pre-sales questions

[dasigna]

hi there,

 

stumbled upon this already some time ago, but it seems now is the time to try! adobe AI/ID and PS gets out of focus due to their inacceptable price- and subscriptions-politics, CD gets more and more annoying too due to price reasons plus lack of stability and real development ...

so as AF looks really promising it might worth trying, what leads to the first question:

 

where can one grab trials for designer and photo??? this is really mandatory, but none to find ...

 

second thing:

as a huge amount of designs and drafts were done in corel over the last years it would be more than just helpful to have a import option for that!!

not really demanded for any complex things, but paths, colors and of course fonts should be imported flawlessly.

in other words - portability depends quite a bit on this feature.

as theres no such thing at the moment (or i may have overlooked that) it is quite important to know when it will be available.

 

thanks in advance for short reply.

[Lee D]

Hi dasigna,

Welcome to the forums.

 

Our trials for Designer and Photo are currently being updated with new features thats will be available to download from our site soon. Import support for .CDR files is something that has been previously requested and may be in a future future.

[MEB]

Hi dasigna,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

If you are using a Mac, the trial for latest version of Affinity Designer is available here (scroll to the bottom of the page). There's no trial for Affinity Photo for Mac neither any of them for Windows as Lee D pointed out.

[Samoreen]

Hi,

 

I'm wondering why Serif are shooting themselves in the foot with this trial version issue. I'm currently advertising Affinity Photo for Windows in my photo club but no one will ever blindly buy a license if they can't try the software before. Since the full version exists and works, I don't understand, as a former developer, why it takes so much time to release a trial version. This is really beyond me...

[MEB]

Hi Samoreen,

This is because we need to fix/polish a few (critical) issues discovered after the program's release (version 1.5). There's no point is distributing a trial with issues we are already aware of because it ends up giving up a bad impression of the software. When the software is released it's used on a larger range of machines/configurations than the Betas distributed just through the forums, so there's always a few issues that crop up...

[Samoreen]

Hi Samoreen,

This is because we need to fix/polish a few (critical) issues discovered after the program's release (version 1.5).

 

So why not build the demo on version 1.5.1 ?

[dasigna]

o.k. thanks for feedback so far.

 

after researching some days within forums etc. theres some more light - but only some ...

 

trial: thats kind of 'dont know what to say' :)

was obviously already announced weeks ago and still not there... hmmm. how should i know if cant try???

 

corel-file support: its getting quite hard to migrate when theres no real option!! going the way over AI and the import to affinity is likely to get things even more worse by jumping around between different file-formats. not to mention the amount of work and time ...

so thats really bad news!

same for .dxf-support (which is used often here for laser-cutting and -markers)!

 

further i discovered, that there will be issues regarding support of summa cutters, as theres no real and easy implementation so far - wich is another downpoint by now. have to investigate more on that ...

 

and: i am missing a real clear plan regarding future payments or plans for complete bundles with designer/photo and upcomming publisher.

so far cant believe it will be free forever if paid once ... ?

 

so at this point i am not quite sure if one could really dismiss CD, AI and PS? seems not possible as a complete changeover at the moment.

mostly for photo, but there theres obviously no seamless integration so far with the last standalone of adobe - lightroom (which i definitely dont want to change by now).

so at the end theres some open points concerning a complete 'goodbye' to corel and adobe.

would be really great if that would change in the near future!

 

at the moment affinity seems to be a real good alternative for those who are starting from scratch or havent much archives or a build up workflow with many things to consider.

but i fear affinity wont get all the others who are having such and have to rely on a stable and existing working process. and i assume there are lots of 'one-man-shows' and small-business-offices out there that would be really glad to kick off the 'big ones' more sooner than later and could get rid of their user-unfriendly (and most likely arrogant) behaviour.

as it seems theres no easy seamless 'jump-over' possible for now - or at least one thats possibly a less painful one.

 

so i think serif has a bit of more work to do before they could take over all of those dissappointed adobe and corel-users that are willing to leave but cant without much pain, due to lack of integration possibilities ...

 

 

still will have a permanent eye on this, and the sooner complaints will be wiped out, the better! B)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EDIT:

ahhh - forgot one thing... photo seems not to be able of handling smart-objects from PS. bad again, cause used a lot too. and thats quite a big point regarding the use of mockups etc ...