I'll join the other poster in asking for a Linux version (foolish demand I know) or at least making it possible to run Affinity on Proton/Wine.
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].
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.
Thank you for the reference for "Breaking Paragraphs into Lines". I attempted to implement something like this (quite naively) a few years ago; to read something in detail makes me realize the impressive lengths people go to in order to do something as 'simple' as breaking paragraphs into lines and further realize how little I appreciate 'tiny' things like this.
Yes, I came to write this. If anyone from Affinity is reading this, I really hope they take notice of the demand for the Affinity suite on Linux. It’s really the missing bit on Linux.
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.
> at least making it possible to run Affinity on Proton/Wine.
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.
I got PhotoLine running under Wine. The interface is not as "sexy" but the capabilities of PL are great and in many ways better than PS or Affinity Photo. PL has been around almost as long as PS but is not as known. I believe two brother from Germany maintain the software. It is much better than GIMP too.
Proton/Wine support would be a great improvement over not being able to run Affinity software on Linux at all. Definitely worth another purchase if Linux is supported in some way. They could try crowdfunding development if they're not sure about the demand.
I've been using Affinity Designer since its beta in 2014, and it has made the gradual decomposition of Illustrator CS6 (the last non-rental version, effectively unusable on modern MacOS) much easier to endure.
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'm in a similar boat. Very happy to be out of the Adobe ecosystem, but just not seeing a lot of action feature-wise from Affinity. Notably, I've been waiting on some kind of bitmap auto-trace, a thing that's been standard in Illustrator for at least fifteen years.
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.
Presumably Serif is either still working on the level of improvements that would justify a v2, or simply don't think adding more income/manpower will output a better product.
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.
Vectorstyler is a new vector graphics app for Mac and Windows. It has more features than Affinity Designer: distortion envelopes, bitmap tracing, shape blends.. some features are even more advanced than in Illustrator. Check if it fits your needs.
I do also wonder about that. I think so far maybe they have enough revenue from the different apps they have created (Publisher/iPad apps). So far.. I have bought all haha.
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.
I wonder how much demonstrable interest it would really take to convince the management at Serif that a real Linux port of Affinity is a worthwhile exercise. Every time the software comes up in discussions, it feels like half the comments are just enthusiastic people hoping for a Linux-friendly version. I understand the hesitation, and surely Serif have had a conversation internally and maybe done some market research. Still, if the cost guesstimate for doing it that I saw someone apparently from Serif mentioning in a previous discussion was even close to realistic, I can’t help wondering if they could easily raise that much just in pre-orders if they ran a Kickstarter-style “Will it work?” campaign, and probably a lot of goodwill from the tech community as a bonus.
The Linux community is a very vocal minority when in comes to the internet. While it would be nice to have available on all platforms, the reality is the majority of people are happily working on the other two major platforms and don't care.
> I wonder how much demonstrable interest it would really take to convince the management at Serif that a real Linux port of Affinity is a worthwhile exercise.
Probably more than is demonstrable. It will never be a money maker. It might still happen for other reasons.
I love Affinity a ton, too, and have more or less ditched Adobe for all my creative needs. Affinity Designer/Photo/Published easily fills the Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesign toolkit for almost any designer's needs. I am satisfied with Figma for UI and UX design, and it seems to be the enterprise solution du jour as well. The only tool missing for me is a comprehensive motion design tool, for which I have only dabbled in alternatives to After Effects (which is amazing software).
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 always appreciate when companies take the time to focus on performance. Performance optimizations aren't as flashy as new features and senseless UI refreshes, but they save users time and probably also increase the amount of time users can stomach using the software in any given day.
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.
I switched to Affinity almost immediately and it was liberating to free my machine from the Adobe Cloud bullshit…
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).
>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.
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.
> 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
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.
Super happy I took advantage of the sale they had a few weeks ago -- bought both Photo/Designer and now can finally say goodbye to the Adobe Subscription shackles.
I've used Affinity products a lot over the last few years - Photo and Designer specifically (moreso Designer). Sorry in advance for what will be a negative comment.
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.
I’m sorry to say I agree. I was hoping Affinity could offer a real alternative to Adobe, and for a while it seemed like they would. But in the last several years it really seems like they have stagnated. Sure they put our Publisher, but it just feels like they can barely focus on one thing at a time. Photo and Designer were left stagnate in that time, especially on iPad.
It really feels like Affinity does not dog food the iPad apps where UI bugs and awkwardness have persisted for years. E.g. They use a radial slider UI element in a lot of places (e.g. representing 0-100% of some blur effect) that is just awkward as hell to use. The element is circular but you can't move your finger in a circular pattern to change it like you would if it was a knob or slider on a physical circular track. Instead dragging from left to right or bottom to top will increase the value. This leads to the user having to remember to drag from bottom right to top left. Otherwise if you drag from bottom to top, but also move slightly from right to left, the two behaviors fight each other and what happens is undefined.
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.
Out of curiosity, what platform are you on? I run Designer on a Mac and on an iPad, and haven't had any crashing issues.
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.
This looks exciting. Still waiting on the ability to write plugins... We currently export to SVG and have an over complex pipeline to clean and transform. Figmas plugins are great, but the storage is lossy in terms of precision, making Affinity our only choice for now....
I am so glad this exists, and take every opportunity to encourage friends and family to switch to it and avoid alternatives from companies with exploitative and unfair business models (like Adobe.)
What strikes me with the performance is the potential to use the engine for a motion graphics app. Think somewhere in-between After Effects and Apple Motion. This might be wishful thinking, but I would love to see it and would purchase it in a second.
I wanted a non-Adobe alternative to After Effects (that also wasn't quite as Final Cut-focused as Motion) for years until I discovered Blackmagic Fusion (now part of Da Vinci Resolve).
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.
I wished they announced this before their 50% off sale ended. I gave the trial a try and Photo Affinity Photo could not handle my RAW files with a few edits on it. It would crash on the default sample images after hiding and unhiding the layers a few times.
Really like the Affinity products, but Designer still does not support hatch fills. This is a real deficit, as it’s required for technical drawings, e.g. for patent images. Does this new version offer this feature?
Affinity Photo has already been my go to for performance reasons (how is it so usable and snappy on an old iPad???). exciting to see it get faster yet.
[+] [-] JustFinishedBSG|4 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] indymike|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] blue_rog|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dantondwa|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] zamalek|4 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] 120photo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] commoner|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrtksn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knowuh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knowuh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mortenjorck|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Eric_WVGG|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gardaani|4 years ago|reply
https://www.vectorstyler.com
[+] [-] codeptualize|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Chris_Newton|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] overcast|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonyedgecombe|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jstummbillig|4 years ago|reply
Probably more than is demonstrable. It will never be a money maker. It might still happen for other reasons.
[+] [-] bovermyer|4 years ago|reply
I double-bought each one so I'd have them available on both macOS and Windows.
Thanks to Affinity I'm Adobe-free.
[+] [-] nodejs_rulez_1|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hbosch|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] PostThisTooFast|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] CoryAlexMartin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codeptualize|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] agys|4 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] iaml|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Toutouxc|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] OzzyB|4 years ago|reply
Thank you.
[+] [-] junon|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Pulcinella|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] angst_ridden|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] vorpalhex|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpfohl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aviraldg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mm983|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bschne|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gaetgu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ambirex|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mortenjorck|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] KingOfCoders|4 years ago|reply
(Long term happy Designer Win/OSX and Photo Win/OSX user).
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|4 years ago|reply
Maybe it's resolved. Right now installing the updates.
[+] [-] lazycouchpotato|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moelf|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mynameisvlad|4 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] gjsman-1000|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddon|4 years ago|reply
This is off topic, but a lot of Affinity users are here, so may be anybody can give recommendations for this?
[+] [-] car|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mitjak|4 years ago|reply
inappropriate feature request: "divide" layer blending mode.