V2: safe enough for big projects?

[Ana-Irina]

For the designers who made the switch to V2 and have significant experience with it, do you feel confident enough to use V2 for big, high-stake projects? My focus here is on Publisher specifically.

I bought V2 on the day of the launch over a year ago, but since then, every time I tried switching to it, I found it to be pretty buggy, crash-prone and somewhat slow. Now I am about to start a rather large and intense project (an annual report of 500 pages) and the new V2 features would be of great help.

But can I trust it not to crash out of nowhere and compromise my work? Even though I do have the habit of saving backups, I would like to know if the software has reached the level maturity that V1 has.

V1 is very reliable, almost crash-free, no bugs...like a good friend 🙂. Can I trust V2 to be the same or at least close?

Thank you in advance for your input!

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, Ana-Irina said:

V1 is very reliable, almost crash-free, no bugs...like a good friend 🙂. Can I trust V2 to be the same or at least close?

It might help to specifically ask about those tasks that have caused your previous attempts with V2 to fail – otherwise you seem to have already answered your question by your practical experience:

2 hours ago, Ana-Irina said:

every time I tried switching to it, I found it to be pretty buggy, crash-prone and somewhat slow.

While many V2 users may be working without major issues, the various reported and logged errors seem to affect only specific aspects, tasks or operating systems/platform.

[bbrother]

3 hours ago, Ana-Irina said:

I bought V2 on the day of the launch over a year ago, but since then, every time I tried switching to it, I found it to be pretty buggy, crash-prone and somewhat slow.

I can only speak for myself so:

• APub still has many bugs
• It's still slow
• I encountered a few crashes, but no more than usual, and luckily it didn't have a major impact on the documents I was working on.

I do a lot of complex manuals with 100+ pages. I always make backups and often save my work to be on the safe side.

 

3 hours ago, Ana-Irina said:

Can I trust V2 to be the same or at least close?

Everyone's workflow and setup is different so only you can truly judge this while working in A Pub.

[Ana-Irina]

10 hours ago, thomaso said:

It might help to specifically ask about those tasks that have caused your previous attempts with V2 to fail – otherwise you seem to have already answered your question by your practical experience:

While many V2 users may be working without major issues, the various reported and logged errors seem to affect only specific aspects, tasks or operating systems/platform.

I only used V2 for a couple small projects and stopped because I experienced some sudden crashes with no specific trigger. I was pretty sluggish, with delayed typing and buggy object manipulation. For example, I would try to move an object, the object would lag behind the cursor, causing the entire app to be unresponsive and/or crash.

Now, a year later, I was curios to find out what was the overall impression and feeling from the designers who use V2 on a regular basis. 

[bbrother]

34 minutes ago, Ana-Irina said:

I was pretty sluggish, with delayed typing and buggy object manipulation. For example, I would try to move an object, the object would lag behind the cursor, causing the entire app to be unresponsive and/or crash.

This shouldn't be the case for small projects. But i understand you. 
In its marketing campaigns back for V1, Serif has often boasted that their apps including APub where designed for multi-core processing to deliver the best performace availble.This is not true i tested intensively APub V2 for the last year on different machines and can't say that performance and stability increased much. Performance in particular is not APub's advantage.

When you will see something like this↓ (that comes from: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/press/newsroom/superpower-your-creativity-with-the-new-affinity-v1-10/)

Quote

Affinity Publisher now enables huge documents, even with thousands of pages and many gigabytes’ worth of linked images, to offer instant loading times, smooth live editing and super-fast scroll, pan and zoom across the whole document.

You can be sure that this is a half-truth and approach such news with great caution.

[Ana-Irina]

41 minutes ago, bbrother said:

You can be sure that this is a half-truth and approach such news with great caution.

Thank you for the input! Honestly, it's quite sad. I love Affinity products and I wish Serif would figure out how to increase their performance and reliability. Maybe after they are done with implementing new features, they will focus more on stability.

The thing is, after years of using various pieces of software, you develop a certain "feel" for each of them. For instance, Indesign feels like the 90s and Win95, and Illustrator feels like hand pain and frustration. Affinity V2 feels like excitement dressed in low-level anxiety 😂.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Ana-Irina said:

I only used V2 for a couple small projects and stopped because I experienced some sudden crashes with no specific trigger. (…)

Now, a year later, I was curios to find out what was the overall impression and feeling from the designers who use V2 on a regular basis. 

If you experience issues with small projects already then it will not be different with a large project. But it may be worth to detect the culprits causing your issues with he goal to solve them locally on your specific system.

Statistically there appears to be a large majority of Affinity users without issues: about 1 year ago Serif published the number of users with three Million (without differentiation between V1 and V2 users). Since the number of forum members is far below 3 Mio it might indicate that a minority has issues. Even if 10 or 100 users will reply to your question to be  fully satisfied or happy with Affinity it might not change the situation you experience on your system and configuration.

One often reported solution for various kinds of issues (including crashes) is to disable "Hardware Acceleration" – although not all users are affected at all when it is "on" in their configuration. It appears to depend on • hardware/platform, • operating system version and • specific tasks or object types used in Affinity. Nevertheless, this simple setting in Affinity "Preferences" -> "Performance" may solve your specific problems like …

1 hour ago, Ana-Irina said:

… was pretty sluggish, with delayed typing and buggy object manipulation. For example, I would try to move an object, the object would lag behind the cursor, causing the entire app to be unresponsive and/or crash.

Also related but less often the three available options in "Performance" -> "View Quality" may matter and possibly solve issues, in particular with redrawing the screen and related display issues. Whether it causes issues appears to depend on certain object types (not just text, plain image or curve objects for instance).

For an obvious amount of users on Windows an update of the driver of their graphic card appears to solve serious issues. Other Windows users run into issues just because of the used installation type (.exe / .msi / .msix).

Another often reported and general issue concerns the file path for saving Affinity documents or linked resources: It is still recommended to avoid storage on external drives or network volumes (USB, NAS, cloud) while storing on local (built-in) disks only appears to be more stable and may help to avoid in particular issues like "access lost, document must close now" / "can't open document" / "document corrupted" / "can not save".

Occasionally some user's issues appear to be caused by an insufficient amount of RAM available on their computer. It seems that 8 GB RAM can easily get insufficient for Affinity. And a small number of (different) users report an improvement if they change the setting in "Performance" -> "RAM usage limit" (especially if they modified its default setting before).

These are just a few examples but options you may easily try to avoid your experienced issues. If they don't solve your problems with small projects it may be required to inspect the specific situation more detailed in a new created thread and ideally with uploaded screenshots, videos and/or example documents.

– Alternatively to a general decision for your new large project between V1 and V2 you could start it in V1 and try V2 only for specific tasks with V2-only features in a copy of the current document -> then copy paste the edited objects to your main V1 document. But note, not all object types can get copied from V2 to V1.

[bbrother]

1 hour ago, Ana-Irina said:

Affinity V2 feels like excitement dressed in low-level anxiety

I agree with you. I will say this, there is potential, but it has been squandered for some time by stupid decisions, lots of mistakes and lack of quality improvement.

 

34 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Since the number of forum members is far below 3 Mio it might indicate that a minority has issues.

The number of users on the forum is in no way an indicator of how many people have problems with the program.
Some users don't register on the forum at all even when they face more or less problems with the apps from Serif.
So you can't make assumptions like that.

 

41 minutes ago, thomaso said:

For an obvious amount of users on Windows an update of the driver of their graphic card appears to solve serious issues. Other Windows users run into issues just because of the used installation type (.exe / .msi / .msix).

There have also been a lot of complaints about the performance and stability of versions 1 and 2 from users of high spec computers and up to date graphics drivers, whether they were using msi, msix, exe, so the issue is more about the application itself, the quality of the code behind it , not on the client hardware or driver side.

Many of these users no longer report problems, sometimes even abandoned the forum because the trust and faith that something will change in this matter has evaporated.

[Ana-Irina]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

For an obvious amount of users on Windows an update of the driver of their graphic card appears to solve serious issues. Other Windows users run into issues just because of the used installation type (.exe / .msi / .msix).

Well, I am a Mac user, and I have 32GB RAM. V1 works fine on it, and it can handle anything I throw at it. After Effects, for example, works great. So I don't think the problem is my workstation, nor my settings.

Also, there is not just the case of "a specific instance of malfunction". There is also a general tone of the software, an overall quality of it. Some pieces of software, like APub 1.10, are sturdy and fast. Others...not so much. 

This what I am trying to get at: by the users' honest assessment, has V2 reached the level of maturity that resembles V1? I am not comparing Serif software with Adobe software. Just with other Serif software.

39 minutes ago, bbrother said:

I will say this, there is potential, but it has been squandered for some time by stupid decisions, lots of mistakes and lack of quality improvement.

I wish they added the new features on the same framework, like Serif had already done successfully in the past. I agree, a lot of mistakes were made. There also seems to be a dismissal of constructive criticism on Serif's part.

[Martyn Folkes]

I had version 1 for a couple of years but hardly used it (not because it was no good, just because I didn't need to use it at the time). I upgraded to v2, and uninstalled v1, assuming that v2 was an improvement over v1. Is this not the case? I have noticed some lag with Publisher v2, like slowness of auto-flowing pages, which I don't remember with v1. I am using an old Windows machine which I assumed was the reason for the slowness, but could it be Affinity that's the problem?

[Bryan Rieger]

On 3/7/2024 at 7:51 AM, Ana-Irina said:

This what I am trying to get at: by the users' honest assessment, has V2 reached the level of maturity that resembles V1? I am not comparing Serif software with Adobe software. Just with other Serif software.

Personally, I would say ‘no’, although I do now regularly use v2 (primarily Designer)—albeit in a very limited way.
That said, a large number of users happily use v2 everyday without complaint so I'd say it all comes down to personal experience and specific needs.

I think Serif made a lot of mistakes with v2 (the UI and UX being the BIG ones), and their “business as usual attitude” in light of all of the problems and complaints doesn't instil a great deal of confidence. I really wish that Serif would admit to the problems with v2, and provide a commitment to resolving them before adding new features. There's so much potential in the Affinity Suite, but the constant issues and workarounds really impact the user overall user experience.

For me Serif's Affinity Suite v2 is like getting a great deal on a {insert your favourite sports car here} only to realize that the steering wheel is in the backseat, the accelerator is in the boot, and the brake is in the glovebox. It might look great, and go really fast, but you're never really sure when you're going to hit that next tree, or embankment.

If v1 works for you I'd probably stick with that for now, while beginning to work with v2 and see if it meets your needs. Be very careful not to open and save your v1 docs in v2 as it's not possible to back-save to v1 from v2. Make v2 copies of your projects, and keep them separate from your v1 copies.

[thomaso]

[MOD EDIT]

23 hours ago, Ana-Irina said:

This what I am trying to get at: by the users' honest assessment, has V2 reached the level of maturity that resembles V1?

For some users it does, for others it does not. A statistically conclusion might affect you or not – it really depends on your specific situation:

• your hardware (e.g. Apple/Silicon/'M' chips?)
• your macOS version (e.g. Sonoma?)
• your desired project type, workflow, Affinity Personas and tasks, e.g.
   – text only (like a novel with auto-text-flow, footnotes, TOC, pinned objects etc.)
   – vector editing (like illustrations with complex curves, geometry/compound, extrude, etc.)
   – pixel image editing (incl. masks, filters, nested layers, etc.)

For your decision it may be worth not only to check whether some major/frequent issues affect your situation but also to experience the new features in V2 to get an impression of their benefit for your project. If an advantage of V2 is not obviously fundamental for your project it appears more reasonible to use V1 … and possibly try V2 for certain tasks only and use a V2 result in V1 as copied objects (if possible !) or as resource exports/imports.

[Dan C]

None of these recent posts have been constructive in my opinion, or aid in answering the OPs question. I have edited or hidden these posts from this thread.

If you don't wish to interact with certain Forum users, please use the 'Ignore' function. Personal attacks will not be tolerated here.

________________________

As a general sentiment, I'm also asking to please stop posting hypotheticals and creating arguments in a thread where a user is asking for direct user feedback.

If you use the Affinity apps, please share how you use them to achieve your work, and if you have personal experience, please share the changes/differences you've seen between version 1 and version 2 of the apps in your day-to-day - or how comfortable you feel starting a large project within Affinity.

 

We don't want to see threads looping endlessly in discussions around what might be the case.
Please provide your personal experiences & feedback for the OP and if you wish to discuss something else, create a thread elsewhere.

[thomaso]

Hardware/macOS-version related issues or preference related solutions for instance:

[bbrother]

On 3/8/2024 at 1:48 PM, Pšenda said:

You should note that these "flame wars", attacking other users and actively discouraging/"warning" new users against Affinity products are often caused by the same people.

The fact that you have been a forum user longer than someone else, and you have a lot more posts on your account than  someone else does not mean that you have more experience or competence to advise.

 

On 3/8/2024 at 1:01 PM, Dan C said:

We don't want to see threads looping endlessly in discussions around what might be the case.

For some time now I have noticed that users with extensive experience on a forum with many threads on their accounts clutter other people's threads by writing essays unrelated to the main topic. This is very irritating and provokes unnecessary exchanges with these users, which you witnessed @Dan C.

For my part, I can only apologize you Dan as a moderator and you @Ana-Irina for engaging in such a discussion in a thread that wasn't mine.
I will do my best to not making that mistake again.
But @Dan C please pay attention to similar situations as a moderator and intervene accordingly.

 

On 3/6/2024 at 9:15 PM, Ana-Irina said:

For the designers who made the switch to V2 and have significant experience with it

 @thomaso ,

What is incomprehensible for you in these words at the beginning of Ana-Irinas' OP?
In your signature that it's displayed below the post you are clearly stated that you're "Affinity V1 only". 
If I interpret it correctly, you don't own V2, so yyou don't have any signifant experience with it.
So why the heck are you even commenting on this post.

 

[bbrother]

On 3/7/2024 at 2:16 PM, Martyn Folkes said:

I have noticed some lag with Publisher v2, like slowness of auto-flowing pages, which I don't remember with v1. I am using an old Windows machine which I assumed was the reason for the slowness, but could it be Affinity that's the problem?

In short. Yes. That's what my observations are. 
There's no big performance jump if you use an high-end unit instead of old one that has at least 4 core CPU with minimum 16GB RAM with an reasonable mid range SATA or PCIe NVme SSD. Devs have a lot of work to do when it comes to the matter of performance and reliability.

[Westerwälder]

Bei mir funktionieren Designer2 und Photo2 bisher viel besser als Affinity Photo 1, deshalb verstehe ich nicht die Auffassung einiger die Affinity immer wieder schlecht schreiben. Gewiss es gibt hier und da ab und zu Dinge die ich nicht sofort verstehe, aber ich bin der Auffassung dass ich der Fehler vor dem Rechner bin und ich suche nicht den Fehler im Programm, wie es einige immer wieder gerne tun. 

So far, Designer2 and Photo2 have worked much better for me than Affinity Photo 1, so I don't understand the opinion of some who keep writing Affinity badly. Of course there are things here and there that I don't immediately understand, but I am of the opinion that I am the error in front of the computer and I don't look for the error in the program, as some people like to do again and again.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Westerwälder said:

So far, Designer2 and Photo2 have worked much better for me than Affinity Photo 1, so I don't understand the opinion of some who keep writing Affinity badly.

It seems to vary, user to user. Personally, for me they seem to work about the same: All of them crash occasionally, but not often, & usually just when I am verifying that a bug someone has reported does in fact crash the app.

[Westerwälder]

21 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Es scheint von Benutzer zu Benutzer unterschiedlich zu sein. Für mich persönlich scheinen sie ungefähr gleich zu funktionieren: Alle stürzen gelegentlich ab, aber nicht oft, und normalerweise nur dann, wenn ich überprüfe, ob ein Fehler, den jemand gemeldet hat, tatsächlich die App zum Absturz bringt.

Das zu überprüfen ist Sache von Serif. Aber einige hängen sich gerne an Fehlermeldungen dran, um wieder ihren Frust dazu zu geben! 

It is up to Serif to check this. But some people like to hang on to error messages just to express their frustration!

[bbrother]

@Westerwälder

Maybe you have a similar problem with reading comprehension as others and didn't notice that we are talking mainly about APub, not Ade or APh.

9 hours ago, Westerwälder said:

I don't understand the opinion of some who keep writing Affinity badly

I am writing about my own experiences working with the program. I don't look through rose-colored glasses and I don't intend to write things that are inconsistent with my personal experience.

Maybe i will shock you wwith this but:
I like affinity programs, I think that despite some bad decisions and little progress in recent years, there is still some potential left in them.

8 hours ago, Westerwälder said:

It is up to Serif to check this. But some people like to hang on to error messages just to express their frustration!

You have neither the appropriate competences nor the right to write what and how other users can test.

FYI I am not writing this out of frustration and to discourage others I am simply describing my experiences. I also think that the frustration comes out from people like you basing what you write.

 

Hey @Dan C, 

Could you please react and influence to those who continuosly make the same accusations of frustration or discouraging others to Affinity programs, or making stupid allusions to what others can and cannot test, while not staying on topic? This is not how it should be on a forum.

[RM f/g]

I consider it safe enough: I use Publisher 2 for documents of over 200 pages with many placed photos, pdfs and Designer drawings.

I rarely experienced a crash (in both versions) and V2 never made the impression of being slow.

In the safety department I can see the benefits of using the Book file in V2: separate chapter files to limit the damage in case of a fatal crash.

On the other hand: if you don't trust V2 yet, maybe it's better to stay on the safe side for a project this large.

 

 

[Dan C]

On 3/9/2024 at 11:25 PM, bbrother said:

What is incomprehensible for you in these words at the beginning of Ana-Irinas' OP?
(...)
So why the heck are you even commenting on this post.

3 hours ago, bbrother said:

Maybe you have a similar problem with reading comprehension as others and didn't notice that we are talking mainly about APub, not Ade or APh.

3 hours ago, bbrother said:

You have neither the appropriate competences nor the right to write what and how other users can test.

3 hours ago, bbrother said:

Could you please react and influence to those who continuosly make the same accusations of frustration or discouraging others to Affinity programs, or making stupid allusions to what others can and cannot test, while not staying on topic? This is not how it should be on a forum.

I certainly will 'react' to the above.

This is unacceptable behaviour from you as a user, and will not be tolerated here on the Affinity Forums. Personal attacks are not, and will never be allowed here.

This is not the first thread you have been personally involved in that has divulged in this manner, as evidenced here, where moderators had to edit your posts contents.

Please familiarise yourself with the Forum Guidelines before continuing to post on this site. If you continue to derail threads with personal attacks, your forum account will be removed.

I also recommend reading through this post where I have previously outlined that it is not our users job to police who can, or can't post on the forums and who has the 'more valid' opinion. All users are equal, and have the same right to post here as any others.

I do not wish to 'lock' this thread as I believe there are valid conversations occurring between other members, but further posts in the manner of the quoted text above will result in this.

Thanks for your understanding.

[Ana-Irina]

Big thanks to everybody to spent the time answering my rather vague question, especially @bbrother!

On the other hand, I always find it strange when a simple, not-in-least ill-intended question unleashes a storm of unnecessary defensiveness. We all use Affinity here and I assume we all want it to see it grow and become a good, solid platform. But that cannot be accomplished if simple questions and constructive criticism are viewed as attacks. Maybe we could all tone down the irritability and focus on giving feedback and maybe even proposing solutions.

That being said, here are some conclusions:

• The stability of good software should not be machine-dependent. The computer should only influence speed, not overall software reliability. So, if V1.10 doesn't yield corrupt files, one would expect V2 do the same under same circumstances. Any other outcome is a software-related issue. Bad code runs badly on any machine. Didn't you notice that even though we keep upgrading our computers, the apps themselves don't run any better? This is just a general observation. Please don't take it to heart.
• Affinity apps have a great concept behind them. The parametric mode of editing shapes, the ability to visualise your work at full resolution, the ability to focus purely on design, the unitary feel of the 3 apps -- are all amazing. The parametric editing could be a very good base for a future animation app.
• I will continue use Affinity V1 for most of my projects. 
• I will continue to test every new big release of V2 until my license stops being eligible for new updates. We're at 2.4. Fingers crossed for 2.9!
• I will continue to use Adobe apps whenever something serious is at stake. Also, having to go back to InDesign from time to time is also good brain training. It makes you apreciate the simple things in life😂.

That's it. I wish everybody great inspiration in their design work!🤗

[bbrother]

4 hours ago, Dan C said:

This is not the first thread you have been personally involved in that has divulged in this manner, as evidenced here, where moderators had to edit your posts contents.

Yes. Second. In the first one you linked to, I was called a bully after I made one comment, relevant to the original question, that read as follows:

Quote

In fact, only after fixing the UI and UX issues would you realize what a negative impact it had on your workflow.

Hence my harsher reaction afterwards. Yes my fault i should not react that harch. 
But calling someone a tyrant after making a comment like that? Isn't this an excessive and irrational reaction?  I leave it without answer. Anybody can judge it by them self.

5 hours ago, Dan C said:

Thanks for your understanding.

Don't thank me, because no, I have no understanding of your selective treatment.

 

[Dan C]

6 minutes ago, bbrother said:

In the first one you linked to, I was called a bully after I made one comment, relevant to the original question

I believe the context is important here - I cannot speak for other users but your post in that thread was seemingly received negatively by multiple users, as you were essentially criticising another users opinions and feelings, based on their use case of the apps.

You are welcome to disagree (politely, preferably) with other users, and provide criticisms of the Affinity apps - but you cannot criticise other users directly for their opinions, especially when the opinion is related to their usage of the Affinity apps.

Regardless, the thread above is the real issue in my opinion, and the reason for the resulting temporary restrictions on your account. I simply linked to the secondary thread as a further indicator of content that we don't want to see here on the forums - as your post there was also moderated by the Affinity team due to the abusive content.

I suggest being more mindful of the content within this thread above, rather than focussing on the secondary thread. My apologies if including a link to this thread within my post above did not help in explaining the reason behind these restrictions, as I can see how it might not be clear.

11 minutes ago, bbrother said:

But calling someone a tyrant after making a comment like that? Isn't this an excessive and irrational reaction?

My apologies, but I cannot see anyone calling anyone a 'tyrant' in either thread - though perhaps you don't mean this literally. 

If any user has an issue with content on the Affinity Forums, we ask that you report the thread to the moderators using the 'Report' tool and we can investigate further, and take action where necessary.

13 minutes ago, bbrother said:

I have no understanding of your selective treatment

I'm sorry to hear you feel this way - I certainly attempt to apply myself as fairly as possible across the forums, though with hundreds (if not more) of users online at once, posting in multiple languages, it would be remiss to ignore the possibility that any moderation may appear biased.

If you have any issue with our moderation of the Affinity Forums, you can contact our team directly at affinity@serif.com.