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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

#111

Post by underlipton »

starik36 wrote: post #77
theobr wrote: post #28

I've been using Affinity's suite exclusively for about 4 years now and I haven't looked back once. Briefly tried Photoshop again for the generative AI stuff and it was slow, unreliable and crashed multiple times. HIGHLY recommend giving Affinity a shot, I've edited thousands of images with Photo and I can't imagine using anything else now.

Does Affinity suite include generative AI at all?

It has content-aware fill, which IIRC is an early form of gen-AI.

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

#112

Post by neom »

Unrelated but have any of you web software folks tried the latest dreamweaver? I'm old af and I used to love DW in the 90s and actually it's part of why I even know how to code(ish), I used it to teach myself (god bless you kevin lynch)...! anyway, I saw they still update it so I downloaded it just to see what it's like..Seems like they've really developed it well into a front end focused IDE, I can't say if it's good or not, but just from clicking around it felt pretty good... Thought I'd mention it. :)

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

#113

Post by null0pointer »

I really like Affinity, especially their buy it once pricing model, and I use Affinity Photo for all my photo editing. However, I was very disappointed to learn they were recently acquired by Canva, a company that is blatantly following the VC growth playbook. So I fear that sooner or later Affinity will fall victim to enshittification. It will either become exactly like Adobe is today or it will be sacrificed on the altar of ROI.

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

#115

Post by ChristopherDrum »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #39
theobr wrote: post #28

I've been using Affinity's suite exclusively for about 4 years now and I haven't looked back once. Briefly tried Photoshop again for the generative AI stuff and it was slow, unreliable and crashed multiple times. HIGHLY recommend giving Affinity a shot, I've edited thousands of images with Photo and I can't imagine using anything else now.

> I've been using Affinity's suite exclusively for about 4 years now and I haven't looked back once. Unluckily, Affinity Designer still has no tool for tracing images (a functionality that would be really helpful for the tasks that I use Affinity Designer for). :-( UPDATE: Also halftone effects for fillings require quite some hacks in Affinity Designer.

Lack of scripting automation and a blend tool are my only real disappointments with the product. These aren't enough to make me switch back to Adobe mind you, but they're relatively glaring omissions I think.

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

#116

Post by parl_match »

dataflow wrote: post #95
parl_match wrote: post #71

Adobe vs Affinity: Is Photoshop better than Photo? Yes, but not by much. Is Illustrator better than Design? Yes, but not by much. Is there an annoying learning curve? Yes, but not by much. I've put the investment into becoming proficient in Affinity and there's no looking back for me. Adobe's pricing, feature roadmap, and general performance are not even close to being worth 10x the price. If Adobe's suite was 2x, I…

> Is Photoshop better than Photo? Yes, but not by much. Everyone keeps repeating this meme every 2 months or so on HN and I have to keep coming back to point out that Affinity's lack of support for Photoshop's generated XMP sidecar files is on its own a dealbreaker for photographers that have those files. (Then as soon as I say this everyone here jumps to Affinity's defense. I'm not trying to attack Affinity or somet…

I feel like it's a bit unfair to bring up vendor lock-in, although it is a miss for Affinity, for sure.

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

#118

Post by dataflow »

parl_match wrote: post #116
dataflow wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is Photoshop better than Photo? Yes, but not by much. Everyone keeps repeating this meme every 2 months or so on HN and I have to keep coming back to point out that Affinity's lack of support for Photoshop's generated XMP sidecar files is on its own a dealbreaker for photographers that have those files. (Then as soon as I say this everyone here jumps to Affinity's defense. I'm not trying to attack Affinity or somet…

I feel like it's a bit unfair to bring up vendor lock-in, although it is a miss for Affinity, for sure.

I actually disagree on both whether this is truly vendor lock-in and on whether this is fair to bring up, but honestly, it wouldn't change anything regardless. The reality is that solving people's problems is what wins you customers, not pleading for fairness. As unfair as it might be, that's the reality of the situation. If we want Adobe's hold on the market to be released, we (and they) need to deal with the reality of the situation.

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

#119

Post by getcrunk »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #45
theobr wrote: post #28

I've been using Affinity's suite exclusively for about 4 years now and I haven't looked back once. Briefly tried Photoshop again for the generative AI stuff and it was slow, unreliable and crashed multiple times. HIGHLY recommend giving Affinity a shot, I've edited thousands of images with Photo and I can't imagine using anything else now.

I agree they are great software, and I own an old Affinity Design license, but unfortunately not long after I decided to ditch Photoshop, I also decided I needed to ditch windows. At the time there was no Linux support which made me sad. I have no idea if that has changed.

Can’t emulate it?
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