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Affinity 2

affinity.serif.com

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Re: Affinity 2

#151

Post by michaelmrose »

hoistbypetard wrote: post #138
jevgeni wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cynically: why would one want a market there then?

If one could sell software there in such a way that only people in that market could buy it at that price, the answer is obvious... software has effectively zero marginal cost per copy. So if you could practically limit your market at a specified price in such a way that that offer doesn't spread to other markets, then every copy you sell in such places is still beneficial to you. There are less cynical answers to th…

Well keeping on the cynical train. Parts of the world experiencing desperate poverty often not so coincidentally experience substantial inequality with the folks needing a professional tool not being so different economically from better off areas. If 90% of your market has no problem paying why would you not charge full price?

Next how do you keep Jane in Seattle and Bob in Houston from buying the poor market version? You can't really restrict it by language or locale people use all sorts of languages/settings in different parts of the world. Desktop computers don't have location and people could trivially block the app from having access to location AND network data. You don't want your offline software failing for lack of phoning home.

An argument could be made that Jane and Bob could well pirate it too but friction matters. Lots of folks can figure out how to pirate but fewer of them will actually do it if they have to visit the skeevier corners of the net, risk malware, and feel like a criminal instead of clicking on a different locale on your website and feel like they are cleverly getting a good deal. One weird trick to make a substantial portion of your revenue go away.

I would say that compared to software like Adobe that costs $600 a year or $3000 over a 5 year horizon it's already very inclusive.

Re: Affinity 2

#152

Post by can16358p »

Last time I used Affinity Photo years ago it was well behind Photoshop especially in RAW editing.

Has it come to somewhere comparable? I really want to go Affinity instead of paying Adobe every month but I want something at least capable as Photoshop and Camera Raw. I heavily do astrophotography/night photo editing and Affinity was just not good enough. But it was years ago.

Any recommendations from anyone who used both recently?

Re: Affinity 2

#153

Post by regular »

laurieg wrote: post #66

I'd love to switch to Affinity from Adobe Illustrator, but there's one feature I just can't live without: In illustrator you can make a dashed line that nicely lines up with the corners of a square (putting one dash in each corner). Nothing else seems to handle this case. [1] I use Illustrator to make stitching patterns and lining up the corners in this way is absolutely essential, otherwise the stitches come out loo…

But Illustrator is ruined by a glaring omission that people have been complaining about for years (if not decades): There's no way to select only the objects that are totally within the selection marquee. Every other vector art application offers this critical selection mode (Affinity Designer defaults to it, I think).

I consider Illustrator unusable as a result. It's also essentially abandonware.

Re: Affinity 2

#154

Post by michaelmrose »

virtualritz wrote: post #123
t0bia_s wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a chance if you need it for professional editing. No clone tools, no camera profiles, probably lack of lens correction profiles as well. UI is prehistoric. RawTherapee is little bit less nerdy than darktable but still not suitable for serious photography work.

TLDR; lies. Kindly substantiate your claims. DT has a clone tool. It's part of the retouch tool.[1] Which is very powerful and allows way more than just cloning. It is also non-destructive, like anything in DT. DT has camera profiles, new cameras get added regularly. You can also create them yourself if you have access to a color checker using a built-in tool.[2] DT has tons of lens correction profiles. Basically any…

Your post is full of great information but didn't need the heading. Odds are really good that the poster you are replying to isn't actually lying. Instead they just aren't as familiar with DT as you are. You could have imparted the same information beginning with an opening that educated the user instead of insisting they were lying and a demand for proof.

Firstly calling someone a liar basically shuts down all discussion in most cases and secondly after you have provided the proof you needn't demand it of them. You can instead wait for them to absorb the data you have provided.

Example:

> Darktable in fact has the features you mentioned and more. I enjoy using it for professional work myself so let me tell you a little bit about the features that make it competitive.

This would refute the position without directly engaging in negativity which is more likely to be read especially by poster but I think we are all a bit tired of people calling each other liars on the internet at this point.

Re: Affinity 2

#155

Post by regular »

CharlesW wrote: post #128
eye_street wrote: post #121

After using Adobe stuff for many years, my stubbornness, with regards to subscriptions and cloud things, led me to buy the various bits of desktop Affinity software. I think they were only about £30 a piece, which isn't bad, but you really aren't buying Photoshop or Illustrator. Designer is a bit of a kludge, and V1 did seem like a work-in-progress. I was hoping a knife tool would be added before we got to V2. There…

Illustrator is the undefeated champ, and I've loved it deeply since 1987. You're right that nothing can replace it at the high-end. For that audience, a $20/month subscription for Illustrator or an all-apps subscription is a given. Still, this Affinity upgrade is an insta-upgrade for me. On a practical level, I'm lucky enough to be able to "vote with my dollars" to support small developers and non-subscription softwa…

Pfff. Illustrator was and is roundly defeated by Corel Draw. Unfortunately the attempt at a Mac version of Draw was a hideously defective failure.

Before that, I'm confident that Aldus Freehand kicked Illustrator's ass.

Re: Affinity 2

#156

Post by regular »

t0bia_s wrote: post #98
datalopers wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

darktable

Not a chance if you need it for professional editing. No clone tools, no camera profiles, probably lack of lens correction profiles as well. UI is prehistoric. RawTherapee is little bit less nerdy than darktable but still not suitable for serious photography work.

No post body was provided.

Re: Affinity 2

#157

Post by regular »

wdb wrote: post #80
sleepless wrote: post #56

So does version 2 of Affinity Photo add support for AVIF? Can't find it listed on https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/full-feature-list/ (rather hard to search, since sections have to be uncollapsed one by one). Strange price model where existing customers do not get an upgrade discount.

Problem is that it's difficult to give discounts in the different App Stores so they give the discount to everyone

App stores? You can buy the apps directly.

Re: Affinity 2

#158

Post by palotasb »

virtualritz wrote: post #123
t0bia_s wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a chance if you need it for professional editing. No clone tools, no camera profiles, probably lack of lens correction profiles as well. UI is prehistoric. RawTherapee is little bit less nerdy than darktable but still not suitable for serious photography work.

TLDR; lies. Kindly substantiate your claims. DT has a clone tool. It's part of the retouch tool.[1] Which is very powerful and allows way more than just cloning. It is also non-destructive, like anything in DT. DT has camera profiles, new cameras get added regularly. You can also create them yourself if you have access to a color checker using a built-in tool.[2] DT has tons of lens correction profiles. Basically any…

I'll substantiate regarding UI: On a Mac it has no items in the menu bar. The default cursor is changed to a low-resolution raster image instead of the default OS cursor. The image metadata pop-ups keep appearing even though darktable is in the background and I'm typing in a textbox in my browser. Something's really off with the UI toolkit they rely on.

I agree with the GP that the UI makes it practically unusable. Prehistoric, and I'd be surprised if this can be used by anyone as-is. I'd take a look at the features, but while it's importing my catalog I can't open any subfolders to look at images already imported. Once I click open my top-level Pictures folder, it closes it again after half a second.

Re: Affinity 2

#159

Post by regular »

detritus wrote: post #32
keyle wrote: post #5

I migrated to Affinity after Adobe put the last nail in the coffin for me. I have to admit that even with some experience, Affinity doesn't get close to Photoshop in terms of shortcuts and ease of use ("getting in the flow"). Sometimes I even resort to using photopea web, rather than open affinity. That said, I really appreciate their pricing model and hope they stick to their guns.

Yeah, totally this - I recently cropped my Adobe CC suite down to just Illy, which i need , and bought Affinity's wares to replace, but it's no contest. Aside from literal decades of muscle memory, there's just too many speedbumps in the way of my normal workflow. So, I've dug out my copy of Photoshop CS2 so I can do all my cleaning up and processing in there. Once I've found out what the difference between Affinity…

I want to support independent, non-rental-scam offerings as well. But Serif's attitude toward fixing bugs in its suite has been pretty bad. And in their presentation of "what's new," they seem to have ignored repeated requests for features that are standard and expected in this type of software.

They're not even complicated requests; stuff like non-printing layers and the ability to resize the selection marquee. I mean... WTF?

Re: Affinity 2

#160

Post by regular »

vladstudio wrote: post #11

I've been Photoshop user since, hmm, 2000? Gave up couple of years ago, and spent some time comparing Affinity Designer and Pixelmator Pro. For me personally, Pixelmator won, and it's been my editor of choice: https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/

I bought Pixelmator also, but gave up on it because of incredibly clumsy and baffling UI decisions.
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