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Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months

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Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months

#11

Post by karaterobot »

> This discount, alongside the six-month free trial, is potentially geared at soothing concerns that Affinity would change its pricing model after being acquired by Canva earlier this year.

This doesn't sooth my concerns. Why should it, when it's literally them switching to a subscription model. Nothing in the article says otherwise. Do we believe they'll build the infrastructure to support a SaaS, then turn it all off after this 6-month trial? It's not just for fun, they're clearly going to make it the primary way of paying for their products.

I bought all the Affinity apps (multiple versions) because I was specifically trying to escape Adobe Creative Cloud. Their software may not be as good as Adobe's, but Affinity's business model provided enough value on its own. I'm making some assumptions here, but come on, we know how this story usually plays out. Unless I'm wrong, I think this is probably a bad idea for users like me.

Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months

#12

Post by ToucanLoucan »

dagmx wrote: post #10
AquinasCoder wrote: post #3

Does anyone have insight on how this compares these days to Adobe's suite? Seems pretty competitive, but I'm not sure if you're getting 80% of the features for 30% of the cost or 50% of features for 50% of the cost.

It truly depends what you do and need. IMHO, as someone who professionally uses the Adobe products and has licenses to all the Affinity suite, none of the apps compare favorably to the Adobe equivalents other than price and a superior iPad version. They’re all great apps though but they definitely exist in the tier below adobe’s offerings. Which may be fine for most folks but hasn’t been for me, because I literally c…

> Affinity Photo is fine as a photo editing tool but it falls apart for more advanced edits where you need to use brushes and advanced masking tools. Again, perspective tools and more granular referencing tools are just missing or broken. It is a significant step up from Gimp though but I would personally push people to Krita instead.

I want to switch but the total lack of any automated export functionality is a complete deal-breaker. That's like 15 minutes of work per piece foisted back onto me, and like, I just cannot fathom a reason to even have the Layer States feature if you aren't going to use it for this.

Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months

#13

Post by S0und »

AquinasCoder wrote: post #3

Does anyone have insight on how this compares these days to Adobe's suite? Seems pretty competitive, but I'm not sure if you're getting 80% of the features for 30% of the cost or 50% of features for 50% of the cost.

I'm a hobbyist who has used PS for 20 something years now. My issue with Affinity Photo is that you can use 85% of your PS knowledge and workflow, everything is the same but that last 15% is awfully, unlogically different and will drive you mad. That last 15% feels like it was made by people who do not understand why PS does things the way it does. Meanwhile my statement cannot be true, because Affinity nailed the firat 85%, but just cannot comprehend why they couldn't copy the last 15%.

Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months

#14

Post by thunfisch »

dagmx wrote: post #10
AquinasCoder wrote: post #3

Does anyone have insight on how this compares these days to Adobe's suite? Seems pretty competitive, but I'm not sure if you're getting 80% of the features for 30% of the cost or 50% of features for 50% of the cost.

It truly depends what you do and need. IMHO, as someone who professionally uses the Adobe products and has licenses to all the Affinity suite, none of the apps compare favorably to the Adobe equivalents other than price and a superior iPad version. They’re all great apps though but they definitely exist in the tier below adobe’s offerings. Which may be fine for most folks but hasn’t been for me, because I literally c…

Do you know of Scribus, or do you not consider it a good OSS equivalent for InDesign? Last time I've worked with InDesign was around 2011, and it was meh. Scribus is also really realy meh, but gets the job done. I've got an Affinity license and have been using Designer for a bunch of projects - to me it's a toss between that and Scribus for what I do. They are totally different, but I have more experience with Scribus and therefore am much quicker in using that.

Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months

#15

Post by herpdyderp »

ntlk wrote: post #5
AquinasCoder wrote: post #3

Does anyone have insight on how this compares these days to Adobe's suite? Seems pretty competitive, but I'm not sure if you're getting 80% of the features for 30% of the cost or 50% of features for 50% of the cost.

Some features are “missing” or don’t work in a similar way. For example, Affinity Designer doesn’t have shape replication tools like Illustrator, manual copy paste is required. You also can’t trace an image to turn it into vector outlines. Just two things off the top of my head that I noticed because I used them extensively in Adobe Illustrator. So if you’re only using a subset of features you’re probably fine, but w…

It's been a while now but I got Inkscape (free but clunky Illustrator alternative) to do shape replication across a path for me once, and then I copied the result into Affinity Designer. Obviously if you need to do that frequently, it's not gonna work well but I've only had to do that a few times since ditching Adobe.

Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months

#16

Post by SubiculumCode »

karaterobot wrote: post #11

> This discount, alongside the six-month free trial, is potentially geared at soothing concerns that Affinity would change its pricing model after being acquired by Canva earlier this year. This doesn't sooth my concerns. Why should it, when it's literally them switching to a subscription model. Nothing in the article says otherwise. Do we believe they'll build the infrastructure to support a SaaS, then turn it all o…

I really hope not. Its also the reason why I purchased their software.

Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months

#18

Post by stevenicr »

ntlk wrote: post #5
AquinasCoder wrote: post #3

Does anyone have insight on how this compares these days to Adobe's suite? Seems pretty competitive, but I'm not sure if you're getting 80% of the features for 30% of the cost or 50% of features for 50% of the cost.

Some features are “missing” or don’t work in a similar way. For example, Affinity Designer doesn’t have shape replication tools like Illustrator, manual copy paste is required. You also can’t trace an image to turn it into vector outlines. Just two things off the top of my head that I noticed because I used them extensively in Adobe Illustrator. So if you’re only using a subset of features you’re probably fine, but w…

I am thinking I have seen tutorials on tracing to vector, like maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=480dGcU6ce4&pp=ygUVYWZmaW5pd...

Or perhaps you are describing something else I am unfamiliar with the terminology.

I've been going back to several tutorials on youtube for doing things affinity - as it seems to have the capabilities I am used to with the old photoimpact, it's just finding where / how is not the same.

Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months

#19

Post by data-ottawa »

karaterobot wrote: post #11

> This discount, alongside the six-month free trial, is potentially geared at soothing concerns that Affinity would change its pricing model after being acquired by Canva earlier this year. This doesn't sooth my concerns. Why should it, when it's literally them switching to a subscription model. Nothing in the article says otherwise. Do we believe they'll build the infrastructure to support a SaaS, then turn it all o…

For what it’s worth, the current version and version one were both designed in a way that they could be switched to a subscription model.

When you make purchases from their store they’re available within the app based on your account, if you sign out you’ll lose access to them.

I know with V1 you could manually download your assets, I’m not sure what the status is for V2 on that.

I share your scepticism since the Canva acquisition.

Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months

#20

Post by kmfrk »

They did a similar trial during covid which was what got me to try them out. Love their tools, except some of the magic tools aren't available in Designer and require Photo, which can be annoying for people who prefer just one.

Some excellent official tutorials, too:

https://youtu.be/6wfeMGwcF0c

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