Dear Devs | If you have a bad day, read this…

[Guest]

Hey guys!

This is my little love letter to your software suite. I absolutely adore it. Its usability and look and feel are absolutely spot on. And this is coming from a man who is using vector programs since 2002 (Freehand, anyone?). I even go so far as to advertise your suite on a regular basis in my lessons.

Here in Germany I teach at two private design schools, the HTK academy and SAE School, and I am ((un-)fortunately) responsible for Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Since they're still industry standard. But I have stopped using them ever since I came across Affinity in my professional life and only use them because I teach them. I even went so far as to introduce a slide in my presentations where I talk about the respective alternative to each program because there're just too many benefits compared to Adobe. Who's only advantage is its market share, which they bought, not earned. I mostly teach fresh first and second semester students and I am happy to suggest to them a viable alternative very early on.

In summary, please keep doing what you're doing and keep making a stand for ownership over continuous rental models like Adobe.
Much love and support going out to the Affinity team!

Greetings,

PS: Please make an After Effects contester, so I can can Adobe fully...

[fde101]

2 hours ago, The_Snooze said:

Please make an After Effects contester, so I can can Adobe fully

Not sure why this keeps coming up, but not necessarily the best use of Serif's time when they already seem to be stretched fairly thin as it is; if you are looking for motion graphics capabilities check out programs like Apple Motion or HitFilm; maybe add something like SynFig Studio for certain specific use cases.  For compositing work, take a look at Fusion from BlackMagic Design, or at Natron.

Point being there are already several solid options out there to replace After Effects, including a few free ones.

[Komatös]

Or for the same money, also from BlackmagicDesign, Davinci Resolve Studio.

[fde101]

50 minutes ago, Komatös said:

Or for the same money, also from BlackmagicDesign, Davinci Resolve Studio.

Resolve isn't really a replacement for After Effects so much as for most of the other video-related apps offered by Adobe - Premiere for example - but it does have an integrated version of Fusion which is good for smaller tasks.  That said, Fusion and Resolve Studio both include licenses for each other.  If you buy either one, you have access to both.  There is a free version of Fusion which is built-in to the free version of Resolve and can be fine to get a feel for it, but there are a few limitations to working with the version which is integrated into Resolve.

[Iajhy]

Same feeling here bro (Affinity❤️), I recently bought the studio version from BMD DaVinci Resolve, worth every penny  
And you can use Fusion Studio as well, since the serial activates both. I thought Natron development was dropped, but I guess the community keep working on it.
BUT I think a prototype UI/UX solution would make more sense, since Adobe owns Figma and there's nothing left to contend on that area. I thought Framer would be this other guy, but they completely changed the niche for websites only, they still have a few prototyping stuffs, but is far behind Figma.
Considering what we have today with Affinity Designer, wouldn't be too far (I'm guessing ) from add those capabilities for a prototype solution. 

[2ddpainter]

For vector motion graphics i like to mention "Cavalry".
There is also a free Version, where only a Account is needed.
Here a Link:
https://cavalry.scenegroup.co/

Exporting your graphics its a bit unsual, you need to Render it.

[Bryan Rieger]

8 hours ago, Iajhy said:

…I think a prototype UI/UX solution would make more sense, since Adobe owns Figma and there's nothing left to contend on that area. I thought Framer would be this other guy, but they completely changed the niche for websites only, they still have a few prototyping stuffs, but is far behind Figma.
Considering what we have today with Affinity Designer, wouldn't be too far (I'm guessing ) from add those capabilities for a prototype solution. 

Unfortunately expectations for a UI/UX prototyping tool have changed considerably in recent years. The collaborative workflows enabled by Figma have become essential for many orgs, but even they are struggling to add meaningful prototyping capabilities to their app. Recently Figma added a very simple implementation of variable states, which while helpful, is still a long way off from what folks are expecting these days. One of the big problems is all of these tools (except Framer, which only focuses on the web) have abstracted away all of the underlying platform components, patterns, and best practices (iOS, Android, Web, macOS, Windows, etc). Instead what we're still left with is 'pictures under glass', which unfortunately still translates to stitching many different static screen compositions together with click/tap events.

It might be seem trivial to add 'click-through' prototype capabilities for the Affinity apps, but without a solid foundation (based on reactive views, layouts, components, states, etc) you hit the wall pretty quickly, with users wanting more and more features, that require further significant changes in architecture and approaches. Even Sketch is still pretty much stuck with simple click-through prototypes after all these years.

I believe the opportunity for Affinity to compete with UI/UX prototyping has unfortunately passed, and any further investment in that area would be a distraction IMHO.

Just my opinion as someone who was involved in building (and supporting) numerous UX/UI prototyping tools for the past two+ decades.

Personally, I think Serif has done an amazing job with Affinity in offering creatives a competitive toolset with different priorities and a refreshingly simple business model. There's still lots of opportunity to not only evolve and improve the existing products, but to do it in a way that continues to separate them from the competition. I'd love for the narrative to change from “Affinity needs to catch-up”, to ”ooh, that's a really wonderful way of working”. Different is good.