Running Before You Can Walk - Missing Some Basics

[MCFC_4Heatons]

Its a great tool but using the latest Beta is mightly frustrating that some basics/fundementals are missing ...

1)  Please add a basic persepctive tool that works on bitmaps / vectors, in Adobe Fireworks its called the skew tool & works seamlessly on bitmaps or vectors. Altthough I have copies of both Photo and Designer its tedious switching between programs sometimes, maybe because I am long time Adobe Fireworks users and used to the all in one program approach.

2) Please add some text anti-aliasing pre-sets/options, the native feature that was explained to me in Designer  is totally alien.

3) Ability to crop the canvas area either mannually with a crop tool or crop to selection ... Its really useful when designing indiviudual graphic elements

[Jowday]

On 3/5/2019 at 4:30 AM, MCFC_4Heatons said:

Its a great tool but using the latest Beta is mighty frustrating that some basics/fundamentals are missing ...

1)  Please add a basic perspective tool that works on bitmaps / vectors, in Adobe Fireworks its called the skew tool & works seamlessly on bitmaps or vectors. Although I have copies of both Photo and Designer its tedious switching between programs sometimes, maybe because I am long time Adobe Fireworks users and used to the all in one program approach.

2) Please add some text anti-aliasing pre-sets/options, the native feature that was explained to me in Designer  is totally alien.

1) Only the one program approach makes sense when we are talking about basics, so agreed

 2) Yep, the UI is in engineerish (closely related to rubbish) 

[Mithferion]

On 3/4/2019 at 9:30 PM, MCFC_4Heatons said:

3) Ability to crop the canvas area either mannually with a crop tool or crop to selection ... Its really useful when designing indiviudual graphic elements

Working with Artboards makes it easy to do any of those tasks.

Also, the Warp/Distortion tool is on the Roadmap, and some of us hope for it to allow any kind of manipulation, including perspective.

Finally, Font hinting would be great, with some presets for texts, even if I have no complains about the default rendering, improvements are always welcome.

Best regards!

[jstnhllmn]

"Roadmap" is Affinity talk for "lol".

[emmrecs01]

10 hours ago, jstnhllmn said:

"Roadmap" is Affinity talk for "lol".

@jstnhllmn Can I ask what evidence you have for this rather wild assertion?

Jeff

[Alfred]

7 minutes ago, emmrecs01 said:

@jstnhllmn Can I ask what evidence you have for this rather wild assertion?

Jeff

Maybe @jstnhllmn thinks the long wait for features listed on the roadmap indicates that the developers are giving it ‘lots of love’. 

[Old Bruce]

2 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Maybe @jstnhllmn thinks the long wait for features listed on the roadmap indicates that the developers are giving it ‘lots of love’. 

I thought "lol" meant "left on light"

[jstnhllmn]

I refer the above dedicated users to posts from as far back as 2014 indicating roadmapped features which have yet to manifest, specifically Object Blend and Envelope Distort. The frustration with Affinity compels a user to spend $30/month on CorelDraw for features that have existed in Illustrator et al since when, the early 90s?

 

[Mithferion]

Ah, like when it took Adobe 30 years to have a Crop Tool in Illustrator, or that time when they had their users without the Handles snapping to the Grid capability for two complete years in said Application.

Best regards!

[jstnhllmn]

@Mithferion I hope that "but Adobe sucks too" isn't the standard to which Affinity measures itself — or justifies its glaring, critical functionality shortcomings. This was supposed to be the Illustrator killer, not an exercise in comparable frustration.

[Mithferion]

@jstnhllmn

And your hopes meet a good end, because that's not how they or me measure them. Nor there is a justification, it's just that "for features that have existed in Illustrator et al since when, the early 90s?" implied that the Development of Illustrator has been a wonderful tale to tell, which is not true and that's why I mentioned those two cases.

Even Adobe as a big company, with all of its resources, has this kind of pits.

About the Warp/Distortion/Perspective Tool, the way I see it: it's not a Basic but an Intermediate Feature that is used a lot, and for the cases it's used in, there is no workaround to it. I want it to be a reality too, but that's the thing with Software Development, sometimes good things take years to come to fruition.

Frustration? The amount of it differs from person to person, so don't project yours into others, the same way I don't try to lessen yours or change your perspective on this matter.

Best regards!

[jstnhllmn]

17 hours ago, Mithferion said:

And your hopes meet a good end, because that's not how they or me measure them. Nor there is a justification, it's just that "for features that have existed in Illustrator et al since when, the early 90s?" implied that the Development of Illustrator has been a wonderful tale to tell, which is not true and that's why I mentioned those two cases.

 

That inference is your own, and it is false. If I (or any user) thought Illustrator (or its development) was wonderful, I'd be on the wrong forum.

17 hours ago, Mithferion said:

 Even Adobe as a big company, with all of its resources, has this kind of pits.

 

Again, I addressed this 'two-wrongs-make-a-right' logic in my previous post. Adobe's 'pits' don't exonerate Affinity of their failure to deliver a feature road-mapped 4-years ago.

17 hours ago, Mithferion said:

About the Warp/Distortion/Perspective Tool, the way I see it: it's not a Basic but an Intermediate Feature that is used a lot, and for the cases it's used in, there is no workaround to it.

This is unclear, but it suggests you think these tools are essential (irreplaceable) features. I guess then that we agree, that they are necessary? Shrug emoji.

17 hours ago, Mithferion said:

Frustration? The amount of it differs from person to person, so don't project yours into others, the same way I don't try to lessen yours or change your perspective on this matter.

I am not inventing the sourced and cited frustration of other users or projecting my frustration onto them as the linked forum threads above indicate — you can find more yourself, and it won't take very long. Ironically, you're quite guilty of dismissing my perspective — the false charge you levy upon me with your misleading and curiously personal accusation.

We can be a user of a thing, and a fan of a thing, without being an apologist for the shortcomings of a thing.    

Cheers! 

[Mithferion]

8 hours ago, jstnhllmn said:

That inference is your own, and it is false. If I (or any user) thought Illustrator (or its development) was wonderful, I'd be on the wrong forum.

Cool. We agree on that.

 

8 hours ago, jstnhllmn said:

Again, I addressed this 'two-wrongs-make-a-right' logic in my previous post. Adobe's 'pits' don't exonerate Affinity of their failure to deliver a feature road-mapped 4-years ago.

And I don't remember expressing that kind of logic, like saying:

1. Adobe is late in delivering features / improvements,
2. Then, Serif is doing a good work that satisfies their user base.

So, the same as the previous point, we agree that Software companies don't always deliver X, Y, Z when their users desire. It's a fault but that's what happens.

 

8 hours ago, jstnhllmn said:

This is unclear, but it suggests you think these tools are essential (irreplaceable) features. I guess then that we agree, that they are necessary? Shrug emoji.

To clarify what I meant: these tools are a condition sine qua non for some cases. To me, based on the number of use cases, something is Basic or Advanced. For example:

• The Move Tool is a Basic feature (Designer would be utterly unsuable without it).
• The Mesh Warp/Distort Tool is an Intermediate feature.
• The Scripting capabilities and extensibility is an Advanced feature.

But we agree that for it to be more competitive and attractive, Designer needs such Intermediate and Advanced features.

Maybe it's a really subtle difference that for practical effects is useless, but that's the way I see it.

 

8 hours ago, jstnhllmn said:

I am not inventing the sourced and cited frustration of other users or projecting my frustration onto them as the linked forum threads above indicate — you can find more yourself, and it won't take very long. Ironically, you're quite guilty of dismissing my perspective — the false charge you levy upon me with your misleading and curiously personal accusation.

I was trying to be fair, because it's not the same level of frustration that you and I have. Some users need this by yesterday, others like me can live for a bit longer without it. For the benefit of the first group, I want it to be a reality, the same way I was in favor of another feature that finally arrive to the latest Beta: snapping handles to the Grid, but that's a past discussion.

 

8 hours ago, jstnhllmn said:

We can be a user of a thing, and a fan of a thing, without being an apologist for the shortcomings of a thing.

Sure we can, but I'm an apologist of not letting your frustration getting the best of you. Expressing your needs in a confronting way rarely gets you anywhere. As someone said:

- Speak loudly and people will get away from you; whisper and they will lean to hear you.

I try to say things that are good for Serif and what users need more urgently, because it's benefitial for all.

Best regards!

[Mithferion]

Just as an excercise, here is a list of features that some users need ASAP (I'm making a list by memory, from that I've read in the forums, and counting the ones that are already in the Beta), some of these are features that I'd love to have right now, but I recognize that it's a titanic task to cover all of this:

Designer

• Bleed area guides
• Mesh Fill tool
• Mesh Warp/Distort tool
• Knife tool
• Calligraphic line styles
• Arrowhead line style
• Export slices with previews
• Pages (like the ones in Fireworks)
• Multiple Effects/Fills/Strokes per shape
• Replicate/Blend
• Convert Bitmaps to vectors (Auto traicing)
• Select same Color/Fill/Attribute
• Blob tool
• Spiral tool
• Width tool
• Paint Bucket tool
• Vector Eraser tool
• Vector Crop tool to do actual vector cropping
• Shape Builder tool
• Scripting/Extensibility
• Text Hinting support
• Prototyping capabilities
• Vector patterns
• Fixing the convert to curves problems at small sizes
• Fixing problems with Boolean operations

Photo

• IPTC Support
• Smart Objects support
• Better digital painting brushes
• Tool Presets
• Crop to selection

Publisher

• IDML Import support
• Data merge
• Footnotes / Endnotes

All Apps

• Saving custom workspaces
• DAM Application
• DXF/DWG Import/Export
• ICO Export
• BMP Export
• WMF Export in Mac
• TGA with alpha Channel Export
• CDR Import/Export
• PSD Export with editable text
• AI Import/Export
• Right-To-Left languages support

As someone could suspect, I use Designer more that the other Apps, so that's whay I'm more aware of the features that most people want in that side.

Best regards!

[GarryP]

My two-penneth, to put things into some kind of perspective:
According to Serif press information: "Serif has around 70 employees."
According to a recent 10-K Annual Report from Adobe: "As of November 30, 2018, we employed 21,357 people."
Need I say more?

[Guest]

@GarryP, This is really a poor excuse in the eyes of those who are desperately waiting and will wait for many years for the tools they lack. Moreover, to disperse with three software programs on various platforms with so few staff....
It's the story of the frog who wanted to make himself as big as the ox.
 

[Wosven]

If we follow the Tools and mode added to Designer Bêta, we can understand that they're working toward some of the Tools asked for, and they don't mind, when developping code that make it possible, to add new feature that are different but can be usefull.

I'd rather have people thinking this way than developping in a rush some tool that's half baked and will be a pain tu use or for them to improve or correct later.

I saw a lot of other apps here and there, but few of them are able to replace Illy or PS, so I wont mind waiting for them to deliver a Tool only if it's matching their expectancies.

 

I use some apps for more than 20 years, and we didn't have a lot to compare them to at the begining, and we were happy each time they introduce new and interesting, usefull features. Looking at the improvements Sherif do on the 3 Bêta, when we're only using version 1, and only paid once for the apps, they set a high standard quality for their products. It give me hope and I can be more patient.

We won't be able to stop CC subscription soon, and some of us will need to keep some licences, since we'll keep on working with people using CC apps, or some works need them. It seems some are already only using Sherif apps. That's more options than we had few years ago.

[jstnhllmn]

Echoing @reglico, maybe the advert line on the attached image needs to be rethought. 

You can sell a '65 Mustang (AD) in 1965 as the car to end all cars and you'd probably get 95% of potential drivers' heads nodding along with you, but X-years later, when the new wizband whatever comes out with the sexy-talking navigational widget and the custom-powered ass-heaters (Illu), you can't still be peddling the '65 mustang as the car to end all cars. It corners like a beast. Horsepower for days. Hums like a peach on crack.

But we have other needs now. Can it massage my butt while the heat is cranking?

No, it cannot.

Better believe that drivers — particularly those prone to believe the proclamations of over-eager marketing departments — are going to predictably express their frustration. Here's mine:

Wake me up when we get there.