Serif Reviews 36

Hello,

I just had to leave a review! I have been using the old Adobe (was Macromedia) Fireworks desktop application for Windows. I used Fireworks (started in 2000) mostly for prototyping website design / layouts as it was brilliant and much better suited than Photoshop when I first got into creating graphics.

Anyhow - fast forward 21 years of using Fireworks I could never find a decent alternative for a decent price or something that wasn't part of a subscription model.

I decided to give Affinity Designer a go today because I finally decided to throw in the towel for using Adobe Fireworks because of the memory error that totally ruins the experience for me (I had put up with it this long because I had so much experience with it).

I tried the trial version of Affinity Designer and followed some basic tutorials via YouTube tutorials.

Long story short - after about an hour of trying, I have finally found my eternal replacement for Adobe Fireworks.

I am very grateful that Affinity Designer is out there for people to use since it's an excellent piece of software with such a low price barrier. I have now purchased it and although It's only been a few hours now, I can honestly say I am in love with the fact, for me at least, I can relate to Affinity Design as if it were Adobe Fireworks. Affinity Design runs flawlessly on my pc, everything is intuitive from editing vectors, paths and so on. The interface is beautiful and I've never been so excited about a desktop program since Adobe Fireworks after first time use.

Thank you for creating such great software Serif. I will be recommending Affinity products to my friends & colleagues.

HORRIBLE customer service.

Oh my god...I paid twice for a product (Affinity Publisher) and did not receive it.

Talked with CS for 13 e-mails back and forth, they did NOT offer any solution.

When I asked to create a manual check-out link (which they proposed to me as a solution, so I could at least pay a third time to get a license key), they did not even send it because they did not read my email properly.

Shocked with the stupidity of the customer service.

This really makes me so annoyed with the company, even though I love their products....

I literally needed hours for the process of sending these emails. No sign of empathy, understanding or solutions. Very impolite. Clearly they need to train their CS personnel better, it seems like they are completely overwhelmed.

I had to resort to calling the bank so they can try to revoke the payments...hope to get something back. However, even getting those 50 euro's back will not give me back my time wasted with useless e-mailing with people who have no clue how to help customers...

Affinity Designer is such a good alternative to Adobe Illustrator. The company provide updates and the product just keep getting better and better. I highly recommend them!

I had a problem when I downloaded Affinity photo. I emailed their customer service department not expecting a reply for a week. After a few days I got an email reply apologising for the delay.What delay? The customer care suggested a solution that worked. Thanks Leigh for your input that was spot on. The photo package is superb and is matched by their customer service department.

Good company, great service excellent programs. One or two features missing compared to Adobe. You can plug those gaps with some open source software like Inkscape (if you need to image trace) or Darktable as lightroom replacement.

Customer service helpful and nice. Always adding new features!

I went from PS to Affinity photo mainly because it was cheaper and was fed up with the Adobe policy.

The software is pretty good but flawed and bugged at some part.

As an example I just wanted to print a document. 1. The document for some reasons appears pinkish (???) on the printing pop-up. 2. There is no way to modify (decenter) the position of the document. 3. When you modify the print zoom ratio it has no effect on the preprint image. You need to enter CR and print to get image modified !

It is a pity because the software is extremely neatly finished.

There is some more work needed on it to fully compete with Adobe

Serif software has always been superior in my opinion, My first purchase was Pageplus, I can't remember what version, but we are talking mid to late 90s. It was superior to Microsoft's publisher in the way it worked with layers and being able to overlap things, something publisher at the time did not support.

More recently you have the affinity range of products and wow, still easy to use and the user interfaces are awesome. Again in my opinion it is better than photoshop in oh so many ways, but of course, it has the option to open PDN files, which is useful. I have used both Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo. I wouldn't say that I like everything about both, in fact when it comes to using a magic wand to put transparecy on a background, I actually always default to the free Paintdotnet software as it does things easier, in that you just click and it selects. However for more complex stuff, I definitely use Affinity Photo.

Price, now this is where Serif remains even more superior, because they have not gone down the subscription route. To boot as always their products are more than reasonably priced. This is something other software creators can learn from, Serif make their products available to users of all kinds because they are so affordbable, after all if you are not a professional, would you really pay the prices of Adobe products? You will simply get more custom if you price things reasonably and would most likely not lose out because of it, people are also less likely to opt for bootleg versions if something is affordable.

I was disappointed that Serif opted not to make a web authoring software, there is definitely a gap in the market. Who knows in the future though, Serif may change their minds but I guess they didn't take decision lightly and may not.

I haven't tried Affinity Publisher yet, since I have no need for desktop publishing these days, but I have no doubt it is as exceptional as the rest of the Affinity range.

Would I recommend Serif? Whole heartedly and 100% and in fact I am always encouraging photoshop users to explore them. You cannot beat a company that gives both quality and fair pricing.

I tried the trial version of Affinity Photo, and I was impressed with its performance. After testing the trial, I immediately purchased licenses for both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. The support team is excellent and highly responsive.

I changed from using Adobe-Software to Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer (for Mac) and although I miss the one or other feature (seamless pattern fill, calligraphy brushes), the software allows you to do great things and the forum/community as well as the competent helpers from the affinity-team manage to help you out very efficiently in case you get stuck. More over I have the feeling that they really work hard on further improving the software. Big bonus : It costs a fraction of what Photoshop and Illustrator would have cost me and I feel well equipped. Very happy to have discovered this software.

Brilliant software all round at a good price.