that the existing ones will be improved and developed instead. 

All these ongoing calls and requests for new software packages are unrealistic for two main reasons. Firstly, Serif would be introducing new equivalent softwares into crowded markets where there are already Grade A standard software packages already available. Secondly, and this is invariably forgotten, Serif is two orders of magnitudes smaller than the giant Adobe corporation. Serif at this time do just not have the resources of their huge competitor and we should all take that into account. 

Right now, we should be grateful for their three excellent and great value software products. It would be much better instead, and far more realistic, to suggest how features and aspects of the existing software packages can be improved and refined. 

I have to say I don't understand this type of response. Successful companies grow by adding products to their lineup in addition to improving existing ones all the time. They also grow by acquiring existing packages and rebranding them to fit their lineup. This attitude of "please don't add what other people need, just improve what I already have" is shortsighted. Serif is squarely aimed at competing with Adobe, which is their only chance of long term survival. They need to be doing what Adobe does, better and cheaper. So far so good, but asking them to stop short of a 1:1 parity in product offering is shortsighted. 

That means Serif should develop (or acquire) video editing, special effects and DAM programs to complete their lineup. Affinity is nothing if not a lifeline for folks drowning in the Adobe model. 

[Jowday]

15 hours ago, tallrob said:

Serif is squarely aimed at competing with Adobe, which is their only chance of long term survival. They need to be doing what Adobe does, better and cheaper.

Wrong on both accounts.

 

[Blende21]

There are enough examples of organizations that grew too fast, could not manage to establish a solid core from all that and in the end failed miserably. +1 for making the existing customers happy instead of sailing off to new shores. Happy customers draw more customers.

[Snapseed]

On 8/17/2020 at 7:41 AM, tallrob said:

I have to say I don't understand this type of response. Successful companies grow by adding products to their lineup in addition to improving existing ones all the time. They also grow by acquiring existing packages and rebranding them to fit their lineup. This attitude of "please don't add what other people need, just improve what I already have" is shortsighted. Serif is squarely aimed at competing with Adobe, which is their only chance of long term survival. They need to be doing what Adobe does, better and cheaper. So far so good, but asking them to stop short of a 1:1 parity in product offering is shortsighted. 

That means Serif should develop (or acquire) video editing, special effects and DAM programs to complete their lineup. Affinity is nothing if not a lifeline for folks drowning in the Adobe model. 

The reality of the current situation is that Serif currently has 200 or so staff whereas Adobe has 20,000+ staff and tens of millions of dollars or more in the bank with which they can do anything they want to.

For any business to progress the logical thing to do is initially offer a select range of very good products, market and improve them, grow the business so that in the longer term they build up a cash reserve that they can then use to either hire more developers or buy up an existing complementary product and integrate that into their product range (both Adobe and Corel have also used that second approach).

 

[wonderings]

On 8/14/2020 at 6:50 PM, Snapseed said:

Hopefully, there won't be any new software packages for quite some time but that the existing ones will be improved and developed instead. 

All these ongoing calls and requests for new software packages are unrealistic for two main reasons. Firstly, Serif would be introducing new equivalent softwares into crowded markets where there are already Grade A standard software packages already available. Secondly, and this is invariably forgotten, Serif is two orders of magnitudes smaller than the giant Adobe corporation. Serif at this time do just not have the resources of their huge competitor and we should all take that into account. 

Right now, we should be grateful for their three excellent and great value software products. It would be much better instead, and far more realistic, to suggest how features and aspects of the existing software packages can be improved and refined. 

I completely agree.

It always seems to me when people request Affinity versions of other software is they just want some more cheap software. 

They have 3 BIG apps for 3 big segments on design. These apps are a good starting point but not ready to take on Adobe in most pro environments. They are also fighting against a standard in the fields where Indesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop are used. The other thing they will be fighting with is there is virtually no more issues with version incompatibility anymore. I never have to worry about a client having a different version of Indesign, everyone, well the vast majority are on the CC subscription and using the same software versions. Affinity is not affected by this yet as they only have 1 version. Go a few versions in and you will see issues on who has upgraded who has not and some fragmentation will begin... unless they have a clever way around this. 

Affinity has great software for an AMAZING price, was even better at 50% but still a super bargain at full price. Now is the time to start upgrading, fixing, adding features to bring it on par with their Adobe counterparts. 

[Frozen Death Knight]

On 8/17/2020 at 8:41 AM, tallrob said:

I have to say I don't understand this type of response. Successful companies grow by adding products to their lineup in addition to improving existing ones all the time. They also grow by acquiring existing packages and rebranding them to fit their lineup. This attitude of "please don't add what other people need, just improve what I already have" is shortsighted. Serif is squarely aimed at competing with Adobe, which is their only chance of long term survival. They need to be doing what Adobe does, better and cheaper. So far so good, but asking them to stop short of a 1:1 parity in product offering is shortsighted. 

That means Serif should develop (or acquire) video editing, special effects and DAM programs to complete their lineup. Affinity is nothing if not a lifeline for folks drowning in the Adobe model. 

There are only a couple of businesses I would like to see Serif tackle with their software line-up; animation by adding a timeline for Designer and Photo (vector animation for UI/UX design like After Effects, pixel art animation, and standard 2D animation clean-up), 3D editing of textures (which they are already working on), and a DAM just to make make for a stronger image editing suite. Most of these do not require a brand new program to address.

The last thing I want to see is Serif trying to emulate Adobe's business model of trying to tackle every single creative business under the sun. Frankly I don't think Adobe has been very successful at this considering how much legacy stuff that exist in their softwares and that they keep losing ground to other competitors that specialise at specific needs. Premiere Pro pretty much lost out to Davinci Resolve for instance. There are tons of ways to design and build websites nowadays, so you are hardly stuck with Adobe. Flash/Animate is kind of amazing because how much that software fell from grace when it used to dominate. Etc., etc.

Heck, even Photoshop lost out to competitors in the 3D texturing business despite being the hub for 3D texturing back in the day, and even when they bought out Substance Painter last year they are very soon facing competition from free alternatives like Quixel Mixer and ArmorPaint. If Affinity is able to handle 3D texturing well enough you could also replace Photoshop as the go to software for dealing with final retouches at the end of a 3D texturing workflow.

Still, the focus Serif should have above all of these is the core features and tools for the current line-up. Affinity has so much room to grow without creating a single new program for the next 5-10 years if so desired. I hope the devs specialise on these 3 core programs for a long time, since there are plenty of other programs you can replace the rest of Adobe's suite with. You can't however fully replace Photoshop, you can't fully replace Illustrator, and you can't fully replace InDesign. I want that to change.

[darinb]

A DAM seems obvious. Photo adjustment programs and DAMs are sort of merged to a large degree. Having a Photoshop replacement with Affinity Photo without having a Lightroom replacement seems like a halfway solution. Plus the DAM market seems quite fragmented. There's Lightroom, Apple Photos, Capture One, and many more. I suspect Affinity can bring both their high standards to play here and offer integration with their other products that will make for quite a compelling product.

In video? DaVinci and Final Cut are already strong there. I don't see people crying out for something else and I don't see the same opportunities for integration with  their exiting apps. Animation is too much of a niche. 3D texturing, ditto?

If we are doing niche please, somebody do a modern e-book creation app. The current situation is quite bad....

--Darin

[Fixx]

15 hours ago, darinb said:

If we are doing niche please, somebody do a modern e-book creation app. The current situation is quite bad....

This will probably be a Publisher feature. 

[sfriedberg]

On 8/25/2020 at 8:50 AM, Frozen Death Knight said:

Heck, even Photoshop lost out to competitors in the 3D texturing business despite being the hub for 3D texturing back in the day, and even when they bought out Substance Painter last year they are very soon facing competition

It's not just competition of functionality, but of business practices (licensing), too.

When Substance announced they were "joining the Adobe family", I wrote them to express my regret for their decision, and told them the best they could expect is to follow the trajectory of Sonic Foundry Vegas, which was bought by Sony Creative Software, neglected to some extent, and then sold off again to Magix, who at least are taking an interest in the product line.

I stopped buying Substance licenses when they started the subscription model.  I may return to Substance if they regain an acceptable licensing model.

[Snapseed]

1 hour ago, sfriedberg said:

It's not just competition of functionality, but of business practices (licensing), too.

When Substance announced they were "joining the Adobe family", I wrote them to express my regret for their decision, and told them the best they could expect is to follow the trajectory of Sonic Foundry Vegas, which was bought by Sony Creative Software, neglected to some extent, and then sold off again to Magix, who at least are taking an interest in the product line.

I stopped buying Substance licenses when they started the subscription model.  I may return to Substance if they regain an acceptable licensing model.

Personally, I despise the perma-rental model that Adobe and others are using and I think it amounts to licenced extortion. The good news though is that it's doing wonders for the sales of Serif Affinity,  Corel and Skylum software products.

PS I recommend J Cristina's Cutting the Cord series of videos on Youtube on how to escape from the Abode software jail.

[myclay]

A Dam from Serif is as of now needed since no matter which DAM you might use, only the saved thumbnails of the Affinity-files can be accessed.

To make any other DAM out there truly usable, the Affinity file formats would need to be documented and parsable from outside of Serifs programs.

[darinb]

Indeed, the workflow regarding a DAM with Affinity files is problematic. I wish there was some indication on whether they were still working on a DAM--if not, that's cool, and I can figure out what product to commit to and whatever workflow required. But if they are, and it might come in the next 6-12 months, then I'll do what I can to wait....

Affinity! Give us a sign!

--Darin

[Pšenda]

55 minutes ago, darinb said:

I wish there was some indication on whether they were still working on a DAM

 

 

[darinb]

On 9/1/2020 at 3:46 PM, Pšenda said:

 

That's a sign! Puzzling but there it is.   Thanks...Darin

[dotails]

On 8/25/2020 at 10:50 AM, Frozen Death Knight said:

There are only a couple of businesses I would like to see Serif tackle with their software line-up; animation by adding a timeline for Designer and Photo (vector animation for UI/UX design like After Effects, pixel art animation, and standard 2D animation clean-up), 3D editing of textures (which they are already working on), and a DAM just to make make for a stronger image editing suite. Most of these do not require a brand new program to address.

The last thing I want to see is Serif trying to emulate Adobe's business model of trying to tackle every single creative business under the sun. Frankly I don't think Adobe has been very successful at this considering how much legacy stuff that exist in their softwares and that they keep losing ground to other competitors that specialise at specific needs. Premiere Pro pretty much lost out to Davinci Resolve for instance. There are tons of ways to design and build websites nowadays, so you are hardly stuck with Adobe. Flash/Animate is kind of amazing because how much that software fell from grace when it used to dominate. Etc., etc.

Heck, even Photoshop lost out to competitors in the 3D texturing business despite being the hub for 3D texturing back in the day, and even when they bought out Substance Painter last year they are very soon facing competition from free alternatives like Quixel Mixer and ArmorPaint. If Affinity is able to handle 3D texturing well enough you could also replace Photoshop as the go to software for dealing with final retouches at the end of a 3D texturing workflow.

Still, the focus Serif should have above all of these is the core features and tools for the current line-up. Affinity has so much room to grow without creating a single new program for the next 5-10 years if so desired. I hope the devs specialise on these 3 core programs for a long time, since there are plenty of other programs you can replace the rest of Adobe's suite with. You can't however fully replace Photoshop, you can't fully replace Illustrator, and you can't fully replace InDesign. I want that to change.

Petition

I found a petition to make Affinity Animator a thing! If you sign it and maybe we can move mountains.

[Kahlua]

On 1/20/2021 at 1:24 PM, dotails said:

Petition

I found a petition to make Affinity Animator a thing! If you sign it and maybe we can move mountains.

The design team told them that they won't change direction based on a petition.

[Jowday]

On 7/18/2020 at 2:44 AM, Starfy Stars said:

So I don't think 3 is too much. What will be the 4th program from Affinity?

You tell us. You'll be funding it.