People who've switched entirely to affinity, why and how's it going?

[wonderings]

On 6/7/2021 at 3:32 PM, spinko said:

I havn't read through the whole thread but this is my short story:

I bought the Affinity Trio when they came out a couple of years ago. The idea was to encourage them (financially) and to show them my support for the development of an alternative to the comparable Adobe Trio, fully knowing that the software couldn't replace the Adobe offering immediately.

At present, I still have to use Adobe Indesign software because some basic features, most notably for me, multipage spreads with different page dimensions and foot-notes are not implemented. I could use Designer and Photo with some pain to replace Photoshop and Illustrator but I definitely couldn't use Publisher to replace Indesign at the moment because publishing work is currently my main income source and every project almost needs one or the other feature not currently implemented in AffPub.

As much as I would like to DITCH ADOBE once and for all, at the time of my writing this rant, it is regrettably not possible.

I am a little disappointed. I was hoping that Affinity's goal was to build a suite that professional designers could actually use as an alternative to the Adobe offering and that within a couple of years or so that goal would be attained. But I guess I was wrong. Maybe it will take longer. As every one seems to suggest, it took Indesign to mature over 10 years or so... Maybe, but I cant wait that long. I would be more than willing to pay for big updates so that features that professional publishers really use could be implemented in a timely manner. 

Greetings

I bought the 3 apps because of the price point and the first interesting alternatives to Adobe's big 3. I have no plans on switching over at this point in the game but if it could match feature for feature for what I need then it would be pretty amazing to get rid of a regular Adobe payment for multiple users and swap it out for one time purchases every few years when paid version updates come out. 

I think expectations are far to high for Serif, I compared Adobe to Serif in another thread and the companies are vastly difference in size and capital. Over 22 thousand employees for Adobe less than 200 for Serif. Annual income around 13 million for Affinity and 13 billion for Adobe. I am sure if Serif had the resources of Adobe they would be catching up in leaps in bounds. The reality is they don't so they are not going to move and hit the things people want in the time frame wrongly expected. I think it is pretty amazing what they have done and the fact that they have not released a V2 but added numerous updates for FREE with some impressive add ons. Data merge is a big one and something I thought would definitely be held back for V2. 

[boorowaboy]

I think the last comment about the difference in size between Serif and Adobe should put paid to those who grizzled about what is or is not available. Serif has produced an amazing suite of design programs in a very short time and which will increase in efficiency. How many years has it taken Adobe to get where it is. The same applies to the photoshop program. Don’t forget that along the way Adobe bought out any opposition and killed them off . Users of Serif programs have to be patient learn to do whatever you can with what is available, be creative and not complain make suggestions instead.

Complaining about what wasn’t in Pagemaker 1 wasn’t an option it was just amazing to see a column of text appear as you pulled down the blind. We didn’t know what we were missing out on.

Appreciate what the 200(?) person company has done and cheer them on. Complain to Apple and Adobe about greedy business policies and lack of public accountability in their operations.

[uneMule]

@boorowaboy

C'est sans doute le lot d'entreprise qui grossissent.
Apple n'est plus la coopérative fruitière des années 80 qui avait un club avec des adhérents et qui vous offrait des revues et des T-Shirt.
Et Adobe non plus. Il ne faut pas oublier qu'adobe, et très tôt, avec Illustrator, a proposé un produit nouveau et qui a rapidement évolué. Et personnellement je trouvais à ce moment là ce logiciel très bien venu.
Le reste c'est du business. Et qu'aurait fait Macromédia, Aldus et les autres s'ils avaient été dans la même situation. Et on ne parle pas de Quark !

*****

This is probably the lot of companies that get bigger.
Apple is no longer the fruit cooperative of the 1980s that had a club with members and gave you magazines and T-shirts.
And neither is Adobe. We must not forget that Adobe, and very early on, with Illustrator, offered a new product that evolved rapidly. And personally I found at that time this software very welcome.
The rest is business. And what would Macromedia, Aldus and the others have done if they had been in the same situation. And we're not talking about Quark!

[boorowaboy]

Bonjour; Qui, you are correct. Macromedia, Netscape etc may well have pursued the same business strategy. That doesn't mean it is the best for  users. My comments are intended to suggest that Serif and any other small company which produce alternatives to the global corporations should be congratulated and supported. Interestingly I have recently begun using Procreate an excellent iPad drawing program which is similar to Affinity Designer. The point I want to make is that Procreate is used all round the world by iPad users and it was created in Hobart Tasmania. Not, Berlin, London or SanFrancisco. I want that sort of company to succeed as well as Affinity Designer and Serif as a company.

I have attached a link which compares the two. It may or may not link. The search if interested is to; 

Procreate vs Affinity Designer - Which is the Best iPad Art App?

 

Procreate vs Affinity Designer - Which is the Best iPad Art App? - YouTube.webloc

[uneMule]

1 hour ago, boorowaboy said:

That doesn't mean it is the best for  users. My comments are intended to suggest that Serif and any other small company which produce alternatives to the global corporations should be congratulated and supported.

Bonjour.
Vous avez raison. Mon propos avait pour objet de soutenir le vôtre.

*****

Hello.
You are right. My point was to support your point.

 

1 hour ago, boorowaboy said:

Which is the Best iPad Art App?

S’agissant l'utilisation d'application sur tablette, autant être honnête, je ne suis pas cette personne.
Je suis un "vieux" qui utilise encore un ordinateur.

*****

When it comes to using applications on tablets, I might as well be honest, I'm not that person.
I'm an "old guy" who still uses a computer.

[PaulEC]

11 minutes ago, uneMule said:

I'm an "old guy" who still uses a computer.

Strange that using a computer, rather than a tablet, is now old fashioned! I remember when a ZX Spectrum was considered quite advanced, and my first actual PC had a 1GB hard drive! 😀 

[Joachim_L]

6 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

and my first actual PC had a 1GB hard drive! 😀 

OT: You were so wealthy? My first hard drive had 20 MB on an Ericsson PC. When I got my first 1 GB hard drive I thought, that I never get this HUGE disk filled.

[uneMule]

@PaulEC

Je me souviens de cette machine. Successeur du ZX81.
Mon premier Apple, je l'ai achetée dans une société ingénierie informatique. Pas de distributeur local !
A l'époque ou Apple représentait un pourcentage du marché à un petit chiffre et était alors considéré comme un truc pour les gars qui s'amusent.
Les temps on changé. Les pratiques avec !

I remember this machine. Successor to the ZX81.
My first Apple, I bought it from a computer engineering company. No local distributor!
Back in the day when Apple was a low single digit percentage of the market and was then considered a thing for guys having fun.
Times have changed. Behaviours too!

[boorowaboy]

Strangely enough the reason for using the ipad illus software is to keep the brain cells active. I usually work in watercolour and the challenge was to learn how to produce an ipad drawing that seemed to have some life in it.

[This is completely off the original topic so ignore if you wish. I have attached the Procreate drawing of a Uyghur man I sketched in Kashgar in 2007. A long time ago in the ever changing China of 2021.]

[daveu]

As sad as I am to say it, unless you are doing simple RGB web graphics in Photo, it's not a realistic solution to make the switch (especially with Designer) even with v2.

 

I have been in a terrible bind with a client where I created their logo in Designer—nothing but a couple of fairly simple paths and one font. But no matter what vector format I try to export to, they are unusable by any other app. I get client requests all of the time for vector formats they can send to vendors, and none of them work for any vendors. EPS is tiny, blurred, and rasterized. PDF, flattened and not helpful. SVG completely broken and three layers are turned into 21 layers and won't open anywhere. TIFF, flattened rasterized. I at least expected PSD to work even if it will annoy those expected vectors... but nope, not even PSD (!) it's flattened, rasterized, and shrunk down a worthless blur. Of course, PNG and JPG are fantastic and easy, but anything with layers or vector maps are completely useless after export.

 

And it's not one setting here or there, I have literally spent hours and hours doing nothing but exporting with every single combination possible during export for each format. After much frustration and many apologies over months... I have angrily returned to Adobe and rebuilt the exact same logo in Illustrator. Presto, no problem. Everyone gets the files they need, everything works perfectly.

 

I love the idea of Affinity, and I was thrilled to support them in their no subscription mission. Photo is a nice tool for a casual web dev, but it's not an Adobe replacement for a designer.