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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

#61

Post by nikkwong »

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.

It also has no curvature tool, which is a huge deal breaker for many vector artists. I have been making a stink about this online across many platforms for years but the team has shown no intention to adopt it.

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

#62

Post by rubslopes »

rchaud wrote: post #53

I bought the Affinity suite during 2020 when I was exploring some hobbyist graphic design stuff. I still use it frequently. I wonder what the goal is for making it free. Now that they're owned by Canva, are they slowly opening the door toward a freemium SaaS business model?

Occam' razor: Adobe users are generally very rooted in the Adobe ecosystem. Changing is costly. A generous trial period might make some of them try Affinity.

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

#63

Post by azinman2 »

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.

Neither does Adobe

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

#65

Post by ezfe »

Arn_Thor wrote: post #35

This has heightened my concerns, not allayed them. They have said perpetual licenses will always be an option but 1) I don’t trust corporate promises and 2) they could easily just price that out of reach to push people onto a subscription model. A six-month trial is a not a “try us” timeline, it is “make us indispensable” timeline. That’s a big up front loss of revenue for them which I only see them making back if th…

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 changes so no need to react.

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

#66

Post by omnimus »

lukasgraf wrote: post #56
data-ottawa wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affinity doesn’t have a comparable program to Lightroom. Affinity Photo does have a development mode, but it’s single file focused and more akin to Photoshop’s raw import tool than an app like Lightroom or Bridge. I think RAW support is much lower than Adobe supports as well, at least with Fuji I’ve had issues and only a few programs handle Fuji compressed RAW. One of Affinity’s strengths is a single compatible file…

The big issue with Affinity Photo is that it doesn't support non-destructive editing / a non-linear workflow like Lightroom does. It's not exactly a fair comparison, since AP directly competes with Photoshop, not Lightroom, but that was what made it an immediate non-starter for me when it comes to photography. Affinity Photo starts you in a "Develop Persona" when you open a RAW file, and allows you to develop your RA…

I think you are mixing cataloging software with photo editing one. Photoshop/Photo only editing. DigiKam mostly catalogue. Lightroom is pretty good at both. I know few pro photographers who switched to Capture One because of better editing capabilities an the software apparently got a lot better but they already introduced subscription model and while you can still buy lifetime - who knows how long it will be there.

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

#67

Post by Etheryte »

Extremely unfortunate that the article is littered with countless links, but none of them lead to the actual product page. Sure, I can guess what it is or look it up on search, but if you do a marketing stint, surely you'd want to link to the actual thing you're talking about.

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

#68

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

RobotToaster wrote: post #4

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.

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

#69

Post by Saris »

I'm a little confused about Affinity Photo, the name implies it's supposed to be an equivalent to Lightroom, but the program functions more like Photoshop.

Is there a file browser with tagging, colors, flags, etc.. Or am I expected to manually open every RAW file as I go and use something else to manage them?

I did some test edits to a RAW file, closed it, and now looking at it again the history is blank and it seems to have reverted the changes. It looks like I have to destructively save the changes to the RAW file directly?

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

#70

Post by anigbrowl »

Etheryte wrote: post #67

Extremely unfortunate that the article is littered with countless links, but none of them lead to the actual product page. Sure, I can guess what it is or look it up on search, but if you do a marketing stint, surely you'd want to link to the actual thing you're talking about.

Incorrect; the very first link ('the offer') takes you to Affinity's website. This choice makes sense since the offer applies to all 3 of their products, which you can investigate further from the top menu. I don't see how it could be easier.
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