Canva

[debraspicher]

21 hours ago, William Overington said:

I know someone has laughed, but it is a genuine suggestion for a thread

I know I joked earlier about the abuse of the laugh emoji, but I turned off Reaction Notifications a little while ago. They've become useless anyway. All I want to see in my feed is Patrick sharing the latest updates with all my unicorns achieved.

23 hours ago, Aurea Ratio said:

Is there a separate forum for serious customers who use the software for serious purposes?

It's not going to happen. People are better off arranging their own offshoots for software enthusiasts. It wouldn't have to be limited to the industry, though we need the information on that use case the most to encourage competition, because there are a good number of smaller professionals as well who have communicated that they believed Affinity could be going for higher aspirations than it currently does. The messaging from Serif is so difficult that my simple hope is for Canva take over in such a way that we don't have to endure such poor communications ever again.

The navel-gazing that encompasses some of what I think can also be described as "non-serious" has largely been incentivized from Serif's OTT marketing and the speculation that that continuously generates. It sells cheap licenses but it is a far cry from incentivizing more discerning customers to jump onboard for the long haul no doubt when they see the amount of zealotry in the fanbase. Imo, it's toxic longterm for the userbase as some are turned off by the constant hype rather than being given straightforward and realistic expectations. It can leave the sense we stay in the dark as to whether these products remain a dependable platform for their longterm for our individual usecases. The messaging post-acquisition is not nearly enough to answer these questions and other than what we've seen, I've just accepted that for now at least this is not a safe ship for me.

I don't know that Serif ever promised to outright compete directly with Adobe, but the carrot was left out there for so long that it seemed at least a far off aspiration. Now Canva takes over and screams "We're going after Adobe!!!"... there's that hype train again. Can it actually deliver? Canva's market is no where near the industry space and is much larger. How much of the perceived aspirations are legitimate goals or are just clever marketing? And at what point are we just projecting into Affinity what we want it to be?.. those are the important questions for me.

[SallijaneG]

15 minutes ago, debraspicher said:

I know I joked earlier about the abuse of the laugh emoji, but I turned off Reaction Notifications a little while ago. They've become useless anyway. All I want to see in my feed is Patrick sharing the latest updates with all my unicorns achieved.

It's not going to happen. People are better off arranging their own offshoots for software enthusiasts. It wouldn't have to be limited to the industry, though we need the information on that use case the most to encourage competition, because there are a good number of smaller professionals as well who have communicated that they believed Affinity could be going for higher aspirations than it currently does. The messaging from Serif is so difficult that my simple hope is for Canva take over in such a way that we don't have to endure such poor communications ever again.

The navel-gazing that encompasses some of what I think can also be described as "non-serious" has largely been incentivized from Serif's OTT marketing and the speculation that that continuously generates. It sells cheap licenses but it is a far cry from incentivizing more discerning customers to jump onboard for the long haul no doubt when they see the amount of zealotry in the fanbase. Imo, it's toxic longterm for the userbase as some are turned off by the constant hype rather than being given straightforward and realistic expectations. It can leave the sense we stay in the dark as to whether these products remain a dependable platform for their longterm for our individual usecases. The messaging post-acquisition is not nearly enough to answer these questions and other than what we've seen, I've just accepted that for now at least this is not a safe ship for me.

I don't know that Serif ever promised to outright compete directly with Adobe, but the carrot was left out there for so long that it seemed at least a far off aspiration. Now Canva takes over and screams "We're going after Adobe!!!"... there's that hype train again. Can it actually deliver? Canva's market is no where near the industry space and is much larger. How much of the perceived aspirations are legitimate goals or are just clever marketing? And at what point are we just projecting into Affinity what we want it to be?.. those are the important questions for me.

I am not concerned with Adobe; they can have that high-end market (I opted out of it when it went to a subscription model—my income was not consistent enough to trust that I could comfortably pay that fee for a decade or more).  I do want quality software for those of us with high-quality aspirations but low budgets, and what is important for me is whether Canva will help or hurt that goal.  Time will tell; prediction is difficult.  (Having it free in schools does help train the upcoming work force in it, which is a good thing.)

[R C-R]

29 minutes ago, debraspicher said:

The messaging post-acquisition is not nearly enough to answer these questions and other than what we've seen, I've just accepted that for now at least this is not a safe ship for me.

There is no way to answer the questions about what will happen in the future other than to wait & see, or as @SallijaneG just wrote, time will tell.

31 minutes ago, debraspicher said:

Now Canva takes over and screams "We're going after Adobe!!!"... there's that hype train again.

Where did you see Canva say that? AFAIK, they never have claimed they are targeting Adobe or any other company in particular, just trying to improve their share of the graphics software market.

[William Overington]

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

If you want that, make a Feature Request, or add on to an existing one with information on how it would benefit your work. 

Mentioning it here will have no effect on the development of the programs.

I have followed your advice.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/202458-a-localizable-version-of-each-of-the-affinity-programs-such-that-the-localization-of-the-menus-is-using-an-external-localization-file/

William

 

[debraspicher]

2 hours ago, SallijaneG said:

I am not concerned with Adobe; they can have that high-end market (I opted out of it when it went to a subscription model—my income was not consistent enough to trust that I could comfortably pay that fee for a decade or more).  I do want quality software for those of us with high-quality aspirations but low budgets, and what is important for me is whether Canva will help or hurt that goal.  Time will tell; prediction is difficult.  (Having it free in schools does help train the upcoming work force in it, which is a good thing.)

I would be very happy with robust quality and improved output. Affinity does most of the things I need for what I have used it for. I happily keep other tools in my chest. The benefit of having most tools under one roof is to decomplicate output. Adobe tries to be a swiss army knife with their suite and it doesn't feel pleasant to be locked to a one-size-fits-all workflow. But where it excels, imo, is in final output. Of course it doesn't do everything perfectly. No software does, which is why many of us are still here like *knock knock* Hey...

[Aurea Ratio]

On 4/16/2024 at 9:54 PM, debraspicher said:

I know I joked earlier about the abuse of the laugh emoji, but I turned off Reaction Notifications a little while ago. They've become useless anyway. All I want to see in my feed is Patrick sharing the latest updates with all my unicorns achieved.

It's not going to happen. People are better off arranging their own offshoots for software enthusiasts. It wouldn't have to be limited to the industry, though we need the information on that use case the most to encourage competition, because there are a good number of smaller professionals as well who have communicated that they believed Affinity could be going for higher aspirations than it currently does. The messaging from Serif is so difficult that my simple hope is for Canva take over in such a way that we don't have to endure such poor communications ever again.

The navel-gazing that encompasses some of what I think can also be described as "non-serious" has largely been incentivized from Serif's OTT marketing and the speculation that that continuously generates. It sells cheap licenses but it is a far cry from incentivizing more discerning customers to jump onboard for the long haul no doubt when they see the amount of zealotry in the fanbase. Imo, it's toxic longterm for the userbase as some are turned off by the constant hype rather than being given straightforward and realistic expectations. It can leave the sense we stay in the dark as to whether these products remain a dependable platform for their longterm for our individual usecases. The messaging post-acquisition is not nearly enough to answer these questions and other than what we've seen, I've just accepted that for now at least this is not a safe ship for me.

I don't know that Serif ever promised to outright compete directly with Adobe, but the carrot was left out there for so long that it seemed at least a far off aspiration. Now Canva takes over and screams "We're going after Adobe!!!"... there's that hype train again. Can it actually deliver? Canva's market is no where near the industry space and is much larger. How much of the perceived aspirations are legitimate goals or are just clever marketing? And at what point are we just projecting into Affinity what we want it to be?.. those are the important questions for me.

I agree with you completely, more or less. My question was also more to illustrate my despair.

Quote

The messaging from Serif is so difficult that my simple hope is for Canva take over in such a way that we don't have to endure such poor communications ever again.

Agreed. From cringe-worthy to embarrassing and back again. And completely bypassing professionalism and visible market shares in the truly interesting segments of the market. I mean visible, measurable, real, where people outside this forum and the marketing know Affinity, and the programs play a role.

Quote

I don't know that Serif ever promised to outright compete directly with Adobe, but the carrot was left out there for so long that it seemed at least a far off aspiration. Now Canva takes over and screams "We're going after Adobe!!!"... there's that hype train again. Can it actually deliver?

I don't believe so, but the hype created by many without a professional background—especially the numerous online 'reviews' claiming these are Adobe killer programs—has turned the hype into a bunch of bullshit that got out of control, which Serif has ridden without trying to regain control. It seems like it eventually ended with empty words and programs that can't live up to it. If Canva continues with Affinity on this track, then it's definitely not a safe ship.

If Canva doesn't start a professional revolution in Nottingham, then I don't believe the products have a future other than being acquired functionality for Canva, which again are completely irrelevant products for the segment of creatives I'm talking about.

So, I really hope Canva protects Affinity as a suite and elevates it after a thorough self-education on what it takes to break the bubble and improve the programs and reach the customers they've mistakenly believed they were communicating with for years. They missed the mark completely.

And I can see that customers I have had something in common with for a decade have tried to awaken Serif and talk sense into them here. A lot of wasted time for a lot of good people, I hope Canva can make it worthwhile anyway. But I doubt it. Miracles are few and far between, but loud market sellers are just a short distance apart.

[JGD]

On 4/5/2024 at 6:09 PM, R C-R said:

From a very quick perusal of the Canva site, it would seem they support many different RTL languages, so it is possible this will help with adding RTL support to Affinity.

I guess time will tell ....

Judging by @Patrick Connor's good-humoured reaction to my quip and positive reaction to your insightful comment, one would hope that, if Affinity is to endure as a standalone product or at the very least as an integral, offline and fully professional counterpart to Canva (hey, it wouldn't even bother me if they renamed the apps to Canva Designer, Canva Photo and Canva Publisher at some point, as long as they were still offered in a perpetual license), it should target the same markets as Canva does already.

It makes sense from a financial, but also from a customer relations standpoint, because once many of Canva's current and future users get accustomed to what it is to them vital RTL support, they will naturally expect it from Affinity/the professional branch of Canva as well and might be severely disappointed if it just wasn't there. As such, I fully expect it to become a thing by at least v3, by which point it will be heavily marketed towards current Canva users as having basic feature parity and then some.

On 4/5/2024 at 7:12 PM, debraspicher said:

Utilizing in-browser support for its native text support is very different than implementing an entire text engine into software...

Bingo! In the early beginnings, with Affinity being a Mac-only application and having a very modern look and feel to it, it seemed as if Serif was just using macOS's own text rendering stack; it quickly dawned on us all that Affinity had, in fact, an inherently portable engine, which meant it must've been using its own text renderer from the very beginning.

I find it a bit concerning that RTL wasn't considered from the very beginning, as it is absolutely necessary for full Unicode compliance. At this point, almost eleven years in, I would expect Affinity to also offer vertical RTL support for CJK scripts and an equivalent to Adobe's Multiline Composer… I know that is a bit of a lofty ask, but hey, maybe for v3.5? 😉

[JGD]

On 4/18/2024 at 10:40 AM, Aurea Ratio said:

I agree with you completely, more or less. My question was also more to illustrate my despair.

Agreed. From cringe-worthy to embarrassing and back again. And completely bypassing professionalism and visible market shares in the truly interesting segments of the market. I mean visible, measurable, real, where people outside this forum and the marketing know Affinity, and the programs play a role.

I don't believe so, but the hype created by many without a professional background—especially the numerous online 'reviews' claiming these are Adobe killer programs—has turned the hype into a bunch of bullshit that got out of control, which Serif has ridden without trying to regain control. It seems like it eventually ended with empty words and programs that can't live up to it. If Canva continues with Affinity on this track, then it's definitely not a safe ship.

If Canva doesn't start a professional revolution in Nottingham, then I don't believe the products have a future other than being acquired functionality for Canva, which again are completely irrelevant products for the segment of creatives I'm talking about.

So, I really hope Canva protects Affinity as a suite and elevates it after a thorough self-education on what it takes to break the bubble and improve the programs and reach the customers they've mistakenly believed they were communicating with for years. They missed the mark completely.

And I can see that customers I have had something in common with for a decade have tried to awaken Serif and talk sense into them here. A lot of wasted time for a lot of good people, I hope Canva can make it worthwhile anyway. But I doubt it. Miracles are few and far between, but loud market sellers are just a short distance apart.

Getting Variable Typefaces out, as promised, on next week's beta would be a great sign. Getting colour OpenType-SVG by the end of the v2 cycle or at the beginning of the v3 cycle, an added sign of consolidation on that front. Getting RTL support would be a game-changer market-wise and show that Canva is really serious about this.

I know I sound too hung-up on typography, and I'm obviously biased, but, as I've said before, eschewing entire markets and cultures based on technical constraints and… on having bet mostly on certain text/cultural-agnostic professional niches, such as digital illustration, that are pretty much well covered already by competitors (either by Canva itself, which is no longer a competitor, or by other products such as Pixelmator, Procreate, etc.) feels, in hindsight, a bit misguided but arguably still necessary in that earlier context. I didn't personally like it, but I understood that it was necessary for Serif's Affinity's continued survival. 🤷‍♂️

Yes, Serif was trying to secure a few of those niches as their cash cows (and indeed sort of succeeded at it) while they were, as it turns out, strapped for cash (or at least not rich enough to properly tackle Adobe). Conversely, with Canva's backing, they can now go head to head with the proverbial 80lb gorilla and start chipping away at their legacy feature set and keep introducing novel features, i.e. they can walk and chew gum for a change instead of dragging on with development.

Again, I know fully well of the Mythical Man-Month fallacy, but it did feel as if Serif was biting more than they could chew, and I do believe that instead of having a tiny team spreading itself thin over three apps on three platforms, having a separate typography team, a separate vector design team, a separate pixel manipulation team, while keeping them tightly-knit – also unlike whatever the hell is going on at Adobe, with their sprawling thousands-strong team and dizzyingly comprehensive family of apps – is not only feasible, but the best way of going about developing a suite like this.

That's the optimistic view, which I know many – including myself – don't 100% subscribe to, but we have to at least consider it as a possible scenario. Does it assuage our fears or preclude us from pursuing asset and portfolio migration plans? Sadly, no. Does it at least provide us with a glimmer of hope that we will not only end up in a better place than we are in right now as DTP suite customers, but also better than we were even back when Macromedia MX was still a thing (i.e. not eleven, but twenty years ago)? Maybe…

By the way, and while on the subject of Macromedia and competition with Adobe in general, Flash and Dreamweaver, which were the main drivers behind the infamous acquisition (remember GoLive? Yeah, me neither 😂), are now relics of the past, but way before all that went down they did try to go head-to-head with Adobe also on the digital photography editing side of things with their Macromedia xRes product, and failed miserably and promptly threw in the towel by their very first and last attempt, v3 (because, mind you, they didn't even develop it in-house, instead having acquired it from Fauve Software, the true pioneers of layers before even Adobe)… Serif, on the other hand, managed to not only stay afloat for all those years with their Plus suite and then produce something competitive with freaking Photoshop v16 (the 25th anniversary, CC 2015 edition, which had been, by then, an actual verb-worthy product for around two decades and a half, and now for around 35 years), and stuck to it; they have to be commended for that.

[Aurea Ratio]

Serif is working on a modern version of Fonthill Abbey, but if they don't seriously slow down and correct mistakes, architecture, and refactor a lot, I now truly understand how big the problem is after trying the line width tool in the beta of 2.5.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonthill_Abbey

[JGD]

29 minutes ago, Aurea Ratio said:

Serif is working on a modern version of Fonthill Abbey, but if they don't seriously slow down and correct mistakes, architecture, and refactor a lot, I now truly understand how big the problem is after trying the line width tool in the beta of 2.5.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonthill_Abbey

Well, it is a Beta, after all… 😂

Anyway, thanks for the laugh and the historical architecture trivia, I had never heard of Fonthill Abbey (interesting name, by the way, seeing how variable fonts were always the proverbial hill I was going to die on 🙃)…

Looking at its design, it makes me wonder if it served as an inspiration for the design of Sauron's Barad-dûr, and reading the text, all with the tower collapsing twice before finally being made out of stone and surviving and whatnot, it also reminds me a bit too much of Monty Python and the Holy Grail's Swamp Castle and makes me think it might've also been a true source of inspiration for the latter's troubled development legend… After all, Terry Jones was a historian and, despite having specialised in the Middle Ages, he surely would've been no stranger to that kind of cultural reference. 😉

[Alfred]

58 minutes ago, JGD said:

Getting Variable Typefaces out, as promised, on next week's beta would be a great sign. Getting colour OpenType-SVG by the end of the v2 cycle or at the beginning of the v3 cycle, an added sign of consolidation on that front. Getting RTL support would be a game-changer market-wise and show that Canva is really serious about this.

Support for Indic scripts (most of which are LTR, although there are some RTL variations) would be yet another game changer.

[JGD]

2 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Support for Indic scripts (most of which are LTR, although there are some RTL variations) would be yet another game changer.

Wait, v2 is still missing that? 😨

How is Canva doing in that regard? It offers full, web-engine-based support as well already, I presume?

[Alfred]

4 minutes ago, JGD said:

Wait, v2 is still missing that? 😨

So it would seem, sadly.

4 minutes ago, JGD said:

How is Canva doing in that regard? It offers full, web-engine-based support as well already, I presume?

I’ve no idea. And ditto.

Definitely an area to keep a close eye on.

[JGD]

On 4/16/2024 at 4:39 PM, William Overington said:

As I understand the situation, due to lots of funding becoming available, Affinity can now become developed further and more rapidly than before.

Are there roles where people currently do not use Affinity products because Affinity products do not do what those people need and who might start to use Affinity products if Affinity products were to add some particular facility to what they do?

For example, unless things have changed recently, Affinity products do not have built-in colour font capability. What employment roles need colour font capability? Would adding colour font capability to Affinity products increase sales to an extent to make the cost of adding colour font capability worth spending?

Or is adding colour font capability something that will be added anyway because not having it looks unfortunate?

That is just one example.

No. I am retired, I am not connected to Canva, my only connection to Serif and Affinity is as a customer.

The best thread to discuss font-related functionality would now be the sub-thread related to the upcoming variable font support in v2.5 beta. IMHO, I would say it is a feature worth adding, because it's something that Adobe offers and is becoming trendier, and could be very popular among big sectors of Affinity's and Canva's userbase. 

I provided Ash with a recommendation of one of the best experts in colour OpenType-SVG fonts in Europe – and one used to work in the UK, no less –, so the ball is on their court and let's see just how loaded with cash and willing to expand Serif is now, post-acquisition. I take it that they still have to have a bit of restraint in their recruiting process (be it for full-time employees, contractors or consultants), project management and goals, etc., but we should indeed expect speedier development from now on. The ball is on their court, in any case.

On 4/16/2024 at 6:11 PM, William Overington said:

Alright, a localizable version of each of the Affinity programs such that the localization of the menus is using an external localization file.

Interesting as this feature may sound, I highly doubt it will ever be available. It's extremely niche, and might result in quality control issues if lower quality, user-made localisation files ended up on the web. Also, with Affinity potentially becoming bigger, hiring more people for their localisation efforts would render said feature redundant for a lot of communities.

And, if I may say so myself as someone from a minority community of one of top languages globally (Portuguese from Portugal, not Brazilian Portuguese), while it saddens me to see the technical design and typography jargon in pt-PT wither away (I do fight against that by recommending technical dictionaries to my students, mind you), I don't see people defaulting to English on technical software as that dire of an issue when it comes to serving a global market (RTL and Indic script support, on the other hand…). These apps' UIs are usually very sparse on text, and YouTube and the web are chock-full of tutorials using the English terminology anyway. My €0,02.

[walt.farrell]

29 minutes ago, JGD said:

The best thread to discuss font-related functionality would now be the sub-thread related to the upcoming variable font support in v2.5 beta.

I would disagree.

That thread is specifically for discussing the Variable Font support coming in the 2.5.0 beta, not for general font-related discussions. It should be restricted to its stated purpose, to help the beta run smoothly.

[William Overington]

25 minutes ago, JGD said:

..., while it saddens me to see the technical design and typography jargon in pt-PT wither away (I do fight against that by recommending technical dictionaries to my students, mind you), ...

Yes, (amongst other subjects) I studied French and I studied Chemistry, yet alas there was nothing about even basic chemistry in my learning of French.

William

PS When i refer to "my learning of French" I mean my learning of just some French at a general education level.

 

[William Overington]

Replying to my earlier comment that was as follows.

Alright, a localizable version of each of the Affinity programs such that the localization of the menus is using an external localization file.

17 hours ago, JGD said:

Interesting as this feature may sound, I highly doubt it will ever be available. It's extremely niche, and might result in quality control issues if lower quality, user-made localisation files ended up on the web. Also, with Affinity potentially becoming bigger, hiring more people for their localisation efforts would render said feature redundant for a lot of communities.

The localization files could be encrypted so that only official Affinity localization files would work.

There is a whole thread about this topic.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/202458-a-localizable-version-of-each-of-the-affinity-programs-such-that-the-localization-of-the-menus-is-using-an-external-localization-file/#comment-1203861

William

 

[Chills]

30 minutes ago, William Overington said:

Replying to my earlier comment that was as follows.

Alright, a localizable version of each of the Affinity programs such that the localization of the menus is using an external localization file.

The localization files could be encrypted so that only official Affinity localization files would work.

There is a whole thread about this topic.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/202458-a-localizable-version-of-each-of-the-affinity-programs-such-that-the-localization-of-the-menus-is-using-an-external-localization-file/#comment-1203861

William

 

I don't think this is going to be a priority.   People would prefer the programs are stable and have the features needed.   Having worked in several countries, Eglish works just fine for apps like these.  Especially as many will be using keyboard shortcuts most of the time. 

[Alfred]

17 hours ago, William Overington said:

I studied French and I studied Chemistry, yet alas there was nothing about even basic chemistry in my learning of French

Given that you mean

17 hours ago, William Overington said:

my learning of just some French at a general education level

it seems unsurprising to me that you didn’t learn things like ‘basic chemistry’ terminology.

[William Overington]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

Given that you mean

it seems unsurprising to me that you didn’t learn things like ‘basic chemistry’ terminology.

Well, fine, unsurprising, but that is just because of the two cultures thing that C P Snow wrote about.

If the culture in this country were different, maybe chapter 10, say, of the text book learning some French would have had the topic of adding Sodium Carbonate solution to Copper Sulphate solution in a test tube and using a filter paper and a glass funnel and a beaker. So integrating what we did in chemistry class as a practical with our knowledge of how to express things in French.

I appreciate that at the café is important but all the examples were sort of arts based, did we have the same text book? I remember Le prestidigitateur.

When I was young I would have just loved to have tried using Affinity products using the French versions once I had got used to using the English versions.

William

 

 

[William Overington]

20 hours ago, JGD said:

Interesting as this feature may sound, I highly doubt it will ever be available. It's extremely niche, and might result in quality control issues if lower quality, user-made localisation files ended up on the web. Also, with Affinity potentially becoming bigger, hiring more people for their localisation efforts would render said feature redundant for a lot of communities.

And, if I may say so myself as someone from a minority community of one of top languages globally (Portuguese from Portugal, not Brazilian Portuguese), while it saddens me to see the technical design and typography jargon in pt-PT wither away (I do fight against that by recommending technical dictionaries to my students, mind you), I don't see people defaulting to English on technical software as that dire of an issue when it comes to serving a global market (RTL and Indic script support, on the other hand…). These apps' UIs are usually very sparse on text, and YouTube and the web are chock-full of tutorials using the English terminology anyway. My €0,02.

Well, if you want to have a go, you could localize the test file in the following post into Portuguese and post it in that thread.

 

Then that would make a bit of progress and maybe the Affinity team might, just might, try a few tests and use Portuguese for the tests.

William

 

[debraspicher]

On 4/19/2024 at 10:03 AM, Aurea Ratio said:

Serif is working on a modern version of Fonthill Abbey, but if they don't seriously slow down and correct mistakes, architecture, and refactor a lot, I now truly understand how big the problem is after trying the line width tool in the beta of 2.5.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonthill_Abbey

The "shark teeth" "defect" is from a bug I reported before, obviously never fixed. I'm sure others have reported it. I've cleared my attachments, but the topic is here:

These were the attachments...
231201_stroke-odd-behavior.afdesign

Sadly, this is the result of not polishing up on core functions. One consideration, that some have speculated to in the past, is that they don't fully comprehend the math involved and there's plenty of "tweaking" under the hood to get the desired visual results. I've been playing with (and learning, actually) Vectorstyler which is built by one man and it's amazing to me how much manipulation is feasible with just that one program. Serif has a team of people and decades of experience to hire the correct people, so these kinds of issues in CORE functionality (expansion, pressure curves, anti-aliasing curves, etc) should not be so pervasive. I don't see how Canva can change their thinking that dramatically... horse to water, etc.

[William Overington]

15 minutes ago, debraspicher said:

I don't see how Canva can change their thinking that dramatically... horse to water, etc.

They could try allowing and encouraging staff to try to get a Master degree for their research work. A great incentive for those of the staff who would regard that as a marvellous opportunity and a great opportunity for Canva to benefit from the results of those Master level studies.

I hope that nobody dismisses this suggestion on the basis of not understanding that some universities allow research for a Master degree to be carried out in an industrial setting with only occasional visits to the university. Two supervisors, one in the workplace, a member of the business's staff, and one at the university.

William

 

[William Overington]

On 4/19/2024 at 4:03 PM, Aurea Ratio said:

Serif is working on a modern version of Fonthill Abbey, but if they don't seriously slow down and correct mistakes, architecture, and refactor a lot, I now truly understand how big the problem is after trying the line width tool in the beta of 2.5.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonthill_Abbey

Beauvais Cathedral fell down twice, but please look at it now on Google street view.

So, keeping at it can get a result.

William

 

[debraspicher]

20 hours ago, William Overington said:

I hope that nobody dismisses this suggestion on the basis of not understanding that some universities allow research for a Master degree to be carried out in an industrial setting with only occasional visits to the university.

Something tells me you've become all too accustomed to having your suggestions dismissed. (Playfully joking here, not at all meant to be snark)

I'm not against that suggestion, but I think no matter what, something has to change if they ever intend to go after the "big dogs". And that may very well not be their intention if the goal is to target something like Canva's current demographic, which is quite large... and legitimately, there's nothing wrong with this as that is a market that is demanding to be served. It would just be disappointing to a number of people who were hoping to get further away from Adobe's workflow beyond the typical technical, economic, professional reasons, etc. (i.e. creative).. people who were already happy with Adobe will just continue using Adobe.

Theoretically also, Canva can be intending to "buy" the technology to put into the product rather than building it themselves as they seem to be gathering technologies as capital as their habit. Serif's software can be a wrapper for whatever future business aspirations they have down the line for a professional suite... so many possibilities. It doesn't fix preexisting bugs though. Some can say very little will change as far as how Affinity is being developed, but I don't see how that happens the more that I think about it... surely Affinity is worth the $$$ it is because of the possibilities of building atop its foundation. Whether that is good or bad news is subjective to the individual customer.

Items for our consideration... consider these in relation to the Serif acquisition which was in late March:

(Apr 5th) Canva millionaires made as $US1.6b share sale completes
https://www.afr.com/technology/canva-millionaires-made-share-sale-to-hit-3-6bn-first-1-6bn-done-20240405-p5fhmm

Why the $2.43 billion Canva share sale is an epic moment for Australian tech
https://www.startupdaily.net/topic/business/why-the-2-43-billion-canva-share-sale-is-an-epic-moment-for-australian-tech/

(Apr 18th) Pixels and Pictures: Canva challenges Adobe with Affinity acquisition (33%)
https://kstatecollegian.com/2024/04/18/pixels-and-pictures-canva-challenges-adobe-with-affinity-acquisition/

 

Edit: Post below is older but keeping in because the quote is interesting to me. Unfortunately, I can't change text color of date because I am on mobile atm

Edit2: Hail, desktop.

(Apr 26 2022) Investor drastically slashes value of its Canva shares price
https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/other-industries/canva-takes-hit-to-valuation-after-investor-wipes-33-per-cent-off-share-price/news-story/db5c38dde744b4576d52dd11b0e6ffa9

Quote

Canva began 16 years ago, when Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht were living together as uni students at the age of 19.

Ms Perkins was studying at a Perth university and teaching other students design programs to earn extra cash.

She noticed her students struggling to learn complex graphic design systems like Photoshop and thought there had to be a better way.

I'm sure there are other articles floating out there that can adjust the picture a bit, but this was all I could find...