Canva Bought Affinity!
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Pretty much the reason of my presence here. I don't expect Affinity to remain viable in the near future, so I'm looking for alternatives. For Photo, I've found my happiness with Krita/Clip Studio Paint, as my main use was to draw. For Designer, VectorStyler is my main choice, and I'll certainly switch soon.
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I have been using the affinity products in all my work flows since they were launched. Their strength is simplicity and stability, I believe. I have never experienced any crashes, and they are both fast and stable. It's amazing to be able to work with both raster and vector in the same app. Although they don't have all the tools and features a serious professional would require, they are slowly catching up. Wish them best. I recently started using VS. It will take some time to get used to UI and funtionality and still a long way to go.
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@michaelokraj
It would be naiive to think that VS would not sell out if the right buyer and price came along. I think the only safe bets are FOSS. The project I am watching is https://graphite.rs. VS is great for many, but at least I have always ended up with bugs that defeated the purpose. Admittedly, I have not used VS for months now.
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It's why I'm here. I'm not about to give up on Affinity yet; that would be a bit hasty, I think, but I'm pretty firmly in the 'not feeling too great about all this' camp. Anyway, it's a good reason to cast about and see what else is out there. I saw very positive mentions of VectorStyler, so I've come to check it out-- installed the trial version and I'm impressed. I'm more one of those artsy types who really belongs in a raster app with lots of splat brushes, so I really appreciate the hands on shape bending tools you have going on in here. Very cool stuff, and very cool even if I'm able to stick with Designer until the end of time. I expect you'll see a fair few more of us wandering in, looking sad and lost. I hope we won't be too onerous of an imposition.
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Hi there all who have just discovered VectorStyler. Most of the users here come from other vector editors (commercial and open source) and a lot of us have experienced the 'fanboy/fanperson' dress-down one time or another in the Serif forums. The Affinity roadmap has never been realised, and what was most disappointing to me was that things the users deemed important were not listened too.
I have been using VectorStyler for a while now, as a matter of fact, I had at the time to still wait for the Windows version to be released, but it has been a fun ride sofar. We have active users, which come in with great ideas to improve functionality, emphasize what we need most and have discussions about this which invite (in general) open feedback from others in the forums. And then we have a very responsive developer who invites us to play and discover all aspects in VectorStyler, asks us to explain how and why we need some functionality, and luckily keeps reminding us that VS is a tool on its own.
I hope you all have a great time discovering the potential of this application and join the conversation and make this the best alternative around, without being sucked into a subscription model. Please let us know how you go, and yell out if you need help discovering ways to do things. This is NOT illustrator nor affinity designer, but a beast on its own. Go play!
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@_NM_ I hope you realize your hypocrisy in your statement. And … what are you doing in this forum, when you are not using the software? Hilarious.
You're accusing me of naivety, I won't address at all. Good day.
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@syllie Thank you for the welcome! And I apologise for the less-than-nice fancreature behaviour you've experienced from certain elements. You won't get that from me. I've never been much for application tribalism. I've loved Serif for making good tools accessible to people for whom industry standards, and their accompanying price tags, are not an option. That approach enables more people to become artists and designers who wouldn't otherwise have the ability to learn the principles. But closing one's mind to other things is just self limiting and being mean to other people about their choices is just mean. Boo to that.
Those of you who have been around here a while, do you have any thoughts on how long the sale might last? I've only had the briefest of plays with VectorStyler yet-- but I've also just bought the dogs their anti-tick stuff, and they're big dogs so that was a bit of an oof.
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@Strangechilde said in Canva Bought Affinity!:
do you have any thoughts on how long the sale might last? I
Given the current predicament
we can have the sale open at least until 15th of April.
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@_NM_ said in Canva Bought Affinity!:
VS is great for many, but at least I have always ended up with bugs that defeated the purpose. Admittedly, I have not used VS for months now.
The FOSS "Graphite" is interesting - thanks for bringing it to our attention. I'll keep an eye on it as well. Seems like it has a lot of big plans to eventually come to fruition. I didn't dig in far enough yet, but I was intrigued by the ability to see the steps in a process and then go back and alter them. It's always interesting to see the different approaches developers take to creating vector editing programs
I'm glad you're back on the VS forum and using VS again. The fastest way we can see VS improve is to keep testing and reporting the issues consistently. Areas of VS get fixed the fastest where active users frequent. The diversity of dedicated users reporting has made VS more well rounded over the years.
Selfishly in some ways, I was/am all about consistently reporting the specific hurdles that kept me from using VS more fully and my workflow has improved as a result. It wasn't without sacrifice; any time I got stuck in VS due to a bug or other limitation, I'd utilize an old copy of Illustrator to get me through until the VS problem was resolved. The developer is very approachable and active in fixing the issues which means most problems do not remain in place for very long. A lot changes in VS each month, more than many would expect, given the pace of most other software development.
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@VectorStyler You are a kind soul. Thank you!
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Hi, I’ve been paying attention to VS development in passing (thanks, boldline) knowing I’ll likely soon be looking for my next launching pad(s). This was all in fruition pre-Canva acquisition. I’ve returned to Adobe at least for the time being because it’s what I can get back into realistically quickly with my crazy schedule and a very young child. Still, I will never stop checking out alternatives as that is where ultimately I will look for my new home.
I am very pleased to see there is a commitment to quality in this community and that’s one of the reasons I keep returning here to check on VS, I think. I’m sure other Affinity users have taken their own notes and are checking out their options as well post-Canva acquisition.
I’ve been with Affinity since it emerged on Windows and it made sense to me to switch away from AI to it as I always found AI joyless and painful to use. It also needed too many plugins to do what should’ve been native functionality. Even if its output was superior at the time, I thought I could get by as long as the software was solid and I could work around limitations. However, between participating in betas and analyzing each .x bug release, it became all too clear they are not invested in raising their product to the level of even their own marketing. I’ve had numerous issues with getting quality output from their software, to say the least. I was constantly opening the program and finding new bugs, most of the time right upon starting something very basic in their programs. This chipped away at any benefit of the doubt I would’ve given them in the past.
Example: In-program rendering has always been unusable/unreliable:
I can open a PNG in Photo straight from its source and Affinity will still find some way to blur or fudge this in the viewport. I don’t know how they managed it, but their software cannot handle a simple 1:1 display of a bitmap opened straight from its file without some sort of display issue occurring. Something even MS Paint can handle. I would question if it was the file being too compressed, but as it turns out, it was often Affinity. Screenshots also had this issue. I can only imagine what it’s done to my perception of my processed RAWs where it would be much more difficult to tell at scale whether I’m seeing a true image at 100% view or not.
At least there’s increased pressure in the market for competition. This also gives needed incentive for the market to grow and I think it will also encourage people towards other options such as VS and FOSS, indeed any alternatives. That’s my hope and I don’t think that that’s unrealistic at all.
On the bright side, if Canva is where some aspiring designers begin, then they’re already more platform-agnostic than others have been historically. They can still self-educate on their options before settling down on the most obvious choices. Maybe.
@Boldline said in Canva Bought Affinity!:
The FOSS "Graphite" is interesting - thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Same, also. I noticed other people were talking about it on AF. I'm subscribed to their mailing list.
