Affinity does not provide quality, it is time to part with Serif.

[Frozen Death Knight]

16 minutes ago, wonderings said:

That is how people work online now it seems. Make a big thing about quitting, saying goodbye then hanging around for the reaction and then taking part in the reaction. A lot of it is just a craving for attention. 

I was actively trying to avoid writing in this thread because of this very reason. I could have at least respected bbrother if the thread was just done and over with after a post or two, but still trying to stirr up arguments with people for this long and also refusing to address any of the criticism or questions asked by cherrypicking quotes to "win" arguments is just being ridiculous at this point.

[kenmcd]

3 minutes ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

also refusing to address any of the criticism or questions asked after this long by cherrypicking quotes to "win" arguments

Classic troll behavior. 

[bbrother]

1 hour ago, Dan C said:

Please use the 'Ignore' function of the Forums if you don't wish to see certain users posts.

This function is far from perfect. But thanks for advice. I will turn off notifications completely and stop posting. From what i observe for some users Affinity is a state of mind and not an ecosystem for creating graphics. Have a nice day @Dan C

[loukash]

36 minutes ago, Dan C said:

50 minutes ago, bbrother said:

@loukash take a break for a while.

It is not for our users to police who can, or can't post here on the Affinity Forums - or to decide how often other users can post.

Fun fact: I haven't been even posting in this thread since last Wednesday, having a total of 6 (six) posts on the whole forums in June, including this one. So I'm a bit perplexed here about what exactly I should be taking a break from.  

Eh, what ever, never mind… I'm not taking all this stuff personally. 

44 minutes ago, Dan C said:

Please use the 'Ignore' function of the Forums if you don't wish to see certain users posts.

Exactly.  

[RWhite]

I finally purchased the Desktop versions of Affinity last week as I have an upcoming project that I needed it for. Initially I was impressed with how versatile it was given the overall price. However after a few hours/days of problem solving about various UI inconsistencies and problems, I can see why Adobe is still the Industry Standard, despite its much higher price. This morning I opened a test Publisher project and I found that the swatches palette I had been using had reset and was missing. Not even saved. Apparently they aren't automatically saved with projects. Why?  When I opened a different Test Designer project those completely different swatches had also reset to a default too. Basically back to the first one on the list. This is just not bad, this is to put it bluntly unacceptable. If I manually had t o save every swatch palette....my goodness!!!

While I have genuinely enjoyed this week learning about each new programme, I currently cannot in good faith recommend them to colleagues at this point as they are too buggy and in places unintuitive. For instance when I select the pen tool to draw a path, why can I then not click on the path to add and remove points? Why can I only do this when I switch to the node tool? And can someone please tell me why despite have a .5mm black line set each time I draw a shape I physically have to switch on the stroke? For consistency I would like to add or remove points using either the pen or node tool. Yes of course use the node tool to move points and adjust Bézier curves. And if I draw a line I shouldn't need to turn on stroke every time. On another unrelated point why is font size and font leading positioned so far apart on the context tool bar and character palette, Is it just me or am I just use to another software company?

Any way I have software now, so I'm sure I'll dip in and out when I need to. It would be great to staff members adding tags on comments that says 'Comment Noted for Review' where applicable. Otherwise a Forum like this just becomes a trash can for opinions and requests.

[loukash]

28 minutes ago, RWhite said:

I opened a test Publisher project and I found that the swatches palette I had been using had reset and was missing. Not even saved. Apparently they aren't automatically saved with projects.

https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/Panels/swatchesPanel.html

30 minutes ago, RWhite said:

when I select the pen tool to draw a path, why can I then not click on the path to add and remove points?

Of course you can: Hold the command key to temporarily switch to the Node tool.

36 minutes ago, RWhite said:

And can someone please tell me why despite have a .5mm black line set each time I draw a shape I physically have to switch on the stroke?

https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/ObjectControl/objectDefaults.html

36 minutes ago, RWhite said:

why is font size and font leading positioned so far apart on the context tool bar and character palette

Because Leading is a paragraph attribute.
https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/Panels/paragraphPanel.html

Do not confuse it with "Leading Override" which is a character attribute that is to be used only for special purposes in rare cases where you actually know what you're doing.
https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/Panels/characterPanel.html

[Pšenda]

6 minutes ago, loukash said:

Of course you can: Hold the command key to temporarily switch to the Node tool.

Which, by the way, is constantly displayed/prompted in the Status bar, so all you have to do is read.

[evtonic3]

On 6/14/2024 at 6:30 AM, bbrother said:

The title speaks for itself. If you're looking for quality tools for raster graphics, vector editing or DTP, you won't find them in Serif's Affinity-branded programs.

If you have an important commercial project to complete, use proven software rather than Serif products. That way you will save yourself a lot of frustration due to bugs and wasted time looking for workarounds to problems.

Below I wanted to share my review and opinion on several key areas such as bugs, UI/UX, features, updates, development process. This is all that made me draw the conclusions I mentioned at the beginning and abandon Serif products. My patience has run out. I'm not going to wait for something that won't come.

Bugs

There is no such thing as a bug-free program. I am aware of this. The fight is on to have as few of them as possible in the program and not to affect the user's work too much.

Unfortunately, Affinity programs look very bad in this respect. There are a lot of bugs in retail versions that have accumulated from previous versions and updates. The response time from reporting a bug to being fixed by the devs is too long. Suffice it to mention, the V2 version still has bugs that were reported a few years ago in the V1 version.

UI/UX

It appears that not much time was spent on the UI and that it was not designed to be effective, easy to navigate and pleasant for the user to use.

• User interface is cluttered, small panels are bloated with lot of controls, grouped into multiple collapsible sections. Navigation reqires a lot of expanding and scrolling.
• The application's color schemes for both the dark and light theme do not provide sufficient contrast, making the interface unreadable.
• The alignment and organization of the elements is poor. There is a lack of structure. Visual aesthetics are disturbed. The user interface feels patchy.
• UI elements are not consistent in appearance and size.

Stupid UX decisions don't help. By this I mean no custom export presets creation unless they are distinct in parameters from those provided by the application, export preview permanent on, text frame that remembers the last changes applied to it, or not being able to set the "Align to :" option before performing the alignment operation.

Features and tools

They are of poor quality. They use poor algorithms. Just look at tools like Contour tool, Stroke Width tool, or use expand stroke after using one of the mentioned tools. Open source software offers greater precision and quality not mentioning about competitors.

Updates and development

When it comes to updates, when Serif releases an update it will almost certainly contain regressions or, worse yet, there is a high chance of even more serious problems such as unexpected program shutdowns due to bugs in new features. It all stems from a lack of quality in the development process and insufficient internal testing. There are promises of updates that you will be happy with, but when faced with reality, it turns out that these are just empty words.

At the end, I would like to thank the forum users who always provided advice when I needed it, because I didn't know something or had a problem with something. It was good to know that I could always count on your support and quick response. Regards

Who do you use now? What app has most of the things that you speak of and does not have these issues?

[Snapseed]

On 6/24/2024 at 3:09 PM, Frozen Death Knight said:

Well, which alternate brand that isn't Adobe are you planning on moving on to, you who know everything? 

GIMP GNU Image Manipulation Program?

[Frozen Death Knight]

On 3/20/2025 at 6:24 PM, Snapseed said:

GIMP GNU Image Manipulation Program?

I've been trying 3.0 yesterday. It is a massive step up for sure, but it is no Affinity still. Even with some of the bugs I get better performance from running Affinity through Wine on Linux. Also, Krita is miles ahead of GIMP in terms of features and general quality of life like a much stronger brush engine and a very flexible hotkeys system. It even has non-destructive filters long before GIMP achieved the same thing.

Here's my current list of improvements I would like to see in GIMP:
- A better hotkeys system. Again I point to Krita (can change how modifiers work) and also Affinity (switching tools on the same hotkey and using shift as an option).
- GPU acceleration.
- A more extensive brush engine like Krita.
- More vector capabilities.
- A brush selection menu like the one from Photoshop including some features from Krita.
- UI panel placement presets that can be saved and loaded.
- Smudge Tool is not as good as in Krita and Affinity after 2.6.
- The Tool Options panel needs to be completely reworked so it becomes a top bar like how it is done in Photoshop and Affinity. The current version takes up a ton of unnecessary screen space when it needs to be shown at all times to be able to adjust settings on the fly. This issue has long since been solved with having the settings of each tool as a top bar and even other open source software does this like Blender and Inkscape.

Also, GIMP 3.0 is crashing on me a ton when making new canvases. It is incredibly unstable in its current form. There is also some weirdness with the window management itself where I cannot use the fullscreen shortcut or adjust the height of the window.

If there is one thing I think GIMP 3.0 really succeeds at it is the new interface. It looks great. It is miles ahead of Affinity V2 by being a lot more customisable with custom icons, colours, scalable UI, etc. The layer locking feature is just as good as in Photoshop and works exactly like how I want it to. If GIMP just fixed those other core issues I listed I would be a lot more willing to switch over.

Hopefully 3.0 will make GIMP more popular and thus lead it to a golden age the way Blender and Krita have been developed over recent years. Non-destructive layers is a massive dealbreaker for a lot of people, so I can see some people jump onboard because of this release.

[Optische Ausrichtung]

I haven't read everything, but I'd like to point out that people who make constructive complaints want things to improve because they actually want to remain customers. (A secret that I would also like to reveal to Canva/Serif at this point).

[Ldina]

14 minutes ago, Optische Ausrichtung said:

I haven't read everything, but I'd like to point out that people who make constructive complaints want things to improve because they actually want to remain customers. (A secret that I would also like to reveal to Canva/Serif at this point).

Agreed...key word here..."constructive!"

[Meliora spero]

26 minutes ago, Optische Ausrichtung said:

I haven't read everything, but I'd like to point out that people who make constructive complaints want things to improve because they actually want to remain customers. (A secret that I would also like to reveal to Canva/Serif at this point).

Yes, exactly. With a professional attitude, a company like Serif would understand that they should not sneer at complaints in any form but actively extract the core message from customer feedback and learn from it.

Far too many people here have a misguided sense of loyalty to the product, more like football fans than customers, reacting emotionally and defensively to criticism of their beloved brand.

Instead, consider how utterly zero-data-like it would be without all this feedback. It is incredibly valuable - every bit of it. It helps everyone grow, and companies don’t have to act on everything, but without that knowledge, they’re working in a vacuum. That’s exactly what will happen if loyalists scare off regular customers - Serif and Canva will be left with nothing but survivor bias to guide their decisions. And that is already almost the case in this forum.

Ultimately, if you spend your life in this forum, you’re not creating much actual graphic design, and you’re not learning from the real-world needs and demands of the industry, which are happening elsewhere. I spend my daily life in 'elsewhere' and I have a clear idea of what Affinity is missing to make 'elsewhere' buy in. That a few isolated people here strongly disagree based on limited knowledge makes no difference. This isn’t about me - it’s about the market.

[Optische Ausrichtung]

28 minutes ago, Ldina said:

Agreed...key word here..."constructive!"

An example: Affinity Publisher was not able to handle German quotation marks correctly from the beginning of version 2. This was a very annoying bug, because with every text change you had to proofread a document from the moment the change was made right through to the end. The problem was only fixed with version 2.6. I don't remember exactly, but perhaps from version 2.3 (or about one years after the problem was recognized as such by Serif) my criticism was perhaps no longer entirely constructive.

 

[RWhite]

That’s what I thought I was being. ‘Constructive.’  I just wanted to point out that as a new user the pen tool exhibits some strange behaviour. I chose black as my line colour and a .5mm stroke weight beforehand. I then created my shape with the pen tool and the lines simply disappears by default, I physically had to turn on the stroke every time. I did try to save default from selection as detailed but it did not work for me. I do not know why yet. It’s the same with adding or removing a node with the pen tool (like Adobe illustrator), without needing to use a key board shortcut or switching to the node tool. I really thought I was being ‘Constructive’ and adding my voice to improve things for everyone. And yes I know learning new software can be problematic and takes time, despite the YouTube video I came across that says you can learn Publisher in 9 minutes. But I would like to point out that I’ve spent years using programmes such as Aldus Pagemaker, Quark XPress and InDesign. So I think I can recognise when things aren’t quite right. Thank you Optische Ausrichtung for your comment.

[Meliora spero]

Constructive criticism has become a misunderstood concept that many sensitive people use to maintain a cozy and harmless club atmosphere. And then they judge others on whether their messages are "constructive" – which always leads to endless debate.

Let's just call it feedback. That gives us the feedback chain: someone creates a product or something else, the recipient or customer reacts to it and communicates their feedback, and the chain is complete. Make improvements, get feedback, measure. Another feedback chain complete. And so on. 

If you are an adult and professional in a company, you have to accept all kinds of feedback, assess the objective message within it, summarize, and act on it. You have to be mature enough to recognize that a particularly harsh customer might actually be paying a higher price for your mistake than most others.

So no "please devs" attitude, no groveling - just respond. Feedback is pure gold for any producer or company. It's just not everyone who understands that. 

[loukash]

1 hour ago, RWhite said:

you can learn Publisher in 9 minutes. But I would like to point out that I’ve spent years using programmes such as Aldus Pagemaker, Quark XPress and InDesign. So I think I can recognise when things aren’t quite right.

Frankly, it took me 5 years after I bought the first public version of Affinity Designer until I was ready to do the switch from Adobe CS5.5. The release of Publisher was a key point then. The whole process also involved mindset switching on my part, however. Keep in mind that Affinity apps are not meant to be Adobe clones. That's a Good Thing™ in the long run.

On the other hand, I was an avid Freehand user since the early 1990s. So being forced to use Ill-Frustrator after Adobe killed the former was a major p.i.t.a. all along. Hence good ridance, all the missing features in Affinity notwithstanding. 

[joe_l]

9 hours ago, loukash said:

So being forced to use Ill-Frustrator after Adobe killed the former was a major p.i.t.a. all along.

Yes, I know these frustrating times as well. Also the laughable first! version of ID. Not all is good with Affinity, some Serif decisions I do not understand, but okay. Affinity has 98,7% of all features I need. Surprisingly WITHOUT any crashes so far (ok, minor number of crashes). All in all, I am quite satisfied with Affinity.

[Alfred]

27 minutes ago, joe_l said:

Not all is good with Affinity, some Serif decisions I do not understand, but okay. Affinity has 98,7% of all features I need.

That’s a rather precise figure, but is there any way of determining whether or not it’s accurate?

[joe_l]

I am simply a strange person who likes a good 7 everywhere. 🤪

[Alfred]

7 minutes ago, joe_l said:

I am simply a strange person who likes a good 7 everywhere. 🤪

If you really like 7 so much, you could have opted for 7 ninths instead of 7 tenths. That would give you an infinite string of 7s when expressed as a decimal fraction.

[joe_l]

1 minute ago, Alfred said:

If you really like 7 so much, you could have opted for 7 ninths instead of 7 tenths. That would give you an infinite string of 7s when expressed as a decimal fraction.

Hmmmmm. I like that. 👍 But the figures 9 8 7 were in such a nice descending order, I could not resist. 🤦‍♂️

[Alfred]

9 minutes ago, joe_l said:

But the figures 9 8 7 were in such a nice descending order, I could not resist. 🤦‍♂️

Do you have CDO? In case you haven’t heard of it, it’s like OCD but with the letters in alphabetical order, as they should be!

[Snapseed]

21 hours ago, Optische Ausrichtung said:

I haven't read everything, but I'd like to point out that people who make constructive complaints want things to improve because they actually want to remain customers. (A secret that I would also like to reveal to Canva/Serif at this point).

^ I fully agree with this and the only other thing I would like to add is that being polite (and not rude/offensive) with constructive complaints, missing/wanted features, etc would help as well.