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Affinity Studio now free

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Re: Affinity Studio now free

#721

Post by dangus »

ascorbic wrote: post #529
dangus wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have controlling stake in a company without working there day to day. Apple literally destroyed those companies. After Apple acquired NeXT there was one less operating system on the market. PA Semi now doesn’t have a product that is sold to the open market.

Apple bought NeXT and made it one of the most popular operating systems on the planet.

But if Apple didn’t buy them, Apple would have made their own operating system and NeXT might still be here today with their own operating system.

Like I said, a competitor was removed from the market.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#722

Post by dangus »

tracker1 wrote: post #555
dangus wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have controlling stake in a company without working there day to day. Apple literally destroyed those companies. After Apple acquired NeXT there was one less operating system on the market. PA Semi now doesn’t have a product that is sold to the open market.

What do you think MacOS since v10 is?

It’s the ashes or NeXT.

If Apple hadn’t bought them, they’d have to make their own OS or license something else, and NeXT would potentially still be here making their OS.

We have one less choice on the market because Apple acquired them.

See also: DarkSky. No more Android version!

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#723

Post by obliquely »

ctippett wrote: post #670

I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, but the application bundle on macOS hints at a pretty robust scripting API using Javascript. The functionality doesn't seem to be exposed from what I can see in the app. /Applications/Affinity.app/Contents/Resources/JSLib ├── application.js ├── artboardinterface.js ├── artboardproperties.js ├── baseboxinterface.js ├── brushfillinterface.js ├── buffer.js ├── collection.js ├── colo…

In the "first look video" Ash Hewson (Affinity CEO) says "“we’ve also got full scripting capability coming very, very soon” (at 21:33). What's said in the video is that this - and some other developments - will be part of "free" and not dependent on subscription. https://youtu.be/UP_TBaKODlw?si=lJkRZ6l8ekQRF43R&t=1293

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#724

Post by inanutshellus »

archerx wrote: post #716
inanutshellus wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning GIMP as a PS user is like changing operating systems. ... but it has always been worth it for any normal person, IMO. That said... PS's new AI tools might make GIMP no longer a viable option even for normies like me.

Learning GIMP is not worth it for anyone, people should use the much better and actually usable open source alternative called “Krita”.

Maybe other apps are better, but my guess is that they just work harder at copying PhotoShop's UX whilst GIMP actively worked to innovate.

Remember too that PhotoShop itself is unintuitive and hard to learn.

That unintuitiveness is a mark of honor for Photoshop ("ooo, it's so powerful you have to take _classes_ to learn it!") and a mark of shame for GIMP ("ooo, those twits didn't clone PhotoShop, the fools! It's so hard to learn!")

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#725

Post by carlosjobim »

maccard wrote: post #679
ezfe wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this EXACTLY what subscriptions fix, though? That you can stop paying if the product stops getting updates. Everyone wanted a one time license, you aren't allowed to complain when that one-time licensed product stops getting updates. Note: I own a license to V2 of the Serif suite.

> Everyone wanted a one time license, you aren't allowed to complain when that one-time licensed product stops getting updates. A one time license is sold on the promise of future updates perpetually to this version. If serif said “we’re not adding AI tools to v2, we’re going to go to v3 instead” I’d be fine with it. But instead they’re taking the updates they were providing to us anyway and packaging them up under a…

> A one time license is sold on the promise of future updates perpetually to this version.

No it is not and has never been. Of course not, and you must understand that.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#726

Post by opan »

npilk wrote: post #502

What a fascinating thread. I bought Affinity Photo and Designer V1 as one-time purchases a few years ago. I didn't upgrade to V2 when those came out. I have continued to occasionally use the V1 apps - I was just in Photo the other day. To me this is exactly why you would want to buy software licenses as one-time purchases - the company can't rug pull you for what you already bought. If I want, I can keep using the Af…

The benefits you describe are certainly real, but I think people should be free to complain and be disappointed as well.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#727

Post by chromehearts »

guelo wrote: post #430
jazzyjackson wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's really cool they can get AI money from the people who want to pay that, to give away the core for free. I can empathize with feeling their focus will be elsewhere (whatever increases revenue) but I figure AI isn't magic, they need to have the rest of the creative suite work well to, yaknow, synergize Edit: I'll add that I much prefer purchasing perpetual licenses for software that can work without a clou…

I've been using ByteDance's CapCut video editor that has this business model and I've been blown away by the top quality tool you get for free. It really doesn't feel scammy when they ask for money for fancy features that cost them extra GPU cycles to run the AI models.

CapCut is surely the greatest video editor out there. Such a shame it's not available on PC

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#728

Post by jerieljan »

ineedasername wrote: post #588
alt227 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a shame IMO. The Serif suite was great, and I used to try to get every designer I could to dump adobe and switch to serif. Now that it has switched to a freemium model trying to get you to subscribe to AI, I wont be using this or telling other people about it any more. Their priorities have changed. No longer are they trying to to beat adobe at their own game, they are just chasing AI money like everyone…

I am unclear on the problem: are the apps, previously free, significantly more limited than their prior free versions unless/until you also purchase a subscription for the CanvaAI portions? That aside, this isn’t a new thing for Canva, they aren’t chasing AI here, in this space GenAI is chasing the use case that Canva has been filling for a while, and incorporating genai as part of that is just, you know, “hey lots o…

I've been using it and so far yeah, a lot of the existing functionality and new functionality is effectively free and it generally only nags you when you use the clearly separate "Canva AI" panel.

Checking the settings also tells me that Segmentation (used in Object Selection) is provided but Depth Estimation (used in Portrait Blur and Select Sampled Depth tools), Colorization (used in Colorize filter, apparently intended to colorize B&W photos) and Super Resolution (used in Super Resolve filter) are all paywalled.

Honestly, I think that's fine. While I'd wish these are all available (and they could be if you looked hard enough for models that can do this) for a flat price (for parts that are not handled server-side), this is still imho mostly fair.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#729

Post by throwaway2037 »

derefr wrote: post #518
isodev wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. “AI” (i.e. large ML model) -driven features are in demand No, there’re not. People with influence or who have invested in the space say that these features are in demand/the next big thing. In reality, I haven’t seen a single user interview where the person actively wanted or was even excited about AI.

I didn't make any assertion about AI, only about "AI" (note the quotes in my GP comment) — i.e. the same old machine-learning-based features like super-resolution upscaling, patch-match, etc, that people have been adding to image-editing software for more than a decade now, but which now get branded as "AI" because people recognize them by this highly-saturated marketing term. Few artists want generative-AI diffusion…

I never heard of "patch-match" before this post. I found something on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PatchMatch

Is the same algorithm that allows AI/LLM-enabled apps to remove things from photos? Example: Remove the person who accidentally appeared on the left side of the photo.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#730

Post by turnsout »

dangus wrote: post #722
tracker1 wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think MacOS since v10 is?

It’s the ashes or NeXT. If Apple hadn’t bought them, they’d have to make their own OS or license something else, and NeXT would potentially still be here making their OS. We have one less choice on the market because Apple acquired them. See also: DarkSky. No more Android version!

Hate to break it to you, but NeXTSTEP failed in the marketplace. If Apple hadn't bought them, they'd still be gone.

But more importantly: who cares? There is no moral imperative to keep products alive. It's just stuff that people make. Products come and go, and founders owe you nothing.

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