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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

#121

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…

In some areas affinity photo exeed PS. It's native support for EXRs is incredible. In PS, EXRs are opened once, following which they are vanilla PS files. In AP, the ability to access the full dynamic range of an EXR is preserved to a degree that PS cannot match.

It is also possible to stack and combine masks, an idea which is pure science fiction for a PS user. color selection masks can also update if the colors of the rgb component is changed.

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

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a hobbyist photographer and my dad's a professional. This is the first time I've ever heard of these files, so what do people use them for and why are they deal-breakers? As far as I've seen them work, professional photographers spend nearly all of their time in Lightroom, it's pretty rare to see someone reach for Photoshop.

Do you shoot RAW? If you're not seeing them (AFAIK Lightroom uses them too) then you're either not shooting RAW, or you're probably not loading/postprocessing your camera's RAW files (CR2, ARW, etc.) directly -- perhaps you're converting them to DNGs first. The XMP files hold all the postprocessing information for those files, since Photoshop/Lightroom don't alter RAW files in-place. Note: Even if Photoshop/Lightroom…

I think I see the confusion. If my google-fu is correct, modern Lightroom doesn't store this data in XMP files by default, but instead internally in the catalog (with a settings toggle if you want to use files instead). Lightroom Classic does use XMP files out of the box. So if you use modern Lightroom and never need to take the metadata out of the Adobe suite you wouldn't really run into this.

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

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you shoot RAW? If you're not seeing them (AFAIK Lightroom uses them too) then you're either not shooting RAW, or you're probably not loading/postprocessing your camera's RAW files (CR2, ARW, etc.) directly -- perhaps you're converting them to DNGs first. The XMP files hold all the postprocessing information for those files, since Photoshop/Lightroom don't alter RAW files in-place. Note: Even if Photoshop/Lightroom…

I think I see the confusion. If my google-fu is correct, modern Lightroom doesn't store this data in XMP files by default, but instead internally in the catalog (with a settings toggle if you want to use files instead). Lightroom Classic does use XMP files out of the box. So if you use modern Lightroom and never need to take the metadata out of the Adobe suite you wouldn't really run into this.

> So if you use modern Lightroom and never need to take the metadata out of the Adobe suite you wouldn't really run into this.

You're very confused, catalog vs. XMP (or classic vs. modern) is entirely irrelevant. Heck, the catalog is objectively worse. You're switching software and want to still be able to use the post-processing you've applied to your photos. Which Affinity can't do. It's irrelevant where or how that information was stored.

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

#124

First time I've realised that affinity is made by the same people who did serif photoplus. How does affinity compare to lightroom?

For alternatives to Lightroom, check out AfterShot, Darktable, and RAWTherapee. I personally use and require RAWTherapee, as AfterShot won't work for the stuff that comes from my Sigma cameras and I like its power features of the former.

Thanks, I'll look into RAWTherapee and aftershot. I tried darktable before and the fact the default raw images don't look "out of camera" like they do in lightroom put me off (and the fact they developers claim it's "a feature not a bug")

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

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I see the confusion. If my google-fu is correct, modern Lightroom doesn't store this data in XMP files by default, but instead internally in the catalog (with a settings toggle if you want to use files instead). Lightroom Classic does use XMP files out of the box. So if you use modern Lightroom and never need to take the metadata out of the Adobe suite you wouldn't really run into this.

> So if you use modern Lightroom and never need to take the metadata out of the Adobe suite you wouldn't really run into this. You're very confused, catalog vs. XMP (or classic vs. modern) is entirely irrelevant. Heck, the catalog is objectively worse. You're switching software and want to still be able to use the post-processing you've applied to your photos. Which Affinity can't do. It's irrelevant where or how tha…

The only one who is confused here is you. You're trying to make it sound like this is somehow a big issue or a dealbreaker, when in fact pretty much no one who does actual work with these programs cares. You can hate on one application or another, I couldn't care less, but your whole argument is frankly ridiculous.

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

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if you use modern Lightroom and never need to take the metadata out of the Adobe suite you wouldn't really run into this. You're very confused, catalog vs. XMP (or classic vs. modern) is entirely irrelevant. Heck, the catalog is objectively worse. You're switching software and want to still be able to use the post-processing you've applied to your photos. Which Affinity can't do. It's irrelevant where or how tha…

The only one who is confused here is you. You're trying to make it sound like this is somehow a big issue or a dealbreaker, when in fact pretty much no one who does actual work with these programs cares. You can hate on one application or another, I couldn't care less, but your whole argument is frankly ridiculous.

> The only one who is confused here is you. You're trying to make it sound like this is somehow a big issue or a dealbreaker, when in fact pretty much no one who does actual work with these programs cares

Seriously? You don't feel it's ridiculous to say this when just above I posted links to people begging for this feature on the forums since at least 2017?

> You can hate on one application or another

I'm not hating on it - if I hated Affinity I wouldn't even be wasting my time to point it out. I love Affinity and want it to succeed, hence all this.

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

#127
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of single purchase, that people here ask for all the time, is that you pay once and get a product. Nothing that is happening changes that contract. If they go against their perpetual license promise, your existing one will still be valid "perpetually." That's the whole trade: monthly or annual subscriptions give you the flexibility to react to changes to the product. One time payments don't get change…

There is more to this argument. Adobe made themselves an industry standard with a perpetual license - pay once, own forever. Once they transitioned to a subscription model with a strict cancellation policy, it became the only option. Saying that designers could have just continued using Photoshop CS on a 2006 MacBook doesn't reflect the reality of hardware updates and the changes in the industry-wide design trends.

Which, I would argue, is why perpetual licenses are not all fun and games... They didn't revoke any of those licenses

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

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only one who is confused here is you. You're trying to make it sound like this is somehow a big issue or a dealbreaker, when in fact pretty much no one who does actual work with these programs cares. You can hate on one application or another, I couldn't care less, but your whole argument is frankly ridiculous.

> The only one who is confused here is you. You're trying to make it sound like this is somehow a big issue or a dealbreaker, when in fact pretty much no one who does actual work with these programs cares Seriously? You don't feel it's ridiculous to say this when just above I posted links to people begging for this feature on the forums since at least 2017? > You can hate on one application or another I'm not hating…

A loud minority requesting a feature doesn't mean it's a deal-breaker for other users. Clearly the company behind the product agrees, otherwise they would've implemented it.

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only one who is confused here is you. You're trying to make it sound like this is somehow a big issue or a dealbreaker, when in fact pretty much no one who does actual work with these programs cares Seriously? You don't feel it's ridiculous to say this when just above I posted links to people begging for this feature on the forums since at least 2017? > You can hate on one application or another I'm not hating…

A loud minority requesting a feature doesn't mean it's a deal-breaker for other users. Clearly the company behind the product agrees, otherwise they would've implemented it.

> A loud minority requesting a feature

First, thanks for acknowledging that it's not "just me". That kind of nonsensical hyperbole doesn't help the discussion.

Second: You have no idea if it's a minority of the market that actually wants this. The majority of users obviously use Adobe, that should tell you more than how many people are voicing their opinions in a forum. Not every user goes out of their way to re-request a feature that's already been requested years ago.

> doesn't mean it's a deal-breaker for other users.

Nobody said it's a deal breaker for "other users".

> Clearly the company behind the product agrees, otherwise they would've implemented it.

Because there's no other possible reason we could fathom as to why they wouldn't have implemented this already, right?

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

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only one who is confused here is you. You're trying to make it sound like this is somehow a big issue or a dealbreaker, when in fact pretty much no one who does actual work with these programs cares. You can hate on one application or another, I couldn't care less, but your whole argument is frankly ridiculous.

> The only one who is confused here is you. You're trying to make it sound like this is somehow a big issue or a dealbreaker, when in fact pretty much no one who does actual work with these programs cares Seriously? You don't feel it's ridiculous to say this when just above I posted links to people begging for this feature on the forums since at least 2017? > You can hate on one application or another I'm not hating…

I think some clarity that has been missing to your point is that this isn't an issue that Affinity can't edit raw photos, but more that if you switched from Lightroom to Affinity you're going to be missing all your edits for all your photos, which makes it a non-starter for anyone who doesn't want to or can't redit all of their RAW files.
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