Affinity 1.10
affinity.serif.com
affinity.serif.com
Also, please for the love of God implement paragraph wide justification. Without it Publisher is a toy (in my opinion) and not implementing it is unacceptably amateurish when it has been implemented, and open source, since 1981 [1].
[1] http://www.eprg.org/G53DOC/pdfs/knuth-plass-breaking.pdf
I'll buy all three Affinity apps again with a Linux or Proton version. I lug around a Mac just so I can run Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher and click OK in Xcode (or some other trivial can't-be-automated thing) from time to time. Incidentally, I do pay for quite a bit of Linux software (JetBrains, WingIDE, DaVinci Resolve)... and that is before counting all the games that I'll be buying via Steam now that I can run via Proton. Yes, I'm probably in the minority in the Linux world, but Linux (KDE desktop) is easily the most productive for me and great software is actually worth paying for. Plus, the current direction towards total lockdown of MS and Apple is going to create a lot more users just like me.
affinity@serif.com
[0]: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/47502-affi...
Same here. I already own Affinity apps for Mac and on Windows but I don't see anything wrong with buying next Designer or Photo for Linux (with or without Wine/Proton). However, I know it is massive effort and still very complex errand to deliver even comparable experience on Linux as on Windows. I do still keep fingers crossed for Serif but it is frantic demand.
Funny, I used to loathe KDE but I ended up with it by default after trying out NixOS for the first time and... I haven't left. It's great. Just fabulous. I haven't felt the need to go back to a tiling WM yet, which I still find surprising...
Same here: I was a long-time xfce user but, over the years, I found myself using more and more KDE applications. For a friend I setup a Debian with the default KDE environment... I ended up using that myself - with not too many tweaks I just love it: the defaults are sane and if I want to change anything I can !
Has KDE changed that much or have I changed ?
Used to be I disliked KDE for 3 reasons: 1. it made me feel like I was Doing It Wrong and stuff sometimes didn't work if I didn't use K- programs for everything (and I disliked basically all of those), 2) it was the worst-performing and heaviest (disk, memory, everything) DE around, and 3) the config was insane, in a bad way—not that you could do it, but the GUI config manager was just a damn mess.
1 has improved a ton, 3 has improved a little, and 2 isn't true anymore—Gnome is much heavier and has terrible performance by comparison (try both on a resource-constrained device if you don't believe me).
I wouldn't be surprised if XFCE has gotten a little heavier, too, so the difference between the two isn't so stark. Especially default installs of XFCE on some distros, which include a lot of extras.
i wasn't even too sad with them shipping features missing 90% of the old functionality while they got the code right, but doing that just to copy apple frivolous design choices was just too much.
Try out Khronkite... It's a script that makes KWin into a tiling WM. I'm using it now.
Feels exactly like when Mac broke through 15 or so years ago: all the cool kids used it and advocated it, management wanted it and several people in IT preferred it and use it whenever they can get away with it.
I've had presentations where the Macbook couldn't sync and the Kubuntu Dell rescued me. Linux video is massively better than a few years ago thanks to AMD drivers being fully open source.
How many have a little pinguim 15 years later?
Another advantage.
Of course there are things like my Canoscan 4400F that has refused to work for years, but that is so rare I can remember that particular piece of trash a decade later.
Here is the thing, what you think about me, doesn't matter at all.
I own the suite on Mac and Windows and I’ll gladly buy it a third time for Linux. Otherwise, at least better Wine support will be very welcome. I’d even take part in a Kickstarter fund raise for this.
Many pretend they don't use proprietary software while they still install what could be called malware directly from Steam. We're all forced to use proprietary software inside our CPUs and other hardware anyway. It would be easier to fight back if more people used and supported free software and hardware to move society to a better place. By the way I'm not implying that being open source or not has something to do with software quality.
Most of us just want a choice between good desktops, 30% faster compiles, cli commands (e.g. git) that completes in milliseconds instead of seconds etc.
Most reasonable persons, even the more free software loving ones are happy to run 50 - 75% free rather than 100% proprietary :-)
I would be overjoyed even it was unofficial/at-your-own-risk. They previously stated on their forums that they were worried that they wouldn't be able to deliver the experience that they wanted[1]... or recoup costs.
[1]: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/626-affini...
Even with very good justification tools (InDesign's being the obvious example, as it's a direct competitor) a professional end result still requires a lot of manual work -- adjusting tracking and kerning, actually editing the text. But without that solid basis it's entirely slow manual work.
For my professional needs, Designer is a perfect fit, as I only use it when I need to design an icon that would be too complex for Sketch. For side projects, I've made it work – for all the effort Serif has put into improving the fundamentals, Designer remains a feature-poor Illustrator replacement for complex illustration.
Serif's long-term aims with its vector package remain a mystery to me. Circa 2015, they had a public roadmap of everything they planned to add to the 1.x branch, including key illustration features such as shape blends and distortion envelopes. That roadmap has long since been deleted, and most of the features added to Designer since then have been subtle workflow enhancements (a contour tool last year was a notable exception).
The obvious explanation for this is that $50 six years ago isn't enough to sustainably develop all the functionality of a full Illustrator replacement, but to that end, I wonder why Serif hasn't made any movement toward a paid upgrade path.
I appreciate that while I know they'll inevitably launch a v2, they didn't choose to claim every possible dollar on the table on the way there.
It's great for simple designs to send to the laser-cutter or vinyl cutter for making physical products.
But even then it's not that much.
Before I thought they might still be coasting on their old products, but afaik they discontinued those.
Pixelmator seems to be on a much better track than Affinity Photo for bitmap editing, but I'm just not aware of a better alternative to Illustrator than Affinity Designer.
I sympathise with people who want to be able to use their favorite software on a FOSS OS, I'm right there with you, but that will always be an uphill battle on Linux because the culture is deeply anti-platform.
[0] "Linux" here is taken as shorthand for "The GNU/Linux Desktop". The kernel itself is a fine platform.
[1] unless you lump all the different package repos, formats, and managers together. I shouldn't have to explain why this is a problem here.
Even worse, there is a vocal group of users who believe that this fragmentation is a good thing, and that software developers should target multiple distributions (or be shamed for it), as opposed to doing the sane thing and just targeting Ubuntu (or some common abstraction layer).
I think targeting it would be probably the best solution for a company willing to porting to Linux. Alternatively, Flatpaks/Appimages provide a very nice and user friendly solution to this problem.
That's mainly because it's cheap and VFX is like a "factory production line" style job. But VFX is also very much a niche compared to vector graphics and DTP (and even more so, compared to bitmap graphics).
In other words, if Affinity's concern is that the Linux market for their stuff if small, then the intersection of "the Linux market for their staff" that "has the standard platform for VFX" is much much smaller.
AppImage was created for precisely this scenario: When you want to distribute a proprietary application without worrying about packaging it for different Linux distributions.
And for the driver issues: This is being brought up now and then, but comparing the amount of issues I've had with my AMD graphics card on Linux (essentially none) [1] with the amount of anecdotes of Windows driver issues I regularly see in certain forums, I'd say driver issues are a myth by now (to a certain extent of course, please don't bring up how you had to install a firmware package for your Broadcom wireless chipset...).
[1] I'm not saying there aren't ever any driver bugs now and then, but just a food for thought: My graphics card works perfectly out of the box, without any configuration or driver installation at all, on most recent (read: not ancient) Linux versions. On Windows I'd have to look for whatever piece of ad-laden "graphics management suite" I need and then install it as well as regularly update it.
Oh, if only AppImage was widely accepted. Very few developers distribute via AppImage and basically no DEs understand what they are. Not that AppImages need them to, but it'd be nice.
> AppImage was created for precisely this scenario: When you want to distribute a proprietary application without worrying about packaging it for different Linux distributions.
Yes, and it does about as well as could be expected. Which is to say, it kinda mostly works for most distributions that have some level of sanity.
> And for the driver issues: This is being brought up now and then, but comparing the amount of issues I've had with my AMD graphics card on Linux (essentially none) [1] with the amount of anecdotes of Windows driver issues I regularly see in certain forums, I'd say driver issues are a myth by now [...]
Consider that there are an order of magnitude more Windows Desktop users than Linux Desktop users. And I know plenty of people experiencing frequent driver regressions who'd disagree with you.
> On Windows I'd have to look for whatever piece of ad-laden "graphics management suite" I need and then install it as well as regularly update it.
Incorrect. Windows quite often has a driver available via Windows Update, sans overengineered bullshit control panel. It is usually a bit behind the latest-greatest though.
To clarify: Not many FOSS developers distribute via AppImage, or not many proprietary software developers distribute via AppImage? Since the former is to be expected, but I'm curious about your experiences with the latter. To be honest, I haven't seen that many AppImages in the wild either, but I'm also not using a lot of proprietary software on my system at the moment.
> Incorrect. Windows quite often has a driver available via Windows Update, sans overengineered bullshit control panel. It is usually a bit behind the latest-greatest though.
That's good to know. Do you happen to have a document or some other resource explaining the Windows Update graphics driver distribution system? IIUC Windows a) configures some sort of "Windows Basic Display Adapter" on first boot, before b) installing basic IHV-specific drivers via Windows Update. But I understand the IHV drivers installed by Windows Update support all graphics card features, only without the control panel? I always thought there is no alternative to the separately installed IHV graphics driver, especially if you need OpenGL/Vulkan/CUDA/etc. support. But if Windows manages to provide that functionality automatically through Windows Update, that sounds like a good alternative.
I had to do a Windows 10 reinstall recently after I broke something severe in the networking stack (entirely on me, I was playing with something I knew I shouldn't have been playing with) and I had the NV 2060 drivers back on my machine pretty much immediately as part of the update installation chain. I just had to go back into the Windows Store to redownload the control panel since it's a hybrid video laptop and I wanted more control over settings.
Using more neutral language, my main point is that Linux drivers nowadays are better than their historically bad reputation would suggest, and that they often offer a better or at least comparable out-of-the-box experience compared to Windows drivers. An important caveat is that free software-oriented distributions often make it somewhat more difficult to enable on-free firmware or drivers.
Probably more than is demonstrable. It will never be a money maker. It might still happen for other reasons.
Linux has 1% of the desktop market and even within that small number the majority are used to getting their software for free.
I'd say the chance of a Linux version is effectively zero.
https://siliconangle.com/2021/04/14/report-apple-drop-iphone...
Note that Apple's small form factor phones have very often been released out of sync with the main launches in the Autumn. Just because there won't be a new one this autumn doesn't mean the current version will be dropped, and doesn't mean a new small form factor phone won't come along next year, possibly early next year.
I'll not that all the complaints I read were during the period when the SE (or equivalent) was available. People were clearly calling for something else yet when it was offered they didn't take it up.
I double-bought each one so I'd have them available on both macOS and Windows.
Thanks to Affinity I'm Adobe-free.
If anyone's interested, I've found Cavalry to be really good so far but not really intended for footage if that's your use case. Really great for UI motion, however.
I was kinda surprised by this performance focused update, I have not had any performance issues whatsoever, even in big documents.
For this reason I can not use Sketch. It's just painfully slow compared to Designer (and Figma). When everything is "sticky" it really messes with my productivity.
Still, it churns and grinds to a shocking degree sometimes. In your experience, Figma is faster? That’s good to know, as we’re on Sketch at work, but consider other options.
Btw you can import Sketch files in Figma, so you can quite easily compare the two.
As a side note: I also really like the Figma design, auto layout is a game changer imo, component variants are also very nicely done. For UI it's really good, makes me very productive.
(For graphics I do still prefer Affinity Designer)
Unfortunately I have to say that Affinity Photo is still not good enough for my use cases: the difference lies mainly in the many tiny details which make the workflow an efficient workflow.
Publisher is a toy for now and has a lot to catch up to be on par with XPress or Indesign, especially if you want to do some serious type setting or design complex layouts.
I don’t have much to say about Designer as I work with extremely simple vector shapes and it’s good enough for me.
I’m looking forward to the evolution of the products but I wonder if the strategy to 'clone' Adobe was a good one instead of trying a revolution (like for example Figma).
I've seen people say that this awkwardness is not for a lack of trying, instead adobe is just sitting on a pile of patents preventing other companies from implementing the same flows.
Could you please provide an example? I mostly use Affinity Photo for simple photo development stuff and I'm curious where its limits really lie.
Really liked the rest of affinity photo but it was a deal breaker for me.
- Many dialogs (like “Resize canvas”, “Transform”…) don’t hold the values when re-opened for a second time
- No “trim” function
- Crop tool is imprecise, no snapping, no numeric input
- Quick masking is strange
- Macros don’t allow copy/paste operations but keep the initial buffer (?)
- Not so good as tool for tiny bitmaps like icons (for many reasons)
- No bitamp / indexed color mode
- etc.
As said, -many- smaller imprecisions and limitations don’t allow for an efficient workflow in my case, but I can work with it…
But there are also interesting features which are well implemented: for example the Perspective tool is very good and “Impaint” works surprisingly well!
The file exporters are much cleaner than the combination of Photosop’s “Export”, “Quick Export” and “Export for Web (Legacy)”.
Thank you.
For those unaware, these are $50 USD one-time payment alternatives for Adobe products; Photoshop -> Photo, Illustrator -> Designer.
I think Photo is the more developed product, but Designer is what I really need on a day to day basis and it lacks a LOT of the basic features that Illustrator has.
The rendering engine is pretty poorly implemented. Rotating an object oftentimes fills the entire AABB of the rotated shape with black, which also persists into the layer previews as well. Rotating around causes this black box to flicker. It's been reported before and they do little about it.
Exports are rough too. Exporting to raster formats causes insane amounts of blur that are not present in other editors. The developers tell you to increase resolution, as if I don't know what I'm doing. Increasing the resolution is not the solution to everything, and it seems like crisp edges are not well handled in either product when dealing with vector objects.
The constraint system is entirely bugged out and doesn't work for more than a few trivial (and thus useless) cases.
Some of the panes (e.g. the guide pane) cause crashes when opened. Reproducible every time, reported more than a year ago, to my knowledge hasn't been fixed.
People posting bugs or feature requests on the forums are met with "come on guys stop being so mean"-type comments when we're all paying customers too and are a bit miffed about simple things causing our projects to crash, cause rendering issues, or waste time in other ways.
Further, some of the devs' responses have been lackluster, vaporous promises or, in some cases, outright rude and dismissive.
Looking at the glassdoor and some other review sites, it seems the company has a real problem with project management and directional focus, which seems to all fall in line with how the product is perceived after doing some pretty extensive work with it.
Overall, sure, you'll get your money's worth, but I would have happily paid more if it meant getting a more stable product, honestly.
Use if you're in a pinch, but don't think it'll be a cheaper, more grassroots drop-in replacement to CS (even if you don't need e.g. content-aware capabilities and the like, which of course Affinity doesn't have). Even basic usage can be a real PITA.
Beats GIMP and Inkscape any day of the week, though.
As you said there also haven’t been many feature improvements over the years. While I don’t expect complete feature parity with Adobe, the gaps between the apps and their Adobe counterparts seems to have only widened over the years and their is no road map for improvement.
I just hope they don’t turn out like the OmniGroup where an initially strong company with strong software stagnates over years.
I see bugs in the boolean operations, and some of the vector exports are less-than-ideal. I'm looking forward to getting this update to see if the SVG export is better.
I now have it on Windows where the majority of rendering bugs are.
If you're not in the VFX industry (I'm not), it's probably completely off your radar, but Blackmagic has taken Apple's "take a loss on software to sell hardware" model to the next level and distributes Resolve for free. The workflow is different from After Effects, but it took me only a few days to adjust from pre-comps to box-and-pin, and its power and flexibility is incredible.
(Long term happy Designer Win/OSX and Photo Win/OSX user).
Maybe it's resolved. Right now installing the updates.
In 2018, they explicitly said it wasn’t happening:
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/72023-linu...
And even as early as 2014 they never explicitly committed to it:
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/626-affini...
This is off topic, but a lot of Affinity users are here, so may be anybody can give recommendations for this?
inappropriate feature request: "divide" layer blending mode.
I just can't use it. The hotkeys are different and none of the UI makes any sense to me.
If you could just enable a "photoshop mode" that changed all the hotkeys and UI then I could be useful in it.
I'm even reconsidering just taking the dive and paying monthly for Photoshop again.
The controls are a little different, which I imagine would be annoying to a hardcore Photoshop user who has used it every day and developed deeply ingrained muscle memory. For a more casual user such as myself, it's not a big deal. I have to look things up in the (well written, comprehensive) documentation sometimes, I learn the new Affinity equivalent command, and it's fine. The learning curve has overall been much better than I anticipated.
I just can't use it. The hotkeys are different and none of the UI makes any sense to me.
If you could just enable a "photoshop mode" that changed all the hotkeys and UI then I could be useful in it.
I'm even reconsidering just taking the dive and paying monthly for Photoshop again.
I'm sure if you never used anything else before it'll be great