Affinity Designer v2.0
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I'm a big Affinity supporter, but they botched the release of version 2. They basically updated the UI, added a couple of new features in each app (some of them – like the vector Warp – are quite buggy) but didn't do much to fix the old bugs from v1. Also it seems to me that the smaller feature requests we've been posting on their forums for years went mostly unnoticed. All the annoyances and quirks from v1 are exactly the same in v2. I'm still giving them a chance because their apps are so damn fast and good compared with Adobe's, but I do hope they'll step up the bug fixing.
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@tudor said in Affinity Designer v2.0:
I'm a big Affinity supporter, but they botched the release of version 2. They basically updated the UI, added a couple of new features in each app (some of them – like the vector Warp – are quite buggy) but didn't do much to fix the old bugs from v1. Also it seems to me that the smaller feature requests we've been posting on their forums for years went mostly unnoticed.
That's exactly how the company has been developing and marketing software since at least 1990, when I first heard about Serif. That's how they updated and sold the Plus series, and that's how they develop Affinity. 2-3 new features, little improvements in every update, but also devastating bugs that are never ever fixed. The biggest news with Affinity was probably that the Plus series bugs died with the Plus series.
My biggest concern is that Serif even really believes they are innovating. That's my impression after talking to their developers, and after reading their posts on their forum. Their marketing is downright ridiculous.
In any case, I constantly see their (young) customers blinded by an almost cult-like illusion of how hard it is to make software in 2022 and that Affinity represents the latest technology. And they are easy to impress:
Personally, I find it impossible to ignore that Publisher lacks features I could use in Aldus Pagemaker in 1990 (!), and that Designer lacks features that were in several illustration programs in the early 1990s. And contains algorithms that don't match the algorithms of that time in products from a company that were actually founded back then, in 1987. Then you know they are not a tech company and that the ambition is sales sales sales. And it was actually a company that used creepy and unpopular telemarketers right up until they started over with Affinity, and now use viral marketing instead.
I still like making a particular type of poster in Designer 1.x, which performs quite impressively with many objects even when most are with effects, but it's almost surreal to see the new generations waiting for years for things I used from the early 90s.
The definitive clue that Serif is making software for amateurs - voluntarily isolated and with big blinders on in a cave - is the big fuss about the EXE file hidden in their app version of 2.0. It's as if they didn't know anything about how their customers and the whole world work in workflows with other programs, or ignored this which will just be worse. They even thought in their own words that they were "ahead of the curve" and asked customers to contact the developers of third party products to update their products.
I got decisively wiser with v2. Serif is a smart little company that is good at selling, but the products are simply not for creatives with my profile. And now the wait starts for the yet missing features for their cult of customers.
These are fine products for people who can't afford anything else, but it was simply too burdensome to visit their forum, where many believe they are right up front and ahead of the professionals with their inferior discount product. But what do they know about professional use when they are not professionals themselves...
But so much the better to discover Vectorstyler. Coming from Affinity it must be like joining NASA after being a member of a small fireworks club.
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@Ingolf said in Affinity Designer v2.0:
@tudor said in Affinity Designer v2.0:
They basically updated the UI, added a couple of new features in each app (some of them – like the vector Warp – are quite buggy) but didn't do much to fix the old bugs from v1. Also it seems to me that the smaller feature requests we've been posting on their forums for years went mostly unnoticed.
Absolutely, they simply don't care or don't know how to fix & implement. When I realised that we were wasting our time asking and reporting, I left the forum, now for good.
In any case, I constantly see their (young) customers blinded by an almost cult-like illusion of how hard it is to make software in 2022 and that Affinity represents the latest technology.
young and less young, some of whom literally live in the forum (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) and who intrude on all the threads trying to convince people that the Aff suite is the absolute solution to everything.
These are fine products for people who can't afford anything else, but it was simply too burdensome to visit their forum, where many believe they are right up front and ahead of the professionals with their inferior discount product. But what do they know about professional use when they are not professionals themselves...
I really enjoyed reading on their forum the criticisms of some forumers whose writings were similar to yours...
But so much the better to discover Vectorstyler. Coming from Affinity it must be like joining NASA after being a member of a small fireworks club.
I love this comparison, so "graphic"
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@Pat said in Affinity Designer v2.0:
young and old, some of whom literally live in the forum (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) and who intrude on all the threads trying to convince people that the Aff suite is THE solution to everything.
Fanboys by every definition of the word. They seem to have more time than bots and algorithms.
I really enjoyed reading on their forum the criticisms of some forumers whose writings were similar to yours...
This is not exactly a coincidence. Serif has thrown around the term professional, and it seems to annoy people.
But so much the better to discover Vectorstyler. Coming from Affinity it must be like joining NASA after being a member of a small fireworks club.
I love this comparison, so "graphic"It is funny because it is true.
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@Ingolf it sounds like you really care about Affinity!
I too was also disappointed they didn’t include a few more new tools. Overall I think their apps are going in the right direction, just rather slowly. I have actually purchased a Universal licence - the intro price was good value to me as I also have an iPad and Windows PC.
With regard to it being professional software or not, I can't say. I'm not a professional in the sense I don't make a living from using graphics software. I would say however, in their defence (as a casual/non pro user) I have seen some amazing images and designs created using their apps.
I think to a certain extent, professionalism, skill and ingenuity comes from the person using the software, in the same way an accomplished photographer will get the best out of whatever camera they are using. I suspect at the end of the day, ‘graphics professionals’ will use (or want to use) Adobe as that’s what they were hooked on when students and it’s still perceived as the de facto graphics industry software. I see this all the time when looking through job ads.
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@Jono said in Affinity Designer v2.0:
@Ingolf it sounds like you really care about Affinity!
I think to a certain extent, professionalism, skill and ingenuity comes from the person using the software, in the same way an accomplished photographer will get the best out of whatever camera they are using. I suspect at the end of the day, ‘graphics professionals’ will use (or want to use) Adobe as that’s what they were hooked on when students and it’s still perceived as the de facto graphics industry software. I see this all the time when looking through job ads.This is the angle that has distorted and ruined the debate on the Serif forum. What many are trying to discuss is the real usefulness of products out in the world, where value is created or products are exchanged or things are communicated on physical media or web (webp, svg, png, jpg) - not about what level the user is at as an artist or professional, and whether they can use some semi-professional software at home or in a one-man business.
The debate is whether the software can be used in a professional context with professional output equipment and ultimately - but not only - in professional workflows between market players. And whether it is at all appropriate to use them here, if they can be used at all. There can be so many workarounds involved which ruin the business case because time is money. That time is a factor I also saw users on Serif's forums deny. That's how low the level can be there.
I work professionally with professional equipment at my job in a professional environment with professional players who themselves also use professional equipment. I am not talking about things being in Adobe formats or Adobe formats at all - I talking about the entirety. Privately I can do some things in Affinity at a high level because I am experienced and skilled, but I cannot use Affinity in my professional work, neither Publisher, Designer nor even Photo, which at least has many features but amateurish algorithms or amateurishly implemented algorithms. Highlight - the shadow recovery algorithms for RAW photos alone are so ridiculously primitive that I haven't seen it implemented worse anywhere. It was that bad in their old PhotoPlus as well, so they are neither learning nor improving the programs.
On a compassionate level, I'm glad someone is making software for little money that makes many creatives creative and happy, but I cringe when the company thinks or claims they are making software for professionals. I don't even think they are in touch with the industry on any particular level, and several on the forum are starting to suspect that too after the bloodless and lacking update to v2.
in the same way an accomplished photographer will get the best out of whatever camera they are using
It's not that simple with photographers and cameras. I'm actually quite an accomplished and curious photographer, having taken (and sold) pictures with all sorts of cameras over several decades, and I tease the many today who only talk camera gear that I can take good pictures with any camera. And I can. But I also encounter equipment limitations or weaknesses that prevent me from excellence. And that's something you reach for when you can finally reach that level after years of trial and experience.
So you really take the picture with the lens, and by far the best pictures I take have been with lenses that took me 5 years to really get to know deeply, because they render reality in an enchanting way where many other lenses can't keep up despite price and specs. And they do well in some conditions and miserably in others, and are good for some subjects and not for others, so you really have to go through many hours and experiments and trials with your equipment. I learned from a good photographer that you don't review a lens after a week or month, and not after measurements, but after a year of hectic use. I was skeptical, but is he right. Dog eyes and human eyes and bird eyes don't see reality the same, they interpret it, and so do lenses. So you can take a good picture with whatever camera, but with your favourite lens you can capture the moment in a magical way. I've spent years and years putting together a simple photo kit that takes pictures in a beautiful and aesthetic way, and there are both expensive and inexpensive lenses.
And that's my point here. Reality is infinitely more complicated than all those myths and endlessly repeated phrases on the web, there are many more nuances to reality. And that requires some knowledge, which I struggle to get myself, and struggle to learn from veterans. Along the way I've become a professional at some things, a semi at others, and am still beginning in other disciplines, but I have plenty of knowledge and nuances that the Serif forum suspiciously often fails to address. It tells me a bit about many of their clients, and sadly the Serif company as well. They make a lot of money from excessive and overblown marketing and clients who are very often not professionals. They have been doing this for 30 years soon. They themselves know this very well.
And that's why I'm here - because the man behind Vectorstyler has ambitions and reaches for the stars competently and fearlessly. Vectorstyler is a tool I enjoy using and actually growing with, it's a delight.
As a Serif Affinity range customer, you get to wait for years and often in vain - in a few years in a decade - so I shake my head in resignation and will retire Designer as a private artist when I finish my last works by 2023 (they're big).
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Whilst VS has a larger feature set than AD it doesn’t mean everyone needs that. It’s the same when people argue over AD vs AI features. I get by with a very limited number of tools, pen, few shapes if I can make use of them, gradients and blurs and that’s me happy. I find AD’s workflow to be good for my needs and it’s doesn’t bog down. From my admittedly quick play I’m not sure about VS for me, still deciding whether I want to try a project in it. So whilst I have a license for v2 for my requirements there’s nothing I use that v1 doesn’t have which had an even smaller feature set. Was v2 over hyped, yes, was it released too soon, yes, will it improve, yes, just not at a quick enough rate for some people. Everyone’s requirements and workflows are different.
As for fan boys every forum has them including this one.
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Designer and Vectorstyler are two completely different programs for completely different needs and purposes. I've been using Vectorstyler for a couple of years now, and it's for completely different projects than what I use Designer for. There is almost no product overlap.
Vectorstyler focuses quite heavily on being a very feature-rich program for manipulation and production of vectors, and for those with that particular need. And the sources of inspiration from the market are obvious.
Serif set a very slow, messy and unclear course with Designer, which has only now gained some extra vector features. If you look at what it actually outputs of SVG and PDF, it's not impressive. No output I can use for professional work. So I use it exclusively for bitmap output, just vector controlled for as long as I'm working. I assume the same applies to your work.
I've seen quite a few on the Affinity forum asking what the heck Designer really is. A vector program or some kind of bitmap program. It is quite important to know if you have placed your workflow in the right product. It's still impossible to say where Serif will end up with Designer, but there's probably more grounds for optimism now for people with vector needs. One thing Serif could have done there was to teach their marketing not to oversell like amateurs.
I know your work from their forum, and I have done similar for fun once. But it's more hard manual work than what I use Vectorstyler and other programs for, where I really, really, really need advanced vector features to save a lot of time and avoid doing everything myself. Because then it takes 1 year instead of 1 week with it all in an unusually stupid manual way. So a lot of vectors in my work in Designer had to be created in Vectorstyler or other programs.
I think for your work you're best served with Affinity, which performs quite well with many objects and effects, although you probably won't love doing it in the iPad app. It's just as if Designer was made for that type of work. It's also for similar types of designs that I start Designer.
I do, however, pull out Vectorstyler when I need a break from Illustrator and CorelDraw, which are better han Designer at pure vector work and outputting it professionally, but in terms of user interface annoy me.
As for the fanboys, there's a good balance of talk in here from mature people, while the other forum... it's clearly someone's life and hobby, but it's not a clubhouse or social office. And it has not qualified discussions with professional and professional knowledge, to say the least. I've had to ignore upwards of 20 people to filter out the nonsense and noise.
By the way, I'm curious to know what Serif's CEO is doing on the front line with tasks that are in no way part of his primary or secondary job. It can't just be busyness after the release 5 months ago. He's making decisions about tiny details that go far beyond his expertise, so I wonder what problem Serif is currently facing. Besides a key developer switching to DuckDuckGo. If the latter is the explanation, then Serif is more vulnerable than one might think. They are very few in development teams.
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@Ingolf What a lot of wasted words when your first paragraph is total and utter nonsense to put it politely. Why did you bother with the rest of the essay (which I didn’t read) other than you like the sound of your own voice? I think a minority of people on this forum, certainly includes you and your posts, have decided for me as to whether I’m going to have a proper play with VS. Those people remind me of the same type of people on linux forums.
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@VectorVonDoom Maybe Ingolf meant a big difference under the hood code-wise.
In any case, let's disagree without being harsh.
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@b77 said in Affinity Designer v2.0:
Maybe Ingolf meant a big difference under the hood code-wise.
What I wrote in my first paragraph is that one program is aimed rather uniquely at vector manipulation and advanced vector output, and that the other, despite its vector features, quite often and often inevitably produces bitmap output, and that I therefore use the programs for their own distinct purpose and tasks, and that they thus never overlap in the preparation of my products. I use from start to finish either one or the other. So in my work they are two different tools in the toolbox that should not be compared too much directly.
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