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V2 is a downgrade


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Hey everyone!
I'm sorry, but after having bought the universal license and done some testing, I deleted V2 Designer, Publisher and Photo from my iPad.
Publisher would have been great to work on files due to using Designer and Photo tools via Studio link (I'm not even doing layout stuff!) and I'd have used Designer for its export persona if I don't need editing the file later on or port .svg to V1 (quite limited, but with knife and shape builder in V2 at least somewhat interesting).
In its current state, however, the suite is a massive downgrade from V1 and even with the knife tool, shape builder and the quick menu being great tools that do work wonders on workflow efficiency, it's still much slower and quite risky to work with:
- No V1 file compatibility
- Online activation required
as well as the following issues:
- Only starts up to my files section if there are files already
- Can't double tap layers to expand and collapse
- Button lower left has to be disabled each time when opening a file
- Bars left and right show last icon only by scrolling even though there is room for displaying them (iPad mini 5)
- Frequent crashes (about 5-7 times per hour) by just using the knife, boolean operations or the shape builder
- Shape outline sporadically creating blobs at start of vertex loop when shape was created by shape builder
- Grouping layers (very basic) takes two taps instead of one, yet I got massive UI for sorting layers (probably rarely needed in general; personally, I never need it)
- Couldn't find vector warp on iPad
I can't remember alpha or beta testing any software that included such a number of huge workflow impairing issues that were regressions from a previous version. And this is a release. Frequent crashes and missing V1 compatibility are the worst ones.
Sad. Not going for a refund, though. Hope it gets better (worthwhile). You did a great job with V1 after all.
Not really going to discuss here any further. For the time being, I'll keep using V1 and be productive.
Best wishes,
Shu

[EDIT:

Two months later, testing again, some issues are solved, others appeared. Current issues:

- No V1 file compatibility
- Online activation required
- Only starts up to my files section if there are files already

- Button lower left has to be disabled each time when opening a file (changed now, but should probably be a per app setting rather than per document)
- Bars left and right show last icon only by scrolling even though there is room for displaying them (iPad mini 5)
- There is a new feature, using a tool by swiping on an icon, yet I need to scroll on the tool bar to get to certain tools. How does that work out? Badly.
- 3D filter still only shows one light source when adding further ones.
- It's great that Designer now has Duplicate when touch & holding by accessing the quick menu, but getting rid of the small menu bar completely isn't optimal either, since when you only need copy or paste (or duplicate in Photo), you now have much more screen travel than before on a funcion that's used quite frequently, making it incredibly exhausting. I'd suggest reinstantiating the old menu, including duplicate for Designer and invoking the new one by other means (maybe touch & hold, then swipe up).]

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Yup. I have to wonder if Serif actually did any user research or user testing (especially with professional users) with v2. As it currently stands, v2 just feels half-baked.

I'm hoping Serif might soon begin to communicate with users beyond their stock "we'll add your requests to our ever growing list of requests" answers—but I won't hold my breath.

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Personally I can live with all the bugs, crashes and all the shortcomings of v2, and I think that StudioLink alone it makes a huge difference on the iPad. Makes every other software I know of kids’ toys. 

But some of the changes (on the iPad) are questionable. The replacing of ckeckboxes with dots that are sometimes hit or miss, especially combined with More Space, makes little sense to me, as do the lack of the trash icon, the extra-step required to group items, the vector-only functionality of the warp tool, the missing group thumbnails in Compact Mode etc.

Although most of the issues are already being acknowledged by the devs as being looked at, how long will the fixes going to take is anyone’s guess, I think. Some issues took years to be fixed in v1, others were ported to v2.

But then again, v2 is a huge improvement over the first. I can live with all the issues, there’s no turning back from studiolink for me. 

StudioLink 256gb 11’ M1 iPad Pro

iPadOS 17 Public Beta 1

iPad Magic Keyboard

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Version 1 doesn't have version 1 file compatibility either.  It can only open files from older versions of version 1, not from newer.

Version 2 is newer than any version of version 1, so it stands to reason that the older versions would continue to not open newer files.

This is nothing new.

All iPad apps require online activation - typically done by the App Store so it is simply invisible to the user.

 

2 hours ago, shushustorm said:

- Couldn't find vector warp on iPad

Interesting... neither can I.

There are a few features which are listed as desktop only, but this one is not among them, so I would have expected it to be there, but I similarly can't find it.

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6 minutes ago, fde101 said:

Interesting... neither can I.

There are a few features which are listed as desktop only, but this one is not among them, so I would have expected it to be there, but I similarly can't find it.

I counter-intuitively discovered the other day that vector warp on the iPad is under 'group' (the icon in the layers palette). 

image.thumb.png.2845cc507c4818b97c978ce4066820d4.png

 

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Just now, Bryan Rieger said:

I unintuitively discovered the other day that vector warp on the iPad is under 'group' (the icon in the layers palette). 

Oh wait - that's a group icon!  I was looking at that and thinking it was a copy/duplicate button!

Yes, and that actually does make a minimal amount of sense since the implementation on the desktop also is to embed the selection a special type of group which does the warping.

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9 minutes ago, fde101 said:

Oh wait - that's a group icon!  I was looking at that and thinking it was a copy/duplicate button!

Yeah… that's a 'group' icon. Much like we have what is essentially a radio button in v2 for layer visibility, and the symbols icon still looks like a biohazard symbol. 🤦‍♀️

Icon recognition in v2 should probably be a drinking game (and I don't drink). If you get it wrong, drink. If you get it right, drink to celebrate.

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48 minutes ago, MoonaticDestiny said:

I dont even know why they would put it there. It honestly shouldnt go there. 

The warp function is a kind of grouping action, so that's a good place for it. 

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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True, but personally I’d like to see Warp having its own icon and category, so the group function to be activated as it was in v1, and as it should be in any vector software — readily available, not hidden in a submenu. Grouping objects and staying organised when working with big projects is a must, and having to tap twice every single time for such a fundamental function gets very tiresome as time goes by. 

StudioLink 256gb 11’ M1 iPad Pro

iPadOS 17 Public Beta 1

iPad Magic Keyboard

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It took me a few minutes to get my head around 'warp as a group', but once I did it made a lot more sense. I agree with @walt.farrell, while it may initially be unintuitive, 'group' is the right place for it. I suspect we may see more group types in the future, as it's a really nice metaphor for applying non-destructive filters and effects on any number of objects at once.

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5 hours ago, shushustorm said:

- Online activation required

It's very sad they've resorted to this. Yes, they currently have no plans of deprecating support for V2, of course they don't they just launched it. What about in five years? Ten years? What if management changes? What if they get bought out? The customer can become left out for a multitude of reasons, even third-party licenses can mess stuff up for us, if Serif has any of those agreements (example: Serif MoviePlus features cannot be unlocked anymore and they provide no way to unlock the features anymore).

They made an official statement in the first few days that you could install the trial but this is not true, it requires internet even to start the trial.

A few years ago I saw a statement from one of the Serif employees and it didn't make me feel any better about this new online activation implementation, I can't find it but in essence it amounted to 'no software will work forever anyway so it isn't too important'. I think it was on a pre-purchase question thread about V1 activation.

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39 minutes ago, ATP said:

 

A few years ago I saw a statement from one of the Serif employees and it didn't make me feel any better about this new online activation implementation, I can't find it but in essence it amounted to 'no software will work forever anyway so it isn't too important'. I think it was on a pre-purchase question thread about V1 activation.

'No software will work forever', but some can work for a very long time;
I still have PaintShop Pro 7, from 2001, which I still use from time to time,
on Windows 10.  🙂

PaintShop Pro, btw, is another example, next to FreeHand, of an excellent
application which was destroyed after a buy-out...

 

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21 minutes ago, Fred5738 said:

'No software will work forever', but some can work for a very long time;
I still have PaintShop Pro 7, from 2001, which I still use from time to time,
on Windows 10.  🙂

PaintShop Pro, btw, is another example, next to FreeHand, of an excellent
application which was destroyed after a buy-out...

 

The greatest thing about PSP7 is that it still installs and works, no problems even on modern machines. That will currently not be true for the Affinity 2 suite of software as they require activation servers to install and those servers will be taken offline some day.

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21 minutes ago, ATP said:

The greatest thing about PSP7 is that it still installs and works, no problems even on modern machines. That will currently not be true for the Affinity 2 suite of software as they require activation servers to install and those servers will be taken offline some day.

Yes, and that is very unfortunate. Let's hope that Serif will change its mind about the online activation or will come up with a solution, maybe offline activation for the 'exe/msi'-variant or something.

Note to Serif; I wouldn't mind to pay more for a special version with offline activation.

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6 minutes ago, Fred5738 said:

Yes, and that is very unfortunate. Let's hope that Serif will change its mind about the online activation or will come up with a solution, maybe offline activation for the 'exe/msi'-variant or something.

This doesn't inspire confidence for customers.

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1 hour ago, Bryan Rieger said:

we may see more group types in the future, as it's a really nice metaphor for applying non-destructive filters and effects on any number of objects at once

Don't look any further than the good ole Compound Curves which is also nothing else but a group with a "special effect".

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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37 minutes ago, ATP said:

That will currently not be true for the Affinity 2 suite of software as they require activation servers to install and those servers will be taken offline some day.

It appears to only require online activation. That is to say, once activated, it doesn't need internet connectivity to run.

I registered mine, then blocked all traffic using my firewall and the application still functions as normal.

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6 minutes ago, rvst said:

It appears to only require online activation. That is to say, once activated, it doesn't need internet connectivity to run.

I registered mine, then blocked all traffic using my firewall and the application still functions as normal.

The point is, if a few years down the line, Serif/Affinity was bought by Adobe and then discontinued by Adobe, to kill the competition (...), and you bought a new computer, then you could no longer install and run v2 because you could not activate it anymore.

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2 minutes ago, Fred5738 said:

The point is, if a few years down the line, Serif/Affinity was bought by Adobe and then discontinued by Adobe, to kill the competition (...), and you bought a new computer, then you could no longer install and run v2 because you could not activate it anymore.

Fair point. Although I suspect that would be on shaky grounds legally in many jurisdictions. The acquirer would very likely have to remove the online activation or refund users

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28 minutes ago, loukash said:

Don't look any further than the good ole Compound Curves which is also nothing else but a group with a "special effect".

I can definitely see that, but it would be nice to see the same mental models adopted for all effect groups. As it stands compounds still feel very separate.

Also, I can't for the life of me find them on the iPad, and RTFM is no help at all as the following excerpt (from FTM) makes no sense in v2:

Creating Compounds


3. On the Move Tool's context toolbar, tap Geometry.
4. Tap Add, Subtract, Intersect or Xor.
The compound will be created as a Compound layer entry on the Layers panel, containing the original objects.

There is no Geometry menu/button to tap. And tapping the Add, Subtract, Intersect, Xor, and Divide menu items performs that action on the selected geometry, but does not create a compound shape. And while it as possible to Separate Curves after, I was only left with the geometry produced after the operation. There is simply no layer group to toggle to manipulate the shapes or modes any further.

Am I missing something, or do the docs not align with reality?

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4 hours ago, iulian said:

True, but personally I’d like to see Warp having its own icon and category, so the group function to be activated as it was in v1, and as it should be in any vector software — readily available, not hidden in a submenu. Grouping objects and staying organised when working with big projects is a must, and having to tap twice every single time for such a fundamental function gets very tiresome as time goes by. 

@walt.farrell I didnt really explain myself but what this user above said is how I feel. I think I said it shouldnt be there because I didnt like how they turned the group button into a pop up menu and added warp group to it. The group button was a solo button in v1 that you could hit to group and ungroup. I loved it. Super easy to group and ungroup. Now, in v2, you have to hit this new group button twice to ungroup since its now a pop up menu. So its more work for a simple action. What they should have done is kept the group button to group and undo as its own separate button and then create a new button that has a "warp" icon that when clicked on shows a pop up menu with all the warp groups. Thats what they should have done. Look at the photo below. 

 

group and warp.jpg

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