Has V2 fixed Affinity's biggest issues?

[François R]

2 hours ago, AlainP said:

Real professionals don't whine all the time on discussion forums. They make suggestions and work using other tools if the ones they have don't fulfill their needs.

Exactly, and then the forum's emotional and emotionally driven members can think about how many with a serious and (semi)pro agenda in here they have scared away. Or simply discouraged from getting involved at all after scanning the forum. In general, you may wonder why these professionals are not to be found in this forum at all. 

I certainly don't use Affinity professionally. I once thought it had potential and followed it excitedly, but that hope evaporated year after year. And the forum has certainly not raised my hopes.

At work I call companies for support, or create a support ticket that is answered by a professional and customer oriented person who doesn't call me "Hater" or part of a coordinated attack by the competition. Whether you'll be satisfied with the response or handling is not a given, but you don't have to go through a meat grinder of random annoying people from the Internet. So you don't have to go through all sorts of bullshit that bypasses the core of the problem, as is the case in here. It's simply too unserious for professional use.

Nevertheless, there are people who use/have to use the programs to generate their income, and I feel sorry for them having to go that route for support or feedback in here.

There is something particularly wrong in this forum. I don't use many forums myself, three to be exact, most of what I do is professional as described above, but apart from some open source forums I visited as a youngster, the others are far less characterised by cult and youth club mentality. In fact, I can actually get issues resolved or great answers.

The great harm is that the majority of long standing issues are never, ever addressed in a thorough and balanced way, but that everything ends up in nonsense.

[Twolane]

15 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

look up what possible definition for HOA

I'm afraid I must take exception to Horn of Africa, since there are two. One can be rounded. I've spent some time getting into various kinds of trouble in the sands of time on the other, but I shan't go into detail about either. 😎

[Guest]

Just my 2¢, but the whole 'professional' discussion (in relation to tools) is so dated and loaded with baggage. Since the rise of the 'prosumer' in the 80s many, many folks have been performing 'professional' work using the tools readily available, and affordable to them. In the 80s this was the desktop-publishing revolution which enabled 'regular' folks with a Macintosh and a little software to create work that would have traditionally been done using expensive professional typesetters[1]. In the 90s this might have been video production companies using slightly better quality camcorders than the consumer ones, but not anywhere near the quality (and price) of the high-end professional cameras—or using Premiere and After Effects instead of a dedicated Avid suite to edit their work. And let's not forget the internet (considered a fad early on) which enabled a generation of hackers using relatively simple tools to build some of the biggest and most valuable companies today. Now it might be using Procreate and Instagram to build your illustration career, or Google Docs and Substack to author and market your books.

Today, with laptops, iPhones and iPads, Procreate, Instagram, Canva, Figma, Google Docs, Keynote, Blender, GameMaker, etc. many folks make professional quality work without the need for what many folks would deem 'professional quality tools' (Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Cloud, Autodesk Maya, Unity, etc). I think Serif knows this 'prosumer' market very well, not only with their previous apps, but also with many of the new customers that are coming to Serif tools for the first time today. These folks look at what these new tools enable them to do, and not focus on expectations (ahem, baggage) they don't have because they a) have never used the 'professional' tools, or b) were utterly confused when trying to use the 'professional' tools.

I think much of the friction comes when Serif (or other folks in general) draw comparisons to other, entrenched 'industry standard' applications (ahem, Adobe) that have been extensively used in many recent traditional 'professional' workflows. The Affinity apps aren't there yet, and maybe never will be. However, if your professional work isn't tied to 'traditional workflows' the Affinity apps have an awful lot to offer already (if they can fix the bugs/UX issues).

Maybe trying to replace InDesign with Affinity Publisher for your publishing business isn't the way to go today (or possibly ever), or maybe Publisher is exactly what you need to finally launch that new knitting magazine you've been thinking about? Maybe you still need to use Illustrator and Photoshop to exchange files with your existing customers, or maybe Designer and Photo provide and excellent (and budget friendly) way for your team to create the assets needed for your new game. These are all just tools we use to accomplish things we couldn't have done without them. If it works, use it, if it doesn't, don't.

[1] In my first job my boss would make me take the 'bloated' PostScript output from Illustrator and optimize it for the imagesetter so it would process faster. Was I ever happy when we moved away from that archaic workflow.

[François R]

When I use the word professional, it is a 100% reference to whether the product is used in a professional context where the creative uses the product in order to sell a product or the product as a part product, or where the product is used in a context where the product in its final form or as part of something larger is finally to be sold. Or used by professionals by authorities or organisations. In this context several other professionals and professional equipment are involved. Printers, print shops, web servers, other creative, whatever. What my product can do is not as relevant as that it works in the middle of a workflow. And in particular as an end product.

When you throw around the term professional tools in marketing, which Serif loves, you have to be aware that someone assumes this is what is meant by professional, because that is simply the reality for someone.

I am well aware that some need less than others. But it is so much their need and tolerance for the unfortunate many necessary workarounds that dominate this forum. Someone has to take the term professional seriously because Serif uses it non-stop.

When you even advertise that v2 "sets new standards", that it is "Professional photo editing, publishing, graphic design and illustration", that with v2 you are "breaking barriers," you have to expect feedback from the disappointed. And it has come.

Double disappointment for those Serif customers when they are confronted with nonsense from random people in here.

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, François R said:

When you even advertise that v2 "sets new standards", that it is "Professional photo editing, publishing, graphic design and illustration", that with v2 you are "breaking barriers," you have to expect feedback from the disappointed. And it has come.

If someone is a "professional" - as you qualify him here, then he should know that marketing gibberish about something being the best, the fastest, the most perfect is simply gibberish that a "professional" can't believe at all. "Professional" is a professional because he can easily recognize that it is just marketing gibberish and that the given application does not do what he needs and requires for his professional work.
So I absolutely do not understand why a "professional" should be somehow disappointed, or should even feel cheated, because during trial period (today even 30 days) he quickly revealed that the given product is not suitable for him at all, so he will not buy it - after all, no one is forcing him to do so.

[AllAppsUser]

The customer who is most valuable to Serif's, and it's app suite's future, is the one who buys the whole suite, who spends £90, not £30, (actually it's those who'd spend £90 x 6+ for their studio). This isn't about "£30". And they're the one's who will keep buying it when it's £500.

Why do they buy the whole suite?

Because they use all three apps constantly, every day. <<< That's the defining characteristic of these customers.

And yes, there is a distinct pattern to how they use the three apps, so there are 'needs' that are distinct to that pattern of activity.

Photographers will possibly never buy Designer, and may never buy Publisher. They'll - probably / likely to / may - only ever spend £30.

So here it is - why these particular 'professionals' whinge: I've randomly picked Photo. At the moment, Photo is focussed on the specialist photographer, at the expense of the individual using all three apps every day. Designer is the same. The 'suite' is not a 'suite', other than superficially. There is no incompatibility between specialist photographer and three-app-user, btw.

Their needs are not getting met, while photographers and illustrators are. It's not about being special.

By the way, I've admired Serif for their stated mission, and it's heart-breaking to see something with so much love and effort poured in to it missing the target they set themselves.

---------------

NOTES:
'Professional O_o !' The pattern of activity I've described above is the 'workflow' I'm referring to when I talk about 'professional'.
**** Feel free to suggest something else I can use to label those who use all three apps more or less equally, I'll welcome it with both arms. I'll even change my heinous username if I can ****
My use of the word professional is NOT a judgement on anyone and I know it's a crude label, but it's the best I've got, unfortunately. @François R, three posts above, has a good definition that I recognise and am referring to. It's a particular process in a context, that doesn't have a label anyone understands instantly, unlike 'photographer', or 'illustrator'. 'Designer' is a label for a plethera of processes - furniture, clothes, bridges, databases, systems, heirarchies, business models, packaging, UI's....

It is not about 'skill' or 'creativity' or 'professional attitude', or 'special status' (I naively thought everyone understood that, and I apologise for offence).

The username 'designer' was already taken at the time, and I didn't give it much thought, btw.

Marketing gibberish What's the alternative? 'Professionals' should only give time to testing stuff that doesn't make these promises? Importantly, properly testing an app to assess whether it's usable is quite an exercise, requiring no small investment of time - as I said, it's not about £30.
 

 

[Artsketch]

13 minutes ago, ProDesigner said:

will keep buying it when it's £500

Is it really worth £500 every 2-3 years?

[AllAppsUser]

Every single business has 'core' customers who keep them afloat. Who provide 80% of the revenue that pays wages and other bills. It's reality. I hate to break it to you, but you may not be in the 'important customer' bucket with a lot of the firms you're paying. It's not personal.

And you've mentioned just one feature you need. Try a dozen. It might be the starving who are pleading a special case here?

[walt.farrell]

23 minutes ago, Artsketch said:

Is it really worth £500 every 2-3 years?

Well, it won't be £500 unless you've bought multiple Universal licenses or a lot of individual product licenses.

And it isn't every 2-3 years. Or, at least, it might not be. First, V2 could be like V1 and last for 7 years. Next, there's no requirement to upgrade to the next paid version, whenever there is one. You can keep using V2 as long as you want.

[AllAppsUser]

9 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

You can keep using V2 as long as you want.

Your device's OS will be the determiner of how long. I can't see Serif will offer updates ad infinitum for previous versions.

[François R]

3 hours ago, Pšenda said:

If someone is a "professional" - as you qualify him here, then he should know that marketing gibberish about something being the best, the fastest, the most perfect is simply gibberish that a "professional" can't believe at all. "Professional" is a professional because he can easily recognize that it is just marketing gibberish and that the given application does not do what he needs and requires for his professional work.
So I absolutely do not understand why a "professional" should be somehow disappointed, or should even feel cheated, because during trial period (today even 30 days) he quickly revealed that the given product is not suitable for him at all, so he will not buy it - after all, no one is forcing him to do so.

That is right. You don't understand. But you post. 7000 times. Your completely blind and ritual defense of Serif with such unserious nonsense is part of the problem. Not the solution.

[Artsketch]

26 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

You can keep using V2 as long as you want.

Only if it will be compatible with Apple's yearly macOS and iPadOS update.

[walt.farrell]

7 minutes ago, Artsketch said:

If it will be compatible with Apple's yearly macOS and iPadOS update.

If it's not, then for the foreseeable future Serif will update it to keep it running. Even if V3 were to be released in 3 years, I figure Serif will (try to) keep V2 running for at least 5.

[AllAppsUser]

14 minutes ago, François R said:

But you post. 7000 times.

360 posts since the end of 2019? So 180 ish a year.

Where do you get 7k from?

[François R]

10 minutes ago, ProDesigner said:

360 posts since the end of 2019? So 180 ish a year.

Where do you get 7k from?

From the profile I was actually replying to.

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, ProDesigner said:

360 posts since the end of 2019? So 120 a year.

Where do you get 7k from?

François R was talking to Psenda there, not to you.

 

 

[François R]

Just now, walt.farrell said:

François R was talking to Psenda there, not to you.

Indeed. Some in here could learn a lesson or several thousand from Walt. He is very balanced, actually listening, he asks curious questions to understand better and is actually a very helpful person.

[AllAppsUser]

12 minutes ago, François R said:

From the profile I was actually replying to.

My mistake @François R.  I thought it was odd. Thank you both, @walt.farrell too.

[François R]

2 minutes ago, ProDesigner said:

My mistake @François R.  I thought it was odd.

No problem. 🙂 It is getting late. 🌛

[AllAppsUser]

8 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

I don't think they are starving if they are paying hundreds a year to Adobe. 

"Starving" for features in the apps. You've not understood, and that's ok, it's getting late.

[Kal]

😳

Holy disastrous dialogue derailment Batman! Does Affinity need a Meta forum for this kind of thing?

I'm the one who triggered this whole thing with my offensive use of the word 'pr*fessionals', so let me be the one to try and end it. Who cares what happened on other threads with other forum members? On this thread, I used the word, and when brought to task over it, I explained exactly what I meant by it. And I stand by that. Now, you're free to agree or disagree with the point I was making, but let's play the ball and not the man. Many have commented that our society has largely lost the skill of respectfully disagreeing with one another, and forums like this one seem to prove the point.

Now, to those who resent the very existence of this thread, because I dared to complain about software which only cost me A$159… In my original post, I said:

Quote

I'll still purchase all the apps, and I'll still recommend them to family and friends. They do a lot of great things, and you certainly can't beat the price.

 

For those who are still offended, let me spell it out. It's not about the price. The price is great. So, you get what you pay for? Yes. So, that denies me the right to express any disappointment over this V2 release? No. I am disappointed because the software is clearly positioned as a competitor to Adobe's Creative Cloud software. As others have pointed out, Affinity uses the word 'pr*fessional' in their own marketing! Go take a look—it's the first effing word on their home page!! Oh but that's just marketing hyperbole right? We all know not to trust marketing, right? Well here's a thought… If you want to take someone to task over their use of the word 'pr*fessional', why don't you start with Affinity? If you think it's marketing bullsh*t, why not hold them accountable?! Why take it out on me when I simply come here to express my personal disappointment that the experience doesn't match the hype?

I've been pretty patient on this thread up 'till now (even when the first two comments tried to shut down the discussion before it even began). But the way some people make things personal (even getting precious and defensive on Affinity's behalf), is reminding me why I tend to avoid the Apple forums—so many precious Apple users who take unofficial residence outside the glass walls and guard their turf ferociously. I have better things to do with my time—and so do you I suspect.

[A_B_C]

If we could just leave this talk of “professional” versus “prosumer” versus “amateur” behind us, once and for all. — In the end, it is all about tasks that can be fulfilled with the help of a particular software and about the level of difficulty or ease of fulfilling these tasks. Also, and not to forget, about the way in which the design of a particular software can inspire us in doing our work. Tools can be inspiring, remember. What @debraspicher said earlier in this thread made a lot of sense to me. Forget about labels like “professional,” as they really do not tell anything in themselves. Rather talk about use cases and tasks. That will be more fruitful.

I’ll give you an example. When Affinity Publisher came out some years ago, I had hoped I could soon start using it for typesetting press-ready academic books with the application (my focus of work has changed to a different area since then). But without footnotes and an option to organise Publisher documents into books, that was unfeasible. In Version 2, we have a footnotes system as well as a book system now, and my first tests show that Publisher does handle large documents with footnotes quite well. Unfortunately, we still lack a robust cross-references system that would also be required for the intended task, at least for the kind of publications I have in mind. So I have to conclude that for the specific task of typesetting academic books with footnotes and cross-references, Affinity Publisher is still lacking an essential feature.

Such a description does not make use of the word “professional” or the like. It just describes requirements for fulfilling a task, and I think it does not really make much sense start a debate concerning the question whether a “professional” DTP application must be capable of being used for typesetting publications whose production would require a robust system of cross-references. Remember that housands upon thousands of books are printed and published each year that do not contain a single cross-reference. Ironically, a majority of academic books and publications are today produced by people who wouldn’t call themselves “professionals” in the area of typography or book design at all, for these books and publications are typeset by their authors themselves. The typical work environments of these authors are LaTeX or Microsoft Word. So when you take a look at the provided example, I think it should be sufficiently clear that using the word “professional” is highly uninformative in comparison to descriptions of tasks and task requirements. Please let’s leave this debate behind us, as it really doesn’t get us anywhere, does it?

In short, I found @Kal’s approach at the beginning of this thread very fruitful, and I hope this post may contribute to get back to the intention from which this thread was started. 🙂

[A_B_C]

@Kal, seems we cross-posted, so my post shouldn’t be read as a direct answer to yours. Rather to the endless discussions about the term “professional” that tend to derail useful threads like this one quite regularly.

I think the problem is that “professional” is a semantically open term that can have a lot of meanings which are largely context-dependent. So everyone may understand something slightly different when using this term. Some authors in this thread have successfully, as I think, explained their specific use of the term. But the semantic openness remains. And if we consider the matter carefully, it is precisely this semantic openness that invites marketing folks to employ this term in their communications. It helps them establish a certain perception of their products without promising or advertising anything too specific. Should they rather not use this term? — Maybe. But I doubt anyone in a marketing department will lightly forgo the benefits that result from the semantic openness of the term and the specific air it carries. Up to a certain point, this is … understandable … I fear. 😉

[Kal]

2 minutes ago, A_B_C said:

@Kal, seems we cross-posted, so my post shouldn’t be read as a direct answer to yours. Rather to the endless discussion about the term “professional” that derails useful threads like this one in a regular manner. 🙂

Thanks for that. I've used up my daily allowance of 'reactions' again, but you've been a voice of reason here, and I appreciate it.

 

18 minutes ago, A_B_C said:

Forget about labels like “professional,” as they really do not tell anything in themselves. Rather talk about use cases and tasks. That will be more fruitful.

Sure. Words and labels without context are always prone to misinterpretation. When I said that Affinity needs to 'listen to the pros', that was just a succinct way of labelling a very diverse group of users who would, in the process of sharing feedback with Affinity, provide the necessary context. But I think you probably understood that, and I agree, it would be good if we could 'leave this debate behind us'.

[Kal]

If anyone is interested, here's my own personal context. I was a pr*fessional graphic designer for many years, doing both digital and print work. Around the time macOS stopped supporting CS6, I was transitioning away from print work anyway, and focusing more on software design/development. And so for me, it seemed like the perfecting opportunity to say goodbye to Adobe and hello to Affinity. (I detest the forced subscription model, where your personal files are forever held to ransom, so I was not willing to keep paying Adobe for that indulgence.)

I found the transition frustrating. IMHO, UI/UX is not Affinity's strength. Like someone else said in this thread, all those little annoyances do add up, and they contribute to a less enjoyable experience. You learn to adapt of course, but I've never been able to say that I truly enjoy using Affinity software.

And then, occasionally, I still pick up a print job, where I feel like I'm p*ssing into the wind trying to make things work. I've come to the conclusion that Affinity either doesn't understand print very well, or they just don't think it's important. If it's the former, then they need to enlist the help of some knowledgeable consultants (which is what I was trying to say in my infamously contentious post).