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I'm using AD since summer 2014 and I think updates are very slow. 3 years, I can't believe it ! I was thinking 2 years but no, it's 3 years. Between first beta and now, the significant updates for me are symbols, text on path, corner tool and pivot point.

 

I must explain my job : I'm working for horology and I'm drawing dials, cases, hands, straps, all we need for a watch. I already love AD because it was so easy to change colors. A very big time saving compared to Illustrator. And no more crashes with heavy files.

 

But it was not easy to draw. New versions works pretty well and I use symbols a lot (draw an index, duplicate 12 times and after very easy to modify). Pivot point for rotation was a liberation. I always do rotations, it's the base in horology ! We now can do the same with scale.

 

But today, no decent mirror tool. I'm fed up of this ridiculous and stupid mirror tool. I must use a bounding box to get what I want. Two clicks for defining axis and let's go !

 

We can't change point 0 on art board.

 

No blend shape tool. I use it a lot for guilloché.

 

No deformation tool.

 

No offset tool.

 

No tool for simplifying paths. We often have too many points we expand strokes.

 

No spiral tool

 

No arc tool

 

No measurement tool

 

No vectorize tool

 

I'm also doing 3D with cinema4d a lot of tools / functions would be great for AD. Have you ever seen how powerful is mograph in c4d ? Basically, it's a duplication tool but you can add a lot of modifiers (random is the most evident). It could be awesome to get the same.

 

Idem with particles and modifiers.

 

Moving rotated objects in world or object coordinates can also be useful.

 

Initially, AD was only for mac OS. But the market is at the overside of the street… I don't want to blame you but development seems slow down.

 

No news about the InDesign killer. Xpress is coming back with nice features but costs 830 €…

 

Put the pedal to the metal, guys, I will follow !

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Realy, reall „slow“ updates: Just name a different software product, which is developed faster. Only one!

(I know one, but its – excuse me! – an Adobe product: Muse. But that’s it!)

Software engineering is not a pizza service: order – deliver – eat! (Or is it? If I consider Affinity’ pricing level, it may be the case …!)

 

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Adobe Systems
Employees - 15,706
Photoshop development time - 30 years+/-

Serif
Employees - 190
Photo/Designer development time - 4 years+/-

Other serious contenders against the Adobe Goliath - 0

So disappointed? Me? No Sir. Rather impressed if anything;)

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Arrow heads are essential! Whose feature favorite isn't "essential", "indispensable" or "should be built in since version 1".

If those post really are meant seriously, a piece of software can never be released, before all favorite features of every user are integrated.

My mantra: "Less buttons, more creativity" (if you know, what I mean…)

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On 5. August 2017 at 3:46 PM, markw said:

Adobe Systems
Employees - 15,706
Photoshop development time - 30 years+/-

Serif
Employees - 190
Photo/Designer development time - 4 years+/-

So disappointed?;)

 

Yes, because you did not mention: number of programs and versions, abilities of programming tools, employees per year, corporate purchases, …

 

The Knoll brothers were not 15706 people!

 

And: Serif doesn’t like these comparisons. ;)

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23 hours ago, lenogre said:

Initially, AD was only for mac OS. But the market is at the overside of the street… I don't want to blame you but development seems slow down.

Hi Lenogre,

 

I also have a wish list of items - I've made several posts about them.  Illustrator has a certain look - it's evolved but it's strictly vector.  What I love about AD is that it's a different kind of tool altogether, a hybrid between vector and raster.  Tell me, do you enjoy shading in Illustrator?  Can you make a more realistic look with Gaussian blurs that make shadows and light sources realistic? Yes Illustrator can do a lot of things, but there are a lot of things that AD can only do, or do better.

 

But here's the real clincher - speed, performance.  Especially with the Metal update (Mac), AD just flies. I don't mean 2x or even 5x but somewhere like 10x+. Illustrator and InDesign stall.  I had to stop a project in InDesign because it wouldn't allow me to edit with a linked AI files - it was choking performance.  I ended up doing the whole thing in AD in several artboards even faking some page "templates."  Whatever time I lost doing that I saved more time at how fast everything was.  I'm utterly impressed at how fast it performed. 

 

I find myself using AD for vectors 99% of the time. 

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21 hours ago, Oval said:

 

Yes, because you did not mention: number of programs and versions, abilities of programming tools, employees per year, corporate purchases, …

 

The Knoll brothers were not 15706 people!

 

And: Serif don’t like these comparisons. ;)

 

And, I'm pretty sure Serif doesn't have anything like 190 employees now. I think the total is down to fewer than 100: the company used to have lots of telephone sales staff, but they seem to have abandoned that particular business model. In any case, if you're looking at the relative pace of development, you need to look specifically at the numbers of developers and QA staff.

 

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My opinion is that you don't need to look at the number of developers, but to what you've paid and what you get for that. For me, both AD and AP offer great value for what i've paid. In very new version there's a new feature i like and will use. And then there's the speed improvements...

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Development is a question of priorities.

 

Constraints is an incredible and powerful function but I NEVER made a chart. But I think everybody makes symmetries. It's not sexy as constraints but we really need it.

"Hi guys, we got a mirror function, look at it !" LOL (Illustrator fan…)

"Hi guys, we got a constraints function, look at it !" Waouhhh (I must confess, I said Waouhhh and Illustrator fan too) but no decent mirror tool.

 

In my opinion, Affinity softwares are not expensive enough. I can pay more to get more.

 

Maybe, they can do surveys. Vote for the tool/function you want to see. Several proposals. You vote but they keep results secrets.

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On 5. August 2017 at 3:46 PM, markw said:

Employees - 15,706

 

Two (plus two) people made the first version of Photoshop. 

 

11 hours ago, Alfred said:

 

And, I'm pretty sure Serif doesn't have anything like 190 employees now. I think the total is down to fewer than 100 […] you need to look specifically at the numbers of developers 

 

Two (plus two) people made the first version of Photoshop. But this thread is about the disappointment that basic features that are needed every day for fast, smooth and precise graphic design (as proclaimed) are still not useful or missing. For example you need other apps for spirals, complex symmetry and expanding strokes and the risk that users will not use Affinity because of that disappointment exists. Not because of the quantity of developers.

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7 hours ago, Mr. K said:

There is no arguing that AD and AP are incredible values. I would gladly pay more $ for faster implementation of tools and updates.

 

Absolutely, Affinity Designer and Photo should be priced at around 300$ each. They could even offer OPTIONAL subscription licenses. Affinity is THE ONLY serious contender to Adobe and should expand its possibilities. It's also something psychologically: If I tell my friends an colleagues about AD and tell them it's just 50$ it's almost like "oh, that's pretty cheap. I wonder if it's good then." And I tell them it is and it's just that cheap to gain market share.

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11 hours ago, lenogre said:

Maybe, they can do surveys. Vote for the tool/function you want to see.

It's called https://www.uservoice.com/

Affinity should definitely use it, otherwise useful needed functions go on missing while stuff most people won't need get's implemented. The constrains function you mentioned is an excellent example, it's useful for UI/UX people, but it's hard to understand the prioritization of such complex tool used only one subsection of designers, while many others, such as hidden characters is ignored.

One of the most glaring omissions is vector pattern design, it's used in so many areas of design, from branding, to stationary, to textile, to packaging, to illustration, and so many areas of print design. Why are so many areas of design ignored? Why ignore all these and prioritise just UI/UX?

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14 hours ago, Wiredframe said:

 

Absolutely, Affinity Designer and Photo should be priced at around 300$ each. They could even offer OPTIONAL subscription licenses. Affinity is THE ONLY serious contender to Adobe and should expand its possibilities. It's also something psychologically: If I tell my friends an colleagues about AD and tell them it's just 50$ it's almost like "oh, that's pretty cheap. I wonder if it's good then." And I tell them it is and it's just that cheap to gain market share.

I'm sorry, but Adobe Illustrator's features are miles away. I can't even make a good brochure on Affinity Designer because of the missing continuous flow of text.

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Actually XPress has had some great sales recently. I took advantage of their "competitive upgrade" program that lets InDesign users (and users of a lot of other products) get XP at half price! They had another sale that let me get the next update (2018) at about $80 or so. Both very good deals. They are already several good options for page layout now so I don't seem the need to sit around waiting for Affinity Publisher. It seems like the company has put their focus on iPad which is a smart idea since it takes advantage of the fact that Adobe been as serious about iOS development as Serif now appears to be. That seems to be a long term decision that wasn't a good one on Adobe's behalf in my opinion.

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On 07/08/2017 at 1:18 AM, Oval said:

 

Two (plus two) people made the first version of Photoshop. 

 

 

Two (plus two) people made the first version of Photoshop. But this thread is about the disappointment that basic features that are needed every day for fast, smooth and precise graphic design (as proclaimed) are still not useful or missing. For example you need other apps for spirals, complex symmetry and expanding strokes and the risk that users will not use Affinity because of that disappointment exists. Not because of the quantity of developers.

I think we had about 5 developers working on producing the first launch versions of Designer and Photo together - and we obviously needed to be a credible alternative at launch to an already dominant suite in order for people to even think about making a purchase, no matter the price...

 

I don't think we've done anything fantastical here, so I'm sorry that I've even helped you make a more accurate comparison, but we aren't and never were 190 developers...

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On 10. August 2017 at 9:25 AM, MattP said:

but we aren't and never were 190 developers

 

But no one claimed here that Serif is or was 190 developers. Again: That disappointment exist not because of the quantity of developers.

 

 

 

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Loved to read the reference to Cinema 4D.
I also work with Cinema 4D (I'm a Cinema 4D user, teacher, plugin developer, etc) for over 15 years now.
And there are lots of tools and even concepts that would be amazing in an application like AD.

MoGraph is one such example.
I can make a few videos showing how it could be useful for 2D work.

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@Oval

 

Some people were making the comparison, but your point was that the 'original' Photoshop was written by two people.  We developed the first version of Designer and Photo with 5/6 people.  Cast your mind back - was that original Photoshop 2/5 as good as the first release of Affinity Photo?  As I recall Photoshop didn't get particularly good for 3 or 4 major versions.

 

Another issue is anyone who thinks that just throwing more people at the problem will turn faster improvements.  That is a bad assumption.  The current team has an in-depth knowledge of our code base, and our development strategy.  Adding new people doesn't instantly equate to faster development.  In fact, in some cases, adding new people can have a detrimental effect as they take time to get up to speed, and have a greater chance of introducing bugs.

 

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@Ben

 

We are really not interested in this comparison but it ignores the disappointment of users and that the Knoll brothers invested much less time, had not today’s hardware and software, had no Photoshop and more to learn from, were not two fully skilled developers and so on. We did not start that discussion and no surprise that Serif didn’t react to those main points lenogre made here.

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