Designer - Free transform tool (perspective distort)

[BofG]

2 minutes ago, MCFC_4Heatons said:

Yes, but we're talking about essential missing features

Devil's advocate here, but Serif have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. If the feature was truly essential that wouldn't have happened.

I don't know the reasons behind the lack of this particular function, but maybe it's that the business model requires some key features to be planned for the v2. There will come a point where the sales growth dips, and new revenue needs to be saught.

Probably at some point this will all go to the SaaS model, everyone seems to want the new features now, and having the paid upgrade model necessitates paced output of features.

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, BofG said:

Devil's advocate here, but Serif have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. If the feature was truly essential that wouldn't have happened.

Scanning through the feature requests made in these forums it becomes pretty obvious that there are many, many different ideas about which features are essential & which ones should get the most attention or highest priority.

In fact, quite a few users say bug fixes & stability improvements should be the highest priority & no new features should be added until/unless the apps can be made as stable & bug free as possible.

[Dazmondo77]

12 hours ago, BofG said:

Devil's advocate here, but Serif have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. If the feature was truly essential that wouldn't have happened.

But it's taken for granted that you can do vector distortions in an app that was initially aimed squarely at professionals - I use vector distortions a lot so I think it's a shame that I've had Illustrator cs5 open for the past six and a  half years in order to crack on with work (although affinitys copy and paste is currently broke and only pastes RGB - hopefully back to normal in next beta 1.9.5???)

I do feel sorry for self employed / freelancers that want or need to make the switch and have only used adobe cc, as adobe have now announced cancellation fees. saw a twitter post from someone needing to end a Photoshop subscription, as it was too expensive, getting charged $134.96 - that is just wrong (GREEDY GITS) - yes we can welcome those effected to Affinity, with a nice slick snappy interface and easy learning curve, you can be up and running in a day, but imagine the surprise when all you want to do is slight tweak to the perspective of a group, with a deadline around the corner, you can't. you have to find an alternative method = Inkscape - VectorsStyler beta - CorelDraw is all you have on the Mac there's fair few more on the PC including Serif Drawplus - 😒 

[BofG]

10 minutes ago, Dazmondo77 said:

But it's taken for granted that you can do vector distortions

Except it's not there (well except basic shear). There is a free trial available, so it's not like this is a secret that people can only discover after making the purchase.

Of course it would be a nice addition for many users, but the complaint that it's "essential" doesn't hold water. If it is truly essential then people would pay the price it demands from one of the "big" players and wouldn't be here.

I'm just happy to have something workable, easy to use and that doesn't cost hundreds of pounds a year.

[DJ_Jaybee]

47 minutes ago, BofG said:

Except it's not there (well except basic shear). There is a free trial available, so it's not like this is a secret that people can only discover after making the purchase.

Of course it would be a nice addition for many users, but the complaint that it's "essential" doesn't hold water. If it is truly essential then people would pay the price it demands from one of the "big" players and wouldn't be here.

I'm just happy to have something workable, easy to use and that doesn't cost hundreds of pounds a year.

It's essential. We are also paying for Adobe subscriptions as essential tools like a free distort tool still isn't included. If you have art work you've already created and want to add it into a perspective scene and need to retain vector editability to edit shading etc - with free distortion tool you can place this in the scene in seconds... if as a designer or illustrator you need do this - the first time you find it's missing, you would consider this tool essential.

[BofG]

39 minutes ago, DJ_Jaybee said:

It's essential. We are also paying for Adobe subscriptions as essential tools like a free distort tool still isn't included.

Genuinely curious to know why you are choosing to use both? If Illustrator does everything you need and Designer doesn't, why take the pain of switching back and forth? Why even buy Designer in the first place when it lacks an essential feature for your work?

[Mark Freeman]

2 hours ago, BofG said:

the complaint that it's "essential" doesn't hold water. If it is truly essential then people would pay the price it demands from one of the "big" players and wouldn't be here.

I get what you’re saying man, but something can still be essential even if the frequency in which it is needed is relatively low for some people. I don’t need to pay Adobe their extortionate prices so don’t (primarily out of principal), but it would defiantly save time and money if a feature that has been deemed important enough to be present in other vector programs since I was in college twenty odd years ago, was included in Designer for when I do need it. In those rare moments for me it is definitely essential, and it’s fair to say that if it was there I would use it more often. Overall though, it’s the absence of an explanation from up high that irritates me…. Even more than the inefficient and often inferior workarounds.

[Dazmondo77]

1 hour ago, BofG said:

Genuinely curious to know why you are choosing to use both? If Illustrator does everything you need and Designer doesn't, why take the pain of switching back and forth? Why even buy Designer in the first place when it lacks an essential feature for your work?

For me - I can knock stuff up loads quicker in Affinity via Publisher and Studiolink which total genius - I really hate having to use Illustrator, it's slow and just not nice to use in comparison, I just need it for a few missing basics such as vector distortions, Blob brush, simplify paths, perspective grid, easily create fancy borders, 3d, real vector brushes, Im sure theres a few other things that I can't think of off the top of my head - I don't want to use it but I have no choice if I need to crack on and get stuff done

[DJ_Jaybee]

3 hours ago, BofG said:

Genuinely curious to know why you are choosing to use both? If Illustrator does everything you need and Designer doesn't, why take the pain of switching back and forth? Why even buy Designer in the first place when it lacks an essential feature for your work?

We first got Affinity Designer when Adobe dropped Fireworks... as it's a great hybrid vector / pixel tool and whilst it doesn't do everything that Fireworks does / did we discovered that it's an excellent program for creation and editing.

Affinity Designer has quite a lot of features we consider much nicer than Fireworks and illustrator, so in using it over the years have grown to love it - and will generally prefer to use it... but for some work requirements it is still missing key features - mainly for me, the free distort tool. 

At the moment I would probably use Affinity Designer 70% of the time - if it had free distort tool that would potentially be able to use it 90% of the time.

At that point I would be wondering if we still need Adobe... which seemed to be what Adobe's latest customer survey was asking, so maybe they are getting worried that there is more competition now + people have grown to like other software when they've tried it. 

If they hadn't dropped Fireworks, we probably would never have started looking at other options and seen other software we really like working with.

[BofG]

1 hour ago, Mark Freeman said:

I get what you’re saying man, but something can still be essential even if the frequency in which it is needed is relatively low for some people

Fair to say then that it's not essential for the commercial viability of Designer, but essential for some people to be able to ditch Adobe/Corel/InkScape?

[BofG]

@Dazmondo77 @DJ_Jaybee

From the sounds of it Adobe is missing the essential feature of a nice responsive UI

I do get where you are coming from, I do miss some things from Illustrator but for the value proposition I'm happy to work around them.

@DJ_Jaybee take a look at InkScape for the path effects. They are very comprehensive and might serve your needs. I'd recommend setting the keyboard shortcuts to Illustrator style before you begin otherwise it's a painful experience. 

[Mark Freeman]

24 minutes ago, BofG said:

Fair to say then that it's not essential for the commercial viability of Designer, but essential for some people to be able to ditch Adobe/Corel/InkScape?

Yes, that’s fair. However, considering the amount of attention in this non existent feature gets from users on this forum, I would say that it’s arguable Affinity could shift their position from seeing no major adverse effects due to the lack of free transform etc. (thanks to the UI/other excellent features from a criminally inexpensive app) to raising itself up to being a more legitimate competitor Adobe, especially when factoring in price.

[Mark Freeman]

38 minutes ago, DJ_Jaybee said:

At the moment I would probably use Affinity Designer 70% of the time - if it had free distort tool that would potentially be able to use it 90% of the time.

Fascinating insight mate, great post 👌🏻

[MCFC_4Heatons]

4 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

For me - I can knock stuff up loads quicker in Affinity via Publisher and Studiolink which total genius - I really hate having to use Illustrator, it's slow and just not nice to use in comparison, I just need it for a few missing basics such as vector distortions, Blob brush, simplify paths, perspective grid, easily create fancy borders, 3d, real vector brushes, Im sure theres a few other things that I can't think of off the top of my head - I don't want to use it but I have no choice if I need to crack on and get stuff done

We bought Designer, Photo and Publisher in the hope of a few missing features being forthcoming, but me personally I still use Fireworks CS6 95% of the time due to the lack of perspective tool and one or two other missing features in Designer, I also keep a copy of Adobe illustrator CS6 installed because of the great interoperability  between Fireworks, for example I can copy and paste vectors between the two apps if I need to use the warp tools in Illustrator for example. Fireworks has some extensions for opening, importing and exporting SVGs but they are not 100% reliable, so occasionally I sue Designer top open/edit/export SVGs.

A simple skew tool like Fireworks has  that allows you to drag a corner for a perfect perspective effect would be a game changer for Designer IMO, add some common warp tools like arc, arch and fisheye  as well and Adobe would be under serious threat.

 

[MCFC_4Heatons]

6 hours ago, BofG said:

Genuinely curious to know why you are choosing to use both? If Illustrator does everything you need and Designer doesn't, why take the pain of switching back and forth? Why even buy Designer in the first place when it lacks an essential feature for your work?

The point is people want to drop Adobe but with essentials missing from Affinity Designer they just can't at this point.

[MCFC_4Heatons]

8 hours ago, BofG said:

Except it's not there (well except basic shear). There is a free trial available, so it's not like this is a secret that people can only discover after making the purchase.

Of course it would be a nice addition for many users, but the complaint that it's "essential" doesn't hold water. If it is truly essential then people would pay the price it demands from one of the "big" players and wouldn't be here.

I'm just happy to have something workable, easy to use and that doesn't cost hundreds of pounds a year.

If you have to pay a sh*t load of money to Adobe because of core missing features in Affinity then that means it's essential to a hell of a lot of people. A basic perspective tool is a no brainer...

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Mark Freeman said:

Yes, that’s fair. However, considering the amount of attention in this non existent feature gets from users on this forum, I would say that it’s arguable Affinity could shift their position from seeing no major adverse effects due to the lack of free transform etc. (thanks to the UI/other excellent features from a criminally inexpensive app) to raising itself up to being a more legitimate competitor Adobe, especially when factoring in price.

It is also fair to say that there are other missing features that many users consider essential enough to prevent them from buying AD or if they do from using it full time as their main or only vector app.

For example, the almost complete lack of support for true vector brushes is a deal breaker for many. Others say the lack of vector based symmetry/mirroring drawing tools, a cutting tool (scissors or knife), or a segment based stroke thickness tool makes AD a no-go.

Then there are the things that do not always work as they should, most notably for vector objects the boolean geometry, expand stroke & smooth curve features. Many users think it is essential for those things to work as expected 100% of the time.

The bottom line is ADs commercial success will never really depend on the addition of any one missing feature, no matter how essential any number of users considers it to be. People buy & use it because of its strengths, not its weaknesses. Price is part of it, but so is the UI, the unique native file format that enables all 3 apps to work on a document created by any of the others, the best-in-class customer support, & (for most users) its snappy performance even on modest systems.

[BofG]

50 minutes ago, MCFC_4Heatons said:

If you have to pay a sh*t load of money to Adobe because of core missing features in Affinity then that means it's essential to a hell of a lot of people.

The fallacy of that argument is who was to blame before Affinity came along?

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, MCFC_4Heatons said:

The point is people want to drop Adobe but with essentials missing from Affinity Designer they just can't at this point.

Actually, just about every missing feature that anyone might consider essential could be done using a free or open source app, so it is not true that whatever is missing from AD is what prevents them from dropping Adobe.

For that matter, there are some that use open source apps exclusively & would never consider buying or using anything else.

[Mark Freeman]

6 hours ago, R C-R said:

The bottom line is ADs commercial success will never really depend on the addition of any one missing feature, no matter how essential any number of users considers it to be.

Overall I agree. I did say “being a more legitimate competitor” with no predictions as to how much the inclusion of the features that are topic of this thread would impact Designer’s standing. Only that it would be positive, and I stand by that. I wouldn’t however say no to those you mentioned either. 

[MCFC_4Heatons]

11 minutes ago, Mark Freeman said:

Overall I agree. I did say “being a more legitimate competitor” with no predictions as to how much the inclusion of the features that are topic of this thread would impact Designer’s standing. Only that it would be positive, and I stand by that. I wouldn’t however say no to those you mentioned either. 

Without a even a basic perspective tool its nothing more than a toy ....

[Mark Freeman]

10 hours ago, MCFC_4Heatons said:

Without a even a basic perspective tool its nothing more than a toy ....

Well that’s clearly not the case when people make money with it. Myself included. Those who find the lack of inclusion limiting in a professional sense have options with Adobe, but again, my frustrations come primarily from the lack of transparency as to WHY it’s not included, since as you say it is such a basic but greatly demanded feature.

[BofG]

8 minutes ago, Mark Freeman said:

lack of transparency as to WHY it’s not included

I can understand why, there's no answer that will satisfy everyone so it's best to keep quiet rather than "fan the flames" so to speak.

[Mark Freeman]

3 minutes ago, BofG said:

I can understand why, there's no answer that will satisfy everyone so it's best to keep quiet rather than "fan the flames" so to speak.

Well if the whole GD software thing doesn’t work out for management…. They can always give politics a go 😁

[Xzenor]

6 hours ago, BofG said:

I can understand why, there's no answer that will satisfy everyone so it's best to keep quiet rather than "fan the flames" so to speak.

I thought of that too but then why not drop a note to one of the moderators. "Yo, we don't have the time or energy to go into all the million questions and threats that are gonna come out of this, so you just tell'm abcdef.." I think most of us are civil enough to not shoot the messenger