[HN Gopher] Affinity Designer: A Love Story
___________________________________________________________________
Affinity Designer: A Love Story
Author : robenkleene
Score : 137 points
Date : 2020-03-28 15:03 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (design.infinum.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (design.infinum.com)
| PunksATawnyFill wrote:
| Illustrator is abandonware at this point. Defective and basically
| unmaintained by Adobe. Too bad they don't just open-source it.
|
| Designer is decent and probably the best vector option on Mac,
| but it suffers from some pretty bad UI. Tools' settings are
| scattered all over the place, with properties of objects
| sometimes being mixed in with tools in the tools palette.
|
| Properties for objects are often nonsensically enabled, either
| because no object is selected or the property is inapplicable.
| This issue comes down to poor UI validation.
|
| Affinity doesn't appear to be particularly interested in
| addressing some reasonably significant gaffes, either. If you
| look at their Fill functionality you'll see examples of all of
| this.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| Affinity Designer is an excellent piece of professional creative
| software, but Serif's business model is broken.
|
| They've erred on the other end of the spectrum from Adobe. Rather
| than get greedy and force users into renting their software as
| Adobe has, they've tried to stretch out a very low price of entry
| into a multi-year series of free updates - and it's not working.
|
| I paid a mere $50 for Affinity Designer half a decade ago. While
| it's seen some valuable updates since then, the core promise of
| an Illustrator killer remains out of reach: Key features like
| blends, pattern brushes, distortion envelopes, and more have sat
| on the 1.x roadmap for years, and the marquee feature of 1.8,
| released a few weeks ago, was a years-in-the-making _bugfix for
| the expand stroke feature_.
|
| I _want_ to give Serif more money so they can bring Designer up
| to speed with Illustrator, as fifty dollars every 5+ years
| clearly doesn't support the kind of development effort this
| requires. I don't want to _subscribe_ to Designer either, but
| there are other proven models: Look at Sketch, which has an
| optional, annual upgrade program, and has shipped vastly more
| functionality than Designer has in the same time period.
|
| My criticism isn't entirely fair as Serif has also been occupied
| with launching Photo and Publisher during this time, but there's
| no escaping the conclusion that Designer has stagnated. I really
| hope the company finds the right course correction that keeps the
| Affinity range affordable while sustainably funding development.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| I tend to agree. Development for Photo also has slowed down
| after a burst of new features after release. I am definitely
| wondering how they are doing financially.
| sbuk wrote:
| I know that they've been focussed on getting Publisher out.
| Whether that is the reason for any slowdown isn't clear.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Isn't it a bit presumptuous to worry about this without knowing
| their finances? Outside of glaring exceptions like MoviePass, I
| generally assume that if a business is willing to charge $X for
| a product, they do it because they believe $X is a sustainable
| price.
|
| There are any number of reasons feature updates might be coming
| more slowly than is ideal. As I'm sure everyone here is well
| aware, throwing more money at a development team doesn't
| necessarily make it faster.
| vosper wrote:
| > As I'm sure everyone here is well aware, throwing more
| money at a development team doesn't necessarily make it
| faster.
|
| But it does, especially over a multi-year timespan. Unless
| you really screw up in managing or hiring.
|
| Assuming you hire reasonably skilled engineers and accept
| that they will take some time to integrate with the team (and
| that this will temporarily slow the team) then eventually you
| can build more stuff in any window of time.
|
| For reference, see almost every software company.
| johneth wrote:
| > Isn't it a bit presumptuous to worry about this without
| knowing their finances?
|
| FYI, you can view their accounts on the UK's Companies House
| website: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/05041038/
| filing-h...
| greggman3 wrote:
| I'm pretty happy with Affinity Designer (not so much Affinity
| Photo) and I agree with you I'm worried about their money
| situation. I even bought both apps twice. Once on Mac and once
| on Windows.
|
| Like you eluded to IMO they should just do the traditional
| thing, charge for upgrades?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yes, bought Affinity Publisher as an act of good will. Not
| sure I'll need/use it.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Don't look too hard at Sketch. While they have been the first
| movers on what was (and to a lesser extend still is) a glaring
| gap in the designers toolkit, Figma has been clawing market
| share at lightning speed over the last 2 years.
|
| Sketch has delivered on a lot of things, but I do not think
| their business model is root cause of their success.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| They only recently changed their business model. Their
| success was the excellent piece of software. This has been
| copied by many now.
|
| I don't want cloud only software. Do you want to offer
| syncing? Use my Dropbox or iCloud for that. You want some
| shared library? Use my Dropbox of iCloud for that.
|
| Give ME control over MY assets and don't take my work
| hostage.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Personally I agree and find this development and its
| implications troubling, but the market disagrees. The world
| goes SaaS -- at least for now.
| mattkevan wrote:
| That's the primary reason why our design team chose Sketch
| over Figma. Lock in with Figma is worse than with Adobe -
| there's no way to export other than flattened SVGs or
| bitmaps and almost nothing else understands their
| proprietary file format.
|
| Plus, if you stop paying the subscription you potentially
| lose access to your files. Yes, there's a generous free
| tier, but that's essentially VC funded at the moment.
| There's no guarantee that will last forever, especially if
| they need to actually make some money.
|
| At least with Sketch the file format is well understood and
| you can keep using whatever version you end up with when
| your licence expires.
| robenkleene wrote:
| I agree 100% with this thought process, I have trouble
| understanding why people are willing to use a product
| that gives them so little control over their work.
|
| Because of this, I've spent a lot of time reading about
| why people choose Figma, and the reasoning is simply that
| they value working together more efficiently more than
| they value data ownership.
|
| There are a few interesting take-aways that come from
| that observation:
|
| 1. Over time, there might be a divide with file-based
| apps for personal use on one side, and web apps for group
| use on the other (we're probably already here outside of
| some areas, like video editing and programming, where
| people still collaborate by editing files).
|
| 2. Even for the file-based apps, outside of expert users,
| it's actually probably preferable for most users to use a
| web-based app and take their risks with the company
| behind it, rather than keep track of those files
| themselves. E.g., picture users with no backup strategy,
| and all their files on one computer in their house. For
| these users, dealing with the future of Figma is probably
| _safer_ than them keeping track of their files
| themselves.
|
| 3. Another fascinating angle here is that programming
| ends up side stepping all these trade-offs entirely, just
| because of version control (which is facilitated by plain
| text file formats), which solves both problems
| simultaneously (collaboration and offsite backups).
| Version control, and by extension plain text, are such
| powerful concepts that they end up splintering off
| programming from the trajectory the rest of the software
| industry is on.
| mattkevan wrote:
| Really good points.
|
| You're right. Individually, files stored in Figma
| probably are a lot safer than on a hard drive that's
| never been backed up. Organisations should probably think
| hard though.
|
| Sketch files are basically a bundle of zipped JSON files
| and image assets, lending themselves quite nicely to
| version control.
|
| Abstract, for example, is a nice UI layer over Git and
| neatly adds versioning, collaboration, and developer hand
| off to Sketch.
| leokennis wrote:
| I don't think their business model is broken, I think your
| expectations are wrong.
|
| Clearly it will be insanely hard to compete with Illustrator.
| It's a brand name and industry standard.
|
| But if you can convince enough people that they can get a
| pretty good approximation of Illustrator for a fraction of the
| price (and you adjust your rate of shipping features
| accordingly), that can be a great business model.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| This is a fair counterpoint, as there may indeed have been a
| contraction in Serif's ambitions for the product. But there's
| ample evience that Affinity Designer has fallen short of
| Serif's own expectations: A 2014 post on the official
| Affinity product forum laid out a public roadmap for the 1.x
| cycle, including such Illustrator staples as mesh warping,
| blends, gradient mesh fills, and more. Some of the original
| roadmap was indeed implemented, such as the critical feature
| of artboards. But as the originally-promised "two years of
| free updates" stretched into more than four, the majority
| went unaddressed.
|
| The thread has since been deleted.
| mattkevan wrote:
| If you go for the volume licensing deal, that is an annual
| subscription, and it works out at about PS13 per year per
| licence.
|
| One company I worked for had one laptop with Creative Cloud
| shared between an entire department because they couldn't
| justify getting everyone CC just for occasional use.
|
| When I pointed out what good value Affinity was, they
| promptly rolled it out for the entire organisation.
| mattkevan wrote:
| Affinity Publisher is great too. If you have the other apps,
| being able to edit assets by instantly switching into Designer or
| Photo mode and having access to all the relevant tools is
| amazing. Saves so much time round-tripping between apps.
|
| Amazed Adobe hadn't done something similar a long time ago.
| bowbe wrote:
| Any Sketch-to-Designer converts here that could recommend the
| switch? I've been using an old standalone license of Sketch and
| refuse to upgrade to their subscription model.
|
| Things you like, things you miss, etc.
| PunksATawnyFill wrote:
| I don't use Sketch a lot, but I like being able to set up a
| one-button export that spits out multiple versions. You may
| very well be able to do this in Designer, but I don't use their
| "persona" concept.
|
| Sketch suffers from some profound selection problems. It
| inexplicably treats all objects as filled... but only when you
| drag within them (but not when you click). So if you want to
| select a bunch of smaller objects that reside within the
| boundaries of a bigger one, NOPE: You'll end up moving the
| enclosing object when you try to drag a selection marquee
| around the enclosed objects.
|
| That's a deal-breaker for me. I mean... WTF.
|
| Another selection-oriented quibble in Sketch is that you can't
| set the default selection mode to "select only objects that are
| fully enclosed by the selection marquee." This is only
| available if you press and hold a hotkey while selecting. But
| that's miles ahead of Illustrator, which totally lacks this
| critical selection mode... a product-killer in my book.
| Designer offers this mode up-front as a full-time default, as
| does Corel Draw (which defaults to it). Inkscape has it also. I
| don't know how people tolerate its absence.
| juliend2 wrote:
| I used to design for print media as well as for web, and I can
| say that Affinity Designer does both really well. So it's more
| than just an Adobe XD, Sketch or Figma replacement (web UI
| design).
|
| For more than a year now, I no longer need to use my old
| Illustrator license that I bought just before Adobe went cloud-
| only. Really impressed. And it's going to be a no-brainer for me
| to get an Affinity Publisher license as well, when I'll need to
| do multi-page print documents.
| AmVess wrote:
| I switched to Affinity Photo a while ago. It took a little while
| to get used to it, but I don't miss PS at all now. Granted, I'm
| not a professional photog, but I've been using PS since it was
| released.
|
| I also have Designer, and it is quite good...although I don't
| know enough about Illustrator to be able to compare them.
|
| Adobe has gotten lazy and sloppy. The CC launcher/updater
| frequently needs to be reinstalled, and PS is slow in quite a few
| areas. Simple batch resizing photos in PS is a real chore because
| it only uses a single core. Affinity uses all of them, and the
| performance difference is pretty stark.
|
| Affinity frequently updates their products with new features. I
| purchased this product a few years ago and haven't been charged
| for new releases.
|
| Affinity allows 5 one serial to be installed on 5 machines.
|
| All of their products are for sale for 50% off.
| slantyyz wrote:
| I have Affinity Photo, but I find I don't even use Photo for
| photos at all.
|
| It's usually for manipulating non-photo raster stuff for the
| web. For photos, I pretty much use DxO (Lightroom equivalent)
| exclusively.
|
| I have found Lightroom equivalents to have just the right
| amount of Photoshop functionality that a) lets me do everything
| I need faster than a dedicated Photoshop type app, b) lets me
| do that stuff in batches faster.
| ilmiont wrote:
| I used Affinity Designer as my only design tool for about a year
| (UI design) from late 2017.
|
| I liked it overall and I liked what Serif has built it around it,
| even going so far as to offer printed documentation (the
| Workbooks) and the beautiful Affinity Spotlight website which is
| a really wonderful website unto itself. And there was the obvious
| benefit of the low cost and perpetual license.
|
| The featureset was adequate for me and the interface initially
| won me over.
|
| But I ended up moving away for two main reasons:
|
| 1. It tended to feel sluggish as hell. 2. Frequent crashes in the
| middle of work. 3. Lacking basic productivity capabilities, e.g.
| no ability to interact with the layers pane (rename, reorder
| etc.) using the keyboard shortcuts.
|
| I was running it on an i7-7700k with GTX 1080 Ti and yet there
| was often a perceptible delay between clicking something and the
| action occurring. Even expanding layers in the layer pane, or
| double clicking a text field... there was a very small but
| perceptible delay.
|
| More serious though was (3) especially combined with (1)...
| little things like tidying up file layers were vastly more time
| consuming than they should have been.
|
| I was suggested to try Figma and have never looked back. It has
| keyboard shortcuts for everything and all interactions feel
| instantaneous... even though it runs within the browser! The
| first time I used it I was astounded and then made the switch
| within weeks. Haven't run Affinity in over 18 months and it would
| take a lot for me to try it again.
|
| I now run a Linux desktop anyway so not really even an option...
| seangp wrote:
| I love the affinity suite. Our entire studio has switched from
| Adobe to Affinity and we haven't looked back - we're very happy.
| Latest version of photo supports smart objects so we can now use
| PSD mockup templates which was the one thing we really missed in
| the previous version. We do use Sketch for UI work but they have
| really been dropping the ball lately. We're now running several
| versions behind in Sketch because of all the bugs and poor UI
| choices. Might even switch to Affinity designer for all our UI in
| the near future.
| kmfrk wrote:
| I love it too, but I find it a little weird I need the Photo app
| to use the magic "remove object" tool. Otherwise Designer seems
| to have everything I want.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I've been using Krita a lot as my Photoshop replacement lately,
| but I bought both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer and have
| been impressed with how much they offer for such a significantly
| more reasonable price. It's time to tell Adobe "no" to
| subscription based software.
| apozem wrote:
| This is an unpopular take, but for certain kinds of programs, I
| actually prefer subscription software.
|
| All software is a sandcastle build on top of a thousand other
| sandcastles. It takes active maintenance, especially if it's a
| professional-grade tool.
|
| Subscriptions are the best way to ensure active, responsive
| product development. They align the developer's incentive (keep
| paying me) with your incentive (keep my tool working).
|
| You wouldn't pay a contractor everything up front to renovate
| your bathroom. You'd pay as you go to ensure the work continues
| and is of good quality. Same thing with software.
| jolux wrote:
| You do get to keep the product at the end though. And then
| you'll typically pay someone else again 20 years down the
| line to fix different problems, or do different things, etc.
| Much closer to the old Creative Suite model than CC is. (the
| latter is also just dreadful software that I dread installing
| to use Adobe products, which I feel a need to bring up every
| time I think of it because of how awful it is)
| jiveturkey wrote:
| adobe has _way_ more and better features. the subscription
| model is working well for them. that ship has sailed.
|
| for people who only need affinity's feature set, it's perfect
| alternative. but it isn't putting a dent into adobe's revenue.
|
| i'm not sure why you care to continue to slam adobe. if
| affinity's products and sales model suit you, why care what
| adobe does?
| nnq wrote:
| > way more and better features
|
| That's hyperbole. Affinity products are quite close. Artists
| with more of a "hacker" mindset who can improvise a bit
| around missing features can also get by with open-source
| alternatives like Inkscape and Gimp.
|
| Oh, and the _new-user friendliness_ of Adobe products is
| abismall. I 've never seem something more user-hostile than
| Photoshop - it imposes a brain-breaking mental model copied
| from the era of dark-room photo-effects or smth. and doesn't
| accept that _everyone_ wants vector + raster in the _same
| one_ software.
|
| If the industry would not be so high-pressure and artists
| would have time to learn more tools and play with stuff
| instead of crunching to meet deadlines, stockholm-syndrome-
| software like Adobe's would die off... it only survives
| because that +10% productivity + extra 15% productivity for
| using the same tool as all the others and all the examples
| give overwhelmed and overworked artists an extra 25% they
| can't say no to!
| PunksATawnyFill wrote:
| Amen. The Photoshop UI is a mess.
|
| But... although I eagerly bought Designer when it came out
| (because Illustrator is basically dead), its UI isn't much
| better. And I consider that less forgivable in a new
| product.
| mattkrause wrote:
| The one thing I really miss from Illustrator is "Select
| Same Appearance". It doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to
| implement, but it's been "coming soon" for five years.
| knolan wrote:
| I learned to love Photoshop and Illustrator after watching
| a lot of excellent training videos back in the day. I held
| it up against appallingly bad CAD software like a
| SolidWorks and Pro/Engineer. Adobe's apps are utopia in
| comparison to the hot mess of parametric CAD.
|
| Then I learned Blender and nothing comes close for speed
| and efficiency, except maybe Vim.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I am deep, deep down the Illustrator rabbit hole (20y of it
| being my main tool, working on big projects that are deeply
| entwined with how it works) and will not be changing to
| Affinity Designer, but I can really see Affinity being a lot
| more appealing to new artists. The subscription model is
| super off-putting when you're barely scraping by. Sure Adobe
| has student pricing but you know what? I wasn't a student
| when I glommed onto AI, I was just recently out of school and
| struggling to get into the animation industry. I pirated it
| for a while, then started buying it every second or third
| release when it actually had features that sounded useful to
| what I was using the program for.
|
| Affinity, you pay like, what, fifty bucks, and you're done.
| No subscription, no fucking around with cracks. That's a
| _lot_ more appealing to someone still learning their craft.
|
| I have seen this change happen to Photoshop, there are a
| _lot_ more young artists who are using Clip Studio or
| Procreate than Photoshop for their work. I constantly see
| articles here talking about how UI people are using Figma or
| Sketch or whatnot instead of AI because they are both better-
| oriented to what they do and are a _lot_ cheaper, with a buy-
| once model instead of a subscription.
|
| Adobe is also terrible at listening to their users. I can
| point you to a top-ranked feature request for AI that had its
| "user story" put into the pipeline to be implemented "soon"
| something like two years ago, which is a feature I personally
| was putting into their old feature request inbox a decade
| ago. Illustrator is really, really ripe for disruption, and
| Affinity has a solid competitor judging from my brief
| explorations of it.
| Kelteseth wrote:
| Give it a try. I have been using Affinity Designer since
| 2017 and never looked back. Took me only about a day to
| learn because it is so similar to Photoshop! I use it
| mostly for SVG and UI design related stuff for my open
| source wallpaper app ScreenPlay [1].
|
| [1] https://screen-play.app/
| egypturnash wrote:
| I am thinking I might fuck around with it soon for some
| standalone art, but I am currently in the middle of a
| multi-year comics project[1] that pushes Illustrator
| really hard to produce complex, painterly work at high
| speed and really don't feel like changing horses in the
| middle of a stream would be a good idea. :)
|
| [1] http://egypt.urnash.com/parallax/
| timtimmy wrote:
| I find Affinity Designer is way way faster to use than
| Illustrator. It's not just the rendering, the whole UI is
| streamlined. However, it's missing many features compared
| to Illustrator, especially some of the stroke patterns.
| saagarjha wrote:
| > Affinity, you pay like, what, fifty bucks, and you're
| done.
|
| It's currently half off, so you can grab it for 25!
| PunksATawnyFill wrote:
| Illustrator is abandonware at this point. What a sorry joke
| it is. Decade-old defects not fixed.
|
| To me the last straw is its lack of a proper selection
| method (select only objects that are fully enclosed by the
| marquee, not just touched by it). This glaring deficiency
| had me running Corel Draw in a VM for years.
|
| Now we finally have some newer vector tools on Mac:
| Designer and Sketch (although Sketch buries the
| aforementioned selection mode under a hotkey).
| detritus wrote:
| It sounds like we've been in the same boat, for about the
| same amount of time. I've gone from being a total Adobe
| fanboy (who isn't a fanboy in their late teens and
| twenties?) but it's a company that I absolutely cannot
| stand now - primarily because of the infliction of the
| subscription model, which I now pay more for (can't skip
| releases) and am totally locked-into and resentful of. And
| yes, there're oodles of issues that have been going around
| for years but are never resolved (my recent one (ie; for
| two years now) - do I have x instances of 'CEPHtmlEngine'
| running, taking up processes, or do I delete the
| CEPHtmlEngine folder, suffer a couple of popups and then
| occasionally have my hard disk filled with 26x 16mb files A
| MINUTE when working on large documents? Fun choice!).
|
| I don't even use the Affinity software, but I've bought
| them, purely because I want Adobe to have competition.
|
| from a software standpoint, I could probably get away with
| Illy CS2 - the 'features' added since then have been ..
| mostly irrelevant. But if I don't have a subscription, I
| can't open client files.
|
| - ed: numerous typos
| achow wrote:
| I was always surprised by Adobe's lack of product thinking and
| software development chops and their revenue and share price
| (inversely proportional).
|
| All of their products never evolved, very poorly integrated,
| terrible UX and product design in general, bad software
| development maturity.
|
| The last one is an educated guess based upon all of the
| previous points and also Steve Jobs publicly shaming them due
| to Adobe's inability to react on Flash issues. [1]
|
| Adobe took very long time to react to Sketch software
| challenge, and the result (Adobe XD)is just about OK, nothing
| remarkable.
|
| [1] Steve Jobs' open letter:
|
| Thoughts on Flash
|
| https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
| stickfigure wrote:
| I'm always amazed that Adobe just let Flash go without a
| fight. For a while they practically owned the "web
| development platform". It's as if Microsoft decided to stop
| developing Windows and said "eh, just install Linux".
|
| Don't get me wrong - I'm _very_ glad we 're all working in
| HTML5/Javascript/etc today and not ActionScript. And it would
| have required a herculean effort by Adobe to fix all of
| Flash's issues - probably a total rewrite of everything. But
| it's a lot easier to rewrite software than rebuild a giant
| community of developers.
|
| From a strict business game theory perspective, it seems like
| Adobe really screwed this one up.
| baddox wrote:
| Without a fight? My recollection is that it died an
| extremely slow, prolonged death.
| Marazan wrote:
| The thing they have up without a fight was Flex, their
| Rich Internet Application dev framework.
|
| When they abandoned support for it they killed the
| careers of thousands of developers and removed their
| chance of dominating web app development.
|
| Flex was miles ahead of what HTML 5 was producing at the
| time, if they had focused on getting the Flex compiler to
| output Javascript we would be living in a world where
| Adobe was synonymous with Web Dev.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| I don't know. They can develop excellent software but it
| seems they are very deliberate in what they put energy into.
| Reminds me a little of Microsoft. They can produce excellent
| products if they are forced to but they are perfectly content
| with producing mediocre stuff as long as the business is
| fine.
| Marazan wrote:
| Thoughts on Flash is filed with lies. It opens with lies and
| continues with lies.
|
| Apple denied Abobe access to APIs they needed to make Flash
| run better on Macs
| sbuk wrote:
| Lies? The main points were; not 'open', which wasn't wrong
| or a lie; 'full web', again none of the points were
| incorrect, and hindsight show flash on Androids was a poor
| user experience. In terms of 'reliability, security and
| performance', flash was a train wreck - no falsehoods
| there. It certainly rinsed the 'battery Life' on my Windows
| laptop at the time. Finally, it clearly wasn't designed
| with 'touch' based devices in mind.
|
| Jobs last point harks back to the main development platform
| for the Mac being Metrowerks CodeWarrior for Macintosh.
| Apple were essentially beholden to a third party with
| regard to improving their OS, which along with licensing
| other hardware vendors, nearly put them out of business.
| Whether you or anyone agree or disagree with his motive,
| you could see _why_ Jobs didn't want to run that risk
| again. There is also the elephant that is the App Store in
| the room, but again, once bitten (retailers not carrying
| Apple Compatible software), you can understand the
| decision, without necessarily agreeing with it.
|
| > _Apple denied Abobe access to APIs they needed to make
| Flash run better on Macs_
|
| It didn't run particularly well on Windows, Linux or
| Android either...
| Marazan wrote:
| The SWF spec was completely open, there were multiple
| Flash players both open source and commercial. So a lie.
|
| Flash was designed, as its very first use case, for touch
| screen kiosks. So a lie.
|
| Flash Player was perfectly performent, shit code that ran
| on it is different to the platform. When the first round
| of HTML 5 demos came out I made my own Flash equivalents,
| the HTML 5 demos ran at 80% CPU on my machine, the Flash
| versions ran at 5%.
| sbuk wrote:
| Not really. It was an open spec, but controlled solely by
| Adobe.
|
| > _Flash was designed, as its very first use case, for
| touch screen kiosks. So a lie._
|
| Bullshit. It was originally release By FutureWorks(?) as
| a vector tool to run on PenPointOS - that failed, so they
| pivoted to use the core as an animation tool for the web.
| Macromedia bought it added extra functionality, including
| 'actions'. Adobe acquired Macromedia, and Flash, in 2006
| (if memory serves correct). I remember them stopping
| development of, the vastly superior to Illustrator
| (IMHO), Freehand. They release Flex, which you may be
| confusing with Flash as it was based on it, as a platform
| for enterprise apps. If there was any kiosk targeted
| features, they were very definitely and after thought. So
| no, not lies.
|
| Lastly performance. Annecdata. It ground my laptop to a
| halt and my desktop sounded like a jet engine taking off.
| I used quite heavy 3D and cad programs at the time, and
| even they did hog resources like Flash did. Admittedly,
| total annecdata. But enough people at the time saw fit to
| complain about it.
| jkaptur wrote:
| Where can I read more about this?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Apple denied Abobe access to APIs they needed to make
| Flash run better on Macs
|
| Huh? What APIs are you referring to?
|
| There was no SIP back then, and from what I understand you
| didn't even have to sign kernel extensions. You could do
| just about whatever you want... right?
| applecrazy wrote:
| Source?
| inapis wrote:
| Adobe has access to plenty of APIs on Windows, yet it
| didn't run any better and was an incessant security
| nightmare. Why would anyone have a reason to believe that
| Adobe would've done a better job on the mac than much
| flexible windows?
|
| Adobe's current performance on Windows and Mac in 2020 does
| not add any backing to that argument either.
| Marazan wrote:
| Flash ran massively better on Windows than on Macs. One
| of Job's specific complaints was that it didn't run as
| well on Mac as it did on Windows. And that's because they
| couldn't get the same graphics hardware access they could
| get on Windows.
|
| The flash player was a perfectly performany piece of
| software. The piece of shit programs people wrote for it
| were slow but that was not inherent of Flash. The same
| people went on to wrote piece of shit HTML 5 apps that
| peg out your fan just as much.
| k__ wrote:
| I'm using Gravit Designer and Photpea for a few years now.
|
| They're free and run in the browser. But I'm not doing much
| design work. Just shirt and badges.
| albertop wrote:
| I wish they had a Lightroom replacement. It is the only thing
| keeping me shackled to Adobe.
| slig wrote:
| Have you tried ON 1 Photo?
| albertop wrote:
| Trying now. Thanks!
| guitarbill wrote:
| after struggling with inkscape for way too long. finally, i
| downloaded the affinity designer demo, and actually got stuff
| done. it isn't perfect, splitting/deleting parts of a curve was
| trickier than illustrator. but overall, very happy. i'm a
| convert.
| pier25 wrote:
| I love Photo but the lack of group isolation in Designer is a
| total deal breaker for me.
|
| Working with groups is still a nightmare even after years of
| demands by users for this feature.
|
| See this thread started in 2014:
| https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/1640-ad-is...
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| I quite like Affinity too, but have a small gripe with the
| company. While they have free online tutorials, they also sell
| "workbooks" for their software, which seem to be beautiful
| manuals. Why are users expected to pay for manuals? Shouldn't
| their PDFs be free downloads?
|
| More generally, why do many tech companies charge for training in
| using their products? For instance, Google has GCP courses on
| Coursera, but you have to pay $49 month to access labs. I don't
| see this practice with physical goods, but we seem to accept with
| software.
| g_p wrote:
| Serif also produces free online manuals, in addition to the
| workbooks:
|
| https://affinity.help/photo/en-US.lproj/index.html (Photo)
| https://affinity.help/designer/en-US.lproj/index.html
| (Designer) https://affinity.help/publisher/en-
| US.lproj/index.html (Publisher)
|
| Might be of use to anyone wanting to learn more about the
| products by way of the old-fashioned reading of the manual!
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| "More generally, why do many tech companies charge for training
| in using their products?"
|
| It wasn't always like that. A lot of the "disruption" that came
| from tech companies wasn't necessarily about great tech but
| often their advantage was that they took shortcuts in terms of
| customer service. And good manuals were one of the costly
| things they dropped. Just compare Microsoft or Apple
| documentation from the 90s against what we have today. Back
| then they put some real effort into writing good manuals. Today
| it so just some auto generated stuff and even that doesn't work
| well. Or try to file a bug and you just get an empty response
| from some bot.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Why are users expected to pay for manuals?
|
| ...why shouldn't they? They take extra time/money to create,
| and not all users will necessarily need them. If a third party
| wrote a book on Affinity and charged for it, we wouldn't bat an
| eye. Shouldn't the developer get the same privilege?
| PunksATawnyFill wrote:
| Manuals and books are different things.
|
| Nobody should be expected to pay for a manual; that's part of
| the product. An advanced book? Sure.
|
| Look at Resolve: It has an EXTENSIVE (and pretty decent)
| manual, which costs nothing... and for most users, neither
| does the product.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| As GP mentioned, Serif offers free online tutorials. It's
| just that they also sell additional "workbooks".
| Kye wrote:
| The workbooks are more than manuals. You can get a manual from
| the Help menu. The workbooks are textbooks that show you how to
| do specific full projects.
| x3haloed wrote:
| Because the software is super cheap. Affinity sells perpetual
| licenses at a fraction of what Adobe charges. They need
| additional income sources. Makes sense to me. Why not break up
| the pricing to pay for only what you need?
| gtm1260 wrote:
| The value of being able to collaborate and share on the web in
| Figma has outweighed any feature of almost any other graphics
| editor.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I didn't even know Affinity had a student discount. I'm not even
| a graphics designer and I have it for I have it for all my
| devices. It's great to not have to pay a subscription just to
| tinker around with Photoshop-level tools, and I am very glad that
| it exists and is so high-quality.
| seanwilson wrote:
| I moved from Inkscape to Affinity Designer. The interface for
| Affinity Designer is orders of magnitude better but I do like
| that Inkscape lets you load + save to SVG files instead of being
| geared towards a proprietary forward. However, after a while, I
| kept finding when I would Google "how to X in Affinity Designer"
| and find a feature I thought was obvious was missing with no
| plans to implement it.
|
| I ended up switching to Sketch and it's orders of magnitude again
| better for me. I primarily draw icons, logos and interface
| mockups. Sketch gives you lots of ways for quickly iterating over
| lots of mockups that I couldn't find in Affinity Designer so I'm
| much happier now.
|
| Either way, they're both good for different use cases and both
| have free trials.
|
| I'm considering Figma now because I don't like being tied to
| using a Mac and want something that might work on a Chromebook.
| You can run Inkscape on Chromebooks now but I'm pretty sure sure
| I can't go back to the interface. Are there any alternatives I
| haven't considered?
| jkestner wrote:
| I don't know much about Inkscape's press capabilities, but
| Affinity Designer's are what make it so valuable for me. The
| first illustration app good enough for me to move off of Adobe.
| The proprietary format may be necessary to support features for
| press/Adobe compatibility.
|
| Anyway, with all these graphics tools like Affinity and
| Pixelmator that are an order of magnitude less than what came
| before, I don't mind holes in feature sets--they're just a set
| of tools to pick between for each job.
| asfarley wrote:
| Yes! I ran into _exactly_ the same thing with Inkscape,
| aftering purchasing Affinity thinking that it was going to be
| the 'pro' version of Inkscape. Now I'm regularly going back to
| Inkscape for features that Affinity doesn't consider to be
| important:
|
| 1) Auto-trace (come on - I could write this myself, not
| implemented yet?)
|
| 2) Provide option to preserve aspect-ratio in exported SVGs
|
| Makes me wonder whether it's worth the continued investment in
| learning.
|
| Also, I am not sure 'personas' is the best choice. After trying
| both, I somewhat prefer Inkscape's single UI which balances the
| needs of any sort of editing.
|
| I find it quite jarring to go looking for a control for 10
| seconds until I realize I'm in the wrong persona. Maybe I just
| need more practice though.
| RBerenguel wrote:
| I remember being a super satisfied user of Sketch many years
| ago, and was then burned with the amount of bugs when they
| moved from version 2 to 3 (if my memory serves). I actually
| bought Affinity Designer then, on the spot (again, if memory
| serves that was 7 years ago or so). So far for my low-level use
| case it has been excellent, and have eventually added the full
| suite (Photo, Publisher, Designer) to my computer (or my
| partner's). I no longer need to edit complex things, so
| Affinity is a great tool. Although Inkscape has its place
| still, as a "just in case SVG editor".
| tannerbrockwell wrote:
| Affinity Designer - File - Export PDF EPS SVG
|
| You can directly open these files. The .afdesign format of
| course is proprietary, and support for import and export of
| these formats does what I need.
| seanwilson wrote:
| > Affinity Designer - File - Export PDF EPS SVG
|
| What if I want to open an existing SVG file, quickly tweak it
| and save it in place though? The only way I know involves way
| too much clumsy clicking. That's what I meant by "geared
| towards" their own format - they don't make it easy to stick
| to just SVG.
| leeoniya wrote:
| the quality and value of both Designer & Photo is exceptional. I
| got a personal license for both and a 5-pack for work. Not being
| bound to a SaaS/subscription model was key.
|
| one thing that's odd is that you cannot export to bmp. it's been
| requested on their forums but continues to be strangely absent.
| c0nsumer wrote:
| I'm really liking Affinity Designer whenever I've tried it; it
| does pretty much everything that I use Illustrator for.
|
| I just wish it could properly injest .AI files. It opens them,
| but only does things with the PDF header part, resulting in a
| loss of all groupings. Things like long vectors (think trail
| routes on a hike/bike trail map) become split into LOTS of little
| pieces.
|
| Affinity Designer is great if you're starting and sticking in it,
| but moving complex Illustrator docs into it kinda falls apart. :(
| PunksATawnyFill wrote:
| What if you export your Illustrator files to SVG?
|
| Just an idea.
| slantyyz wrote:
| > I just wish it could properly injest .AI files.
|
| For me, it's the only non-Illustrator app that I tried that
| didn't mangle them too much (visually speaking). I had tried so
| many free and non-free (but inexpensive) apps on Mac and
| Windows that would have so many problems with .ai files. Once I
| would load them into an app, the would look nothing like I
| expected them to. My use case for .ai files is usually to
| simply convert them to svg or emf to be able to insert them
| into documents.
|
| Thankfully I didn't have a need to edit them, because it sounds
| a little nightmarish from your experience.
| c0nsumer wrote:
| That's very true and a good point. It does load them fine,
| and they are usable. Just... Not good for editing.
|
| For a specific example, check out this: http://www.cramba.org
| /storage/maps/pontiaclake/CRAMBA_Pontia...
|
| In the original .AI the main mountain bike trail loop is a
| single path. Makes it nice and easy to work on. Bring it into
| Designer and I think it became dozens of really small ones?
|
| I'd really like to move to a Designer workflow because AI is
| so expensive for the no-pay volunteer work that I do making
| these maps, but the up-front work of that would be
| tremendous. So for now... I just can't.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| It's worth noting that the Affinity apps are available for both
| Mac and Windows (in contrast to some Mac-only design tools like
| Sketch). Overall, I find the UI of the Affinity apps to be...OK.
| Some tasks feels a bit clunky (but less clunky than Adobe apps).
| I still recommend the Affinity apps if you are looking for
| alternatives to Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign. But be aware
| that the Affinity apps are not identical in features to Adobe's
| apps. The Affinity website has a good showcase of how people are
| using their apps:
|
| https://affinityspotlight.com/
|
| It's also nice to see some competition against the behemoth that
| is Adobe. In particular, these smaller, more nimble competitors
| (Sketch, Affinity, Figma, Procreate) have shown that you don't
| always have to beat the dominant company in a market, just carve
| out enough space in the same market to succeed.
| jimbobimbo wrote:
| I'm Paint Shop Pro refugee. I started using PSP back when it was
| developed by Jasc. Then I bought several versions of Corel's
| iteration of PSP, but the quality went down quite noticeably.
|
| Affinity series is awesome. I bought their Photo last year, and
| today - they're running a sale - got the Designer. Very nice
| product!
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| I'm an ex Photoshop user - stopped using it when they moved to a
| subscription model.
|
| I'm an ex Sketch user, because I moved back to Windows (feel that
| Apple is ripping users off and I can get better choice, quality
| and performance elsewhere. I don't need shiny and thin and $20
| cables that break often).
|
| I like Figma - amazing what the engineering team achieved there.
| But it's primarily an online app and I'm worried they might get
| acquired by some of the bigger companies.
|
| I'm now using Affinity Designer and Photo. It does most of the
| things I need. It has some minor UX annoyances (or maybe my
| Photoshop muscle memory is not fully overwritten yet).
|
| Maybe I'm one of the dying breed that prefers to have a native
| app with a perpetual license and the option to choose when to
| upgrade and being more in control.
|
| I'm not sure whether it's sustainable for Serif to charge $49 for
| an app. I'd be happy to pay more if it meant they could work on
| those other things mentioned here by others.
|
| EDIT: typos
| xs wrote:
| Been using Affinity Photo for a year now. I love it. I feel
| confident with the tool and can make some pretty cool things. No
| other tool has made me feel that way. I've spent 10 years on and
| off using gimp and photoshop. Never could get it. I tried Krita
| and Pixlr. They were buggy and had shortcomings. Affinity Photo
| has a great price and absolutely rocks.
|
| One thing I still think is clunky though is the Color Picker
| Tool. I have to select my paint brush, then click and drag the
| color picker to the color I want, then click the color I want
| again to get it on my paint brush. I think other tools simply let
| me hold alt+click on the color to get that color on my brush. But
| Affinity is like a 5 step deal which slows me down a lot.
| brianpgordon wrote:
| I'm a Photo (and Designer) user too, just for casual use. The
| only features I really miss from GIMP are animated gif editing,
| a "crop to selection" function, and to a lesser extent a click-
| and-drag perspective transform. The Affinity forums have
| helpful information for working around missing features, but it
| seems like some people there have a weirdly defensive attitude
| about how there are good reasons for every missing thing...
|
| Designer was a bigger win for me because I've always found the
| Inkscape UI baffling.
| PunksATawnyFill wrote:
| Agree on the defensive attitude of the forums AND,
| occasionally, the developers. Not that this is specific to
| Affinity; Adobe apologists are some of the Web's most
| obnoxious... far worse than Affinity's.
|
| The eyedropper function is BACKWARD from every other one I've
| used. You click on the eyedropper, and suddenly the color of
| the current object changes... but you haven't even sampled a
| color yet. To sample a color, you don't click on the
| eyedropper... you click on a dot next to it, and drag that
| onto a color.
|
| Then, the next time you select an object and open the Fill
| panel... the color you just sampled is gone. Another WTF.
|
| The lack of cropping is baffling. I asked for this too. This
| is a version 1.0 feature.
|
| Also... inability to change the background color. What if I
| want to see what my design looks like against various
| backgrounds? What if I'm printing on colored paper? You're
| stuck making a big-ass rectangle under your drawing and
| filling it with a color, then remembering to hide it or
| disable it if you print. LAME.
| kyrra wrote:
| My friend was selling me on affinity recently. They have a 50%
| off sale going on with their products right now, and they have 90
| day demos to try it.
|
| Definitely will have a learning curve for someone that has only
| used paint.net, but will be nice when I need to do the occasion
| graphics work for personal projects.
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