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Affinity Suite... Something big is Coming?


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I have been an Affinity user for years now, all three apps, and I really like them. The V1 apps were certainly missing some standard features but I didn't even notice most of the time. Publisher needed the most work, but even there I started using it as a beta and never needed inDesign again. It had the basics I used. I got the update today and it's pretty awesome but not in the "something big" marketing way that was promoted. All the apps are MUCH more useful and they filled in many if not most of the gaps I wanted filled. The price was a shock... in a good way. It was less than ½ what I expected to pay. Publisher on iPad is lifesaver for me as I need to travel light often so now all my design work is possible on the iPad. Sadly some of the desktop features are not on the iPad Publisher version and Apple has a terrible system to handle fonts, it's a nightmare that Serif will have to pressure them to change. Photo I have used for textures in C4D with no problems and found it easy to work on post for 3D images. Expectations for this update were BIZARRE. Serif was pretty clear they aren't doing video apps and that while they want to do a DAM they hadn't really started one, though that could have been the big surprise, but it wasn't.  I don't expect or want clones of Adobe products and prefer to wait and see for some features like AI stuff until they are proven useful, so I'm very happy with this and there will be no more paid updates until V3 which might be years and a few hundred improvements away. Like every software out there, if it handles your needs and is within your budget - it's a great software. If not, there are other places to go. 

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16 hours ago, Lonchaney said:

Filters>Distort>Perspective?

 

That's... interesting. Last time I searched for it I either didn't find anything or I found something with it that makes it useless for what I needed it. All I can remember from last time I tried is that the transform tools were not sufficient for me.

Visit my Portfolio on Artstation.com & Follow me on Instagram

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On 11/9/2022 at 3:35 PM, Jeff H1 said:

 

It's a bit more cumbersome than AE.   it will also be a 1.0 when it finally goes gold.   Just like Calvary, which was dubbed as an AE killer, it will take time for adoption after the bugs get ironed out and used in production outside of beta.    Hopefully LA won't go the same route as MF with Calvary and put it behind a subscription paywall which killed Calvary's momentum, but who knows....

 

Sorry to derail this thread a bit, but I don't see Autograph being comparable to Cavalry. With all due respect to the Cavalry devs, it's a product seemingly aimed at hobbyists looking to do something isolated and cool with its procedural toolset, to post on social media.

 

It is fundamentally not built to handle any sort of complexity in a project. It has a miserable caching system (if you could even call it that), and the whole app will choke with even a handful of high res images on the timeline (by "handful", I literally mean less than 5). I don't believe the current version even supports video footage.

 

What makes things even worse is that the app is unbelievably riddled with bugs from top to bottom. They claim a 1.0+ plus release, but honestly, I have used alpha software with fewer bugs and inconsistencies than Cavalry. I have lost an inordinate amount of time to bugs and reporting bugs in that app, and I ran out of patience with it a while back.

 

The devs seem keen on pushing more big title features than knuckling down on the consistency and robustness of the app, which is a shame. I desperately wanted Cavalry to be a viable alternative to Ae, but unless they revamp their QC process, Adobe has absolutely nothing to worry about from Cavalry.

 

What irritated me more is in their latest release, they have locked the Shortcut Manager behind a paywall - you need the Pro version to customise shortcuts. When I asked the question on their Discord about this decision, a dev stated that they feel that anyone who wishes to use Cavalry enough to want to customise it, will see the value of their pro license over the free version. This would normally be a good approach, but if they think that I am paying to beta test their incredibly buggy app, they are dead wrong.

 

Back on point - Autograph is foundationally built to handle video and high res images, including OpenEXR. I cannot imagine that their app, even at 1.0 will be anywhere nearly as broken as Cavalry, so I'm cautiously optimistic about it.

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Affinity Photo:
Sadly still not given the ability to copy/paste or manipulate alpha channels directly. Uninstalled trial. Back to Photoshop for me. Incredibly frustrating. This is such a good application in so many respects, but is missing a few critical features.

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image.png.1bd2b2433c35cf2b7856d0222ce53176.png

 

Happy to see they added features towards book publishing.
That's exactly what I asked them for 2 years ago in my search for a low-cost, good-featured app. I also asked them if there were any other book-specific features like an alternating page offset for preventing content sinking in the middle of the book (happens when the book is thick in content), automatic word indexing etc... They responded honestly that their app was magazine-oriented but would promote my notes to the development team.

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Magazine racks are going the way of the dodo. I'm not sure how many new magazines are coming out, but I keep hearing of magazines closing. Meanwhile, thousands of people are uploading their own books to be printed on Amazon Createspace / Kindle - way more I'm guessing than the number of new monthly magazines coming out.

 

Also if someone is working for a magazine publisher I'm assuming the publisher can afford InDesign and claim it back on tax. Whereas self publishers should find the Affinity app and price very attractive. 

 

Nice they added this feature anyway, I'll give the bundle a try soon.

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For the non-PS user (too expensive for my needs so I would just get Paint Shop Pro) ,  I find the $41 USD price for Photo V2 pretty attractive and equivalent to the 2023 upgrade price for PSP (whose updates are more gimmicky than useful IMHO).   
 

So for the sub $100 photo editing tools out there (eg PSP, Gimp, etc) where would you rate Affinity?   
 

Dave

Sorry...but I simply do not have enough faith to be an atheist.

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On 11/11/2022 at 5:21 PM, Mike A said:

Affinity Photo:
Sadly still not given the ability to copy/paste or manipulate alpha channels directly. Uninstalled trial. Back to Photoshop for me. Incredibly frustrating. This is such a good application in so many respects, but is missing a few critical features.

I think masking and alphas should be their prio number 1 for years. It is the core of image editing and was always a bit cumbersome in Affinity. It makes it basically unusable for a lot of things when alpha channels is blocked from copy and paste and direct editing.

Edited by zeden (see edit history)
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On 11/12/2022 at 1:44 PM, BoganTW said:

 

Magazine racks are going the way of the dodo. I'm not sure how many new magazines are coming out, but I keep hearing of magazines closing. Meanwhile, thousands of people are uploading their own books to be printed on Amazon Createspace / Kindle - way more I'm guessing than the number of new monthly magazines coming out.

 

Also if someone is working for a magazine publisher I'm assuming the publisher can afford InDesign and claim it back on tax. Whereas self publishers should find the Affinity app and price very attractive. 

 

Nice they added this feature anyway, I'll give the bundle a try soon.

Most of the magazines I work for cannot afford Adobe for the office anymore and to be honest, many of them were cheap before the pricing structures changed and one has been using a 15 year old version of Quark Xpress!  (It's a nightmare.) They still make some money and that is mostly because they are highly specialized. One is distributed at classical concerts. opera and ballets so it's a captive audience waiting for a show to start another is a gay magazine telling of all the stuff going on in that community in my province and it's left out everywhere for tourists. So magazine still are useful, but I think for niche markets. The book feature in Publisher V2 might get some of my clients to switch to Affinity. 

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