Beta update?

[Gregory St. Laurent]

Any news as to when the next Beta update for Windows will be released? It's been a while.

[Chris B]

Hey Gregory St. Laurent,

There is no ETA for a new beta build I'm afraid. 

[Rick G]

51 minutes ago, Chris B said:

Hey Gregory St. Laurent,

There is no ETA for a new beta build I'm afraid. 

BUT ... you just release a new Publisher beta so my crystal ball says (and this was confirmed with a Ouija board ...)

... that the other products can;t be far behind 

[Asser82]

Sadly the development speed of Affinity Photo for Windows started to feel very slow. If someone, like me, is not interested in Apple products in general, then the last release (not beta) in the photo domain was 1.6.5 from August 22, 2018. It is almost 9 months now. Time for a new baby :-)

[000]

2 hours ago, Asser82 said:

Sadly the development speed of Affinity Photo for Windows started to feel very slow. If someone, like me, is not interested in Apple products in general, then the last release (not beta) in the photo domain was 1.6.5 from August 22, 2018. It is almost 9 months now. Time for a new baby :-)

Same on Mac, but everyone who bought the software can download and install a preview version (beta) for update 1.7 (avialble here in the forums) -- these betas are usually updates every couple of weeks simultaniously for Windows and macOS.

A big update with version number 1.7 is going to be released together with the new Publisher, which is, why things take a bit longer than usual.

[rudyumans]

give these people a break

[nezumi]

I also have this desire to have a new version ASAP - specially when I know its packed with some good, new features - just like 1.7 seems to be. But lets keep in mind one really important thing - something that I cant stretch enough. The outstanding level of integration between Affinity software. You can open file from Designer inside of Photo and see no difference - vectors are still vectors, all looks practically the same. I havent used Adobe software for over 2 years now but I remember opening AI file inside of PS was very limited and lot of objects was rasterized loosing ability to be edited and scaled properly. Knowing Adobe it didnt changed. In my opinion Affinity really shines when it comes to integration.
Now, we are getting whole new software to the Affinity family and I am willing to bet devs are working on similar level of integrity. Can you imagine the complexity of that task? Not only we have lots of new tools in each of the existing programs, the whole new software but also integration between them. It surely needs lot of work, lot of time to be done properly.
Properly... Thats another thing.
Affinity is fighting for a position on the market and the fight is (mostly) against massive corporation named Adobe. Affinity just cant afford half-assing their product for the big day of introducing new software to the family. Rushing would be silly and would surely backfire. Publisher might convince many people to jump ship.

In the meantime Adobe is working hard to help Affinity by threatening owners of old licenses with possible lawsuits if they do not join "The Almighty Cloud". Unbelievable. You bought the license, but they just want to force people into monthly pay no matter what.
That comes shortly after news that they are "testing" new price for Photography Plan - which is basically "lets double the price, we were too generous. Lets squeeze that $10 more MONTHLY". The geniuses of marketing.
So while we are watching Adobe shooting their feet repeatedly we need to be patient. Devs need to make it right. I have no doubt that Affinity may become new "industry standard". In fact I already planned on purchasing Publisher solely to support company. I dont really need it all that much. Maybe occasionally for tables. And if I need to wait bit more to get great 1.7 - so be it. Working on current versions just fine for now.

[Gregory St. Laurent]

3 hours ago, Jens Krebs said:

Same on Mac, but everyone who bought the software can download and install a preview version (beta) for update 1.7 (avialble here in the forums) -- these betas are usually updates every couple of weeks simultaniously for Windows and macOS.

A big update with version number 1.7 is going to be released together with the new Publisher, which is, why things take a bit longer than usual.

But it seems the Mac version is further along and gets a little more love. The Windows version still doesn't have the GPU acceleration yet

[nezumi]

9 minutes ago, Gregory St. Laurent said:

But it seems the Mac version is further along and gets a little more love. The Windows version still doesn't have the GPU acceleration yet

Because Macs are like consoles. Theres much less configurations to worry about. You have only handful of cards to test. Windows is whole another animal with the variety of hardware it offers. I am building my PCs myself - I can put there as much or as little as I desire and Affinity has to think about all possibilities to make it work.
I dont know where is the thread but we were already discussing it and somebody from Affinity mentioned that they are thinking about it, started to plan and work on it but cant give estimate time as to when it comes, precisely due to complexity of the subject.

[Thomas_Photo]

Remember, that you paid 54€ once for this software (or even less during a sale).

I bought Affinity Photo in 2017, and 2 lears later still get free updates with a lot of new features, performance improvements, new camera support... With Adobe I'd already paid more than 240€ and not even own the software. Please remember this, before saying that "we don't have xy yet" or "development is slow".

[Rick G]

2 hours ago, Thomas_Photo said:

Remember, that you paid 54€ once for this software (or even less during a sale).

I bought Affinity Photo in 2017, and 2 lears later still get free updates with a lot of new features, performance improvements, new camera support... With Adobe I'd already paid more than 240€ and not even own the software. Please remember this, before saying that "we don't have xy yet" or "development is slow".

Adpbe just announced that they will be going after anyone still using older versions of their software

[CLC]

15 minutes ago, Rick G said:

Adpbe just announced that they will be going after anyone still using older versions of their software

That is untrue; Adobe is warning that users of old versions might encounter copyright infringement suit filed by a third party  (speculation is the third party is Dolby) if they keep using old versions of CC.

[Asser82]

Yes, this is also what I see, that Mac is more on track concerning performance increase through GPU usage. Windows supports many graphic cards, but it does not matter, because in the end all graphic cards use chips from AMD (Readeon), NVidia (Geforce) and Intel (CPU integrated, more dedicated in the future). Above the hardware/driver layer there are abstractions in form of DirectX, OpenGL and Vulcan. So if we are on Windows, just target DirectX 11/12, if Vulcan is too experimental and OpenGL too geeky. Fallback to software renderer where needed. I mean, games do it all the time. The "only" thing that you need is a "game engine" which manages the working parts and distributes them efficiently to the available processing units.

I think, the main reason, why we see minor progress here is a growing code base (no green field engineering any longer), increased number of products and with it the lack of resources. Google says Serif has 190 employees. Now take 100 out, which cannot write code, divide the remaining into 2/3 Apple and 1/3 Windows factions, because for Apple there is Mac and iOS. For the remaining 30 people, distribute them over designer, photo and publisher and maybe some non announced products.

What remains for Photo on Windows is maybe 10 people, where some must be educated, visit fairs like MSBuild, become parents or get ill. The remaining 8 person years per year for development is not much to make big jumps. Hopefully the team is not hit further through brexodus, because development teams tend to be international, and new employees (if there are any) do not contribute much in the first years to the overall progress.

[Rick G]

1 hour ago, CLC said:

That is untrue; Adobe is warning that users of old versions might encounter copyright infringement suit filed by a third party  (speculation is the third party is Dolby) if they keep using old versions of CC.

I have seen one of the emails, They sent out warnings

[Mark Ingram]

I'm really not sure why you're all discussing this. We have never given out ETA on releases / patches / betas, etc (and never will, for obvious reasons). I realise you may be excited to try out the new version as an official retail release (or even get a new beta update), but complaining about slow development is not an accurate thing to say. The Windows version has massively improved performance in the most recent betas, and we continue to add new features, and fix bugs as we go. The time period between releases does not reflect the amount of work that is happening, it merely reflects the time delays between when I make a build, how it gets on with internal testing, and then when I release it to the public. We have builds that are never released onto the forum (which happened last week, build #308 crashes on Windows 7, so it was never released externally).

And with regards to GPU Compute, yes it's something that's on my roadmap, but the complexities of implementing this on Windows are far greater than macOS. macOS has one GPU manufacturer, and Apple are in control of the drivers (you get the latest ones automatically). Windows has at least 3 GPU manufacturers, and the drivers are in a variety of different states and ages - we see that from bug reports here on the forum (i.e. crashes that are solved by merely uninstalling and reinstalling your GPU drivers).

Aside from GPU Compute (and ability to load RAW files via Apple RAW engine), there are no feature differences between the macOS and Windows versions.

[Gregory St. Laurent]

1 hour ago, Mark Ingram said:

I'm really not sure why you're all discussing this. We have never given out ETA on releases / patches / betas, etc (and never will, for obvious reasons). I realise you may be excited to try out the new version as an official retail release (or even get a new beta update), but complaining about slow development is not an accurate thing to say. The Windows version has massively improved performance in the most recent betas, and we continue to add new features, and fix bugs as we go. The time period between releases does not reflect the amount of work that is happening, it merely reflects the time delays between when I make a build, how it gets on with internal testing, and then when I release it to the public. We have builds that are never released onto the forum (which happened last week, build #308 crashes on Windows 7, so it was never released externally).

And with regards to GPU Compute, yes it's something that's on my roadmap, but the complexities of implementing this on Windows are far greater than macOS. macOS has one GPU manufacturer, and Apple are in control of the drivers (you get the latest ones automatically). Windows has at least 3 GPU manufacturers, and the drivers are in a variety of different states and ages - we see that from bug reports here on the forum (i.e. crashes that are solved by merely uninstalling and reinstalling your GPU drivers).

Aside from GPU Compute (and ability to load RAW files via Apple RAW engine), there are no feature differences between the macOS and Windows versions.

Sorry I didn't mean to start a firestorm, I'm just anxious and look forward to the new version. I appreciate all the hard work you guys do and really enjoy using Affinity Photo.

[Frozen Death Knight]

18 hours ago, Gregory St. Laurent said:

But it seems the Mac version is further along and gets a little more love. The Windows version still doesn't have the GPU acceleration yet

They actually are working on GPU acceleration for Windows (see link). It seems however that GPU acceleration is a lot harder to implement on Windows, which to me isn't too surprising considering how open PC systems are over Macs. I know it sucks having to wait (would be a pretty big upgrade for me when I paint actually), but all we can do is have some patience and wait for the developers to figure out a solution. If it manages to come out this year I would be more than thrilled.

[CLC]

On 5/15/2019 at 1:08 PM, Rick G said:

I have seen one of the emails, They sent out warnings

Indded. It's just a warning. And it's actually only Adobe Animate (Flash) product in question, see here: https://imgur.com/a/CbvApoz

[- S -]

42 minutes ago, CLC said:

Indded. It's just a warning. And it's actually only Adobe Animate (Flash) product in question, see here: https://imgur.com/a/CbvApoz

That's incorrect.  See here:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/adobe-says-upgrade-creative-cloud-apps-or-risk-3rd-party-claims/

Quote

…According to a support page created by Adobe on May 8th, the following programs have versions that have been discontinued:

Photoshop, InDesign, Premiere Pro, Media Encoder, After Effects, Animate, Audition, Lightroom Classic, Bridge, Prelude, SpeedGrade, and Captivate

 

[MickRose]

On 5/14/2019 at 9:33 PM, nezumi said:

In the meantime Adobe is working hard to help Affinity by threatening owners of old licenses with possible lawsuits if they do not join "The Almighty Cloud". Unbelievable. You bought the license, but they just want to force people into monthly pay no matter what

If you look at the link above there is a list of unauthorised apps and they are all CC ones, not CS ones. It looks like Adobe is just trying to get CC users to use up to date versions. They are not suggesting CS software is somehow unauthorised.

[- S -]

4 hours ago, MickRose said:

If you look at the link above there is a list of unauthorised apps and they are all CC ones, not CS ones. It looks like Adobe is just trying to get CC users to use up to date versions. They are not suggesting CS software is somehow unauthorised.

In the table on that support page, unauthorized versions include CS6 as well (Photoshop 13, InDesign 8, etc.).  

I think Lightroom 5 is possibly an unauthorized version too.  It isn't explicitly listed in the table, however it's listed under versions that need to be manually uninstalled.

[Alfred]

On 5/15/2019 at 11:56 AM, Asser82 said:

Google says Serif has 190 employees. Now take 100 out, which cannot write code, divide the remaining into 2/3 Apple and 1/3 Windows factions, because for Apple there is Mac and iOS. For the remaining 30 people, distribute them over designer, photo and publisher and maybe some non announced products.

I suspect that 190 figure is way out of date. My impression is that it’s several years since Serif last had anywhere near 200 employees, and I don’t think there have ever been more than twenty or thirty of them actually writing code.

[jmwellborn]

22 minutes ago, Alfred said:

I suspect that 190 figure is way out of date. My impression is that it’s several years since Serif last had anywhere near 200 employees, and I don’t think there have ever been more than twenty or thirty of them actually writing code.

I’ll take 20-30 people with brains writing code any day over a goliath with “tech support” coming from who knows where which generally descends rapidly from “how can I help you” to “I will have to ask my supervisor” to “you must pay us a $90.00 fee to get a resolution to your problem.”    That is, of course, after waiting on Hold for about 60 minutes or so.    Good things come in small packages.   Old adage.

[dmstraker]

What will happen somewhere along the way is code ageing, where complexity increases such that new features and fixes get harder and hence slower. When this happens depends on a number of factors such as:

• key programmer stability (don't want to lose people who understand how it all really works!),
• time pressure (like when pre-announcements are made),
• code complexity (fancy algorithms, etc) ,
• code architecture (eg clean modularity),
• quality rigour (testing begins with specification, not code complete),

and so on.

Go slow to go fast is often a wise move, but such choices are not always in the hands of the programmers. I am, by the way, in awe of what the Serif folks have produced. This is non-trivial coding, folks!

[DigitalVisuals]

From practice out I can say the leatest beta on windows 10 is more stable then ever before.  Yes There are glitches there is a beta for. 
So Affinity team you are on the right way.