Just a week after I paid for the suite! But it's been useful for my (very much non-artist) purposes so far, though like all photo editing software I've ever touched, it has a TON of features and is pretty overwhelming.
Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months
91–100 of 149 posts
Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I am, intentionally so ;-) Because this mix is where Lightroom excels, and competing products just fall short.
As an enthusiast or professional photographer you really need both, preferrably in the same application, or at least in tightly integrated applications.
I started with Lightroom 1 beta3, and while it was dog slow, the speedup in workflow to cull and edit thousands of photos after a shoot was revolutionary at the time. In the beginning it only supported global edits, which was enough anyway for 95% of photos. But you could sync and apply these edits in bulk to other photos, and get through hundreds of them quickly.
Capture One certainly is the closest. But switching costs are huge. My catalog contains tens of thousands of images, professionals will have hundreds of thousands. If I'm to switch, I need to be certain that every single Lightroom edit is, in principle, supported too, and will be converted faithfully on import.
And their pricing is weird. In the beginning they required you to pick a RAW edition - you could have support for Canon, or Nikon, but not both. That's gone now, and as you say, I think it has come a long way. But their perpetual license now is nowhere competitive in price with the Adobe Photography Plan ($9.99/mo, infamous "Annual paid monthly", for LR+PS). The $300 for Capture One is for one major version, for the price of 2.5 years of Photoshop and Lightroom.
Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months
#93I have been looking for Affinity Photo for a while - but can someone recommend a good alternative to lightroom?
Perhaps something that integrate with Affinity reasonable well?
For mac. Plus points for linux support. Even more plus points if it can easily share the library between different devices.
Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months
#94I have been looking for Affinity Photo for a while - but can someone recommend a good alternative to lightroom? Perhaps something that integrate with Affinity reasonable well? For mac. Plus points for linux support. Even more plus points if it can easily share the library between different devices.
I've moved to Capture One years ago and have been extremely happy with it.
Even better that RAW processing for my Fuji cameras is better on C1 than Lightroom.
Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months
#95Adobe 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 something. I'm just pointing out the reality users face is very different from the meme that goes around on HN. Defending Affinity all day long won't solve the problems users face.)
Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months
#96I'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…
Why do you think the name implies it's similar to Lightroom instead of Photoshop? I'd expect a product named Affinity Light to be similar to Lightroom.
Not sure to be honest, I guess they talk about it as a photo editing suite, I mean their tagline is "The photo editor you’ve been dreaming of" which makes me think of it as an alternative to Lightroom.
I wouldn't call photoshop much of a photo editor as it was never very good at it either with the RAW workflow, more of a generalized drawing/editing tool I guess?
Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months
#97This 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…
Your concerns for what? They're not going to send people to your house to uninstall the software.
To play along, activation is still a potential issue. Affinity v1 suite had offline activation so one can always activate on any new system/install, while v2 (for its non-volume license at least), which since brought along an optional subscription model, switched to online activation.
Looking at Adobe multiple versions have phased out online activation support over the years, with a not uncommon complaint being trouble installing and using purchases subsequently. As with anything tied to server checks one has to trust it will either continue working or workarounds be provided.
IIRC Clip Studio Paint switched their activation method in the last few years as well.
Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months
#98This 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 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.
Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months
#99Didnt know about this, and I have started to loathe Adobe due to their licensing model.
I will check Photo out!
Re: Affinity's Adobe-rivaling creative suite is now free for six months
#100Extremely 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.
Yeah no, the first link takes me to a random press release on their corporate website. Unless I already know that this corporate press release site is also the site where the product info is, I won't know to look for it — many modern products have the corporate entity and the actual product separate. It would literally be easier to use feeling lucky on Google. It's deeply wishful thinking that anyone would go and explore the website for your corporate entity just because you're trying to sell something.