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Is Affinity Designer even developed anymore?


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5 hours ago, viterzbayraku said:

VectorStyles is paid already. 100$ for license.

Looks like an essential purchase to plug the gaps til Designer catches up - only thing is the more you use it the more you may want to just switch to VS even though the interface is not a patch one Designer - it's got all the basics, it even has a printable slug area and prints CMYK to postscript printers - damn - I'd even say theres too many features  - I just wish I didn't have to buy it - if the the Designer roadmap had have moved at a fairly reasonable pace we'd not be having to look elsewhere  - that's  £85 that I'd prefer to give to Serif

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Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

Thanks for the offer. We don't actually have a "one time payment" policy. We simply haven't had a version 2 yet. When we do release version 2, that will be a paid for update (as will version 3 whenever that is). As for more developers, please get them to apply if you know any

Please also look for a multilingual programmer.

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hello everyone!
the truth is i never got used to illustrator, i always used corel draw, eventually i had to use illustrator because almost everybody uses it, it is clear that both programs have incredible and advanced features. when i got to know affinity designer i decided to use the trial version, at first i was not convinced (i think it was v1.4)
then in version 1.7 I downloaded the trial version again and decided to buy it. here there are many important changes. but in my opinion, what got me hooked was its fluidity, it is a very fast and light program, it fulfills what is necessary to design almost everything.
-Icon libraries, images, vectors, groups of graphics.
-Live view of the changes.
-Fastness for everything.
-Intelligent guide lines.
-easy to apply options (color, effects, transparency).
- its object selection is a thousand times better.
-the customization of the shorcuts is much better.

these are the features that got me hooked on affinity designer.
today it is my favorite design program. it lacks some features that make it impossible to save time, but having to do almost everything manually like deformations, vectorizations, for sure the experience and the speed of work is increasing.

in the beginning i was of the same opinion, always comparing one with the other and pointing out the shortcomings. my message to those who depend on advanced features that are not included in designer is to go back to where you came from. you can come back any time after.

@irolandricaurte

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 6/9/2021 at 8:07 PM, Roland Ricaurte said:

today it is my favorite design program

I would say Publisher is my favourite design program as it covers (almost) all bases, via StudioLink which is a real game changer for me - so for 99% of Designer stuff I use publisher and only open Designer and Photo for the few things that are exclusive to that stand alone apps.

On 6/9/2021 at 8:07 PM, Roland Ricaurte said:

my message to those who depend on advanced features that are not included in designer is to go back to where you came from. you can come back any time after.

I love the Affinity workflow too much to take steps back, although I sometimes have no choice.

My Affinity workflow now takes advantage of VectorStyler, which I use as kind of a plug-in / complimentary app, which should see me through the coming years, until we have all the missing stuff - it's a bit cumbersome and can be a bit buggy, but I can get stuff done without touching Illustrator. 

 

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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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello!

What if the Affinity products were relying more on the community ?

I've been testing a lot of softwares and games, and what i can observe is that the one that are still up even though low prices or even being free, is the community that's behind.

I originally come from the 3D world, working with Blender, Unreal, Unity, Godot Engine and a few others, all being free.
First Point - Blender has always been free and open source (well except at the very start, but lets not make history here), and had a sluggish UI, weird counter industry standard shortcuts etc. Today, we can see how it evolved. They have a really dedicated community, developpers from all around the world, and most importantly (IMO) the scripting capabilities for people that don't want to touch the source code but have to adapt the software to there needs. And i think Affinity products is lacking that point. This would eventually allow users to temporarily solve some lacking features until they are officially implemented by the dev team.

Second Point - Unreal and Unity were not free in the early years, and have now became free until you earn a certain amount of money, past which you'll have to give a percentage of your profits. This might not fit Affinity philosophy or business mind or whatever it's called, and that leads me to that other point.

Third Point - Relying on contents instead of the software itself. By this, i mean establishing an official asset store where Serrif would take a percent of the sale. That's what Epic and Unity does, and i think they have been alive long enough to prove that combining this with the previous point generates enough founds to keep things going.

Fourth Point - Why not going open source or adding a donation system (or both) ? That's quite sensitive i know, but look at Inkscape, they have a ton of features, even a modifier system like in 3D softwares (and damn, i miss this so much in 2D softs). On the other side, the UI is terrible (let's be honest). I wish AD would get the features from Inkscape, and Inkscape to get the UI and smoothness of AD.

Another things is that a lot of opensource softwares can get people involved in it, either by donating there time or giving money. Plus, Epic Games tends to encorage open source by donating some money (Blender had been given 1.4 million if i remember well, Godot Engine got 50K... look at the Epic Mega Grant nominees).

I also think that Affinity products got really interesting things, like the persona system, but they could have more. This is something that was innovating from other softwares, but it seems that the innovation stops here, sadly. I wish your softwares kept going with "out of the box" ideas. Right now to me, lots of 2D softwares look similar, with the same design philosophy and lacking or 20 years old workflow. I could make a 30 pages comparison of features that are in 3D softwares and could have there place in 2D but that's not the point.

I hope you will find some interesting things in there.

Cheers

Edited by Darknoodles
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  • 1 month later...
On 4/8/2021 at 5:47 PM, keren said:

Please hire a Developer hoe's specialized in global language implementing, like Right To Left directions etc. please asap.

Is there an update regarding Right To Left? I'm a customer and I'm still waiting :( 

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The professional world needs an affordable alternative to Adobe Illustrator. And several offerings are clamoring for that space. The problem is Adobe was a monolith for many years, they were a monopoly, and their teams were amazing. But they have all disbanded. In the latest release, Photoshop's Export As feature was reduced from a percentage down to options like "Very good." Illustrator had updates that completely broke the performance and simplify tools, and they've been scrambling to get it all back in order. All the new additions I've seen in these programs over the years have clearly been done by a younger, inexperienced team of developers, not necessarily designers for the intention of catering to professionals, and the overall decision has been to only make updates that users hate so they waste time having to revert it and give people a reason to continue paying. So even without the stupid subscription, the Adobe house is falling. I considered what it would take for my workplace to stop providing me an Adobe subscription, and honestly there's not too much that I really need.

The problem is Affinity Designer, if it ever wishes to be more than just a side drawing program for fun, needs more attention to the workflows and necessities of professionals so they can do everything they need to do in one program. This is not fun stuff, it's stuff like vectorizing raster images, fixing lines by drawing near them, and maybe not having totally random glitches when sending to print. The big updates have stopped, now it's just small tweaks and refinements.

There is a much bigger market for this program than what Affinity set out to make. It was marketed to professionals, we were promised a program that can do it all. We're willing to spend a lot more than $25 for that program, but we're not given the option.

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On 8/26/2021 at 1:38 AM, Sotalo said:

The professional world needs an affordable alternative to Adobe Illustrator. And several offerings are clamoring for that space. The problem is Adobe was a monolith for many years, they were a monopoly, and their teams were amazing. But they have all disbanded. In the latest release, Photoshop's Export As feature was reduced from a percentage down to options like "Very good." Illustrator had updates that completely broke the performance and simplify tools, and they've been scrambling to get it all back in order. All the new additions I've seen in these programs over the years have clearly been done by a younger, inexperienced team of developers, not necessarily designers for the intention of catering to professionals, and the overall decision has been to only make updates that users hate so they waste time having to revert it and give people a reason to continue paying. So even without the stupid subscription, the Adobe house is falling. I considered what it would take for my workplace to stop providing me an Adobe subscription, and honestly there's not too much that I really need.

The problem is Affinity Designer, if it ever wishes to be more than just a side drawing program for fun, needs more attention to the workflows and necessities of professionals so they can do everything they need to do in one program. This is not fun stuff, it's stuff like vectorizing raster images, fixing lines by drawing near them, and maybe not having totally random glitches when sending to print. The big updates have stopped, now it's just small tweaks and refinements.

There is a much bigger market for this program than what Affinity set out to make. It was marketed to professionals, we were promised a program that can do it all. We're willing to spend a lot more than $25 for that program, but we're not given the option.

Powerful Point!

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On 8/26/2021 at 1:38 AM, Sotalo said:

The professional world needs an affordable alternative to Adobe Illustrator. And several offerings are clamoring for that space. The problem is Adobe was a monolith for many years, they were a monopoly, and their teams were amazing. But they have all disbanded. In the latest release, Photoshop's Export As feature was reduced from a percentage down to options like "Very good." Illustrator had updates that completely broke the performance and simplify tools, and they've been scrambling to get it all back in order. All the new additions I've seen in these programs over the years have clearly been done by a younger, inexperienced team of developers, not necessarily designers for the intention of catering to professionals, and the overall decision has been to only make updates that users hate so they waste time having to revert it and give people a reason to continue paying. So even without the stupid subscription, the Adobe house is falling. I considered what it would take for my workplace to stop providing me an Adobe subscription, and honestly there's not too much that I really need.

The problem is Affinity Designer, if it ever wishes to be more than just a side drawing program for fun, needs more attention to the workflows and necessities of professionals so they can do everything they need to do in one program. This is not fun stuff, it's stuff like vectorizing raster images, fixing lines by drawing near them, and maybe not having totally random glitches when sending to print. The big updates have stopped, now it's just small tweaks and refinements.

There is a much bigger market for this program than what Affinity set out to make. It was marketed to professionals, we were promised a program that can do it all. We're willing to spend a lot more than $25 for that program, but we're not given the option.

 

Personally, as a professional, I wish they would fix the more fundamental issues of concerning productivity, like finally making the Deselect keyboard short work on the iPad as well as actually having shortcuts for Delete, Hide/Show UI, Undo/Redo. Stopping to fix an errant changes in a line because you didn't know it was selected, or hitting those tiny little targets, just brings the creative workflow to a halt.

This is the stuff that annoys us every time and makes us wonder if there's anything better.

New functionality should be held off (which, to their credit, they did this last release) until the stuff that should be working is actually working.

They keep promising, though.

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I mean, most professionals don't usually work on iPads. Some of this functionality is required for certain workflows and techniques. I recalled Affinity Devs had no idea how important TGA export was to game design. It's the format everyone uses to load textures, and it took many years to get support for it. And Image Trace is something you just expect from vectoring software, but I have to switch to Inkscape to get the vector lines. You can't edit vector lines by redrawing them, either.

Every missing feature is an opportunity to obliterate workflows, and vice versa, new features like masking can create new workflows. But if the workflow doesn't exist, then professionals CAN'T use it. They have to make work-arounds, or worst-case scenario, become unable to use the software. People are willing to spend money for things that get rid of these workarounds, but it seems Affinity would rather compete with Clip Studio than Adobe. Adobe has been falling for many years, and Affinity's suite comes close to filling that void, but there's still some ways to go before it can phase out Adobe for good. I sincerely hope this continues to be the end goal for the suite. Right now it feels like they've hit a plateau, but there's still a long way to go.

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1 hour ago, Sotalo said:

I mean, most professionals don't usually work on iPads.

Personally, I don't think that's true. Not these days. But it depends on what you do. I ink comics, which is much easier on an iPad because of the simple ability to rotate with your fingers. And I use vector, not raster.

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For illustration that makes sense, especially if you're more interested in the pen quality than dealing with tons of layers. But vector is notoriously difficult to work with because the lines have to be generated anytime you move the scene, and hardware acceleration on tablets is lackluster. Raster is more difficult to lay down very large brushes, but easier to change the view. I do more technical graphics work and 3D, tablets are out of the question.

I noticed Affinity's price increased to $55. Let's hope we get some new features to go along with this increase. Like... image trace!

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4 hours ago, Sotalo said:

I noticed Affinity's price increased to $55. Let's hope we get some new features to go along with this increase. Like... image trace!

I think $54.99 has been the list price from the very start. All lower prices have been temporary sale prices.

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No, the price has always been $49.99, and the sale price (COVID and Black Friday) was half off. If this means we can get continued development of features that would be great! The Affinity Suite made a serious jab at Adobe, but there are still some quirks and missing features that we really need to improve workflows.

Vector simplification. Right now the experience editing and deleting individual points is nice, but it's a very manual process. If we just want to simplify a curve, it requires going through and fixing each point. If we had a slider for how aggressive the simplification should be overall, cleanup for certain tasks could be almost fully automated. The current smooth curve function does the opposite of what we need it to do, it adds points.

To go with this, we could also use a feature to smooth the pen's pressure sensitivity. I noticed some issues where the line suddenly dips and rises in thickness. If the program has the ability to stabilize this with a slider beforehand, or include pressure smoothing as a check box with sliders for any post-process smoothing measures, that can help avoid the manual cleanup necessary both beforehand and afterwards. These features would really help people who use pens to vector lines.

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On 8/31/2021 at 1:36 PM, silikonanswer said:

Is the autotrace feature in the todo list?

Yes, but without ETA.

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On 8/30/2021 at 3:29 AM, Sotalo said:

I noticed Affinity's price increased to $55.

I suspect this may be due to exchange rates. It is still cheaper to buy Affinity products in the US than in the UK. (Which, considering Serif is a British company, some people might think is a bit unfair!) 🙂

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Affinity Publisher 2 : Affinity Photo 2 : Affinity Designer 2 : (latest release versions) on desktop and iPad

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On 8/29/2021 at 10:29 PM, Sotalo said:

For illustration that makes sense, especially if you're more interested in the pen quality than dealing with tons of layers. But vector is notoriously difficult to work with because the lines have to be generated anytime you move the scene, and hardware acceleration on tablets is lackluster. Raster is more difficult to lay down very large brushes, but easier to change the view. I do more technical graphics work and 3D, tablets are out of the question.

I noticed Affinity's price increased to $55. Let's hope we get some new features to go along with this increase. Like... image trace!

The price is so incredibly cheap already, not sure why you would expect new features because of a simple price hike. 

 

On 8/26/2021 at 1:38 AM, Sotalo said:

The professional world needs an affordable alternative to Adobe Illustrator. And several offerings are clamoring for that space. The problem is Adobe was a monolith for many years, they were a monopoly, and their teams were amazing. But they have all disbanded. In the latest release, Photoshop's Export As feature was reduced from a percentage down to options like "Very good." Illustrator had updates that completely broke the performance and simplify tools, and they've been scrambling to get it all back in order. All the new additions I've seen in these programs over the years have clearly been done by a younger, inexperienced team of developers, not necessarily designers for the intention of catering to professionals, and the overall decision has been to only make updates that users hate so they waste time having to revert it and give people a reason to continue paying. So even without the stupid subscription, the Adobe house is falling. I considered what it would take for my workplace to stop providing me an Adobe subscription, and honestly there's not too much that I really need.

The problem is Affinity Designer, if it ever wishes to be more than just a side drawing program for fun, needs more attention to the workflows and necessities of professionals so they can do everything they need to do in one program. This is not fun stuff, it's stuff like vectorizing raster images, fixing lines by drawing near them, and maybe not having totally random glitches when sending to print. The big updates have stopped, now it's just small tweaks and refinements.

There is a much bigger market for this program than what Affinity set out to make. It was marketed to professionals, we were promised a program that can do it all. We're willing to spend a lot more than $25 for that program, but we're not given the option.

If your business is running that lean that you cannot afford the monthly Adobe subscription I would question the viability of that business. We have many licenses so pay a fair bit every month but that is a small fraction of what we bring in using the software. I have not seem the doom and gloom you seem to be seeing with the Adobe apps, yes they have little glitches now and then but nothing that has made it completely unusable or have had noticeable performance issues for me. I would also not say the "Adobe house is falling". From what I see their user base is continuing to grow. Now with Affinity you are getting a whole heck of a lot of features for all 3 apps that run just about the same amount as one month of Adobe. It is not something I would switch to as I like what Adobe is doing with CC and it has solved so many headaches going this route. 

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24 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

I suspect this may be due to exchange rates.

It is exactly this. The UK price is unchanged and Apple price matrices (which we follow for price consistency across different stores, as it helps with email offers) have been changed recently changing the US price and some other territories.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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1 hour ago, wonderings said:

The price is so incredibly cheap already, not sure why you would expect new features because of a simple price hike. 

 

If your business is running that lean that you cannot afford the monthly Adobe subscription I would question the viability of that business. We have many licenses so pay a fair bit every month but that is a small fraction of what we bring in using the software. I have not seem the doom and gloom you seem to be seeing with the Adobe apps, yes they have little glitches now and then but nothing that has made it completely unusable or have had noticeable performance issues for me. I would also not say the "Adobe house is falling". From what I see their user base is continuing to grow. Now with Affinity you are getting a whole heck of a lot of features for all 3 apps that run just about the same amount as one month of Adobe. It is not something I would switch to as I like what Adobe is doing with CC and it has solved so many headaches going this route. 

If you work at an industrial capacity, the price is not a problem. But most creatives do not drum up enough business to warrant the price. I'm talking the kind of people who go to Michaels and purchase beads and leather string to make a bracelet. Also, students, and the recently graduated. Plus, the fact of the matter is I had a better drawing experience using Krita, a free program, than I ever had in Photoshop. And Affinity Designer allows the blending of raster shading with vector linework, NOT A SINGLE Adobe program is even capable of that. Not unless you want to consider Photoshop and Indesign's HORRIFIC pen tools a "vector editor."

For many years Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign were the holy trinity of desktop publishing. You did your photo manipulation and corrections/editing in Photoshop, your logo and vector design in Illustrator, and your layouts and publishing in InDesign. And for many years that was the best experience, and the features added to the capacity: Illustrator got a 3D perspective grid to assist in 3D views for, say, a cityscape. And Photoshop got quick select, a tool that made me wonder how we ever lived without. But then those features died: perspective, of course, was very difficult to use, Illustrator is not Sketchup. And truth be told, my experience with Affinity Photo is so smooth and clean that I don't often find the need to use selections to make spot changes. The developing process for full photos is extremely fast and clean, the need for constantly selecting and masking adjustment layers goes way down. For everything, Affinity is just better.

Photoshop has plateaued to the point of death. The newest big feature, "Neural Filters," which are still in development, do exactly the same thing Affinity Photo is already capable of doing, but even faster with even better results. Noise reduction? Come on. I can get amazing noise reduction in 1 second just dragging one slider in Affinity Photo, and it doesn't just blur everything like Photoshop. And yes, when Illustrator had those buggy issues I wasn't able to do what our business needed. I had to load in a very large 4800x3000 image to manually go over in vector, and the program just kept crashing. Then the simplify tool obliterated all my geo so I couldn't use my normal workflow anymore. Compared to Affinity Designer which I have some rather complex pieces with tons of layers, vector layers, and lighting/shading and adjustment layers stacked on top and in-between each other and aside from some slowdowns changing the views, the program I purchased for $25 runs more reliably and with better features than Adobe Illustrator, which requires a monthly donation to Adobe so their dumb teams can continue to wreck themselves.

So, to be clear, I position Affinity in a much higher order than Adobe right now. It does everything I need better than Adobe, and there are workflows and processes that are literally impossible to accomplish without it. And to the dumb team developing Adobe, if they really want to fix the stubborn attitude of the decades-old program that we've since moved on, charging $53 a month to get rid of the percentage slider and ruin features is not the way to do it.

But seriously, even a free vector program like Inkscape has image trace. There are just a few nit-picky things in Affinity's suite that block workflows, and if those things were changed it would be perfect. And I don't think these things are that difficult to implement. Redrawing a selected line to fix it? Copy+pasting in individual channels for mask export for games? Allow us to position images for print? Small nitpicks, but a good enough selection to completely block utility of the program. I now have it in my process to take my images to Inkscape just for the image trace, and then take that back to Affinity for everything else. If Serif doesn't have enough money for better development, at least let me buy a plugin so I can do this now!

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15 minutes ago, Sotalo said:

If you work at an industrial capacity, the price is not a problem. But most creatives do not drum up enough business to warrant the price. I'm talking the kind of people who go to Michaels and purchase beads and leather string to make a bracelet. Also, students, and the recently graduated. Plus, the fact of the matter is I had a better drawing experience using Krita, a free program, than I ever had in Photoshop. And Affinity Designer allows the blending of raster shading with vector linework, NOT A SINGLE Adobe program is even capable of that. Not unless you want to consider Photoshop and Indesign's HORRIFIC pen tools a "vector editor."

For many years Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign were the holy trinity of desktop publishing. You did your photo manipulation and corrections/editing in Photoshop, your logo and vector design in Illustrator, and your layouts and publishing in InDesign. And for many years that was the best experience, and the features added to the capacity: Illustrator got a 3D perspective grid to assist in 3D views for, say, a cityscape. And Photoshop got quick select, a tool that made me wonder how we ever lived without. But then those features died: perspective, of course, was very difficult to use, Illustrator is not Sketchup. And truth be told, my experience with Affinity Photo is so smooth and clean that I don't often find the need to use selections to make spot changes. The developing process for full photos is extremely fast and clean, the need for constantly selecting and masking adjustment layers goes way down. For everything, Affinity is just better.

Photoshop has plateaued to the point of death. The newest big feature, "Neural Filters," which are still in development, do exactly the same thing Affinity Photo is already capable of doing, but even faster with even better results. Noise reduction? Come on. I can get amazing noise reduction in 1 second just dragging one slider in Affinity Photo, and it doesn't just blur everything like Photoshop. And yes, when Illustrator had those buggy issues I wasn't able to do what our business needed. I had to load in a very large 4800x3000 image to manually go over in vector, and the program just kept crashing. Then the simplify tool obliterated all my geo so I couldn't use my normal workflow anymore. Compared to Affinity Designer which I have some rather complex pieces with tons of layers, vector layers, and lighting/shading and adjustment layers stacked on top and in-between each other and aside from some slowdowns changing the views, the program I purchased for $25 runs more reliably and with better features than Adobe Illustrator, which requires a monthly donation to Adobe so their dumb teams can continue to wreck themselves.

So, to be clear, I position Affinity in a much higher order than Adobe right now. It does everything I need better than Adobe, and there are workflows and processes that are literally impossible to accomplish without it. And to the dumb team developing Adobe, if they really want to fix the stubborn attitude of the decades-old program that we've since moved on, charging $53 a month to get rid of the percentage slider and ruin features is not the way to do it.

But seriously, even a free vector program like Inkscape has image trace. There are just a few nit-picky things in Affinity's suite that block workflows, and if those things were changed it would be perfect. And I don't think these things are that difficult to implement. Redrawing a selected line to fix it? Copy+pasting in individual channels for mask export for games? Allow us to position images for print? Small nitpicks, but a good enough selection to completely block utility of the program. I now have it in my process to take my images to Inkscape just for the image trace, and then take that back to Affinity for everything else. If Serif doesn't have enough money for better development, at least let me buy a plugin so I can do this now!

Adobe is not geared for the hobbyist, it is designed and priced for production pro environments where people are making their living with the software. Right or wrong is a matter of opinion, this is what Adobe wants though. If they wanted to go after the casual users they would definitely need a cheaper light option. 

Indesign, Illustrator and Photoshop are still the holy trinity of desktop publishing. They are the standard. There are few people still using Quark and Corel, but from my anecdotal experience they are older shops who are just maintaining and serving the customer base they have till they retire. I don't think anyone would say Adobe is perfect, there is always room for improvement but the mere fact that any design house, any print shop, anyone in the industry are almost all using the same version is amazing. I remember the days of dealing with files from various versions, needing to update or to get the client to send in IDML files, or PDF's to try and work from that. Those headaches are almost completely gone. Affinity does not have that issue right now as they are still V1. What happens when Affinity is 4 or 5 versions in? You are going to have that fragmentation again if files do not move across older and newer versions. 

I think it is great for anyone who can move to Affinity, the savings are huge! The reality is though that many many many people/shops cannot switch over for various reasons. The forums are full of them with people trying to accomplish the same thing with Publisher, Designer and Photos. I have had one file come in that was made with Designer. It was simple and easy to edit in Designer, but there was no difference then if I was dealing with an Illustrator file, they both just work. It will take a lot to topple the standard because they very idea of a standard is so much better then pockets of people all using different software and trying to work together to get good end results. Affinity has great software for a great price and they are better suited for those home users where $60 a month is a heavy burden. 

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24 minutes ago, wonderings said:

Adobe is not geared for the hobbyist, it is designed and priced for production pro environments where people are making their living with the software. Right or wrong is a matter of opinion, this is what Adobe wants though. If they wanted to go after the casual users they would definitely need a cheaper light option. 

Indesign, Illustrator and Photoshop are still the holy trinity of desktop publishing. They are the standard. There are few people still using Quark and Corel, but from my anecdotal experience they are older shops who are just maintaining and serving the customer base they have till they retire. I don't think anyone would say Adobe is perfect, there is always room for improvement but the mere fact that any design house, any print shop, anyone in the industry are almost all using the same version is amazing. I remember the days of dealing with files from various versions, needing to update or to get the client to send in IDML files, or PDF's to try and work from that. Those headaches are almost completely gone. Affinity does not have that issue right now as they are still V1. What happens when Affinity is 4 or 5 versions in? You are going to have that fragmentation again if files do not move across older and newer versions. 

I think it is great for anyone who can move to Affinity, the savings are huge! The reality is though that many many many people/shops cannot switch over for various reasons. The forums are full of them with people trying to accomplish the same thing with Publisher, Designer and Photos. I have had one file come in that was made with Designer. It was simple and easy to edit in Designer, but there was no difference then if I was dealing with an Illustrator file, they both just work. It will take a lot to topple the standard because they very idea of a standard is so much better then pockets of people all using different software and trying to work together to get good end results. Affinity has great software for a great price and they are better suited for those home users where $60 a month is a heavy burden. 

Literally the only reason people are using Adobe is because these programs have been grandfathered in. I played with Photoshop 7, trained on Photoshop/Ill/InDesign CS3 and I used Illustrator CS2 onward, and got invested in the CS5.5 and CS6 suites in college, but Affinity blew them all away. If desktop publishing started today, there's no doubt in my mind everyone would be using Affinity and Adobe would be laughed out of the room. The saving grace for Photoshop is actions. Illustrator's saving grace, I guess, would have to be effects. Plus the stability of these programs when going to print. But Affinity's workflow is much better, and I feel it's inches away from rendering Adobe completely and totally obsolete.

File versions don't matter if the program is inexpensive. Adobe Photoshop Professional alone used to cost over $1,000. For that price you can buy the entire Affinity suite several times over, it's no wonder people were pirating Adobe. They got complacent. They felt they're the only option. They set up a ridiculous certification program with minor tweaks every year to sell educational instruction books every year and quit perpetual licenses so they can rake in more money every year. They thought they could get away with it. They were wrong.

I want to see Affinity where they rightfully belong. Fixing these little things will push them over the top. And if they want to create brand new versions, go ahead. I'll pay $55 for a program that crushes Adobe. But not unless they fix the things that actually need fixing. Not just a hobby program, but one that really sticks it to Adobe.

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42 minutes ago, Sotalo said:

Literally the only reason people are using Adobe is because these programs have been grandfathered in. I played with Photoshop 7, trained on Photoshop/Ill/InDesign CS3 and I used Illustrator CS2 onward, and got invested in the CS5.5 and CS6 suites in college, but Affinity blew them all away. If desktop publishing started today, there's no doubt in my mind everyone would be using Affinity and Adobe would be laughed out of the room. The saving grace for Photoshop is actions. Illustrator's saving grace, I guess, would have to be effects. Plus the stability of these programs when going to print. But Affinity's workflow is much better, and I feel it's inches away from rendering Adobe completely and totally obsolete.

File versions don't matter if the program is inexpensive. Adobe Photoshop Professional alone used to cost over $1,000. For that price you can buy the entire Affinity suite several times over, it's no wonder people were pirating Adobe. They got complacent. They felt they're the only option. They set up a ridiculous certification program with minor tweaks every year to sell educational instruction books every year and quit perpetual licenses so they can rake in more money every year. They thought they could get away with it. They were wrong.

I want to see Affinity where they rightfully belong. Fixing these little things will push them over the top. And if they want to create brand new versions, go ahead. I'll pay $55 for a program that crushes Adobe. But not unless they fix the things that actually need fixing. Not just a hobby program, but one that really sticks it to Adobe.

That is your personal opinion and not based on any factual statistics. People did not have to sign up for CC, they could have been working in CS6 to this day as long as they did not upgrade their OS. You can have ideas and fantasies, but they are purely hypothetical and it does not work that way. Photoshop used to be bundled for free with scanners, they have come a long way and are the standard. Standards themselves are nothing to push aside lightly, they make life so much easier for the industry that has them. If everyone were to jump to Affinity today you would see the headaches come after a few versions when people did not pay to upgrade to the latest version. 

People were pirating Adobe and anything and everything else because they do not want to pay. If you can't afford the price of pro software then again it is not made for you. Stealing it because it is too expensive does not prove anything but that people will steal anything they can get their hands on. 

File versions definitely do matter if you want consistency, if everyone is using different software and swiping files around you are in for some massive headaches and unhappy clients. 

Not sure why the animosity towards Adobe, they are just a software company, not an evil corp trying to dominate the world. They make software, good software for all sorts of creative things. If you don't like it you don't have to use it. 

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