Anyone using Affinity Photo?

[zaxxon]

I've been using Affinity Photo for almost a year. I'm not a heavy user, but it's been stable and does what I want with 32 bit stuff. For the price it's a fine value, I understand if PS is a long term tool in your work, yeah, why change?  But it is nice to see Seriff succeed at this.  I used their web page builder and while it probably wasn't near pro-level:it was inexpensive, it worked, was stable, and the customer support was as good as any I have ever experienced.

[sboerner]

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, PS and I go way back. I think my main issue at this point is the interface. As with all CC apps it's way too cluttered and modal – each tool steals the focus and keeps it till you're finished with it. Leads to a lot of repetitive mousing and clicking, but you can avoid some of this by creating scripts and actions.

I'll give Adobe credit in that from time to time they actually remove tools and rebuild existing ones, even at the risk of irritating long-term users. But some things like the hue/saturation tool haven't changed in almost 30 years, and often new features just get stuck on. The brilliant thing about Lightroom is that Adobe let that team reimagine and build a cohesive, mostly non-modal interface from the ground up.

Appreciate all the comments here.

[WAS]

I never said it was getting hate? You seemed to write the entire article without really comprehending what I stated.

I was just curious for an answer to this

I'd say Affinity Photo has a long way to go before being anything Photoshop level.

I was hoping you would list of all the things that are missing in your opinion that would warrant it being "a long way" behind Photoshop. It's possible some of these things are being developed or possibly already implemented but used in a different way.

A number of long time Photoshop users have moved over so it's enough for some already, I was hoping to find out what else is missing that would keep someone paying a subscription fee as I must assume Photoshop does a number of things Affinity can't to justify the ongoing continued payments?

I believe I already did. Affinity Photo is geared towards Photographers, not really artists. With that in mind, if you explore the software, a lot of it is presets of what PS can do with customization in each of the steps for that preset in AP. It's artistic abilities with brushes has a ways to go. Photoshop while having the name "Photoshop" is actually just a pixel-based editor. AP is actually geared towards photography. There's also the issue that this is an photography/art program, trying to advertise it's ability to be on the go, with laptops and tablets, yet it's desktop variant is RAM dependent and unstable.

Like was mentioned about 2k images in photoshop, this is the issue that's actually talked about and I have experienced with AP. High resolution images and lots of layers and artistic work cause AP to crash with it's RAM management. In PS you can be working on 4-8k plus images with no problem so long as you provide yourself the scratch, all while being on a 4GB laptop.

When it comes down to it, we're experience a reversal in creativity in applications. Whether it's Terragen or otherwise, instead of a need for full control and customization, people want everything to be streamlined and easy. This is even in the case in school. Web Devlopment is a JOKE of a course now compared to the early 2000s. You literally don't learn HTML anymore... you learn tools that produce it largely, and refer to W3C. It's so bad.

We see this same mindset entering the commercial area with the absolute over-saturation of these fields by graduates as well. Everything is being streamlined and made easy. One-click alternatives to doing it yourself.

[sboerner]

So while I've been using PS over the past few days I've tried to pay closer attention to how I use the interface and am realizing how much I've been taking for granted. Also how some of my comments here have been unfair. A properly customized PS workspace can be nearly non-modal. And I've realized how when I'm working – because of long experience but also because of the interface – the application itself nearly disappears. That's good design.

In PS you can be working on 4-8k plus images with no problem so long as you provide yourself the scratch, all while being on a 4GB laptop.

I sometimes work with 8k layered 32-bit images. PS sometimes pauses to catch its breath but it never stops or crashes. So this is absolutely correct, Was, along with many other of your observations. Despite its flaws (and they do exist), PS is still in a class by itself.

But Affinity Photo intrigues me and the clean 32-bit toolset is a major attraction. I'll probably license it and use it in tandem with PS, we'll see what happens.

Still have these on my bookshelf. Remember printed software manuals? These date from 1995. I must have "borrowed" them from work when Photoshop was introduced to our office. Glancing through them now, it's impressive to see how mature and full-featured the application was by the time Adobe acquired it and made it widely available.

[WAS]

So while I've been using PS over the past few days I've tried to pay closer attention to how I use the interface and am realizing how much I've been taking for granted. Also how some of my comments here have been unfair. A properly customized PS workspace can be nearly non-modal. And I've realized how when I'm working – because of long experience but also because of the interface – the application itself nearly disappears. That's good design.

In PS you can be working on 4-8k plus images with no problem so long as you provide yourself the scratch, all while being on a 4GB laptop.

I sometimes work with 8k layered 32-bit images. PS sometimes pauses to catch its breath but it never stops or crashes. So this is absolutely correct, Was, along with many other of your observations. Despite its flaws (and they do exist), PS is still in a class by itself.

But Affinity Photo intrigues me and the clean 32-bit toolset is a major attraction. I'll probably license it and use it in tandem with PS, we'll see what happens.

Still have these on my bookshelf. Remember printed software manuals? These date from 1995. I must have "borrowed" them from work when Photoshop was introduced to our office. Glancing through them now, it's impressive to see how mature and full-featured the application was by the time Adobe acquired it and made it widely available.

I'll be honest here, I do have a desire to pickup AP just for it's ease of use. While I have a seriously large collection of Photoshop Actions I have created myself to do a lot of the "presets" I need, there is a level of direct attention to photography in AP that just isn't there in PS; where they assume you'll be doing it from the ground up (enter the plethora of Photoshop plugins and extensions; even by Adobe themselves [Lightroom]). 32-bit native support is nice, but isn't something entirely missing from PS as you can get plugins to handle it. This is something they need to take seriously though for the future of the software, and the 32bit support topic is still open 8 years later, so it is likely to be added sometime... in the future. From what I understand from PS itself, and the plugins to provide support for it, PS would need to rewrite their image processing core. Mind you, this is the system they have been using since PS 6.0... They've only added to it.

There is just a lot that I also do in PS that AP seems to be a bit behind in, such as actual artistic elements like brushing. I also am not "one" with their update routines. I like concise updates like TG and Adobe there they come with serious improvement, or cover more than just a few bug fixes and one or two minimal features added. Bandwidth is still a issue with a lot of people. I use mobile networks, and used to be limited to 35GB high speed internet. I've since been able to procure a deal with Metro to allow actual umetered bandwidth. (I pay 10 extra bucks and can literally use 300+gb/mo) but the speed is still an issue waiting on downloads.

[sboerner]

OK, here are a couple of things.

Affinity's nondestructive lens blur filter works in 32-bit but includes few options. You can apply a depth pass as a mask but you cannot control the focus point. Also, prepping the pass is hit-or-miss, for example there is no way to automatically equalize it to bring the densities into a workable range.

In comparison, Photoshop's lens blur is destructive (make a duplicate layer first) and works only in 8- or 16-bit. But you can use the HDR Toning panel to equalize the depth pass before converting it. The depth pass can be inverted in the lens blur panel, and you can easily specify the focus depth.

More seriously, Affinity has color samplers but they display values only in the 0-255 range, even for 32-bit images. Which is useless. I found several requests to fix this in the Affinity forum, some going back a year or two, but no satisfactory responses. This could be a show stopper.

Still playing . . .

[WAS]

OK, here are a couple of things.

Affinity's nondestructive lens blur filter works in 32-bit but includes few options. You can apply a depth pass as a mask but you cannot control the focus point. Also, prepping the pass is hit-or-miss, for example there is no way to automatically equalize it to bring the densities into a workable range.

In comparison, Photoshop's lens blur is destructive (make a duplicate layer first) and works only in 8- or 16-bit. But you can use the HDR Toning panel to equalize the depth pass before converting it. The depth pass can be inverted in the lens blur panel, and you can easily specify the focus depth.

More seriously, Affinity has color samplers but they display values only in the 0-255 range, even for 32-bit images. Which is useless. I found several requests to fix this in the Affinity forum, some going back a year or two, but no satisfactory responses. This could be a show stopper.

Still playing . . .

This is where you see new industry workflows being neglected in Photoshop. While this is pretty popular and needed today with the advent of new 3D techniques, Adobe Photoshop hasn't been too interested in it for Photoshop. Lens Blurring a 32bpc was just something you didn't, and shouldn't need to do in the past. You'd save resources and convert the image. And PS being a Pixel-Level Graphic Processor, it just doesn't make sense when you think about the design factors of the software.

You have to remember, Adobe itself is modular for the end-user needs. For example, Adobe is working on Dimensions with Allegorithmic, and other software to cover these holes, under their own price tags.