The Truth About Affinity 2.0: What You Need to Know
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 พ.ย. 2022
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You're spot on. And the price reflects their software's capabilities. Does anyone think that the Affinity apps will be that cheap if they had all the bells and whistles? That being said, the fact that we have an Adobe alternative with 90% of the features which is good enough for 90% of the people out there for a fraction of the price is awesome! For my work, I've found that the Affinity apps do that job perfectly well so I don't need any of Adobe's apps. So I happily upgraded to V2. I think that Affinity is still growing. They are a small team, not a corporate giant like Adobe. It will take some time to catch up to them on the innovation front. This takes a lot of time and money.
This was the review I was waiting for, thank you Dave! I was always going to purchase V2 as I've more than had my moneys worth from V1 and want to help fund the continued development of the suite. Totally agree with you, as far as innovation goes they'll always be playing catch-up as they're still perfecting the day to day tools themselves but I'm 100% with you in the belief if you are a real designer you can work with any tool. Affinity though, wins handsdown for me with their distribution and pricing model and its not like people can't continue to use V1 if they don't feel ready or arn't able to pay for V2 at this time.
Big fan of the full bundle price, especially with the launch discount. Also glad they’re (so far) not going to subscription. Illustrator’s convert to vector and the DocsFlow plugin for Indesign (which enables placed linked google docs with easy auto-update of changes) are the two anchors really keeping me stuck with having a few Adobe apps installed.
When Affinity tries to innovate on something, people still says (yeah, but they lack on A, B, C...". So, it's a never ending struggle for them (or any other small company that does something associated with big corporations)
I think one good and valid point you brought up was how innovative Adobe is. Adobe has been in the game for years and years, whereas this team is probably a lot smaller and trying to catch up. Adobe has become nothing more than the Amazon/Walmart of design software-just swallowing everything in its path. Like Substance for example. Use to be a buy and own program per version. Now they sold their souls to these elder gods who lurk in the proverbial darkness holding us and our wallets by the balls. You want to hate them and for good reasons, but like you said--they are innovative and doing crazy cool things too. Who knows how small their development team is, so that could potentially be making them catch up more painful and sluggish. I think they have the potential to eventually get there, the problem is WHEN. Until they do, we're paying more money for very little bang and/or continued to be held hostage to our Adobe Overlords per month, while we wait and pray for Affinity to rescue us once and for all, haha.
Marginal improvements. This should be a free update, imo. Will not pay again for the new version.
I love the Affinity suite. Thank you so much Serif. I’m an amateur designer. I don’t publish anything, I just love playing with text, winding up my friends and sending birthday, christmas and celebration greetings. The affinity suite has enabled me to do all of this. Keep going guys and gals. I’m not saying that your software couldn’t be better but what in the whole of life can we say couldn’t be better? Your single pricing structure enables me to be able to afford to tickle the small amount of creativity I have. Thank you so much.
Great quick review, Dave. Thanks! I'm a traditional artist, not a graphic designer, but I have been using Affinity Designer to create embroidery patterns from my sketches. I love it. However I won't be in a rush to upgrade simply because there is no vector trace. I love that they have a way to warp in the new version (it's about time!) but vector trace would have been the thing that swung it for me. Hopefully they will bring that along soon.
Thanks again Dave for your quick and to the point reaction to V2 - I know Adobe have a much bigger dev team, but what we got yesterday is a good point to build from. Question is, why am I still using DrawPlus X8 from 2015 for features that should be in Affinity Designer today?
I think in the majority of cases comparing Adobe and Affinity isn't really sensible--at least not in the way that many people do. With Affinity (insert program) we have a program that costs $40 one time (and has perhaps around 8 years of support given the initial release); with Adobe (insert program) we have a program that costs probably on average about $240/year. So even if we only compare 5 year costs there's a massive difference, i.e. $40 vs. around $1200. (No need to attack me on the math if it's off because regardless the difference will remain percentage-wise massive.) I think it's unreasonable to expect the same level of performance from Affinity. Adobe has a lot more revenue which translates to more personnel resources that can make things happen (including innovate). Affinity may never "catch up" with Adobe, but I'd argue that they have sure made up massive ground. Affinity is for those of us that don't see the value in an absurdly expensive subscription. Adobe is for those that do. For many professionals, $700/year for the suite is absolutely justified and worthwhile.
Thanks for the honest opinion Dave. As a photographer and graphic designer there's only one tool I was hoping for and that was auto trace. Illustrator has had it for years and I feel it would be the actual game changer people were looking for. I have to seriously think about whether the upgrade is worth it now.
Content aware and AI aside, I think the majority of professional design work can be done in Affinity.
When I saw the mesh warp filter, I immediately upgraded. The ability to edit text after applying the warp sold me. Then seeing the displace filter in Photo after that felt like validation. Image trace would be nice for some things, but I really don't have a huge need for it. Plus, there is always so much clean up to do after an auto trace that just using the pen and pencil tools are much quicker in the long run.
The new live masks really do go beyond what Photoshop can do. The luminosity range mask is an excellent example. In photoshop you have to play with the apply image tool to get a static mask. Typically you will repeat this to get a refined mask. In affinity, you add a luminosity rage mask, adjust the curve whatching the image update in real time or the preview. And it is a live mask. It will update if anything changes. You can even readjust it anytime.
Love your honesty. It’s super refreshing and although I’m not yet entirely sold on this upgrade just yet, I began realizing the benefits that it brings.
I think what a lot of folks don't consider is that Affinity products are a work in progress. This is only their second version of their software. There have been 20something versions of Photoshop, each with a handful of major changes. Adding a new feature requires a lot of work, so in Affinity's case, they have to pick and choose which new features to add. I'm sure they could add a ton of new features, most of which would have mediocre functionality, at best. Better to add a few new features that work they way they are supposed to than a lot of new features that sort of work. It will take more than a couple of new versions to get close to being on equal ground with Adobe. I think you'll see more and more innovation as time goes on, but right now they are still playing catch up.
Serif did a no no with the windows verion they decided to package the software in a MSIX file which is a microsoft store package so many business users are unable to install the software and now other applications cant reference the executables and you cant spesify the installation location like you could previously also the online only activation is bull when you could activate V1 offline now the software can no longer be installed and activated when the company someday either doesnt exist or the activation servers dont exist making it possible for them to kill the V2 whenever they want and this looks like they are slowly going towards subscriptions as you shouldnt need to activate online which also those business users are unable to do due to security and them using the LTSC version of windows 10 where the store doesnt exist so MSIX wont work and the activation wont work on those business versions of windows
Can we copy adjustments from one photo to another? by clicking copy whilst photo selected then selecting the photo you want to paste to and select command v? i used to be able to do this in lightroom but cant currently in version one of affinity.
Can you do a video on how you create a account to purchase. I have yet to find a Setup new account button. I want to buy v2 while it's 99 but I can't find anywhere to create my account on affinity serif main screen!
I think you make a good point! If you can’t design without all of Adobe’s bells and whistles, perhaps you don’t know how to design. Sure I miss a couple of tools from time to time (especially warp mesh that has arrived in 2.0) but I still prefer Affinity’s workflow before Adobe’s heavily bloated software. I’m a bit disappointed that Serif didn’t develop at least one feature that did not only catch up but went beyond what Adobe offer. I still wonder what thing Ashley Hewson were unable to tell us about in the Something Big is Coming-teaser, “I can’t say that yet *smug laugh*”. No feature Serif has added matches that smugness.