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I am certainly thankful to have the Affinity suite, not having to deal with Adobe anymore. But there is still much to do for Affinity, in order to get to the same level of usability.

A big problem is, that the Affinity team has obviously not much experience with vector path handling. There are so many things that do not work userfriendly, are too complicated or still missing. Adding to an existing path, one has to use the points tool, activate a point, change to the vector drawing tool, again hit on that point and if lucky, then the next clicks set new points adding to that path. Instead of activating a path and hit an end point directly with the vector tool. Done. There are endless many tasks that only work if you first set things exactly right. Then on top of that there is the overall behaviour confusing users. One example here: You have a path active, go in with the vector tool and want to ad points - the path reacts to the tool exactly like it should when the intentioned action would work. It is only later, when suddenly the once active path is deactivated that one realizes, the new points do not add to it. (See video example). Or drawing two separate lines and later join them (not possible by merging tool, as it is only lines, not areas) - I still did not find out how (what I achieved always connects the end points the wrong way), because every time I prefer to redo the whole path in once instead of searching around for the certainly complicated solution I can not remember the next time - like with so many things in Designer.

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1943525519_1001normal.jpg.9275a163841ef274d536bf6cabc5de9f.jpg

  • "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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But at least as of Affinity Designer Beta 1.9.0.10 you can now record and share a time-lapse video of your endlessly frustrating workarounds?! Can't image there might not have been more pressing issues Serif could have addressed before adding this feature to Designer. At least it gives us some idea of where their priorities are now.

 

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3 hours ago, Bryan Rieger said:

But at least as of Affinity Designer Beta 1.9.0.10 you can now record and share a time-lapse video of your endlessly frustrating workarounds?

Does that mean it will capture from other apps - as most of my workarounds involve VectorStyler, ImageVectorizer, Illustrator CS5, ?

3 hours ago, Bryan Rieger said:

At least it gives us some idea of where their priorities are now.

FFFFFAAAAAHHHHHH!  - although what few vector tools we have,  I love ----- how frustrating ----- Right I'm off up the yard to hit myself repeatedly in the right eyelid with a lump of lead pipe ------- AAAGAGGGAGGAGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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I agree with much of what you are all saying. I love so much of what Affinity is doing and after so many years of waiting, we are finally seeing a contender in the ring to keep adobe honest and compete. I am excited to see the way the three apps work together, the universal file format, the ipad apps working seamlessly with the computer versions, the lack of subscription slavery, the intuitiveness of many of the ways it works. I generally prefer affinity’s pen tool to illustrator’s pen tool. 
i love the addition of the time-lapse video and I think it will be really useful to so many artists as They share their work. I’m glad to see they are adding find and replace and contour path to this next update - those were on my “need” list for a long time. 
All that said, it’s hard to understand and be patient with affinity when there are core features we feel are missing.  My main goal is to be able to do my professional work without the need for adobe at all. Time-lapse is great, but it is not a necessity in the goal to leave adobe behind. 
Fixing the Boolean operations once and for all, adding a “merge” Boolean option so we can “cookie-cutter” shapes behind another (great for filling sections of negative space within a fill), the Boolean operations need to result in clean results, not missing sections and tons of extra nodes. We desperately need 100% pure vector brushes, text warp and shape warp, smooth tool, blob brush equivalent and vector eraser, a vector trace at some point (i bought vector magic a while back, so this one matters less to me personally). I’d love to be able to create bit maps like I currently do in photoshop and then import into illustrator - that can have some vector-like principals to them. I’m sure there are a few more that others deem indispensable as well. It feels like Designer has been somewhat neglected over the last few years. Although I also love Photo, I have not kept up with what they are offering as most of my professional work is pure vector.
I understand why they removed the list of goals from the forum a while back - it can add a certain amount of pressure to their lives and apparently people were giving them grief on the forums over it. It’s equally hard for us to wonder how long these features will take to implement. Do i need to buy another intel Mac to keep CS6 alive another couple years or hold out and buy the next generation M1 apple computers? Will these needed features be added in the next year? Two years? I’d rather have these core functions and then add the extras like time lapse and other things later. I have other things I’d love to see added to affinity that can wait for the core features to be added first - like 3D text for example. 
perhaps many of these features are in development for version 2.0? I understand these things can take time, but many of us have been waiting several years for some of these features. We see others like Vectorstyler with many of these core features already implemented and frequent updates - if they can accomplish this, what keeps Affinity from doing the same? I don’t want to be overly critical of the Affinity team - I just want them to understand what is important to me and many and to acknowledge our concerns and maybe even give us an updated ideal set of goals.

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2 hours ago, Boldlinedesign said:

i love the addition of the time-lapse video and I think it will be really useful to so many artists as They share their work. 

And that sharing is free marketing for Serif. That is why it was prioritized. That was their motivation. 

Cyber Monday is coming. If your wallet allows it - I sincerely hope it does - purchase a real vector drawing program. Forget about more gadgets; get a proper tool for your work or hobby. You just cant wait year after year for a miracle happening in budget software. Just look at that watered down, featureless contour tool. Compare it to whatever else. No ambitions, no flexibility, no options. Just more, more, more workarounds.

For around four times the price of Designer and with zero years of waiting in the past, present and future you can (right now) get this and more:

image.png.1c737ced1e9aefa077f129238aa9894d.png

Meanwhile in Nottingham...

image.png.5620bf19c6a37195235c6be92b474234.png

  • "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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@Jowday I don't know if they added the time-lapse for selfish gain - Procreate has had it for years and its a fun and useful addition that I wish all the apps I use had; including Illustrator, Clip Studio, Krita, etc. I don't think Procreate added it for selfish gain. I see it as a great promotional tool for myself as an artist to share my workflow and engage with clients and followers. I use screen capture apps when I do work for that reason.
I'm totally with you on the need for Affinity to develop some standard tools we use daily in our professional work before I can take it seriously as a fully-functional Adobe replacement set of apps - but I don't believe they are diabolical or that self-focused. We may have to agree to disagree on that. The apps are pretty cheap and they have a pretty good base that is growing - though I would think Affinity could probably use a 2.0 release soon to give themselves a financial shot in the arm to get the next series of features added.
What app are you referring to that costs four times the Affinity price?

 

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@anon2 - Hmmm good question. I'm torn between just continuing to support them because I believe in the long term for Affinity despite the slow progression currently and holding off on further financial support until more of what I consider the essentials are added. If the cost to purchase was in the range of what Adobe used to charge ($600+) for a major upgrade, I would certainly hold off until most if not all my essentials were in place. I would fear paying that much and then waiting many more years to see the trio of apps get to be professionally self-sustaining. Since it's not an expensive set of apps, that is less an issue for me. I want Affinity to win and I root for them and I want my money to go toward their success - but I also need them to acknowledge we are struggling with the multi-year slow updates. It's almost 2021 and I'm still running El Capitan to keep Adobe CS6 going without a subscription for goodness sake!
The 2.0 release would need to show me they are serious about taking care of the professional designers that want to use this in place of Adobe.
They would need to add more than say, tinkering with a few small features updates. I'd be looking for text warp, vector eraser, blob brush equivalent and 100% editable vector brushes in the 2.0 release for me to feel great about upgrading. They'd also need to show me that the Boolean operations work properly (see attached image). It's SO frustrating trying to edit my vectors in Affinity Designer expanding and dividing and then merging them only to have a mess of nodes to clean up each time.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I wish they would acknowledge the customer base that has been pleading for certain essential features for years now without much of a reply. I'm all for the cool smaller additions like time-lapse and the anti-aliasing feature, but not at the expense of the essentials.
If 2.0 lacks a solid number of essentials, I might hold off on purchasing for a while until they do.I don't want to get too blindsided in rooting for Affinity to fully replace Adbe, that i ignore other avenues to accomplish this - like incorporating Vectorstyler. I would probably pour more time and resources apps like Vectorstyler get out of beta. I've been doing my best to test out their tool sets and encourage them to make edits that would help my professional workflow. If Vectorstyler keeps going at the pace it has with their betas and improvements, I might be less motivated to push Affinity. Already I've been able to create text warps and blend modes in VS and copy and paste them over to Affinity to finish with success.
 

Screen Shot 2020-11-28 at 6.43.00 PM.png

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15 hours ago, Boldlinedesign said:

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I wish they would acknowledge the customer base that has been pleading for certain essential features for years now without much of a reply. I'm all for the cool smaller additions like time-lapse and the anti-aliasing feature, but not at the expense of the essentials.
If 2.0 lacks a solid number of essentials, I might hold off on purchasing for a while until they do.

You are all hoping for a miracle. One that probably wont happen. That is how miracle works. They exist merely in your head. And if ... perhaps in 5-10 years time. What are the odds really? And will it - when finally implemented - be worth the wait? Or suck? What kind of superb vector expertise did you see traces of so far? Or CMYK ditto. And you certainly did not see any kind of vector feature ambitions in Designer. "A stripped down workhorse" hahaha. Stripped down indeed. But you are the work horse! With a hammer and screwdriver from IKEA.

And the financial injection from the hope - version 2.0! - will Serif change much? Hire more people? Usability experts? Vector experts? Or will they do as they always did, develop a little from time to time and focus on marketing. Behind them dragging a trail of "hopetimistic" costumers with a small budget and thus not much choice. It is all a dream. A fantasy. Beggars can't be choosers - they hard fact behind all this.

Invest in your own future on Cyber Monday! All the features you seek exist! But you are not getting them in McDonalds. And you will never, ever get a real meal in McDonalds. The concept and its (lack of) potential is obvious.

So waste time and opportunities (and fun)... or...

image.png.1aabd5086b33f9fc7c76db1ec89d4620.png

 

  • "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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18 hours ago, Boldlinedesign said:

@anon2 How about you? What would convince you to purchase the version 2 upgrade?

I doubt much (if any) of the following will be in AD 2.0, but 

Things which should have been provided long ago:

  • robust Boolean operations
  • fixes for the compositing bugs

Improvements:

  • vastly improved PDF export dialog
  • vastly improved stroke width graph (see VectorStyler)
  • vastly improved gradient editor, including various interpolation methods
  • improved path smoothing

New features:

  • non-destructive vector warping
  • calligraphic vector brushes
  • true vector texture brushes
  • vector patterns in the Fill Tool
  • freeform gradients (see Illustrator)
  • curvature continuous corners in Corner Tool
  • squircle smart shape (instead of another cat shape :D)
  • spiral smart shape
  • path simplification
  • path roughening
  • shape builder (built on robust Boolean operations)

 

 

 

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On 11/28/2020 at 7:43 PM, Boldlinedesign said:

I agree with much of what you are all saying. I love so much of what Affinity is doing and after so many years of waiting, we are finally seeing a contender in the ring to keep adobe honest and compete. I am excited to see the way the three apps work together, the universal file format, the ipad apps working seamlessly with the computer versions, the lack of subscription slavery, the intuitiveness of many of the ways it works. I generally prefer affinity’s pen tool to illustrator’s pen tool. 
i love the addition of the time-lapse video and I think it will be really useful to so many artists as They share their work. I’m glad to see they are adding find and replace and contour path to this next update - those were on my “need” list for a long time. 
All that said, it’s hard to understand and be patient with affinity when there are core features we feel are missing.  My main goal is to be able to do my professional work without the need for adobe at all. Time-lapse is great, but it is not a necessity in the goal to leave adobe behind. 
Fixing the Boolean operations once and for all, adding a “merge” Boolean option so we can “cookie-cutter” shapes behind another (great for filling sections of negative space within a fill), the Boolean operations need to result in clean results, not missing sections and tons of extra nodes. We desperately need 100% pure vector brushes, text warp and shape warp, smooth tool, blob brush equivalent and vector eraser, a vector trace at some point (i bought vector magic a while back, so this one matters less to me personally). I’d love to be able to create bit maps like I currently do in photoshop and then import into illustrator - that can have some vector-like principals to them. I’m sure there are a few more that others deem indispensable as well. It feels like Designer has been somewhat neglected over the last few years. Although I also love Photo, I have not kept up with what they are offering as most of my professional work is pure vector.
I understand why they removed the list of goals from the forum a while back - it can add a certain amount of pressure to their lives and apparently people were giving them grief on the forums over it. It’s equally hard for us to wonder how long these features will take to implement. Do i need to buy another intel Mac to keep CS6 alive another couple years or hold out and buy the next generation M1 apple computers? Will these needed features be added in the next year? Two years? I’d rather have these core functions and then add the extras like time lapse and other things later. I have other things I’d love to see added to affinity that can wait for the core features to be added first - like 3D text for example. 
perhaps many of these features are in development for version 2.0? I understand these things can take time, but many of us have been waiting several years for some of these features. We see others like Vectorstyler with many of these core features already implemented and frequent updates - if they can accomplish this, what keeps Affinity from doing the same? I don’t want to be overly critical of the Affinity team - I just want them to understand what is important to me and many and to acknowledge our concerns and maybe even give us an updated ideal set of goals.

EXACTLY well said Boldlinedesign

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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16 hours ago, anon2 said:

New features:

  • non-destructive vector warping
  • calligraphic vector brushes
  • true vector texture brushes
  • vector patterns in the Fill Tool
  • freeform gradients (see Illustrator)
  • curvature continuous corners in Corner Tool
  • squircle smart shape (instead of another cat shape :D)
  • spiral smart shape
  • path simplification
  • path roughening
  • shape builder (built on robust Boolean operations)

mmmmmm 20 odd years ago I would have called them new features --- today (or even 6 years ago):= basic essentials ---

Sorry for sounding bitter🤮

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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I want Affinity to win…”

It’s not a zero sum game folks. Affinity will in all reality NEVER replace Adobe and ‘win’ a dominant market share, but Affinity does provide some much needed competition, and offers many users a viable alternative.

If I look at things simply as a feature for feature comparison Adobe ‘wins’ every time, but whenever it sit down and really look at my (relatively simple) needs I find Affinity actually comes really close to fitting the bill. There’s still gaps and bugs (Adobe has also had bugs/gaps that have impacted me for 20+ years), but Affinity definitely is a viable option for many folks today.

The biggest frustration for me is Serif behaving much like their antiquated competition, by not engaging in any meaningful way with their community, providing no dialogue with regards to future roadmaps, bug reports, etc. It’s 2020. Folks today have very different expectations of companies and software than they did 20+ years ago. It’s such a shame that the ‘new’ option feels very much like the old.

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@Bryan Rieger I can understand and agree with much of what you said in reply to my comment, “I want Affinity to win”. I can also see how that comment read like a zero sum game.You’re right in that many people see it that way. I meant it as in, I want Affinity to succeed and be successful  - no matter what Adobe or others do or don’t do. Success as defined by me would be that it’s a solid and powerful trio of apps that accomplish well the professional design needs of artists and designers, photographers, etc. So many people feel adobe is overkill for their needs and strongly dislike the subscription model. I work with many small screen print shops for example, that need a raster and vector app so they can do simple designs and print out more complex ones they are sent. I know for myself, I don’t need all the bloat in adobe to do my professional work. I’m able to do everything I need with my old copy of CS6. So for me, “success” in terms of Affinity is getting the basics done solid and adding the common use tools we’ve rehashed now and over the years. Keeping it somewhat streamlined is to Affinity’s strength actually. Leaving out basic and necessary vector tools is what keeps it from being “successful” in my book. 
 

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It’s Serif’s silence on those “basic and necessary tools” that is so utterly frustrating. It leaves their customers forever wondering if they can actually commit to using Affinity for their work, or if they are forever going to be hedging their bets and maintaining an Adobe subscription (or managing legacy versions) to fill in those gaps - which eventually calls into question why bother with Affinity?

I’d love to see Serif do the following:

1. Admit there are real gaps in their tools that are impacting their users.

2. Commit to addressing these gaps in upcoming releases. It doesn’t all have to be in one release, and we don’t require absolute release dates. Unity provides users with a roadmap of what features they are working on for each release throughout the year (2020.1, 2020.2, etc), with many features being rolled out over multiple releases to ensure the implementation meets needs and expectations. Even Adobe has started doing this (albeit very minimally) with it’s ‘upcoming features’ list in it’s iPad apps.

3. Provide visibility of how Serif envisions these features integrating within the product. This could be articles, videos, screenshots, etc. This not only helps to build trust and confidence, but also provides a way for users to feedback early (and ideally often) to ensure the implementation meets (or exceeds) their expectations. Procreate does this very well.

4. Maintain a dialogue with the community to ensure users are aware of progress, and to manage expectations when things inevitably slip. Most users won’t care if ‘gap feature x’ doesn’t make it into Designer 2021.1 if they know that there were some implementation issues, and that Serif needs another quarter to get it right.

Anyway, probably wishful thinking on my part, but I thought I’d put it out there just in case anyone at Serif is actually listening.

 

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4 hours ago, anon2 said:

I thought it would be obvious that I meant features that would be new to Affinity Designer.

Sorry boss - yes I see your point : maybe ye olde features from the previous millennium new to Affinity Designer in 20?? maybe never?😭 maybe next week?🤞

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

A screen printer client of mine picked up the affinity trio of apps at my suggestion during the last sale. She's hoping it can replace Corel for her business. She finally got around to using the apps and reached out to me to ask about Designer - she needed help finding the "find and replace" feature. She had spent a few hours looking on youtube and google for the answer to no avail. I told her it was coming in the next release - hopefully sooner than later. Then she asked for where to find the image trace option... again I told her it was not available in Designer yet.
I'm sure next she'll be asking where the shape builder is, or why the boolean operations don't create clean results... or why the "vector" brush she used will not expand and acts like a raster brush.
I'm introducing her to Vectorstyler next to see if that can solve for the missing parts. I keep the faith still, that Affinity Designer will get these basic tools fixed and in place, but in the meantime, it's a little embarrassing and very frustrating

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7 hours ago, Boldlinedesign said:

A screen printer client of mine picked up the affinity trio of apps at my suggestion during the last sale. She's hoping it can replace Corel for her business. She finally got around to using the apps and reached out to me to ask about Designer - she needed help finding the "find and replace" feature. She had spent a few hours looking on youtube and google for the answer to no avail. I told her it was coming in the next release - hopefully sooner than later. Then she asked for where to find the image trace option... again I told her it was not available in Designer yet.
I'm sure next she'll be asking where the shape builder is, or why the boolean operations don't create clean results... or why the "vector" brush she used will not expand and acts like a raster brush.
I'm introducing her to Vectorstyler next to see if that can solve for the missing parts. I keep the faith still, that Affinity Designer will get these basic tools fixed and in place, but in the meantime, it's a little embarrassing and very frustrating

The thing with screen print work is that it tends to be heavy on production and processing, in addition to creative work. Affinity software might handle inhouse creative work but it won't even begin to deal with the production and processing.  I know because I've tried every low cost software under the sun to see what they each have to offer for that kind of work. I worked in screen printing art dept for years.  For production work, I would say that pretty much everything I would need is missing from the Affinity stuff.  I had Affinity Designer and Photo on my Mac when I last worked at a screen print shop but there was only one use that I had for it. From time to time, I would get a file such as a webp format and Adobe Illustrator wouldn't open it, or sometimes I'd get a svg file that Illustrator wouldn't open correctly.  I would try to open those files in Affinity Designer. Other than that, it really had nothing to offer for processing customers art and preparing them for print.  The best use for low cost software like that is just creative work.  The production side needs tools built specifically for the work.

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7 hours ago, Kuttyjoe said:

The best use for low cost software like that is just creative work.  The production side needs tools built specifically for the work.

I agree with most of your position, especially as it relates to the Photo/raster side of things. Photo lacks the deep tools to output raster separations and the power of channels like in PS. I'm curious if using independent separation and RIP software would be adequate for many designers and printers.

Designer seems capable of outputting separations for flat vector work - even creating underbases if you add the stroke to the inside. I'm primarily a designer for screen printers so I have not printed output films from Designer personally.
Regardless, I would hope a massive improvement is made to the export capabilities of both Designer and Photo at some point. The pace they've been adding basic tools does not have me holding my breath.

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