Affinity 1.9 Upgrade - Rooting for the little guy

[Bobby H]

Times change, you should always be willing to re-evaluate what's going on. 20-30 yrs ago, one thing may have been true, it may not be true now. That's the thing, people always need to be willing to re-evaluate their situation.

Adobe dominating the graphics space is even more true now than it was 30 years ago. They had multiple credible rivals on the Mac platform back then -rivals with near equal footing. That's not really the case now, particularly in the categories of page layout, photo editing and vector graphics. Adobe is 100% the clear leader there.

You're constantly trying to paint me as being closed-minded and that's just flat out wrong. I've owned and used many different graphics programs through the years, including vector drawing programs. There is a lot of people on this board who are strictly 100% CorelDRAW only and there are some who are strictly Adobe-only. That ain't me.

I've been using CorelDRAW for 30 years and Adobe Illustrator for almost 28 years. I used CASmate and Flexi for some time but drifted away from using Flexi at all about a decade ago and allowed that license to be installed on another production computer. Additionally I used Macromedia Freehand from versions 7 thru 11. I had a license of Denba Canvas. I tried Inkscape when it was first released and have updated it accordingly. Currently I have Affinity Designer and Inkscape installed alongside CorelDRAW and Illustrator on my work desktop and notebook. On my iPad I have Illustrator, Vectornator, Autodesk Graphic and Affinity Designer installed. Not only have I continually been "re-evaluating what's going on," and using the best of what each of those applications has to offer, I have been able to draw pretty solid conclusions through actual experience with the software. When I say Adobe Illustrator is currently the best vector drawing program on the market I can say that with authority.

The article that talked to the Animate users I don't recall specially mentioning the exact function, that it was just a function that was removed and they were forced to upgrade due to what happened with Dolby. The others that I can think of had to deal with photographers. Facial recognition capabilities and geo location. Neither of which I would personally use, but enough people did use them to cause a mini stink about it. Those are the only ones that I am aware of, so it does happened.

Now, didn't they also remove some foundry listing with their fonts as well? That could affect the user as well, if those fonts that were removed were used.

As far as I can tell facial recognition technology is still built into Lightroom Classic. The face tagging feature is to help users organize photos if they want to do so based on specific people. As for fonts, only a couple or so foundries (Font Bureau, Carter & Cone) have removed fonts from the service. Overall the number of fonts offered via Adobe Fonts has continued to grow. Currently 2180 font families are offered from several dozen foundries. Funny thing with the Font Bureau removal, several type designers who released typefaces via Font Bureau have independently re-hosted their fonts on the Adobe Fonts service. A couple examples are Tobias Frere-Jones (Interstate, Griffith Gothic) and Greg Thompson (Agenda, Bodega Sans/Serif).

I think most users understand the potential hazards of relying on fonts synced via Adobe Fonts. In much of my design work any type objects get converted to outlines. Any companies who use particular type families heavily should consider buying regular licenses of those fonts. Even with the benefit and convenience of Adobe Fonts' service I still buy quite a few commercially sold fonts. I usually try to make those buys when the fonts are deeply discounted, usually when they're first released. I have some font families that have seen been hosted on Adobe Fonts. Still, I think the Adobe Fonts service is a huge improvement over the fonts Adobe previously offered in its Creative Suite packages. And that wasn't much at all. There was hardly anything to speak of in terms of fonts in the CS 5.5 Master Collection release. You have to go back to the 1990's when Adobe would bundle a couple hundred fonts into releases of Illustrator or PageMaker. Meanwhile Corel has long bundled around 1000 fonts into its releases (although that collection has barely changed over the past 20 years). Canvas was bundling 2000 fonts (mostly from URW) with its application; I don't know about the current release though.

 

[litewave]

I think the "best" is what makes you productive.
Not what features you may or may not need.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Adobe dominating the graphics space is even more true now than it was 30 years ago. They had multiple credible rivals on the Mac platform back then -rivals with near equal footing. That's not really the case now, particularly in the categories of page layout, photo editing and vector graphics. Adobe is 100% the clear leader there.

I think Adobe absorbed most of them at that as well.

I will say this though, most anything that I'm missing with regard to functionality in Inkscape, I can either find someone else that has written a plugin for that (or use that plugin as a base if I need something else or add stability for my usage) or if I really need it, I can usually write it myself. Some do take longer then others to get something usable, but I can usually come up with something. Is it purty? Not always, but it's just for me, so it doesn't have to be, it just has to be stable and productive. Shoot, I've written CLI utilities, you think those would go over well if I were to sell that to most of the designing crowd that loves their GUIs? It's stable, performant and in the case of one conversion program, allows for a different format that if someone really knows what they are doing, it opens up a lot more options with other software packages, but it doesn't have a fancy GUI (and for Windows users would require Python as well, I still think Macs have Python out of the box, even though I'm pretty sure it's still 2.7 (on 3.8 now)).

And that's really the type of control that I like with programs like this. Some like to purchase things and hit the ground running, I understand that, nothing wrong with that. Some like to build their own workbench instead of buying one and they get exactly what they want, sometimes with better quality parts and still cheaper (not all the time, but sometimes yes). I'm more of that way and I value software that allows for that more then others. I don't exactly want to start from scratch, don't think that, but where applicable (in some cases it's better to just take it without the lube and get what works) that's what I like to do. I think quite a lot of people are that way on here, I know a couple have made their own tools, but for some reason it stops with physical tools and not so much software tools. I don't know where that block is coming from, especially when their are so many tools out there that make this process much, much easier, especially easier compared to what I was learning back in HS and college.

You're constantly trying to paint me as being closed-minded and that's just flat out wrong.

The one respect that I do think I get some closed minded vibe from you is that you appear to be one of those that's of the mind "you get what you pay for"(even though not all of what I use is free even though the development is far more open). Statistically speaking, there may be truth to that with regard to quality, especially back in the 90s where quality was definitely lacking, not so much the case now though.

I think the rest of it is a misconception. For instance, some of the things that you have said, appear to be what most normies think and it's either not true now (stuck in the '90s) or it's a big misconception (things like if it's free == open source || "open source").

While I don't expect people to be experts by any means, having misconceptions or stuck in the past, does make it much harder to truly evaluate everything on an even basis. However, the flip side is, what I find advantageous and willing to sacrifice somethings, the next person may not.

I've been using CorelDRAW for 30 years and Adobe Illustrator for almost 28 years.

Well, I started with Ai, back in summer of '94, but I stopped with CS6 which was out what 2012, so I'll perpetually be at 18 yrs (unless something happens) or so from here on out. Corel, not much there, started with X5, had X6 and X8. Never installed X8 (only have these at all as they come bundled in with another application as there was integration between the two).

As far as I can tell facial recognition technology is still built into Lightroom Classic.

Pretty sure it's gone, but then again, I can't confirm that specifically as I don't have the latest CC. I do have some photographer friends (these are pros, do get paid for their work and do travel quite a bit) I could see, don't know if they use it or not. I do know that they were kinda pissed with that "testing the waters" that Adobe was doing for the Photography Package of going from $9.99 to $19.99 (and no, I am not talking about the difference of online storage capacity either). Some people were randomly seeing the $19.99 instead of the $9.99 when going to renew || signup.

The geo location was a license to Google's API, the individual user will have to get their own to use that now. As far as I understand it.

I think most users understand the potential hazards of relying on fonts synced via Adobe Fonts.

Really?!!?!

Despite the huge issue of sending out files with text still "live" to 3rd party vendors and getting "font replacement errors" all the time (and no, other methods of importing/placing etc don't always make that error go away (at least not in my experience, but then again, I do have less experience then you in Adobe, so that could be it), some fonts don't allow for the PDF layer to embed (I have some A&S fonts that give me that warning on every save) and that's if they haven't unticked that PDF compatibility option (some have, although last time that I checked, that has to be opted out by the user)). I don't do that and I'm sure you don't do that, but the fast majority of master files that I get, have that issue. I really don't know how much are truly aware of that danger or the danger of any usage of 3rd Party licensed code blobs that one uses within an Adobe product.

 

[Bobby H]

I think Adobe absorbed most of them at that as well.

Adobe isn't the only culprit in corporate merger mania in the software industry. Macromedia and Adobe both picked apart Aldus and Altsys in the early 1990's. Adobe didn't absorb everything from Macromedia. Final Cut Pro was originally in development at Macromedia and Apple snagged that and their development team. Even Corel has acquired other software companies.

Nevertheless, Adobe did develop some important graphics technologies in-house. Postscript and PDF were Adobe creations. PageMaker sucked, but InDesign sure didn't. Photoshop has become both a noun and a verb in the pop culture lexicon. After Effects is an Adobe tent pole. For all the problems Premiere has had as of late that application sure punched Apple square in the mouth years ago when Apple goofed up big time in its transition from FCP 7 to FCP X.

I will say this though, most anything that I'm missing with regard to functionality in Inkscape, I can either find someone else that has written a plugin for that (or use that plugin as a base if I need something else or add stability for my usage) or if I really need it, I can usually write it myself.

Inkscape has some decent capabilities. Unlike some other vector graphics applications Inkscape now supports OpenType Variable fonts. But I think Inkscape's user interface is really clunky. When I use that application it feels like I'm stepping in a time machine and going back to the 1990's.

The one respect that I do think I get some closed minded vibe from you is that you appear to be one of those that's of the mind "you get what you pay for"(even though not all of what I use is free even though the development is far more open). Statistically speaking, there may be truth to that with regard to quality, especially back in the 90s where quality was definitely lacking, not so much the case now though.

I'm just interested in using the best tools available to get the job done, even if that involves using more than one of the same kind of application -like I've been doing with both Illustrator and CorelDRAW for the longest time. I am not going to do my work feeling like I have one hand tied behind my back just to avoid paying a subscription to Adobe the evil empire, especially when some of their applications are currently the best ones of that type available.

Pretty sure it's gone, but then again, I can't confirm that specifically as I don't have the latest CC.

The face tagging feature in Lightroom Classic is still there.
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/face-recognition.html

Really?!!?!

Despite the huge issue of sending out files with text still "live" to 3rd party vendors and getting "font replacement errors" all the time (and no, other methods of importing/placing etc don't always make that error go away (at least not in my experience, but then again, I do have less experience then you in Adobe, so that could be it), some fonts don't allow for the PDF layer to embed (I have some A&S fonts that give me that warning on every save) and that's if they haven't unticked that PDF compatibility option (some have, although last time that I checked, that has to be opted out by the user)). I don't do that and I'm sure you don't do that, but the fast majority of master files that I get, have that issue. I really don't know how much are truly aware of that danger or the danger of any usage of 3rd Party licensed code blobs that one uses within an Adobe product.

You're really reaching with this one. C'mon, who are you trying to kid here? Do you really think you're going to convince me that the Adobe Fonts service is a bad thing?

I routinely use all kind of commercial fonts that I purchased in my designs. But I never send any of those font files along with vector artwork of my designs. What for? The text objects are converted to outlines already anyway. I don't care if the lettering was made from fonts that were synced from Adobe fonts or I bought the fonts outright. The clients are getting no free lunch on fonts. If they want copies of the font files THEY CAN BUY THEM.

It's very easy to embed font data into PDFs for print-only purposes for documents that have long passages of text using new or obscure commercial fonts not freely available to everybody. That's another reason not to have to share font files with anyone. If I want to import a PDF with live embedded text objects into Illustrator I can place that PDF and then do the Flatten Transparency trick to convert those embedded font objects to outlines. No need to have the fonts! But if I do send an Adobe Illustrator file with live fonts synced via Adobe Fonts to someone who also uses Illustrator CC his/her copy of Illustrator CC will automatically bring up a window to sync those fonts when opening the AI document. Easy peasy.

 

[Bobby H]

Thread bump. Earlier today Serif Ltd released the version 1.9.2 update for Affinity Designer, for Windows, MacOS and iPadOS. They also released similar updates for their Publisher and Photo applications. The updates are mainly a collection of bug fixes and performance improvements. More info is in their product forums:
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/4-news-and-information/

 

[ikarasu]

Anyone switch over from illustrator/photoshop to affinity? I tried affinity for my home PC... but I just couldn't get used to the subtle differences. It's great software... but I feel like once you're used to illustrator or corel draw... getting used to new software negates any savings from switching.

$50 a month seems like a lot. But I feel like re-learning to use the software as good as I can use Adobe products would take dozens upon dozens hours to get used to and at the level I'm at with Adobe... which means years until the ROI pays itself.

I still bought the software, and will keep buying every update... competition is good! But I think it'll be my "This isn't working right in illustrator, lets try another program" software above all else.

 

[Bobby H]

Anyone switch over from illustrator/photoshop to affinity? I tried affinity for my home PC... but I just couldn't get used to the subtle differences. It's great software... but I feel like once you're used to illustrator or corel draw... getting used to new software negates any savings from switching.

I have the latest versions of Affinity Designer installed on my work PC, home laptop and iPad Pro. But I haven't switched from primarily using CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator as my applications of choice for vector design work. Still, I think it's important to try out new tools. There are multiple vector drawing programs installed on my PCs and iPad.

The funny thing is I use Affinity Designer more on my iPad than on a Windows PC. The feature set between the desktop and iPad versions are fairly similar. When tinkering around with type-based objects Designer offers a better degree of advanced OpenType feature support than Vectornator or Autodesk Graphic. The iPad version of Illustrator is the only superior alternative, mainly because it supports OTF Variable Fonts. But the iPad version of Illustrator needs a keyboard attached (or connected via Bluetooth) otherwise it gets frustrating to use. Illustrator on the iPad is pretty different from its desktop counterpart though. It and some other graphics apps on the iPad are incorporating floating, context sensitive toolbars that float near selected objects. There is a tricky dance of economy with trying to slim down an app's user interface while trying to keep important tools and functions within quick access.

$50 a month seems like a lot. But I feel like re-learning to use the software as good as I can use Adobe products would take dozens upon dozens hours to get used to and at the level I'm at with Adobe... which means years until the ROI pays itself.

Are you talking about the monthly price of Adobe Creative Cloud or the cost to buy Affinity Designer? In the case of Affinity Designer it's a one time fee of $50. I jumped on the 50% off sale they had last year, getting the desktop version for $25 and the iPad version for something like $10. When Serif releases upgrades to Affinity Designer they're free to registered users.

I mentioned Vectornator earlier. If you have a Mac or iPad you can get the new version of Vectornator 4.0 for free. It has been a while since I first got a copy in the App Store; I think I paid $10 for it. It's a pretty decent vector drawing program. But it is kind of basic. With all the hype they were building up with the 4.0 release I was a little disappointed it didn't offer full OpenType feature support. One weird thing, Vectornator appears to be the only drawing program on my iPad that can use Apple's SF Pro type family.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Adobe isn't the only culprit in corporate merger mania in the software industry. Macromedia and Adobe both picked apart Aldus and Altsys in the early 1990's. Adobe didn't absorb everything from Macromedia. Final Cut Pro was originally in development at Macromedia and Apple snagged that and their development team. Even Corel has acquired other software companies.

That's pretty much pro forma, but at this junction right now, it seems like that is the only way that they are able to move forward. When has there been stiller innovation like what we used to get when the software packages were young?

Inkscape has some decent capabilities. Unlike some other vector graphics applications Inkscape now supports OpenType Variable fonts. But I think Inkscape's user interface is really clunky. When I use that application it feels like I'm stepping in a time machine and going back to the 1990's.

GTK based UIs suck big time, of course, I'm a Qt fan though.

I'm just interested in using the best tools available to get the job done, even if that involves using more than one of the same kind of application -like I've been doing with both Illustrator and CorelDRAW for the longest time. I am not going to do my work feeling like I have one hand tied behind my back just to avoid paying a subscription to Adobe the evil empire, especially when some of their applications are currently the best ones of that type available.

That's not exactly the full picture here, considering this was said:

I strongly doubt you're creating any tools/add-ons that are on the caliber of commercially sold plug-ins. If you were able to develop DIY plug-ins on the level of those sold by Astute Graphics you would be selling them yourself. Astute Graphics has a decent sized team working on those.

This tells me that you already lean one way. Not having seen, know nothing about it, you already leaned a specific way. I have to wonder how much that carries over to your assessment of other programs. Even at a subconscious level.

I do agree with your assessment of using the right tool for the job (which is going to vary from person to person, I haven't made that sacrifice of having one hand tied behind my back like you are afraid of having, that is a valid concern and one that may indeed affect you, but it doesn't always affect everyone), but it definitely appears that some programs do start behind the eight ball instead of with a clean slate. At least based on that comment that you made earlier. While you did say "strongly doubt", you already had that doubt and that's a tough thing to get over.

While I agree with you on the UI, I think a UI can be overlooked if the feature set is there, it may be wrapped up in a different workflow (and I have to wonder if it's difference in workflow that gets people thinking that some things are missing when they aren't etc, not all the time, maybe not even most of the time, but I have to wonder if that plays a part as well, I know I thought a feature was missing and it turned out to be a different workflow). I mean c'mon, I've seen some programs that people use day in and day out that don't keep up on modern UI trends. Some of them eventually get there, but it does take them a long time to do so. Typically it's the really niche stuff as well.

You're really reaching with this one. C'mon, who are you trying to kid here? Do you really think you're going to convince me that the Adobe Fonts service is a bad thing?

There is a bad aspect to it and that fonts can be dropped at a moment's notice.

I routinely use all kind of commercial fonts that I purchased in my designs. But I never send any of those font files along with vector artwork of my designs. What for? The text objects are converted to outlines already anyway. I don't care if the lettering was made from fonts that were synced from Adobe fonts or I bought the fonts outright. The clients are getting no free lunch on fonts. If they want copies of the font files THEY CAN BUY THEM.

That's not the issue, is those files that perhaps don't get sent out that are the "master" files. The ones with the text still "live", those are going to be the ones affected if/when a font gets remove.

That's the situation where the font service is showing it's chinks. While I do not send out my master files, I do still like to have a file with everything live if need be (I also have a layer in there that tells me what font I used just in case I have changed computers and I have yet to install that font to the system, but that layer does not get sent with the other file that goes to someone else). Now using Adobe's font service takes away that need for that extra layer when changing computers, while that's nice, I still don't have that font, which means if it goes bye bye, I either have to find a way to purchase it or find something else.

It's also why I do not like Adobe's rolling release update schedule. Anything that isn't owned by them especially is up for removal at any given time, for just about any reason. I like Adobe products in general, I don't like that aspect of what they are offering now. It's one thing, if I know, do I keep this version and keep what features I have or do I upgrade and lose that feature? I am able to plan, there really isn't the ability to plan as much with how it is now.

It's very easy to embed font data into PDFs for print-only purposes for documents that have long passages of text using new or obscure commercial fonts not freely available to everybody.

At least with CS6, embedding period didn't work. Always a DRM type message saying unable to embed due to the fonts EULA with specific fonts that have that protection mechanism in place. In fact, that msg comes up with every save unless I turned off pdf compatibility for that file.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I'm putting this in it's own response, so it isn't lost in with my response to Bobby.

Anyone switch over from illustrator/photoshop to affinity? I tried affinity for my home PC... but I just couldn't get used to the subtle differences. It's great software... but I feel like once you're used to illustrator or corel draw... getting used to new software negates any savings from switching.

I think Johnny has, I could be remembering wrong, but I think he has, at least was trying it out.

$50 a month seems like a lot. But I feel like re-learning to use the software as good as I can use Adobe products would take dozens upon dozens hours to get used to and at the level I'm at with Adobe... which means years until the ROI pays itself.

I can say as someone that has not only switched programs in my workflow (one that I had since the summer of '94 to the spring of 2015), but to an entirely different OS and not one of the 1st two that people think of, so an uncommon choice at that. It didn't take yrs to make that change and become at least as proficient at the same level as the previous, but the key thing was that I was highly, highly motivated to make said change and I think that's where change can get people is that they aren't motivated to that point. If it's the casual, uhhhh I'll see what this one can do, not so much.

If you are able to have both, use Affinity for your personal projects and use Adobe for your professional ones, that way you aren't sacrificing efficiency and still able to learn Affinity. That way if you do make the switch to the other, it isn't quite as damaging to your workflow efficiency. The downside to this is that there is always that risk of you going back to Adobe when trying to figure out how to do something in the other program instead of trooping through it. So there are pros and cons with keeping that safety net.

 

[Bobby H]

That's pretty much pro forma, but at this junction right now, it seems like that is the only way that they are able to move forward. When has there been stiller innovation like what we used to get when the software packages were young?

I don't agree with that. Any lack of innovation really comes down to individual companies. It's not an across-the-board thing. Also, let's not forget when old stalwart applications like Illustrator were "young" they were very basic. New features, like being able to edit objects in preview mode, work with layers or weld/cut objects, were big deals when they were added.

CorelDRAW is one example of a 30 year old application that is struggling; CDR 2020 had only one point release update and one hot fix. The recent release of CorelDRAW 2021 wasn't exactly a mind-blowing upgrade either. I think the issues with CorelDRAW are rooted in the company's ownership -run externally by private equity groups with zero expertise in graphics software. It seems obvious the development team for CorelDRAW does not have the manpower or resources needed and are having to live with "efficiencies" the bean counters are dictating to them.

Adobe Illustrator is 33 years old, but it's an application that is still improving and moving farther ahead of its competition. They have greatly expanded their beta program. They actively seek input from users for ideas to improve the application or be alerted about any bugs present in release, pre-release or beta builds of Illustrator. They're on a steady, monthly schedule of drops for beta and pre-release builds of Illustrator. Just within the Illustrator eco-system there is a number of plug-in vendors that draw attention to features not included in Illustrator's tool set. Any notion that Adobe is just kicking back, taking users' subscription money and doing nothing is just plain wrong.

Newer applications such as Affinity Designer, Vectornator, etc are in some of the same "basic" territory that Illustrator and CorelDRAW occupied in the early to mid 1990's.

I strongly doubt you're creating any tools/add-ons that are on the caliber of commercially sold plug-ins. If you were able to develop DIY plug-ins on the level of those sold by Astute Graphics you would be selling them yourself. Astute Graphics has a decent sized team working on those.

This tells me that you already lean one way. Not having seen, know nothing about it, you already leaned a specific way. I have to wonder how much that carries over to your assessment of other programs. Even at a subconscious level.

You dodged my comment. You're implying that it is very easy for anyone to code together their own software, plug-ins, etc and that we should be doing that instead of paying Adobe or anyone else any money. So, where is this custom software you're creating? And how much TIME did it take to develop it?

As to "my assessment" of programs, I am not the topic of this thread. Affinity Designer is supposed to be. That being said, I'm not going to waste a bunch of hours of my valuable time trying to develop my own custom-made software just to avoid buying commercial software or plug-ins from teams of people who have been doing that for a living professionally for a long time. That's in their wheel house. I'm a graphic designer and illustrator, not a software engineer. I don't especially enjoy farting around with code, much less having a "hold my beer" moment to attempt out-doing the Astute Graphics team. The scenario of making my own DIY draw programs or plug-ins to avoid paying Adobe or Astute Graphics a modest fee is just too stupidly absurd to take seriously at all.

There is a bad aspect to it and that fonts can be dropped at a moment's notice.

You're repeating yourself. And you're ignoring the quality of font packages Adobe included in its Creative Suite generations of applications and earlier -which essentially was very little at all. The Adobe Fonts service is a giant-sized improvement from that.

That's not the issue, is those files that perhaps don't get sent out that are the "master" files. The ones with the text still "live", those are going to be the ones affected if/when a font gets remove.

We already went over this two months ago. You're still trying to imply the Adobe Fonts service is like Netflix where font packages are regularly coming and going. That is not the case. But how would you know since you do not even use the product? Other people can do what they want, but I convert as many type objects to outlines in my master sign design files as possible. There are more long term archival issues with live text objects in graphics files than whether a certain font is installed or not.

At least with CS6, embedding period didn't work. Always a DRM type message saying unable to embed due to the fonts EULA with specific fonts that have that protection mechanism in place. In fact, that msg comes up with every save unless I turned off pdf compatibility for that file.

Specifically what fonts were you trying to embed? I have not run into problems embedding font data into PDFs from Illustrator or InDesign. Font embedding usually works pretty well in CorelDRAW-generated PDFs, although I have run into some glitches with specific fonts. For instance, Mark Simonson's recent release of Proxima Vara won't embed font data in Corel-generated PDFs; the fonts get converted to outlines. That's despite the fact the font properties show it allows embedding. It could be a bug with how CorelDRAW handles OpenType Variable Fonts.

I can say as someone that has not only switched programs in my workflow (one that I had since the summer of '94 to the spring of 2015), but to an entirely different OS and not one of the 1st two that people think of, so an uncommon choice at that. It didn't take yrs to make that change and become at least as proficient at the same level as the previous, but the key thing was that I was highly, highly motivated to make said change and I think that's where change can get people is that they aren't motivated to that point. If it's the casual, uhhhh I'll see what this one can do, not so much.

If your existing collection of art files has zero value and can be tossed in the trash can then it is very easy to switch applications and operating systems.

To a limited extent it might be easier for someone to drop Adobe Illustrator and start using Affinity Designer than it would be to go from CorelDRAW to Affinity. The CDR format is not widely supported by rival graphics applications. Illustrator had a CDR import filter, but it was removed years ago. There are no CDR import or export filters in Affinity Designer (but there is AI, EPS, PDF and SVG). Inkscape is the only graphics application I have outside of CorelDRAW that will open CDR files. To its credit, Inkscape will open old CDR files made prior to CorelDRAW 6 (although the files can open in ways not expected). The current version of CorelDRAW won't open/import CDR files made before version 6 and won't save down to versions earlier than X5. The current version of Illustrator will open any previous version AI file and can save back as far as version 3 from 1990.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I don't agree with that. Any lack of innovation really comes down to individual companies. It's not an across-the-board thing. Also, let's not forget when old stalwart applications like Illustrator were "young" they were very basic. New features, like being able to edit objects in preview mode, work with layers or weld/cut objects, were big deals when they were added.

That's right, but do we really see that now? Is there really that "layers" level of excitement across the board with users? Sure there are some things that get people frosty over, but not to the widespread level that those did.

While Ai larger artboard in of itself is a good thing, hardly innovative as others have had that feature for a longer time and that would have been something that would have been "layer level" decades ago.

CorelDRAW is one example of a 30 year old application that is struggling; CDR 2020 had only one point release update and one hot fix. The recent release of CorelDRAW 2021 wasn't exactly a mind-blowing upgrade either. I think the issues with CorelDRAW are rooted in the company's ownership -run externally by private equity groups with zero expertise in graphics software. It seems obvious the development team for CorelDRAW does not have the manpower or resources needed and are having to live with "efficiencies" the bean counters are dictating to them.

As long as people fork over money to them despite having these issues, what motivation do they have to change?

They actively seek input from users for ideas to improve the application or be alerted about any bugs present in release, pre-release or beta builds of Illustrator. They're on a steady, monthly schedule of drops for beta and pre-release builds of Illustrator.

Bug fixes and things like that are the cost of maintaining software. That's iterative, not innovative. It's important, but that's just the cost of maintaining software.

Just within the Illustrator eco-system there is a number of plug-in vendors that draw attention to features not included in Illustrator's tool set. Any notion that Adobe is just kicking back, taking users' subscription money and doing nothing is just plain wrong.

Plugin vendors is not Adobe. Plugin Vendors are making Adobe more versatile, not Adobe itself.

Newer applications such as Affinity Designer, Vectornator, etc are in some of the same "basic" territory that Illustrator and CorelDRAW occupied in the early to mid 1990's.

Since you put basic in "", I'm not exactly sure how that is going to be defined for you. I would argue in some instances more streamlined as they don't have 33 yrs of feature creep and those bloat. Without knowing exactly what construes as the quoted "basic" versus flat out basic, hard to say.

You dodged my comment. You're implying that it is very easy for anyone to code together their own software, plug-ins, etc and that we should be doing that instead of paying Adobe or anyone else any money.

Not implying that at all, if you believe that that it's my implication then that's on you. What I am saying is that your impartiality of judging fitness of software starts off suspect as you already come with certain biases. Now, I would imagine that there are going to be some biases from the get go, but there are some biases that, at least to me and I may be wrong about it, take it a little over the top.

So, where is this custom software you're creating? And how much TIME did it take to develop it?

Software is in house, used to give me a competitive advantage, as like we all lovingly know that the barrier to entry is not as high as it once was, so anything that creates an advantage is icing on the cake.

As to dev time, depends on what version you are talking about. Qt/C++, Deno (think Node alternative), or Python(plugin)

Deno and Python has the lowest development time of hrs/days.

Qt/C++ is days/months/one program is at 1.5 yrs before I was happy with it.

All of these options abstract the harder bits to where not having to code everything, so development time with these is drastically reduced. Qt is about the best library/framework out there for C++. Don't have to worry about creating a canvas from scratch, just have to worry about drawing on to it. Audio, don't have to worry about manually creating the audio connections, just have to tell it where to get the audio source from etc.

So using tools like this, it is quite about quicker in dev time then writing everything from scratch. The plus side to all of this, can apply this cross platform as well. For instance, Maya uses Qt, which I would say contributes to it being one of the few programs also available on Linux as far as the commercial variety goes.

When Adobe/Corel started, a lot of these tools at this level of "power" didn't exist then, Qt is a 90s baby, but it certainly wasn't the powerhouse that it is today. JS/Python were infants in the 90s as well.

Hell, I can make an app in Godot (Game Engine imagine that) with the dev time like that of Python (GDScript, the native scripting language of Godot, is much like Python). Wasn't it Unreal that was used in the SFx work in Mandalorian? So game engines have their place for other things as well.

As to "my assessment" of programs, I am not the topic of this thread. Affinity Designer is supposed to be.

Your assessments of Affinity are actually apart of this topic. That would go into the whole "rooting for the little guy" bit.

That being said, I'm not going to waste a bunch of hours of my valuable time trying to develop my own custom-made software just to avoid buying commercial software or plug-ins from teams of people who have been doing that for a living professionally for a long time. That's in their wheel house. I'm a graphic designer and illustrator, not a software engineer. I don't especially enjoy farting around with code, much less having a "hold my beer" moment to attempt out-doing the Astute Graphics team. The scenario of making my own DIY draw programs or plug-ins to avoid paying Adobe or Astute Graphics a modest fee is just too stupidly absurd to take seriously at all.

Strawman. The point of my bringing that up was NOT advocating people creating their own software/tools, but was related to how you assess new software and as to if they are viable or not. It is clearly skewed one way. I used your response to me as an example of that skewed notion. Nothing more.

I do it mainly for the competitive advantage and I also like the problem solving. I think it should be on the table for people on here to consider, I've known others on here to create tools, albeit physical tools, so I don't see why it shouldn't extend to this as well, since these are apart of our "toolbelt", but if someone doesn't want to for whatever reason, nothing wrong with that either. "You" do "you".

And you're ignoring the quality of font packages Adobe included in its Creative Suite generations of applications and earlier -which essentially was very little at all. The Adobe Fonts service is a giant-sized improvement from that.

Not at all. I place stability of my resources and control over my resources over that (I rarely used what came with Adobe in the CS/earlier variants). I may love the quality, but if I look at the DRM and see how much control I have over that font. I don't need ownership rights, but I do like stable control over my resources. Some fonts come with installers, great looking fonts, but I avoid those. I can certainly understand why they do that, but as a user, if it becomes a pain to have to deal with all the protections that they have, I just don't use it.

We already went over this two months ago. You're still trying to imply the Adobe Fonts service is like Netflix where font packages are regularly coming and going. That is not the case. But how would you know since you do not even use the product?

No, it's not speed of which it happens it's the fact that it can happen that I don't like and unless I'm mistaken, it has happened.

More that I am beholding to someone else, the less that I like.

Other people can do what they want, but I convert as many type objects to outlines in my master sign design files as possible. There are more long term archival issues with live text objects in graphics files than whether a certain font is installed or not.

Corruption issues happen with digital files as a matter of course, there are means of mitigating that.

Specifically what fonts were you trying to embed? I have not run into problems embedding font data into PDFs from Illustrator or InDesign. Font embedding usually works pretty well in CorelDRAW-generated PDFs, although I have run into some glitches with specific fonts.

Some A&S fonts that I have tend to set Adobe off. I don't necessarily need that functionality as I rarely send stuff off, so it's not that big of a deal for me, but those fonts are the ones that seem to trigger the warning.

If your existing collection of art files has zero value and can be tossed in the trash can then it is very easy to switch applications and operating systems.

Not at all.

All of the files that I cared (as in, they still had value) migrated over. I imagine all of the others would have as well. Is that the case for everyone, maybe, maybe not, but it was the case for me. The programs that I use are cross platform (I planned ahead just in case this didn't work out or if it doesn't work out later on), so I can easily migrate back over to a different operating system and their default file formats can easily be read by other programs. Even the programs/plugins that I have created are cross platform as well. That's the reason why I used the tools that I did for their creation. Cross platform and easier to development. I don't have a team, so I use what I can to help the process along, I don't need the ego stroking of writing everything from scratch, unlike what some people think what needs to be done (even then, people cheat to a certain extent, use a library, even if its std, that's using someone else's code as it is, so "you" don't have to write it from scratch).

I try to be as "nimble" as I can in order to avoid as much of a hit as I can.

 

[Bobby H]

That's right, but do we really see that now? Is there really that "layers" level of excitement across the board with users? Sure there are some things that get people frosty over, but not to the widespread level that those did. While Ai larger artboard in of itself is a good thing, hardly innovative as others have had that feature for a longer time and that would have been something that would have been "layer level" decades ago.

The "layers level of excitement" 25-30 years ago was rooted in the fact early vector drawing programs largely sucked. The same was true for pixel-based image editors. They were extremely limited in what they could do. When some ground-breaking new feature (such as layers) was introduced it meant the user didn't have to fight with the application nearly as much. They didn't have to plan out a strategy of steps in a project to work around the limitations of an application. Early versions of Photoshop required users to save separate "snapshot" files, channel files and other extraneous garbage. Layers were a giant relief to that tiresome nonsense. Lots of obvious and not so obvious improvements have been made and accumulated over the decades.

The larger maximum artboard size is a feature that appeals to a limited number of users working in niche fields -namely sign design and other forms of large scale outdoor design. 30 years ago every vector-based drawing program was rooted 100% in graphics for the printed page. Every drawing program has limits on how large the artboard can be and how far things can zoom out. Corel has had a 1800" X 1800" max art board size for a long time; however, the application is unstable and annoying to use at that level. The same applies to various sign making applications. I've seen CASmate and then Flexi do oddly unpredictable things with page sizes past 1500" or 2000".

While Adobe finally gave sign designers their wish with larger artboards, that's far from the only thing they've done in the past year. Really, I defy anyone to show me a vector drawing application that has made more substantial improvements over the past year than Adobe has with Illustrator.

As long as people fork over money to them despite having these issues, what motivation do they have to change?

What motivation do they have? Well, I think they would like to stay in business. If Corel doesn't do enough to clean up bugs in CorelDRAW and make various improvements to keep up with rivals they will see more and more of their customer base just stay put rather than continue to upgrade or subscribe. There is a growing number of CorelDRAW users who are choosing to stay put on older versions of the software. And that's not just certain people who visit this forum. If you look at the Corel user forums you'll see plenty of people there who use old versions, enough so that they have several sub-forums dedicated to those versions.

Bug fixes and things like that are the cost of maintaining software. That's iterative, not innovative. It's important, but that's just the cost of maintaining software.

How can you even judge what Adobe is introducing with its point release updates and smaller yet more frequent maintenance updates? You're not using the software. Therefore you're not a voice of experience on the matter. The fact is they are paying a lot more attention to their application and the requests of users than what I see from any of their rivals. For example, hardly anyone else was making requests in Adobe's forums to have different options for setting letter sizes, such as by cap letter height. I even met with a good bit of resistance from other users when making my requests. I made a good enough case with my request and how the feature was valuable to sign designers that they built it into Illustrator several months ago.

Plugin vendors is not Adobe. Plugin Vendors are making Adobe more versatile, not Adobe itself.

You completely missed the point. Sometimes plug-ins make users ask an obvious question, "why wasn't this feature already built into the application instead of some other company selling the function as a plug-in?" Of course vendors like Corel and Adobe see what firms like Astute Graphics are doing and occasionally copy certain ideas. For instance the Symmetry feature in CorelDRAW and Repeats feature in Adobe Illustrator copied a lot from Astute Graphics' Mirror Me plug-in. The Pointillizer in CorelDRAW copies functions from Astute Graphics' Phantasm plug-in.

Since you put basic in "", I'm not exactly sure how that is going to be defined for you. I would argue in some instances more streamlined as they don't have 33 yrs of feature creep and those bloat. Without knowing exactly what construes as the quoted "basic" versus flat out basic, hard to say.

The term basic applies to lots of categories. For example TYPE is a very big deal to me. And I will judge applications, sometimes harshly, on their abilities to handle type, their support of certain font formats and the extended features of those font formats. I haven't had dedicated "CAS" apps (like Flexi) installed on my computer for, geez, going on 20 years. One key reason is because their type handling SUCKS. None of them fully, properly support OpenType even though the format is over 20 years old. These applications are stuck in the 1990's. Many of the newer vector drawing programs are also limited with their type handling and lack full support of OpenType features. Affinity Designer does fully support OpenType, but still does not support OTF Variable Fonts.

Illustrator, CorelDRAW and Inkscape are the only vector graphics programs that support OTF Variable Fonts. Illustrator was the first vector drawing program to fully support OpenType with the first release of Creative Suite in 2003. It took CorelDRAW until the middle of the 2010's to properly support OpenType, and they started supporting Variable Fonts in CDR 2020. CorelDRAW still doesn't have any support for OpenType SVG Fonts; Illustrator added support for SVG Fonts in 2018, the same year they added Variable Font support.

As for "feature creep and bloat" that's an easy accusation to toss out when the comment is vague. The comment is harder to defend when pressed for specifics on what features and functions need to be deleted from a vector drawing program.

Not implying that at all, if you believe that that it's my implication then that's on you. What I am saying is that your impartiality of judging fitness of software starts off suspect as you already come with certain biases. Now, I would imagine that there are going to be some biases from the get go, but there are some biases that, at least to me and I may be wrong about it, take it a little over the top.

That's a really funny comment, considering you've opted out of using many of these programs since they're commercial. I'm actually TRYING, BUYING and USING the software. I can talk about what's good or bad in CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator since I actually use the software. I can say the same thing about Affinity Designer. You keep saying I'm biased about various applications, but (unlike you) I'm actually working with the software to see for myself what's good or not in the application.

As to dev time, depends on what version you are talking about. Qt/C++, Deno (think Node alternative), or Python(plugin)

No single user is throwing together a functional vector drawing program, much less a decent plug-in for a drawing program over an afternoon. And that would be an experienced software engineer, not someone whose full time day job is designing signs. I would lose a lot of time and money trying to develop my own custom software or plug-ins versus what it costs to subscribe to Creative Cloud or buy Astute Graphics' plug-ins.

Your assessments of Affinity are actually apart of this topic. That would go into the whole "rooting for the little guy" bit.

You haven't been saying squat about Affinity. You keep going off track in the 100% pointless everyone needs to develop their software or other thread-drift nonsense.

Have you bought a copy of Affinity Designer? It doesn't run natively on Linux (it's compatible with Windows, OSX and iPadOS). I believe my comments about Affinity Designer are fair because I actually have copies of it on my PCs and iPad. I know what's good and not so good about it from experience. If I say Affinity Designer has a ways to go to match CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator I can say it with authority since I use the current versions of those applications too.

Strawman. The point of my bringing that up was NOT advocating people creating their own software/tools, but was related to how you assess new software and as to if they are viable or not. It is clearly skewed one way. I used your response to me as an example of that skewed notion. Nothing more.

Not a strawman at all since you keep dragging the discussion over into that 100% OFF TOPIC REALM. I'm tired of hearing it with the DIY software nonsense. As far as strawmen go, you clearly have a giant one built up about me in your head. You clearly aren't understanding how I assess new software. A lot of it comes down to actually trying it out. You're over there in Linux Land acting like an expert on these applications when you don't actually use them. I can give a fair review of Affinity Designer because I actually bought it.

Not at all. I place stability of my resources and control over my resources over that (I rarely used what came with Adobe in the CS/earlier variants). I may love the quality, but if I look at the DRM and see how much control I have over that font. I don't need ownership rights, but I do like stable control over my resources. Some fonts come with installers, great looking fonts, but I avoid those. I can certainly understand why they do that, but as a user, if it becomes a pain to have to deal with all the protections that they have, I just don't use it.

What freaking fonts come with installers in the year 2021? I haven't seen any commercially sold font packages that required an application to install them since the 1990's. And those were knock-offs of legit fonts. I had one package that had a font called "Chainlink" which was a rip-off of Serpentine (aka the Lethal Weapon font).

We're just going to have to agree to disagree on the Adobe Fonts service thing. I think it's one of the best features of Adobe Creative Cloud. And I'm not changing my mind about that. I don't even know why you care about the issue at all; you don't use Adobe's software.

Some A&S fonts that I have tend to set Adobe off. I don't necessarily need that functionality as I rarely send stuff off, so it's not that big of a deal for me, but those fonts are the ones that seem to trigger the warning.

I think I've ran into maybe one or two instances where I couldn't embed a font or subset of a font into a PDF generated by Adobe Illustrator or InDesign. And that's over the space of many years. In those cases it came down to the specific permissions of those commercial fonts. That's not a fault of Adobe's software or even the Adobe Fonts service either. If you want to avoid all traces of DRM in fonts then I guess you'll have to confine yourself to some of the offerings of Google Fonts.

All of the files that I cared (as in, they still had value) migrated over.

Your use case does not apply to everyone else. You're not using the same software.

When I talk about "switching" I speak in specifics with how well the files from one application are supported in rival software. CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator have the most features and effects built into their tool sets when compared to all other vector drawing programs. And neither have feature parity with each other; there are plenty of things that are unique in both applications. Switching over to an application like Affinity Designer is going to involve penalties. Someone moving from Illustrator to Affinity is going to see AI files open with certain things breaking. Moving from CorelDRAW to Affinity is even worse since Affinity does not support the CDR format.

I encourage anyone to try (and even buy) Affinity Designer. It's pretty inexpensive. It's a decent program for the price. The iPad version is pretty good compared to other drawing programs on iPadOS. But at the same time someone new to Affinity Designer is going to have to keep his old software installed, whether it's CorelDRAW, Illustrator or even something else.

 

[Johnny Best]

I have been an Adobe user for a long time. I purchased Affinity Photo and Designer when they first came out and just upgraded to the newest version. I have been learning to use them over the last year and my goal is to completly get away from Adobe. I do not use the Adobe cloud sh!t and still on CS6. Years ago use Aldus Pagemaker until Adobe took them over. I use OnOne Photo Raw for all my photos now which does a better job than Photoshop.
Never used Corel because I am a Mac user and as far as Flexi and other sign crap I do not use either.
But getting away from Adobe is my desire.
Sorry Bobby H and Wild West but I did not read your diatribes, I need visual to peek my interest.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

The "layers level of excitement" 25-30 years ago was rooted in the fact early vector drawing programs largely sucked. The same was true for pixel-based image editors. They were extremely limited in what they could do. When some ground-breaking new feature (such as layers) was introduced it meant the user didn't have to fight with the application nearly as much. They didn't have to plan out a strategy of steps in a project to work around the limitations of an application. Early versions of Photoshop required users to save separate "snapshot" files, channel files and other extraneous garbage. Layers were a giant relief to that tiresome nonsense. Lots of obvious and not so obvious improvements have been made and accumulated over the decades.

That's actually my point. There isn't the level of excitement with programs long in the tooth.

While Adobe finally gave sign designers their wish with larger artboards, that's far from the only thing they've done in the past year. Really, I defy anyone to show me a vector drawing application that has made more substantial improvements over the past year than Adobe has with Illustrator.

That really depends on what a person uses. While the larger artboard isn't necessary for me, that is more enticing then the the AI, auto this that and the other. But I'm old school that way. I still use tools that have been around since the 90s and early 2000s. I miss out on a lot of other features I'm sure.

What motivation do they have? Well, I think they would like to stay in business. If Corel doesn't do enough to clean up bugs in CorelDRAW and make various improvements to keep up with rivals they will see more and more of their customer base just stay put rather than continue to upgrade or subscribe. There is a growing number of CorelDRAW users who are choosing to stay put on older versions of the software. And that's not just certain people who visit this forum. If you look at the Corel user forums you'll see plenty of people there who use old versions, enough so that they have several sub-forums dedicated to those versions.

As long as people are still spending money even though they are complaining on the newer versions, what motivation is there until people jump ship? Even then, it depends on how many jump ship. If I'm not mistaken, you are quite outspoken about DRAW and yet you still "feed the beast".

How can you even judge what Adobe is introducing with its point release updates and smaller yet more frequent maintenance updates? You're not using the software.

Release notes. I still read the release notes.

You completely missed the point. Sometimes plug-ins make users ask an obvious question, "why wasn't this feature already built into the application instead of some other company selling the function as a plug-in?" Of course vendors like Corel and Adobe see what firms like Astute Graphics are doing and occasionally copy certain ideas. For instance the Symmetry feature in CorelDRAW and Repeats feature in Adobe Illustrator copied a lot from Astute Graphics' Mirror Me plug-in. The Pointillizer in CorelDRAW copies functions from Astute Graphics' Phantasm plug-in.

That's the key thing what is in bold.

That's about the only way that they would have improved the software and in that case, it's copying, not really innovating.

Personally, I would prefer to have a plugin system that allows me as an individual user create my own. Typically they are either Python or JS based. A few hrs to a weekend (depending on how sophisticated you want to go. There is one project (not my own base software mind you) that I have been part of and I had put in there (not just mentioned or made an argument, but actually made it a reality) that allowed for sequin digitizing abilities. Not even the commercial plugin for Ai and DRAW (which costs $3k) offers that ability (and thats really the only commercial plugin out there for this type of work).

As for "feature creep and bloat" that's an easy accusation to toss out when the comment is vague. The comment is harder to defend when pressed for specifics on what features and functions need to be deleted from a vector drawing program.

This can almost always be boiled down to high RAM usage. That's really what it boils down to. A lot of features, most of which are good, but it comes at the price of high RAM usage compared to other programs.

That's a really funny comment, considering you've opted out of using many of these programs since they're commercial. I'm actually TRYING, BUYING and USING the software.

Absolutely not. I'm opting out of them due to less end user control.

Look, the equivalent to Ai in my industry is Wilcom (which has been around since 78 or 79 I think). That costs $15k for the full version, which as a freelance digitizer it's advisable to have.

High end home software version is around $1,500 to $2k.

Middle of the road home software is $700

Commercial software starts at $3k.

One (and only to my knowledge) commercial plugin for my industry costs $3k

I have used Ai from '94 to 2015. Buying every version when it came out with the exception of CS5.5. In some instances, I bought the new version not as an upgrade, but as a full version due to I didn't want to have to deal with loading the previous version then loading the upgrade after that and having to keep up with all those programs during computer swaps.

Adobe (and I have stated this many times) is cheap by comparison. Corel is even cheaper.

I can talk about what's good or bad in CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator since I actually use the software. I can say the same thing about Affinity Designer. You keep saying I'm biased about various applications, but (unlike you) I'm actually working with the software to see for myself what's good or not in the application.

I've used DRAW (it's come bundled in with Wilcom, only reason why I have it though). As I mentioned before, I have used Ai from '94 to 2015.

No single user is throwing together a functional vector drawing program, much less a decent plug-in for a drawing program over an afternoon. And that would be an experienced software engineer, not someone whose full time day job is designing signs. I would lose a lot of time and money trying to develop my own custom software or plug-ins versus what it costs to subscribe to Creative Cloud or buy Astute Graphics' plug-ins.

Typically one can prototype using python and have a functional program within a weekend. Maybe at the alpha/beta stage, but it would still be functional. I don't think you understand how much libraries like Qt abstract that stuff for the user. This isn't the 80s or 90s here.

Shoot, with the canvas element within a browser (and you do have browser based SVG editors out there), could actually probably due it in a day and use Webview to help minimize RAM usage to where you not having to use FF, Chrome/Chromium etc.

You haven't been saying squat about Affinity. You keep going off track in the 100% pointless everyone needs to develop their software or other thread-drift nonsense.

Uhhmmm, what is this then?

My mom uses Photo for her work and she loves it, she stopped with CS6 Ps Extended as far as Adobe goes.

I have messed around her the version of photo that she has on the iPad (she has it on her desktop as well) and I liked it, but nothing beyond that as I don't use Win or Mac anymore, so I didn't experiment with it on that platform at all.

Pretty sure I talked about Affinity Photo there.

Have you bought a copy of Affinity Designer? It doesn't run natively on Linux (it's compatible with Windows, OSX and iPadOS).

There are two options that I have here. VMing (which you should know that I do as you have made comments in response to that) and using WINE. WINE is a compatibility layer. Along the lines of Rosetta. There is a commercial version of WINE available for Mac as well(CrossOver).

Do I actually have to buy it? No, I can run a trial of it via the methods that I mentioned above.

Not a strawman at all since you keep dragging the discussion over into that 100% OFF TOPIC REALM.

Only only responding to you each and every time. My first post on here, I was talking about Affinity Photo and only Affinity Photo.

I'm tired of hearing it with the DIY software nonsense.

The DIY software are just examples on tangential topics that come up in our "debates". I firmly believe in being efficient and I believe in using ready made software that allows me the most control. If there isn't any software out there (the one that took me the longest actually was related to a hobby project, so it always wasn't straight through that entire time) then do something from the ground up. Most programs that I have that I created for business using scripting languages that allow me to create something decent in a weekend with minimal RAM impact. Most of the time, it's plugins, which means I use an already created software for the base, not something I have to totally do from scratch (you seem stuck on the fact that it has to be totally from scratch).

As far as strawmen go, you clearly have a giant one built up about me in your head. You clearly aren't understanding how I assess new software.

Ditto, a lot of your comments in this post alone illustrate that (much less past comments during our previous "debates".

A lot of it comes down to actually trying it out. You're over there in Linux Land acting like an expert on these applications when you don't actually use them. I can give a fair review of Affinity Designer because I actually bought it.

Just because my bare metal OS (and the OS that I prefer) may be Linux, doesn't me that I don't have a myriad ways of still using other programs.

What freaking fonts come with installers in the year 2021? I haven't seen any commercially sold font packages that required an application to install them since the 1990's.And those were knock-offs of legit fonts. I had one package that had a font called "Chainlink" which was a rip-off of Serpentine (aka the Lethal Weapon font).

I wouldn't necessarily call Letterhead fonts rip offs, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree on the Adobe Fonts service thing. I think it's one of the best features of Adobe Creative Cloud. And I'm not changing my mind about that. I don't even know why you care about the issue at all; you don't use Adobe's software.

Use it. That's fine.

That's not a fault of Adobe's software or even the Adobe Fonts service either.

Never said that it was the fault of Adobe. They are just abiding by DMCA laws.

Your use case does not apply to everyone else. You're not using the same software.

No one uses Ai on here? No one uses DRAW on here? Now I know I have gotten some on here to get Wilcom, you may not be aware of that. No one here uses Caldera. Now Substance Painter (pre Adobe) and Maya (before Blender 2.8) are perhaps ones that people on here don't use. You would be very very surprised over the small fortune that I have spent on software. Just because you see me as a "Linux zealot" now, doesn't mean that I haven't paid my lb of flesh over the years.

When I talk about "switching" I speak in specifics with how well the files from one application are supported in rival software. CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator have the most features and effects built into their tool sets when compared to all other vector drawing programs. And neither have feature parity with each other; there are plenty of things that are unique in both applications. Switching over to an application like Affinity Designer is going to involve penalties. Someone moving from Illustrator to Affinity is going to see AI files open with certain things breaking. Moving from CorelDRAW to Affinity is even worse since Affinity does not support the CDR format.

I know exactly what you are talking about. You have to understand, my designs don't necessarily have that problem. Now does that make for good/bad designs in your mind that may depend.

I encourage anyone to try (and even buy) Affinity Designer. It's pretty inexpensive. It's a decent program for the price. The iPad version is pretty good compared to other drawing programs on iPadOS. But at the same time someone new to Affinity Designer is going to have to keep his old software installed, whether it's CorelDRAW, Illustrator or even something else.

You know, you have a similar theme of me always advocating DIY software, and yet my suggestion for ikarasu was this:

If you are able to have both, use Affinity for your personal projects and use Adobe for your professional ones, that way you aren't sacrificing efficiency and still able to learn Affinity. That way if you do make the switch to the other, it isn't quite as damaging to your workflow efficiency. The downside to this is that there is always that risk of you going back to Adobe when trying to figure out how to do something in the other program instead of trooping through it. So there are pros and cons with keeping that safety net.

Also my very first comment on here was talking about Photo, no mention of DIY, if I was as obsessed with it as you seem to think, I would have opened up with it right off the bat.

Does that paragraph read as someone that is constantly trying to sell DIY software projects?

 

[Bobby H]

That's actually my point. There isn't the level of excitement with programs long in the tooth.

What specifically are any newer vector drawing programs doing that qualifies as being "innovative?" What are they doing that is any different or even better than what is offered in Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW? Those 30 year old applications may be "long in the tooth," but I have yet to see any other drawing programs come along offering anything superior. The only attraction I've seen is a lower price in trade for various limitations.

That really depends on what a person uses. While the larger artboard isn't necessary for me, that is more enticing then the the AI, auto this that and the other. But I'm old school that way. I still use tools that have been around since the 90s and early 2000s. I miss out on a lot of other features I'm sure.

For most Illustrator users it was a bigger deal when they got rid of ridiculous zoom limitations. IIRC, the max zoom in Illustrator was only 1600% and then stayed at 6400% a long time (which is still very limiting). Then they improved it to 64000% a few years ago.

As long as people are still spending money even though they are complaining on the newer versions, what motivation is there until people jump ship? Even then, it depends on how many jump ship. If I'm not mistaken, you are quite outspoken about DRAW and yet you still "feed the beast".

While being fixated on me, you conveniently glossed over the fact many CorelDRAW users are not "feeding the beast" anymore. They're staying put on whatever version they have. I would probably do the same thing if I wasn't grandfathered in on the $99 per year "upgrade protection" thing. I sure as hell wouldn't go along if I had to pay $249 per year to subscribe. I think $99 per year is a fair price. $249 per year is not. Not with what Corel has been offering year to year with DRAW.

Release notes. I still read the release notes.

I have my doubts you're reading Adobe's release notes. Even if you were doing so that doesn't compare to actually using the product.

Personally, I would prefer to have a plugin system that allows me as an individual user create my own.

As far as I can tell Adobe offers an easy enough architecture that many vendors have developed plugins for their applications, be it Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, After Effects, etc. Out of all companies who sell graphics related software far more developers are making plug-ins for Adobe's stuff than any other company. If it's so easy to code something together what's the problem?

This can almost always be boiled down to high RAM usage. That's really what it boils down to. A lot of features, most of which are good, but it comes at the price of high RAM usage compared to other programs.

Adobe Illustrator is not a resource hog. It does not require top of the line hardware at all.

Absolutely not. I'm opting out of them due to less end user control.

You were accusing me of being biased against other software vendors besides Adobe (or Corel). That I'm not giving new upstarts a fair shake. I call bull$#1+ on that. Don't try calling me biased when you've adopted this almost pious-like ideology against commercial software and commercial operating systems. And you're not even consistent with it. In one turn you're dumping on Adobe at every opportunity, but then turn around and try to defend Corel when they're doing the same thing, but even worse in some regards.

I have used Ai from '94 to 2015. Buying every version when it came out with the exception of CS5.5. In some instances, I bought the new version not as an upgrade, but as a full version due to I didn't want to have to deal with loading the previous version then loading the upgrade after that and having to keep up with all those programs during computer swaps.

That's not my experience with Adobe software upgrades. Certainly I've upgraded over existing installations. But in the cases where I was starting with a new computer (or a new hard drive) it was usually enough to have the prior version serial number. Adobe Creative Cloud doesn't even require that. You just log into your account and go.

I've used DRAW (it's come bundled in with Wilcom, only reason why I have it though). As I mentioned before, I have used Ai from '94 to 2015.

What version of CorelDRAW are you running with Wilcom? Anything recent?

Typically one can prototype using python and have a functional program within a weekend. Maybe at the alpha/beta stage, but it would still be functional. I don't think you understand how much libraries like Qt abstract that stuff for the user. This isn't the 80s or 90s here.

It's not the computer bull$#!+ in CSI: Miami either. No one throws together commercial-grade quality plug-ins for an application like Illustrator over a weekend. And certainly not a single programmer. There's plenty of stuff in those applications and plug-ins that aren't pre-existing pieces of code clip art.

You haven't been saying squat about Affinity. You keep going off track in the 100% pointless everyone needs to develop their software or other thread-drift nonsense.

Uhhmmm, what is this then?

This is you still dragging the conversation off topic. The OP posted about Affinity Designer. You've been all over the ****king place with all sorts of other thread-drift nonsense that has nothing to do with Affinity Designer. You're just posting only to argue. Your mother has a copy of Affinity Photo. Whoopie-doo! But then you admit you don't own a copy of Affinity Designer. But you have the option to test-drive the trial version -if you ever feel like it. I mean, why are you even in this discussion thread at all? You don't use Affinity Designer. You're not using the current versions of its rivals. So why do you even care? Why waste your time?

Just because my bare metal OS (and the OS that I prefer) may be Linux, doesn't me that I don't have a myriad ways of still using other programs.

But you're not doing it. And, worse, you're over there on the sidelines criticising me over my "bias" when through actual experience with the software I find things I don't like or don't compare well with "long in the tooth" applications such as Illustrator and CorelDRAW. It's hypocrisy on multiple levels.

I wouldn't necessarily call Letterhead fonts rip offs, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

Yeah, you are wrong about that. LHF fonts don't come with installer programs. Not the old Postscript fonts or the newer OpenType versions.

No one uses Ai on here? No one uses DRAW on here? Now I know I have gotten some on here to get Wilcom, you may not be aware of that. No one here uses Caldera. Now Substance Painter (pre Adobe) and Maya (before Blender 2.8) are perhaps ones that people on here don't use. You would be very very surprised over the small fortune that I have spent on software. Just because you see me as a "Linux zealot" now, doesn't mean that I haven't paid my lb of flesh over the years.

You ditched Adobe. And I doubt you're current with CorelDRAW either. You've admitted you don't have Affinity Designer. So any comments from you about comparisons between the three applications are not coming from up to date experience. I don't know if anyone in this forum uses Caldera or not. The overwhelming majority of sign industry software is very Windows-based. Caldera's RIP runs on OSX and Linux. Our shop is 100% Windows-based (except for the iPad I use in some of my work); so we're using Onyx and RasterLink Pro to drive our big printers. But large format RIPs are going off topic.

Also my very first comment on here was talking about Photo, no mention of DIY, if I was as obsessed with it as you seem to think, I would have opened up with it right off the bat.

That was post #2, following the OP's first comment. I hadn't posted anything yet. But once I started contributing to the thread it derailed far away from Affinity pretty quickly.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

What specifically are any newer vector drawing programs doing that qualifies as being "innovative?" What are they doing that is any different or even better than what is offered in Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW? Those 30 year old applications may be "long in the tooth," but I have yet to see any other drawing programs come along offering anything superior. The only attraction I've seen is a lower price in trade for various limitations.

I could mention a couple, but they wouldn't help you, so I doubt that you would give them much credence. But I can mention them if you want.

For most Illustrator users it was a bigger deal when they got rid of ridiculous zoom limitations. IIRC, the max zoom in Illustrator was only 1600% and then stayed at 6400% a long time (which is still very limiting). Then they improved it to 64000% a few years ago.

Still not innovative. How long and how much complaining took them to bring it about.

While being fixated on me, you conveniently glossed over the fact many CorelDRAW users are not "feeding the beast" anymore. They're staying put on whatever version they have. I would probably do the same thing if I wasn't grandfathered in on the $99 per year "upgrade protection" thing. I sure as hell wouldn't go along if I had to pay $249 per year to subscribe. I think $99 per year is a fair price. $249 per year is not. Not with what Corel has been offering year to year with DRAW.

Well, you are the loudest on here with your complaints and yet still pay. I don't care what the reason is for you paying or not, you still are. You think the bean counters care why as long as they get their money? That's for marketing to care why. Bean counters just care about the money figures.

I have my doubts you're reading Adobe's release notes. Even if you were doing so that doesn't compare to actually using the product.

Speculation on your part. I still keep up with program and OSs (well Windows) even though I may not be using them day to day. Why, so that way I can migrate if need be, if this doesn't work out.

I've always read the release notes as that let's me know what has been added, removed, fixed etc and if it is worth it to upgrade. I keep up with it, in case for whatever reason I have to move back.

As far as I can tell Adobe offers an easy enough architecture that many vendors have developed plugins for their applications, be it Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, After Effects, etc. Out of all companies who sell graphics related software far more developers are making plug-ins for Adobe's stuff than any other company. If it's so easy to code something together what's the problem?

I'm unaware of people able to come up with something as an individual without licensing. And it's not an open API, like even DRAW was at one time (they used to allow for people to write things in C++ even). If I recall correctly, in their (Adobe) literature (even the bit that they have published on their own file format), they say that this may or may not be feature complete of instruction set and they reserve the right to stop and pull it. So that in my mind would question just how "open" they are to the average user without license agreements.

Adobe Illustrator is not a resource hog. It does not require top of the line hardware at all.

Resource hog does not mean latest and greatest hardware.

You were accusing me of being biased against other software vendors besides Adobe (or Corel). That I'm not giving new upstarts a fair shake. I call bull$#1+ on that. Don't try calling me biased when you've adopted this almost pious-like ideology against commercial software and commercial operating systems. And you're not even consistent with it. In one turn you're dumping on Adobe at every opportunity, but then turn around and try to defend Corel when they're doing the same thing, but even worse in some regards.

Again, I don't have a problem with commercial software. I don't. Secondly, as a software package, I prefer Ai to DRAW. Not many people in my industry use Ai due to the fact that DRAW comes included with very expensive software as it is.

I'm used to spending far far more for just a couple pieces of software, then y'all are for a suite of software. Adobe is cheap, and Corel is dirt cheap and Affinity is just about free when you consider the industry that I am in. Keep in mind, Ps, the flagship of Adobe's suite, when it was perpetual still cost less then a high end home version of software that I use. I don't have a problem with commercial software in of itself.

I have a problem with how Adobe and Corel conduct business as it is now. I have complained about both, I even made fun of how Corel used to use their still perpetual license as a gimmick to get new users when Adobe first switch to CC (and I knew back then, that they were going to switch as well and it was further cemented when they went on the yearly release cadence).

That's not my experience with Adobe software upgrades. Certainly I've upgraded over existing installations. But in the cases where I was starting with a new computer (or a new hard drive) it was usually enough to have the prior version serial number. Adobe Creative Cloud doesn't even require that. You just log into your account and go.

It was a long time ago, I'm sure that changed. The last for sure, if I recall correctly was the CS2 to CS3. I'm thinking, but I slept since then, so who knows.

What version of CorelDRAW are you running with Wilcom? Anything recent?

When Wilcom drops a new version, typically, it's the last DRAW version at that time (but DRAW may actually be a year old at that point). Wilcom is on a 3-5 yr dev cycle. From ES 3 to ES4 (there is a point release, but that is the latest release and its a couple of yrs old now) it was 5 yrs. When that last one dropped, it wasn't long at all til the latest version of DRAW dropped. I was on the Beta of that version and I was in that program for about a yr and a half if I recall correctly, they staggered branches that we tested, so it wasn't straight through, we did a few wks testing, a few wks off, then back on etc

It's not the computer bull$#!+ in CSI: Miami either. No one throws together commercial-grade quality plug-ins for an application like Illustrator over a weekend. And certainly not a single programmer. There's plenty of stuff in those applications and plug-ins that aren't pre-existing pieces of code clip art.

I didn't say commercial grade, I said prototype. There is a difference between a prototype and commercial grade. Now the prototype may be fully functional, but it's still a prototype. If you have not coded anything and have no desire, how can you make that assessment or not?

Especially if you are all about experience on the latest and greatest and nothing else can compare to that?

This is you still dragging the conversation off topic. The OP posted about Affinity Designer.

Let's see, does the OP's title mention Designer specifically? I don't see it (at least not at the time that I am making this post, can't say if it gets edited or not) and here in their first sentence:

Last year, I purchased Affinity Designer (like Illustrator), Photo (Photoshop), and Publisher (Indesign) for personal use.

It looks like he mentioned more then just Affinity Designer to me. Affinity Designer was mentioned first, but if you also look at the others, it follows an alphabetical schema (on purpose or not, I dunno), so that would also hint as to way Designer was mentioned first.

Yeah, you are wrong about that. LHF fonts don't come with installer programs. Not the old Postscript fonts or the newer OpenType versions.

They must have changed that (updated the old ones), of course, it had been about 5 yrs since I looked at their site. That's good to know.

You ditched Adobe. And I doubt you're current with CorelDRAW either. You've admitted you don't have Affinity Designer. So any comments from you about comparisons between the three applications are not coming from up to date experience. I don't know if anyone in this forum uses Caldera or not. The overwhelming majority of sign industry software is very Windows-based. Caldera's RIP runs on OSX and Linux. Our shop is 100% Windows-based (except for the iPad I use in some of my work); so we're using Onyx and RasterLink Pro to drive our big printers. But large format RIPs are going off topic.

Your comment was about my not using software that others on here use. Didn't stipulate if had to be current. If what you say about what is going on widespread with Corel, then that has to be pro forma now as well with people sticking to the old.

That was post #2, following the OP's first comment. I hadn't posted anything yet. But once I started contributing to the thread it derailed far away from Affinity pretty quickly.

You said that I didn't say squat about Affinity in this thread, not that I didn't say squat about it only post your involvement. Very, very nitpicking, but not necessarily untrue.

We do tend to derail threads fairly quickly. We both have derailed each other's threads a time or two and unfortunately others.


Edit to Add:

I opened up my VM and opened up Ai CS6 just for you Bobby as well. Also, if you look at the icons, you'll see Astute Graphics in there as well. So don't think I have a problem with paying for plugins as well.

 

[rjssigns]

I have been an Adobe user for a long time. I purchased Affinity Photo and Designer when they first came out and just upgraded to the newest version. I have been learning to use them over the last year and my goal is to completly get away from Adobe. I do not use the Adobe cloud sh!t and still on CS6. Years ago use Aldus Pagemaker until Adobe took them over. I use OnOne Photo Raw for all my photos now which does a better job than Photoshop.
Never used Corel because I am a Mac user and as far as Flexi and other sign crap I do not use either.
But getting away from Adobe is my desire.
Sorry Bobby H and Wild West but I did not read your diatribes, I need visual to peek my interest.

If I wasn't an instructor I wouldn't have Adobe CC. Bulk of my work gets done in Flexi, which I own outright, and trying to filter in more Affinity. Also have the full OnOne suite.

 

[Bobby H]

I could mention a couple, but they wouldn't help you, so I doubt that you would give them much credence. But I can mention them if you want.

In other words you don't have an answer. You can't name any examples of truly innovative features in much younger vector drawing programs. It's easy for you (or anyone else) to dismiss anything new Adobe or even Corel offers as not being "innovative" or at best "iterative." Anyone can $#!+ on a product improvement like you taking a dump on Illustrator improving its max zoom level ten fold. It's more difficult to point out positive examples of rival applications at least doing something better, if not offer something unique not found in those "long in the tooth" applications.

Well, you are the loudest on here with your complaints and yet still pay. I don't care what the reason is for you paying or not, you still are. You think the bean counters care why as long as they get their money? That's for marketing to care why. Bean counters just care about the money figures.

There you go again trying to make the discussion all about me. I've explained the CorelDRAW thing, upgrade protection and yadda yadda yadda to you way too many times. If you actually don't care what the reason is why I pay for CorelDRAW or not then drop it.

Speculation on your part. I still keep up with program and OSs (well Windows) even though I may not be using them day to day. Why, so that way I can migrate if need be, if this doesn't work out.

You're not hands-on current with CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator or even Affinity Designer yet you're in this thread arguing about these applications. Again, why do you even care? You claim you've moved on, switched, ripped yourself free from the evil clutches of Microsoft, Adobe and whatever other bad guy needs to be added to the list. If that's the case why show any interest in topics related to those applications? The only reasons I can figure is you're determined to force your opinion on me (or anyone else bothering to read these reams of static), or you're just in here trolling for any argument you can spark.

I'm unaware of people able to come up with something as an individual without licensing. And it's not an open API, like even DRAW was at one time (they used to allow for people to write things in C++ even).

I've skimmed through some of Adobe's documents about plug-in development, such as this one:
https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/devnet/illustrator/pdf/sdk/getting-started-guide-cc.pdf
I can't find anything about developers having pay Adobe a bunch of money just to get access to the Illustrator SDK so they can get started. I'm sure Adobe does have things such as NDAs for plugin developers to sign. Nevertheless, judging by the sheer number of third party plugins available for Illustrator it sure doesn't look like Adobe has anything really onerous set up. Astute Graphics published this recently updated list of third party plugins available for Illustrator, along with some other links in the same page to scripts, plugins and extensions for Illustrator that are free:
https://astutegraphics.com/learn/tutorial/third-party-illustrator-plugins

Resource hog does not mean latest and greatest hardware.

If the software can reasonably well on a PC upwards of 10 years old the application isn't much of a resource hog.

I'm used to spending far far more for just a couple pieces of software, then y'all are for a suite of software. Adobe is cheap, and Corel is dirt cheap and Affinity is just about free when you consider the industry that I am in. Keep in mind, Ps, the flagship of Adobe's suite, when it was perpetual still cost less then a high end home version of software that I use. I don't have a problem with commercial software in of itself.

Then, again, why waste your time on this? If Adobe's products are "cheap" to you then what's the problem?

It was a long time ago, I'm sure that changed. The last for sure, if I recall correctly was the CS2 to CS3. I'm thinking, but I slept since then, so who knows.

The "worst" inconvenience I've gone through with Adobe software upgrades when I didn't have a prior version already installed on the hard drive (like when getting a new computer) is I had to insert the previous version's installer CD. IIRC, this was before Adobe and many other vendors started applying online activation schemes to their applications.

I didn't say commercial grade, I said prototype. There is a difference between a prototype and commercial grade. Now the prototype may be fully functional, but it's still a prototype. If you have not coded anything and have no desire, how can you make that assessment or not?

Unless the plugin is doing something really simple it's not going to get thrown together and made as a functional prototype in an afternoon.

Let's see, does the OP's title mention Designer specifically? I don't see it (at least not at the time that I am making this post, can't say if it gets edited or not) and here in their first sentence:

This thread has been all over the place without any relation to any Affinity product. Please don't act like you've been showing any concentration on Photo or Publisher. Other than the mention of your mother using Affinity Photo in the #2 post the topic has mostly off the rails completely ever since.

Your comment was about my not using software that others on here use. Didn't stipulate if had to be current. If what you say about what is going on widespread with Corel, then that has to be pro forma now as well with people sticking to the old.

Having actual hands-on access to current versions of Illustrator, CorelDRAW or Affinity Designer is kind of important if one is going cast judgment against a new feature, the application's performance quality or any other technical issues. I've already repeated it numerous times how more than a few CorelDRAW users have been staying put on old versions. But you keep fixating on my own personal choices as if they somehow apply to everyone else and somehow validate Corel's business choices.

It was already a problem for Corel with customers skipping one or more product cycles when they went to a yearly release schedule just to cosmetically appear like they were keeping up with Adobe. They couldn't deliver the goods on an annual basis. Corel had a hard enough time with a 2 year schedule. So they took the big gamble on killing upgrades for perpetual license users. It doesn't look like the move has paid off for them anywhere near as well as it has for Adobe. But we can't know specifically since Corel is a privately held company and doesn't have to publish financials to the general public.

There are participants in this forum who've stayed put on older versions of CorelDRAW. There's bunch of them in the CorelDRAW user forums. I think the buggy release of CorelDRAW 2019 and bugs still present in CDR 2020 and 2021 have galvanized those users to stay put and wait it out. The sheer lack of updates, even small bug fixes, is a worrisome sign.

I think SAi is risking a LOT traveling down the same road as Corel with their Flexi application -effectively making it a subscription-only thing. We have 3 licenses of it at my shop. But none are newer than version 12. Version 19 was buggy. And the new setup isn't bringing anything new to the table that we can't already do in other applications. We do most of our design work in CorelDRAW and Illustrator. Even if we have to ditch Flexi completely it's not going to do much harm at all. Our "master" files aren't in FS format.

I opened up my VM and opened up Ai CS6 just for you Bobby as well. Also, if you look at the icons, you'll see Astute Graphics in there as well. So don't think I have a problem with paying for plugins as well.

Those plugins aren't current; CS6 can only use "legacy license" plugins from Astute Graphics.

 

[Bobby H]

If I wasn't an instructor I wouldn't have Adobe CC. Bulk of my work gets done in Flexi, which I own outright, and trying to filter in more Affinity. Also have the full OnOne suite.

Affinity Designer doesn't have any built-in vinyl cutting/plotting capability. AFAIK no one has made any vinyl cutting/plotting add-ons for Affinity Designer.

With that being said, I'd rather do design work in Affinity Designer than I would in Flexi. With an appropriate document PPI setting the max artboard size in Affinity Designer can get plenty big for full size sign design work. The type engine in Affinity Designer is more up to date; you can at least access all the extended character sets and features in modern OpenType fonts. One would think the various "CAS" vendors would bring their industry-specific sign making applications up to date with how they handle fonts. I mean, lettering is kind of a key thing with sign making, isn't it?

 

[WildWestDesigns]

In other words you don't have an answer. You can't name any examples of truly innovative features in much younger vector drawing programs. It's easy for you (or anyone else) to dismiss anything new Adobe or even Corel offers as not being "innovative" or at best "iterative." Anyone can $#!+ on a product improvement like you taking a dump on Illustrator improving its max zoom level ten fold. It's more difficult to point out positive examples of rival applications at least doing something better, if not offer something unique not found in those "long in the tooth" applications.

XML abilities. With the embroidery program that I have, I am able to store information with regard to the embroidery objects parameters, density, underlay etc. If I were to save that in Inkscape and then import/then save in Ai/DRAW that info is lost, any info that isn't strictly XML/SVG markup is lost. And they do not have any method of editing that markup directly.

Plugins. Inkscape has a fully open plugin API. So open that I can use Inkscape's own XY guides as a means of declaring the 0,0 origin of my designs (depending on the designs, hats versus shirts etc that comes in handy). This also allows me to have my embroidery files saving, save copy as to come from the main program drop down and not through the extension itself. Hence, looking like it's more apart of the program and not a separate plugin. Unlike that $3k commercial extension. Do you think that you would be able to create plugins that have that indepth of an interaction between the main program and the plugin in Ai without some licensing going on?

Now I mentioned Deno, Deno is a JS/TS runtime based on V8. SVGs (Inkscape's default file format) allows me to use the XML markup to put in IDs, Classes etc to use with JS for applications that I create with Deno. Deno/Webview/SVGs allows me to quickly come up with my sub par applications (according to you, I am paraphasing) quickly and yes in an afternoon/weekend. Again, not something that is allowed directly within Ai and DRAW as they do not have a means of editing that portion of the file, that would have to be done in a text editor which is far less GUI friendly then how Inkscape does it(no, you don't have to code XML from scratch, I believe that's what you were thinking the last time that I brought up the XML editor and using the XML markup allows one to manipulate the file in other ways that may not be allowed by the options that most people look for in the main part of the GUI). Keep in mind to, Ai/DRAW delete any extrenous XML markup that those programs don't recognize as true XML markup for SVGs.

Again though, nothing about that would interest you, so I'm sure you would only have something negative to say about it, why I didn't write what I did now before. It's not that I didn't have an answer for you. Which is what you thought.

There you go again trying to make the discussion all about me. I've explained the CorelDRAW thing, upgrade protection and yadda yadda yadda to you way too many times. If you actually don't care what the reason is why I pay for CorelDRAW or not then drop it.

They are still getting your money, regardless of what it is, despite your complaining loudly on the one hand, they are still providing you something that you are willing to pay for. If that applies to you, how many other loudly complaining people are also still giving their money for that exact reason. That all adds up. How many still subscribe to Adobe that don't like it, but for one reason or another they still do? Same thing, all that adds up.

You're not hands-on current with CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator or even Affinity Designer yet you're in this thread arguing about these applications. Again, why do you even care? You claim you've moved on, switched, ripped yourself free from the evil clutches of Microsoft, Adobe and whatever other bad guy needs to be added to the list. If that's the case why show any interest in topics related to those applications? The only reasons I can figure is you're determined to force your opinion on me (or anyone else bothering to read these reams of static), or you're just in here trolling for any argument you can spark.

I was once one of those that believed that I needed to have Adobe. When there is a switch like that, there comes a realization that that thought wasn't necessarily true. At least not in my instance. If you actually looked through what I say, I always tell people to investigate the possibility for their own particular situation.

I also keep an interest in other software and see where they are at etc, just in case I have to go back. That's why I keep reading articles/release notes on Windows (not a Mac fan at all, despite having had several of the years, so Mac would have to be the last vendor out there for me to do that).

I've skimmed through some of Adobe's documents about plug-in development, such as this one:
https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/devnet/illustrator/pdf/sdk/getting-started-guide-cc.pdf
I can't find anything about developers having pay Adobe a bunch of money just to get access to the Illustrator SDK so they can get started. I'm sure Adobe does have things such as NDAs for plugin developers to sign. Nevertheless, judging by the sheer number of third party plugins available for Illustrator it sure doesn't look like Adobe has anything really onerous set up. Astute Graphics published this recently updated list of third party plugins available for Illustrator, along with some other links in the same page to scripts, plugins and extensions for Illustrator that are free:
https://astutegraphics.com/learn/tutorial/third-party-illustrator-plugins

I didn't say that you had to directly pay for the SDK, I said that they have caveats on the documentation that I could very get and even on a file format that is there own format, the list that the information may or may not be the complete and the reserve the right to pull it at any time.

If the software can reasonably well on a PC upwards of 10 years old the application isn't much of a resource hog.

A computer that is within 10 yrs old now, can be resourced out to high heaven that can head the bloat, but just "brute forcing" it with RAM. I haven't run anything with less then 32GB of RAM in the last ten years. I have 64GBs of ECC ram right now in my main rig. Electron apps while a resource hog (regardless of how well written it is) just scream on that rig). So no, that even of itself isn't much of a benchmark criteria. And I would be willing to bet that we are running better rigs (for the most part) then the average person.

Then, again, why waste your time on this? If Adobe's products are "cheap" to you then what's the problem?

I told you, price isn't my main problem. The rights/abilities that I have with their software now is. Why I didn't stick with Windows as well when 2015 came along. If I wasn't able to make the switch (as in the software didn't work out) then I would still be where I was 6 yrs ago.

The "worst" inconvenience I've gone through with Adobe software upgrades when I didn't have a prior version already installed on the hard drive (like when getting a new computer) is I had to insert the previous version's installer CD. IIRC, this was before Adobe and many other vendors started applying online activation schemes to their applications.

Not for me, it required an active previous versions already installed.

Unless the plugin is doing something really simple it's not going to get thrown together and made as a functional prototype in an afternoon.

Have you ever done anything with Python/TKinter, Python/Qt, Godot or Deno? If you have never done anything with this type of work and thus don't have the direct experience with using them (experience seems to be something that you are really nailing home), what is your reasoning to being able to say that? I have used those technologies and more (even low level technologies using C++/Qt). Your usage is what exactly? I'm tending not anything at all based on your previous comments, but I could be wrong.

Here is the kicker, if you just create a CLI script/program, that makes even the C++ dev time even less. GUIs are what astronomically add to the dev time on any stack. If it's just a console app, not only does even your C++ app remain portable among platforms and archs, but that can shave off months of having to deal with "drawing" the GUI and depending on what platform you are using, that can make it even longer depending on the documentation. That's why I like libraries like Qt, not only do they abstract all that away from you, but they also have a WYSIWYG designer, but then again, since you are familiar with this process, you know all about that.

This thread has been all over the place without any relation to any Affinity product. Please don't act like you've been showing any concentration on Photo or Publisher. Other than the mention of your mother using Affinity Photo in the #2 post the topic has mostly off the rails completely ever since.

I didn't say that I concentrated on that. You said that I didn't say squat about Affinity at all in this thread, which was shown to be false and if you noticed in that post, I did talk about Affinity Photo with no mention of anything else at all. You keep on moving the goal post to suit your own argument. First it was I didn't say anything at all about Affinity, then it was this thread was only made about Affinity Designer, now I didn't concentrate on Affinity at all.

Don't forget that I also said that I did try Photo on the iPad as well. Can't forget that.

Having actual hands-on access to current versions of Illustrator, CorelDRAW or Affinity Designer is kind of important if one is going cast judgment against a new feature, the application's performance quality or any other technical issues. I've already repeated it numerous times how more than a few CorelDRAW users have been staying put on old versions. But you keep fixating on my own personal choices

Because when you are talking about your own experiences, I'm getting it from the source. Not some nebulous other people that may or may not have chimed in. Even when I answered Ikarasu's post when I mentioned Johnny, I mentioned a specific user handle and mentioned if I recall correctly. If he chimed in (which he did) great, if not oh well.

It was already a problem for Corel with customers skipping one or more product cycles when they went to a yearly release schedule just to cosmetically appear like they were keeping up with Adobe.

That is a common problem for all software vendors using the perpetual license schema, they have to continually win people over. Subscription gets one some time, but not forever.

The sheer lack of updates, even small bug fixes, is a worrisome sign.

That it is indeed. Bug fixes, big or small are the absolute baseline for keeping software going as that is the price of a vendor maintaining said software.

I think SAi is risking a LOT traveling down the same road as Corel with their Flexi application -effectively making it a subscription-only thing. We have 3 licenses of it at my shop. But none are newer than version 12. Version 19 was buggy. And the new setup isn't bringing anything new to the table that we can't already do in other applications. We do most of our design work in CorelDRAW and Illustrator. Even if we have to ditch Flexi completely it's not going to do much harm at all. Our "master" files aren't in FS format.

I would say so as well.

Those plugins aren't current; CS6 can only use "legacy license" plugins from Astute Graphics.

I didn't say that they were current right now. I mentioned them to show, since you seem to think I have something against paying for things, that I even pay for the plugins that I use. I don't have a problem with commercial, Qt is commercial, Ardour is commercial. Both of which are open source. Imagine that, open source with a commercial bent. What is the world coming to.

Affinity Designer doesn't have any built-in vinyl cutting/plotting capability. AFAIK no one has made any vinyl cutting/plotting add-ons for Affinity Designer.

I would check to see if you are able to setup an HPGL printer as the cutter. Hopefully using the RAW HPGL protocol (some cutters are "smart" enough to parse what they need and leave the rest, my Rolands are able to do so). Then it would just be as simple as File->Print to the cutter. Downside to this is everything would need to be setup by the user either manually every time, or thru a plugin/macro or something like that (which I doubt since I don't think Affinity has a plugin system in place). Inkscape does have Inkcut, but to my knowledge that is the only one worth anything. I haven't used the new version as I just do the File->Print method as I have python scripts that do what I need to do as far as setup goes (again nice thing about having a fully open python API).

The nice thing about RAW HPGL protocol is that it does not need (at least in my experience) a driver for the cutter. Which is good for me as no OEMs support directly what I use as far as the OS goes.