The Affinity Suite of graphic design products just went for a long awaited V1 to V2 update. The last year had been quiet and missing the frequent updates and improvements of the last few years so many speculated something was up. The bizarre speculation of the company closing, or being sold to to Adobe was not founded in any reality but it was all over the place. To me, it seems there has been some obvious trolling going on to downplay this release and some people were left to speculate far too long on what was to come. A one minute teaser 5 days before the release that told you basically nothing except a new version was coming out but generated a lot of unwarranted expectations and wild theories.
What was released:
V2 of all the apps and a new, looooong awaited, iPad version of Publisher. What happened was many of the missing features people have wanted were implemented in all three apps. Not all of them, of course, and it is 100% normal to wait a long time only to find that something you need for your work wasn't in the update very disappointing. Designer and Publisher got the most love but the whole suite got a nicer interface that bled over to the iPad. Many of the key features like the style eyedropper were added to all the apps and Photo got non destructive RAW editing and new versions of some features that were somewhat poorly done in the previous versions. All of the apps were elevated to much higher professional level. The "big surprise" was not a D.A.M. but a universal licence that let you install all three on windows, Mac and iPad under the same license and a ridiculously low price considering improvement and updates will be free until V3 comes out which will likely be 2-5 years away.
The good stuff:
Designer's vector warp tools, a criminal omission in V1 were implemented. Also they added a shape builder function and knife tool. Photo got some nice masking improvements and new features and the before mentioned non destructive RAW processing. Publisher, the newest app needed the most work and got it. A book function that lets you organize separate external files into one project, style dropper, automatic page generation when importing a long text file or many images. Publisher on iPad has the same studio link function as the desktop, which lets you simply turn Publisher into Photo or Designer with a simple button to work on graphics and never have to leave the app. We can now realistically work from an iPad for everything most graphic designers need with the exception of epub and web design which Affinity has shied away from, at least for now.
The disappointments:
Digital Asset Management is really the missing piece in the suite and some of the new Publisher features do not work on iPad. iPad also has a terrible font system for publishing. I have to add one font at a time with a 3rd party program that takes a couple minutes for each one - if it works. Many graphic designers need over 600-800 fonts on a desktop system to pick from. This is something Apple will have to address. Designer would profit greatly from a bitmap to vector tracing function as many artists use that in their workflow, a vector eraser and the ability to warp a shape inside another shape (like a word or words inside a heart for example) would fill out it's feature set nicely. I wish there was some way for plugins to work on the ipad and be better implemented on the desktop.
Overall this was an AMAZING release that added many of the features users have been asking about for years. This is not the last update, something I think many don't take into account, and Serif has been responsive to customer needs more than most companies - even if it takes them longer to realize those needs it has been worth the wait.
