Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Frustrations in Workflow, and Roadmap Concerns


Recommended Posts

First, let me say that I remain in awe of the Serif products I use: Photo on Mac and iPad, and Designer on Mac. Having worked for years on Adobe products, I came to Affinity to get out from under Adobe's ridiculous subscription model. I tried several contenders but quickly Designer wiped out any impulse to go back to Illustrator – despite a lot of convenience tools that I missed, and largely still miss in Designer. It says a lot that the generally better, uncluttered and powerful UI of your products has kept me firmly out of the previous world (apart from occasional returns for specific effects that Illustrator 5 still provides).

 

I've recently started production on a graphic novel that I've already spent 2 years developing the script and research for. Now I'm heading into drawing, and I'm staking it all on Designer and Photo on the platforms I use them on, with a few other apps like Sketchup and Concepts as parts of the workflow.

 

That said, as I get into it, I find a lot of small workflow frustrations. The latest illustrates: My project requires a LOT of moving documents between Photo and Designer, in various configurations. So why, when I use the "Edit in Photo" option from Designer, does the document in Photo not inherit the units of the Designer document? SO FRUSTRATING. 

 

All the more so, because the option to change units that is usually suggested, Document Resize is greyed out. And of course, I'm not trying to resize the document, I just want to change its units.

 

It took a lot of searching to find out that the best (only!) way to do this, is to select the hand tool, and use the units popup that appears in the toolbar. What has units got to do with the hand tool?? Very counterintuitive, and more to the point, hard to find the workaround. Worse, there are a number of places that you would (reasonably) expect units control to appear (like, say, Preferences, and Document Setup) that it is completely absent from. 

 

As part of the process of trying to work around this, I also found a bug that seemed to crash Designer when changing units with the Guides Manager open (reported). This indicates to me that while you obviously have a very good team of UI people there, there may be some gaps in testing, and in crash reporting.

 

I want this to be positive, so I'll say again that the products are excellent. With my dependence on them over the next year, and as part of a project that will have consumed 3 years of my life when it's done, I am concerned that the products are in a cycle of pushing new things out, and under-resourcing fleshing out feature sets that should have been filled out long long ago. 

 

In my graphic work, I often needed the flexibility that AI's arrowhead and other line termination options provided. Grid distortion tools there are underpowered or absent in Designer, and when I look back at the feature requests, these, and things like them, have been requested consistently for years now. These requests are responded to with "yes, coming up in the next release" type responses, but we are still waiting for them. The iPad Photo is brilliant, and I understand why you would put a focus on it, but there needs to be a clear sense that you're really able to make these products better, and not just more broadly available.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 years later...
On 1/18/2018 at 8:55 AM, urbanistica said:

First, let me say that I remain in awe of the Serif products I use: Photo on Mac and iPad, and Designer on Mac. Having worked for years on Adobe products, I came to Affinity to get out from under Adobe's ridiculous subscription model. I tried several contenders but quickly Designer wiped out any impulse to go back to Illustrator – despite a lot of convenience tools that I missed, and largely still miss in Designer. It says a lot that the generally better, uncluttered and powerful UI of your products has kept me firmly out of the previous world (apart from occasional returns for specific effects that Illustrator 5 still provides).

 

I've recently started production on a graphic novel that I've already spent 2 years developing the script and research for. Now I'm heading into drawing, and I'm staking it all on Designer and Photo on the platforms I use them on, with a few other apps like Sketchup and Concepts as parts of the workflow.

 

That said, as I get into it, I find a lot of small workflow frustrations. The latest illustrates: My project requires a LOT of moving documents between Photo and Designer, in various configurations. So why, when I use the "Edit in Photo" option from Designer, does the document in Photo not inherit the units of the Designer document? SO FRUSTRATING. 

 

All the more so, because the option to change units that is usually suggested, Document Resize is greyed out. And of course, I'm not trying to resize the document, I just want to change its units.

 

It took a lot of searching to find out that the best (only!) way to do this, is to select the hand tool, and use the units popup that appears in the toolbar. What has units got to do with the hand tool?? Very counterintuitive, and more to the point, hard to find the workaround. Worse, there are a number of places that you would (reasonably) expect units control to appear (like, say, Preferences, and Document Setup) that it is completely absent from. 

 

As part of the process of trying to work around this, I also found a bug that seemed to crash Designer when changing units with the Guides Manager open (reported). This indicates to me that while you obviously have a very good team of UI people there, there may be some gaps in testing, and in crash reporting.

 

I want this to be positive, so I'll say again that the products are excellent. With my dependence on them over the next year, and as part of a project that will have consumed 3 years of my life when it's done, I am concerned that the products are in a cycle of pushing new things out, and under-resourcing fleshing out feature sets that should have been filled out long long ago. 

 

In my graphic work, I often needed the flexibility that AI's arrowhead and other line termination options provided. Grid distortion tools there are underpowered or absent in Designer, and when I look back at the feature requests, these, and things like them, have been requested consistently for years now. These requests are responded to with "yes, coming up in the next release" type responses, but we are still waiting for them. The iPad Photo is brilliant, and I understand why you would put a focus on it, but there needs to be a clear sense that you're really able to make these products better, and not just more broadly available.

Totally agree. Love working in designer, but I have been waiting very patiently for some of these 'discussed' features for quite some time now (some from 2014- 2015). Especially some sort of vector non-destructive distortion tools especially for type and general vector distortion. I'm hoping that some of these much requested features will be part of the 2.0 lineup...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.