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

Resource Manager Bug and Link Suggestions


Recommended Posts

9 minutes ago, sportyguy209 said:

That would be like saying, there was no indication that Serif didn't want to go toe-to-toe with Adobe over Photoshop and Illustrator before they were released.

In fact, there never was & still is no indication from Serif that they have any desire to go toe-to-toe with Adobe for any of their products. A lot of users would love for them to do that but there are several very good reasons why that would not be a very smart thing for Serif to try.

One is that Serif has far fewer resources than Adobe, not just for development but also for worldwide product marketing. Another is that trying to overcoming industry leader market dominance is very expensive in both time & money, often taking years just to gain any traction with managers & IT departments who have no interest in adopting anything that might be disruptive or threaten their job security.

A really good one for Serif is grabbing a big chunk of a competitor's market share is not the only way to increase profits. Often, just going for the 'low hanging fruit' competitors don't care much about is better for that, particularly if they can keep costs down.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I’m a teacher and while I certainly understand the benefits of linking and the disadvantages of embedding, it’s often a lot easier to use embedding with my students.

Backing up their work, having access at home and school or just switching to a different computer is much easier if everything is embedded. Would it be better to get them to keep any visual resources & their project file in a single directory - sure. However a high percentage of kids will constantly forget to do that - no matter how much they are prompted. Also, the kids sometimes accidentally move or delete images that they need without realizing it happened and will impact their project file. If the images are embedded, we don’t have to worry about losing track. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, JaneE said:

Would it be better to get them to keep any visual resources & their project file in a single directory - sure.

With all due respect, you are a teacher so teach them.  In the real world they are going to have to adapt to best/common practices when it comes to this sort of stuff.  Teaching them the easy way to do stuff (embedding) is doing them no favours.  They need to be able to organise their work properly with all the files needed included in any work they do and if they submit work with missing files etc, they should be marked down for that.  You would not accept a student turning up for a PE (sports) lesson without the appropriate kit and having all the necessary files to hand in computer work is no different to that.

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, R C-R said:

In fact, there never was & still is no indication from Serif that they have any desire to go toe-to-toe with Adobe for any of their products. A lot of users would love for them to do that but there are several very good reasons why that would not be a very smart thing for Serif to try.

It’s possible to understand an approach without someone actually saying ‘this is our approach’. In Photo and Designer, Serif has produced the two most feature complete and high quality competitors to Photoshop and Illustrator.

Of course, this might have been a complete accident. I doubt it though. 

That they have always planned a DTP app, is yet further evidence that they were going after the core trifecta of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. 

Of course, they may not publicly say they are competing with Adobe. It sets a very hard challenge that they’ll be judged against.

It has been obvious for years now that Adobe hasn’t really been trying anymore. Instead they have been harvesting profit from their effective monopoly. 

In any case, if the aim was only to cater to individuals, why go to all the hassle of rewriting their entire range of software? I would say, it is because they have bigger aspirations. 

From our point of view, we set up our company 3 years ago having had experience of working in practices of 200+. While we are small currently, I see things like the Affinity range as being a potential competitive advantage. It is substantially cheaper and in some ways arguably better. We want to build our company around the it. We don’t have the baggage and cultural inertia that bigger companies have. We want to grow and with that will hopefully involve purchasing many licences of the full AF range.

However, from our extensive experience of working with large teams, I can just see the future headaches from users not correctly linking files. Given Publisher is still in development I think it is reasonable to make the case as to why linking should be the default behaviour. 

Maybe for V1 or 1.7 or whatever it will be called, they say that embedding is going to be the default for the simple reason that it is more stable and less buggy. I could accept that as long as the strategy is to default to Linking once it is ready. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, carl123 said:

With all due respect, you are a teacher so teach them.  In the real world they are going to have to adapt to best/common practices when it comes to this sort of stuff.  Teaching them the easy way to do stuff (embedding) is doing them no favours.  They need to be able to organise their work properly with all the files needed included in any work they do and if they submit work with missing files etc, they should be marked down for that.  You would not accept a student turning up for a PE (sports) lesson without the appropriate kit and having all the necessary files to hand in computer work is no different to that.

Yeah it was about the most annoying thing I remember from school when it was obvious a teacher was dumbing something down.

If students are there to learn then let them learn. That includes learning about making mistakes. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I’m not going to go off topic and waste anyone’s time by justifying my priorities for my students. I agree that linking is the best practice (and I certainly teach that) but there are reasons embedding exists & can be genuinely useful.

Personally, I’ve been wondering if the reason that embedding is the default is due to the photo and designer personas. If the functionality to edit images directly in publisher with those personas only worked on embedded images, it would make sense for embedding to be the default.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, JaneE said:

Personally, I’ve been wondering if the reason that embedding is the default is due to the photo and designer personas. If the functionality to edit images directly in publisher with those personas only worked on embedded images, it would make sense for embedding to be the default.

This might be a reason. Personally I have little use or love for the ‘Persona’ function. Would much rather work in separate apps. Especially if it were to be the cause of favouring embedding over linking in Publisher!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

57 minutes ago, JaneE said:

Personally, I’ve been wondering if the reason that embedding is the default is due to the photo and designer personas.

I think the number one reason for that is linking isn't working correctly yet, & there may be quite a few more beta versions released before it is. Even after it is, they may decide a preference to set the default is the way to go, leaving that choice to users.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, robinp said:

Maybe for V1 or 1.7 or whatever it will be called, they say that embedding is going to be the default for the simple reason that it is more stable and less buggy. I could accept that as long as the strategy is to default to Linking once it is ready. 

+1 and +1 for linked files.

The best practice is to organize files in folders, folders on a server or a HD depending of their sort (commercial logos, organizational logos, xxx logos, posters, free use pictures, commercial pictures…).

And have a practical folder organisation for the current documents — main folder, image and fonts folders (< a must if the app can use those fonts without needing to install them, it allow different people to easily open/work/correct… a file shared on a server), and more folders if it's helpfull (i.e. for original files send by the client, PDF files, etc.).

I can remember when we used different ways and needed a specific file, it ended up with asking everyone in our small studio : "Who's got the last version of this logo?" (…and documents printed wit outdated ones sometimes…) :S
Improved workflow is to open last year documents and updating logos and adds or others updated linked files before saving it as a new document to work on.

For magazines and such, same principle with main templates. We'll save it with a new name for the current issue, and modifications can be made by someone else on adds or other linked files. Linked files are on a server and can be modified while people are working on the content of the pages.

We archive each issue and go on.

Doing this is so usefull that I do it for documents I produce at home, avoiding having same files in different folders or embedded in documents.

 

Another important point for not embedding files is that when one of those rarely (= not enough to be in a special folder) but linked files is needed, it's faster not to open the old document but to search in the links/images folder and place it in the new document.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • 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.