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 probably wouldn't have switched, but at this point they're just squeezing small creators like myself.
And tbh now that I'm proficient with the Affinity UX, I doubt I'd switch back. It's really good!
And in some ways, Affinity's tools can even be superior (performance, ui smoothness, and even how vector art works). If you're living with a pirated version of CS5 or 6, it's worth coming in from the cold and trying Affinity.
> 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.)
I'm a hobbyist photographer and my dad's a professional. This is the first time I've ever heard of these files, so what do people use them for and why are they deal-breakers? As far as I've seen them work, professional photographers spend nearly all of their time in Lightroom, it's pretty rare to see someone reach for Photoshop.
Do you shoot RAW? If you're not seeing them (AFAIK Lightroom uses them too) then you're either not shooting RAW, or you're probably not loading/postprocessing your camera's RAW files (CR2, ARW, etc.) directly -- perhaps you're converting them to DNGs first. The XMP files hold all the postprocessing information for those files, since Photoshop/Lightroom don't alter RAW files in-place.
Note: Even if Photoshop/Lightroom did embed these in the RAW files, the problem of actually loading the embedded information would still be there for Affinity. So the point here isn't the file separation; the point is Affinity doesn't understand the postprocessing Photoshop has already done on the photo.
I think I see the confusion. If my google-fu is correct, modern Lightroom doesn't store this data in XMP files by default, but instead internally in the catalog (with a settings toggle if you want to use files instead). Lightroom Classic does use XMP files out of the box. So if you use modern Lightroom and never need to take the metadata out of the Adobe suite you wouldn't really run into this.
> So if you use modern Lightroom and never need to take the metadata out of the Adobe suite you wouldn't really run into this.
You're very confused, catalog vs. XMP (or classic vs. modern) is entirely irrelevant. Heck, the catalog is objectively worse. You're switching software and want to still be able to use the post-processing you've applied to your photos. Which Affinity can't do. It's irrelevant where or how that information was stored.
The only one who is confused here is you. You're trying to make it sound like this is somehow a big issue or a dealbreaker, when in fact pretty much no one who does actual work with these programs cares. You can hate on one application or another, I couldn't care less, but your whole argument is frankly ridiculous.
> The only one who is confused here is you. You're trying to make it sound like this is somehow a big issue or a dealbreaker, when in fact pretty much no one who does actual work with these programs cares
Seriously? You don't feel it's ridiculous to say this when just above I posted links to people begging for this feature on the forums since at least 2017?
> You can hate on one application or another
I'm not hating on it - if I hated Affinity I wouldn't even be wasting my time to point it out. I love Affinity and want it to succeed, hence all this.
A loud minority requesting a feature doesn't mean it's a deal-breaker for other users. Clearly the company behind the product agrees, otherwise they would've implemented it.
First, thanks for acknowledging that it's not "just me". That kind of nonsensical hyperbole doesn't help the discussion.
Second: You have no idea if it's a minority of the market that actually wants this. The majority of users obviously use Adobe, that should tell you more than how many people are voicing their opinions in a forum. Not every user goes out of their way to re-request a feature that's already been requested years ago.
> doesn't mean it's a deal-breaker for other users.
Nobody said it's a deal breaker for "other users".
> Clearly the company behind the product agrees, otherwise they would've implemented it.
Because there's no other possible reason we could fathom as to why they wouldn't have implemented this already, right?
This is such a silly stance to take. Just because something is important or painful for you doesn't make it universal, no matter which way you try to frame it. Just like you won't see the users who don't rerequest a feature, you won't see all the users who don't even remotely care about it.
> Just because something is important or painful for you doesn't make it universal,
Again: nobody said it was "universal", but again: it's not about me, either. It's ridiculous that you're still insisting it's just me when you literally see other people complaining about it. You clearly aren't interested in having a reasonable conversation so there's no point in continuing to engage.
I think some clarity that has been missing to your point is that this isn't an issue that Affinity can't edit raw photos, but more that if you switched from Lightroom to Affinity you're going to be missing all your edits for all your photos, which makes it a non-starter for anyone who doesn't want to or can't redit all of their RAW files.
You can google it, but it's putting EXIF data modifications and additions into an external XML file. It's a way to avoid modifying the master file directly.
I actually disagree on both whether this is truly vendor lock-in and on whether this is fair to bring up, but honestly, it wouldn't change anything regardless. The reality is that solving people's problems is what wins you customers, not pleading for fairness. As unfair as it might be, that's the reality of the situation. If we want Adobe's hold on the market to be released, we (and they) need to deal with the reality of the situation.
Is Adobe only 10x more expensive? Adobe is subscription-only so it seems to be only 10x for the first 5 years and then it’s indefinitely more expensive.
Adobe’s customer support is also extremely poor. They ask you for detailed OS info when not only does Creative Cloud scrape that but so does their ad network.
I use Designer almost daily and I’m stunned by how good it is. I have zero interest in ever going back to Illustrator. I’m sure there’s pro requirements that only Illustrator has but I’ve not encountered them. For the price it’s simply amazing.
In some areas affinity photo exeed PS. It's native support for EXRs is incredible. In PS, EXRs are opened once, following which they are vanilla PS files. In AP, the ability to access the full dynamic range of an EXR is preserved to a degree that PS cannot match.
It is also possible to stack and combine masks, an idea which is pure science fiction for a PS user. color selection masks can also update if the colors of the rgb component is changed.
More than a decade ago, Quarxpress got killed by Adobe InDesign because Quark treated their users like garbage and overpriced their software. Adobe should have learned that lesson.
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.
I am in same place. I keep Mac laptop for graphics because of this.
I know the win version now works pretty well on linux with wine. But the process to set this up is not yet automated (like 20min) and is being worked on. So i was too lazy to properly try it.
> I know the win version now works pretty well on linux with wine. But the process to set this up is not yet automated (like 20min) and is being worked on
Where did you get the information about it being worked on?
>
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.
Lack of scripting automation and a blend tool are my only real disappointments with the product. These aren't enough to make me switch back to Adobe mind you, but they're relatively glaring omissions I think.
Agreed people talk about features Affinity dont have but there are also many things that Adobe doesnt have or does so much worse.
Hige part of Adobe dominance (with pros especially) is the inertia to switch because of the workflows baked into muscle memory. Often the wierd quirks and inconsistencies became the standard. And adobe has many because all three softwares were developed by different companies.
I did not know about Affinity. I just signed up and was downloading files in less than a minute. In two minutes I was sitting in front of Photo 2, ready to work.
I just wish the Affinity apps weren’t so slow. Ever action lags and waits for the app to catch up, not to mention how long it takes for the app to start up.
Not that I'm aware of. I hope that their new relationship with Canva gives them the resources to add AI for some features. that might be a 3.0 version.
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 they go for a higher-pressure pricing model.
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.
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.
The concern is here is clearly not the revocation of licenses.
The cost of not just learning but becoming a professional user of a specific set of tools is very high. Then later as time goes by being forced to either abandon these tools or to accept a different pricing model is - to many people - unfair and unethical.
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.
I know some people who bought the last time they had a 50% off sale recently.
$100 or so for the full suite. Great for the few times a year you need to use a tool. Even though I'm more on the tech side, I spent enough time in photoshop/etc around web development at one point that it's handy to have.
This would cost more in a month or two on a subscription.
I don't anticipate the current version licensing being revoked.
Future versions might add a subscription, but my feeling is if the TAM for them is all of Adobe's subscription clients, there's probably a lot more customers they can absorb.
I loved the Affinity Suite, but it’s such a shame that Linux isn’t supported or that it isn’t provided in a Wine-friendly distributable (a regular installer executable rather than a Windows App Store package).
Does anyone have insight on how this compares these days to Adobe's suite? Seems pretty competitive, but I'm not sure if you're getting 80% of the features for 30% of the cost or 50% of features for 50% of the cost.
IMHO, as someone who professionally uses the Adobe products and has licenses to all the Affinity suite, none of the apps compare favorably to the Adobe equivalents other than price and a superior iPad version.
They’re all great apps though but they definitely exist in the tier below adobe’s offerings. Which may be fine for most folks but hasn’t been for me, because I literally cannot complete projects in them and I certainly have tried.
Affinity Designer lacks many utilities from illustrator like advanced gradient handling, perspective alignment and repetition automation. Inkscape isn’t that far off from Designer imho.
Affinity Photo is fine as a photo editing tool but it falls apart for more advanced edits where you need to use brushes and advanced masking tools. Again, perspective tools and more granular referencing tools are just missing or broken. It is a significant step up from Gimp though but I would personally push people to Krita instead.
Affinity Publisher is the weakest of the trio. But then again, so is InDesign. These two aren’t too far off but InDesign has better tools around multi page layout and quickly updating templates references. I don’t know of a good OSS equivalent.
Again, I think these tools are great for people who value the price over the feature set. Most people don’t need more than they offer. But if you’re a professional, the Adobe products are yet unmatched.
Coming from the world of audio software I've always wondered why it seemed like Adobe has such a stranglehold on visual work and nothing really catches up to photoshop or illustrator. In audio there are several big DAWs (digital audio workstations) that I would classify as popular and competent enough for serious work, each of which has artists or producers that have built successful careers around. Yes there are endless wars about what is better but more or less can do the same things and most experienced people say, choose one, learn it, decide what works for you. I feel like with photoshop it's always like "oh it's missing critical feature x, y, and z compared to photoshop so it's a dealbreaker". The closest analogy I could think of is pro-tools being a popular "de-facto" standard in many pro recording studios, but most hobbyists don't use pro-tools and agree that it's popular in pro studios mostly due to tradition.
I'm surprised there aren't at least a handful of adobe competitors that carved a niche and are significantly popular because they made some key workflows faster, more intuitive, or more powerful.
Maybe this difference is because of ubiquitous plugin formats like VST that translate across different DAWs?
1. It's significantly more standardized and straightforward for data interpretation. MIDI is standard (and OSC sort of fizzled), and audio clips (wav, aiff, whatever) are also very standard. You don't have the issues of color science, and you have a much smaller range of transformations that can be done to an audio clip.
2. A lot of infrastructure is standardized. From hardware interaction, to key mapping, but also things like plugins (Audio Units, VSTs, RTAS/AAX). It's so much simpler to go between apps.
3. A lot of audio workflows are treated as procedural and non-destructive.
Compare this to images:
1. Color science is horrific. Even Adobe often get it wrong (Krita was actually the best for a long time). D
2. Plugins are very application specific. So biggest marketshare often wins.
3. The range of transformations people want to do is massive. Each of them need very bespoke workflows, and due to the lack of standardized plugins, they're rarely shared.
4. A lot of image workflows are destructive by nature. A lot of image plugins as well are destructive.
5. Document interchange still sucks. For raster, you'll be plagued by color science issues. For vector, you'll be plagued by nobody implementing SVG the same.
6. Hardware APIs also vary wildly. For a long time, you had to target every vendor of pen you wanted to support for example.
I think a large part of it is due to the industries behind it. Video and Audio need to scale massively within a single project, across a lot of hardware devices, and production houses. The data is massive in comparison. Issues cost a lot.
Images are smaller in scale. An issue can be fixed very cheaply.
The Video and Audio industries fixed this by putting effort into standardization, education and interoperability. Images never had that attention.
This is a great summarize, I'd emphasize that as a result of the items mentioned here, both input (through external MIDI controllers) and output (through VST instruments) are actually cross-DAW, that consistency makes switching DAWs far easier, and makes what any one DAW is best at much narrower.
Its a but funny that you say Indesign is the weakest of the three considering that in professional setting its Indesign (and After Effects) that keeps people with Adobe. Its the most complex one and the only irreplaceable one. Everything that ever gets printed is done with Indesign. Every book, poster, cover, billboard, business card…
Adobe Publisher is close though and in many important ways its way better than Indesign (speed, stability, editing of photos/vectors directly inside publisher) but it lacks one main feature and thats scripts api/third party plugins. Until they release that then professional shops simply cant switch because of automation and super specific workflows they need.
I'll be pedantic and say it really depends on which "professional setting" as to which programs keep people with Adobe. But I assume you mean in the print world.
Personally though, InDesign is (to me) simultaneously both the strongest product in its category, but also the weakest in terms of feature/development compared to the other headlining Adobe product.
Yeah because Adobe doesnt care since they know print industry has no other choice. Indesign has been basically only getting worse since CS6/the subscription. The only useful feature in last 15 years has been pdf comments/corrections.
Whats worst is that each version makes it more unstable and crashes with indesign can be costly.
I know several design studios that keep old macs to do work in CS6 because of that.
At the same time its more often than not their fault. 80% dont need scripting or advanced indesign features but they are lazy/old to learn anything new. Unfortunately this will drag Indesign probably forever since you need to collaborate.
> Affinity Photo is fine as a photo editing tool but it falls apart for more advanced edits where you need to use brushes and advanced masking tools. Again, perspective tools and more granular referencing tools are just missing or broken. It is a significant step up from Gimp though but I would personally push people to Krita instead.
I want to switch but the total lack of any automated export functionality is a complete deal-breaker. That's like 15 minutes of work per piece foisted back onto me, and like, I just cannot fathom a reason to even have the Layer States feature if you aren't going to use it for this.
Also the lack of a plugin sdk, scriptable actions: hope basic automation comes soon.
Discussing using AI was taboo, some vocal users misunderstood and missed that AI is a powerful tool for automatic masking, image segmentation, etc (and that can be ran locally), so all the smart stuff only lives in Adobe.
Yeah there are so many walls like that which I hit.
I always go to their forum, find that it's been asked a lot and with no resolution. Which is fine, I get it that they are newer and don't have the resources.
But in the amount of time I've now wasted trying to do the thing, I just paid for my Adobe license for the month for the relevant app.
Do you know of Scribus, or do you not consider it a good OSS equivalent for InDesign? Last time I've worked with InDesign was around 2011, and it was meh. Scribus is also really realy meh, but gets the job done. I've got an Affinity license and have been using Designer for a bunch of projects - to me it's a toss between that and Scribus for what I do. They are totally different, but I have more experience with Scribus and therefore am much quicker in using that.
Scribus is unfortunately pretty bad and also almost dead. Its maybe interesting if you want to layout embeded LaTeX but the ux will make you hate yourself.
My wife has been using it for years. Hates it. She upgraded a while back in the hope that the latest version was better, but it sucked. First, it did a one way upgrade in the file format, and every doc she printed from 1.6 looked like trash on her printer (no other settings changed). After messing with various settings for hours she downgraded to 1.5.x, restored her old configuration and and files from backups. Old version prints as expected. It also does totally weird and broken stuff, like the other day she was creating an A4 sheet with 6 cards on it. 5 were copy/pastes of the first one, with minor changes. When she printed it, only 3 of them actually printed even though they're visible onscreen. She printed to a PDF... Same thing. She created a new doc and copy/pasted all 6 into it and printed... they all printed fine. Like WTF is even going on there?
Long time ago ive tried to help the project but really its just too complex of a problem for the few people that maintain it.
At same time its dense C++ codebase that only experienced programmers will be able to contribite to. And those programmers often dont value UX/Design much so it becomes huge rift between bunch of designers unable to do anything themselves and few annoyed programmers.
Some features are “missing” or don’t work in a similar way. For example, Affinity Designer doesn’t have shape replication tools like Illustrator, manual copy paste is required. You also can’t trace an image to turn it into vector outlines. Just two things off the top of my head that I noticed because I used them extensively in Adobe Illustrator. So if you’re only using a subset of features you’re probably fine, but without testing Affinity’s products for yourself it might be hard to tell if they’re a like for like replacement for you.
It's been a while now but I got Inkscape (free but clunky Illustrator alternative) to do shape replication across a path for me once, and then I copied the result into Affinity Designer. Obviously if you need to do that frequently, it's not gonna work well but I've only had to do that a few times since ditching Adobe.
Or perhaps you are describing something else I am unfamiliar with the terminology.
I've been going back to several tutorials on youtube for doing things affinity - as it seems to have the capabilities I am used to with the old photoimpact, it's just finding where / how is not the same.
I'm a hobbyist who has used PS for 20 something years now. My issue with Affinity Photo is that you can use 85% of your PS knowledge and workflow, everything is the same but that last 15% is awfully, unlogically different and will drive you mad. That last 15% feels like it was made by people who do not understand why PS does things the way it does. Meanwhile my statement cannot be true, because Affinity nailed the firat 85%, but just cannot comprehend why they couldn't copy the last 15%.
The keyboard actions alone are maddening. Trying to switch tools, exit a text editing mode, change tool properties, all can be very frustrating to do with the keyboard.
I've replaced Adobe with Affinity and am mostly satisfied, although in the latest versions I've been experiencing bugs with the renderer (eg artifact lines or the canvas being cut off by one pixel) which introduces some difficulties.
The best way is to install it and try using it side by side for your use case.
For general stuff, it's very serviceable and comparable to Adobe.
If there's something very specific it might require confirming if the equivalent features exist in both, and if the procedure is different, what that is. New muscle memory like learning vim, but I know several people who are very happy with it and stick with it. They can always hop on Adobe if they need it here or there.
They did a similar trial during covid which was what got me to try them out. Love their tools, except some of the magic tools aren't available in Designer and require Photo, which can be annoying for people who prefer just one.
If you buy the pack of all three then through publisher you can instantly switch between them basically making it one software. That alone is so much ahead of Adobe.
True, though one of the strengths of Affinity is that their files work in both Photo and Designer. You can open in each app and use a tool and then switch back.
I 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.
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.
Unrelated but have any of you web software folks tried the latest dreamweaver? I'm old af and I used to love DW in the 90s and actually it's part of why I even know how to code(ish), I used it to teach myself (god bless you kevin lynch)...! anyway, I saw they still update it so I downloaded it just to see what it's like..Seems like they've really developed it well into a front end focused IDE, I can't say if it's good or not, but just from clicking around it felt pretty good... Thought I'd mention it. :)
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?
Affinity's suite isn't as "complete" as Adobe's. Much smaller company with much smaller product suite. They don't have cataloguing or photo management equivalent. But as for ND RAW editing.... yeah. I've been using Affinity for a while, and they have it, but it's not very obvious.
FWIW they have a non-destructive editor function via the Develop Persona toolkit, it's not something that opens up by default. There are docs available on their site how to use it properly. I do think it's a miss to not bring that more forward, when opening a RAW, hopefully they'll see this feedback.
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?
Likelihood of them fixing bugs that have been outstanding for 6 years during a 6 month trial? Zero.
That's to say that if you try it and don't encounter any of the bugs—great. But if you try it and do encounter the bugs—they're generally unlikely to ever be fixed. In my experience as a user from day one.
Not a heavy graphic design user so would never consider an Adobe subscription, switched to Affinity for its low cost perpetual pricing which has been a great substitute for my needs, though still use Paint .NET for small edits.
Most of the functionality is there but it does a few things differently to Photoshop, fortunately there's a lot of resources in their docs, forums and YouTube videos to learn how it's done in Affinity.
Coming from Adobe Lightroom, I found Affinity Photo to be unusable. But I eventually switched from shooting RAW to shooting JPG, and now I just use files straight out of my Fuji cameras. As a busy parent I can't be bothered to edit anymore. I just shoot and post or shoot and print.
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.
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.
I have never gone to their website (singular) before and I figured all this out by simply looking at the page for a few seconds. These objections seem ridiculous to me.
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.
While I'd love to use free tools, these really don't compare to the paid tools like the Affinity suite or Figma for example.
Especially in a professional setting as a designer, the tools I use are chosen to make my life easier and enable me to work more efficient, and these really don't yet. From what I see, they aren't build for this setting in mind and cannot keep up with paid tools that have significantly more of a financial backing.
The one open-source outlier for me is PenPot, but even they aren't there yet in my opinion, at least not for my needs (and preferences).
> This discount, alongside the six-month free trial, is potentially geared at soothing concerns that Affinity would change its pricing model after being acquired by Canva earlier this year.
This doesn't sooth my concerns. Why should it, when it's literally them switching to a subscription model. Nothing in the article says otherwise. Do we believe they'll build the infrastructure to support a SaaS, then turn it all off after this 6-month trial? It's not just for fun, they're clearly going to make it the primary way of paying for their products.
I bought all the Affinity apps (multiple versions) because I was specifically trying to escape Adobe Creative Cloud. Their software may not be as good as Adobe's, but Affinity's business model provided enough value on its own. I'm making some assumptions here, but come on, we know how this story usually plays out. Unless I'm wrong, I think this is probably a bad idea for users like me.
They have actually committed not to switch to a subscription model. Why do you think this is them doing that?
> Do we believe they'll build the infrastructure to support a SaaS, then turn it all off after this 6-month trial?
It's not a SaaS? It's a series of apps with trial keys that expire. Just like the normal 15 day trial or the pandemic-era three-month trial. Once the key expires, the trial expires.
Affinity are saying they won't switch everyone to subscriptions, that perpetual licensing will always be an option, and they don't yet have a subscription model.
Are you referring to some sort of asset marketplace with in-app purchases, or something like that? If so, I've never used it. I can say that you don't need to be logged in to use Affinity Photo, Designer, or Publisher: I don't even have an Affinity account, let alone do I need to log in to use the software. My recollection of buying their products is: you pay them over the web, they send an email with an activation code, you paste the code into the app, and that's it.
Maybe I’m wrong, my upgrade path was I just signed into my account through the app and it validated my version and downloaded all my assets (from the asset store).
Yeah, 2.5.something. I'm currently signed out, and can use the app (Publisher is the one I just tested) just fine. If I go to my Account page, it tells me I'm signed out, and it has a little message noting that I don't need to be logged in in order to use my purchases. I've never bought anything through their store, so I have never encountered any login gate.
Anyway, they're currently very lenient, but my guess is that that'll go away before long.
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 format between all of their apps, but it does lack anything like library support.
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 RAW file. Before you can use any of the common editing tools, you need to leave that persona by committing your changes. You need to make a choice to bake these RAW adjustments into a "RAW layer (embedded)", "RAW layer (linked)" or a "Pixel layer". It's not very obvious what these are and how they work.
Most of the common editing tools then work destructively. Once you use them, you can't go back and change any of the RAW adjustments. There are some very limited tools available that can work non-destructively, but again, it's not very obvious which ones those are. And use of the wrong tool can immediately turn a "RAW layer" into a "Pixel layer" without warning.
It's all very confusing, to be honest. It may be a case of the RTFM, but I did so when I tried this a couple months ago, and came to the conclusion that AP simply isn't capable of a non-destructive editing workflow yet, except for a few very basic cases.
But the bundle price was worth it for me for Designer and Publisher alone. So I hope in due time they'll launch a fourth product to compete with Lightroom, on photo cataloging, culling and a non-destructive workflow.
The current commercial alternatives for Lightroom unfortunately are still lacking, last time I looked at them (Capture One, DxO Photo Lab). And the open source ones (darktable, digiKam) are ... not good. I'm keeping my eye on "Ansel" though (darktable fork by an ex-dev, anger-driven development), the author's rants sum up very wrong what's wrong with darktable, and why its community is so dysfunctional.
> The current commercial alternatives for Lightroom unfortunately are still lacking, last time I looked at them (Capture One, DxO Photo Lab)
Genuine question, how do you find DxO PhotoLab lacking when compared to LR?
I'm an old-time LR user and due to Adobe's licensing shenanigans exploring alternatives. I am having a pretty good time with trial version of DxO PhotoLab7. So far I haven't come across something that I could do in LR (as a hobbyist) that I can't achieve in PhotoLab7. And, I'm loving the built-in DeNoising algorithm in PL7.
> Genuine question, how do you find DxO PhotoLab lacking when compared to LR?
It's mostly their "no catalog" approach that irks me. From what I understand they use a model that doesn't use a catalog, and requires you to import photos, but instead allow you to point it at any filesystem location, and work on those photos.
Fair enough, but for me the question then immediately becomes how and where the data that I generate in PL7 is stored and managed - and I was struggling to find any comprehensive information on this.
If it doesn't have a catalog, where does it store edits I make to my photos? Does it actually modify and write down some information in RAW files (that would be a non-starter for me)? Does it litter the filesystem with XMP sidecar files next to the originals? How does it keep (and repair) associations between original RAWs and their edits/metadata if they get moved on the file system outside of PL7?
It allows to search/filter photos by metadata attributes "across your whole computer" (according to their tutorial video on organization). So it must keep some index somewhere, otherwise that would be dog slow. So how and when does that index get updated? Do I get any control over when that happens, any UI feedback when its happening and I'm potentially working with outdated metadata, etc..?
LR's catalog approach has some drawbacks, but from an engineering standpoint, it seems to me that's the much simpler and robust approach to implement this. The LR catalog is a simple SQLite DB, and backup is trivial: Backup my originals and the catalog, done. Follow the simple rule "Don't modify originals behind LR's back" and you'll be good. (Or be prepared to do it in a very systematic way, and fix references in LR afterwards).
The catalog approach definitely has its limitations and issues, but I find it very easy to reason about. No surprises. PL7's approach seems to require much more magic behind the scenes, which makes me quite uncomfortable.
In terms of denoising, I have to agree - the DxO stuff is miles ahead in terms of quality for some algorithms, and denoising is one of them. I use NikCollection (as a PS plugin) for those 1 out of a 1000 photos that deserve some serious editing.
Thanks, you articulated that much better than I would have.
The manuals for Affinity products are pretty good, and I agree on the price being worth it for the quality and usefulness of the software.
For me Publisher fits a good niche. Since V2 I use Designer for planning woodworking projects and it’s quite competent for that task (they’re simpler 2D plans and diagrams to track my cutting sheets).
One more Lightroom alternative for you to consider would be RawPower, which actually does a great job handling different raw formats. I know the devs have a new app but I haven’t tried it.
Thank you for the recommendation! RAW Power is one that I actually didn't have on my radar, and it certainly looks very interesting.
Maybe not as feature-rich as some of the heavy hitters, but it looks to be very focused in both its feature set and its UI. And it seems to hit that sweet spot where it does both cataloging and RAW processing competently.
This is the most promising alternative I've seen so far for what I'm yearning for, so thanks again!
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.
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.
Thanks, I'll look into RAWTherapee and aftershot. I tried darktable before and the fact the default raw images don't look "out of camera" like they do in lightroom put me off (and the fact they developers claim it's "a feature not a bug")
Affinity has really sophisticated colour editing controls.
For example you can apply adjustment layers and then use a blend curve (not just blend ranges) to moderate it. So if you want warmer shadows, it's as easy as using a colour temperature adjustment to warm up your image and then adjusting the curve so that it doesn't apply where you don't want it.
And you have cross-model curves: you can apply Lab curves to RGB model images without converting.
It has a Capture-One-style HSL wheel. It supports LUTs (and LUT inference!)
I can think of some things Photoshop does that Affinity Photo does not, but I've been using it nine years now for my photography and web work (along with Designer). I think for almost every normal Photoshop user[0] there's no reason not to use Affinity Photo instead.
[0] Unless you're particularly wedded to Lightroom, for which there is no Affinity alternative.
I really like Affinity, especially their buy it once pricing model, and I use Affinity Photo for all my photo editing. However, I was very disappointed to learn they were recently acquired by Canva, a company that is blatantly following the VC growth playbook. So I fear that sooner or later Affinity will fall victim to enshittification. It will either become exactly like Adobe is today or it will be sacrificed on the altar of ROI.
Adobe 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 probably wouldn't have switched, but at this point they're just squeezing small creators like myself.
And tbh now that I'm proficient with the Affinity UX, I doubt I'd switch back. It's really good!
And in some ways, Affinity's tools can even be superior (performance, ui smoothness, and even how vector art works). If you're living with a pirated version of CS5 or 6, it's worth coming in from the cold and trying Affinity.
> 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.)
I'm a hobbyist photographer and my dad's a professional. This is the first time I've ever heard of these files, so what do people use them for and why are they deal-breakers? As far as I've seen them work, professional photographers spend nearly all of their time in Lightroom, it's pretty rare to see someone reach for Photoshop.
Do you shoot RAW? If you're not seeing them (AFAIK Lightroom uses them too) then you're either not shooting RAW, or you're probably not loading/postprocessing your camera's RAW files (CR2, ARW, etc.) directly -- perhaps you're converting them to DNGs first. The XMP files hold all the postprocessing information for those files, since Photoshop/Lightroom don't alter RAW files in-place.
Note: Even if Photoshop/Lightroom did embed these in the RAW files, the problem of actually loading the embedded information would still be there for Affinity. So the point here isn't the file separation; the point is Affinity doesn't understand the postprocessing Photoshop has already done on the photo.
The feature has been requested a lot; see for example https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/113871-use... and https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/45772-can-...
I think I see the confusion. If my google-fu is correct, modern Lightroom doesn't store this data in XMP files by default, but instead internally in the catalog (with a settings toggle if you want to use files instead). Lightroom Classic does use XMP files out of the box. So if you use modern Lightroom and never need to take the metadata out of the Adobe suite you wouldn't really run into this.
> So if you use modern Lightroom and never need to take the metadata out of the Adobe suite you wouldn't really run into this.
You're very confused, catalog vs. XMP (or classic vs. modern) is entirely irrelevant. Heck, the catalog is objectively worse. You're switching software and want to still be able to use the post-processing you've applied to your photos. Which Affinity can't do. It's irrelevant where or how that information was stored.
The only one who is confused here is you. You're trying to make it sound like this is somehow a big issue or a dealbreaker, when in fact pretty much no one who does actual work with these programs cares. You can hate on one application or another, I couldn't care less, but your whole argument is frankly ridiculous.
> The only one who is confused here is you. You're trying to make it sound like this is somehow a big issue or a dealbreaker, when in fact pretty much no one who does actual work with these programs cares
Seriously? You don't feel it's ridiculous to say this when just above I posted links to people begging for this feature on the forums since at least 2017?
> You can hate on one application or another
I'm not hating on it - if I hated Affinity I wouldn't even be wasting my time to point it out. I love Affinity and want it to succeed, hence all this.
A loud minority requesting a feature doesn't mean it's a deal-breaker for other users. Clearly the company behind the product agrees, otherwise they would've implemented it.
> A loud minority requesting a feature
First, thanks for acknowledging that it's not "just me". That kind of nonsensical hyperbole doesn't help the discussion.
Second: You have no idea if it's a minority of the market that actually wants this. The majority of users obviously use Adobe, that should tell you more than how many people are voicing their opinions in a forum. Not every user goes out of their way to re-request a feature that's already been requested years ago.
> doesn't mean it's a deal-breaker for other users.
Nobody said it's a deal breaker for "other users".
> Clearly the company behind the product agrees, otherwise they would've implemented it.
Because there's no other possible reason we could fathom as to why they wouldn't have implemented this already, right?
This is such a silly stance to take. Just because something is important or painful for you doesn't make it universal, no matter which way you try to frame it. Just like you won't see the users who don't rerequest a feature, you won't see all the users who don't even remotely care about it.
> Just because something is important or painful for you doesn't make it universal,
Again: nobody said it was "universal", but again: it's not about me, either. It's ridiculous that you're still insisting it's just me when you literally see other people complaining about it. You clearly aren't interested in having a reasonable conversation so there's no point in continuing to engage.
I think some clarity that has been missing to your point is that this isn't an issue that Affinity can't edit raw photos, but more that if you switched from Lightroom to Affinity you're going to be missing all your edits for all your photos, which makes it a non-starter for anyone who doesn't want to or can't redit all of their RAW files.
Yup, thanks. Hope that clarifies it for anyone who was confused by that.
You can google it, but it's putting EXIF data modifications and additions into an external XML file. It's a way to avoid modifying the master file directly.
I feel like it's a bit unfair to bring up vendor lock-in, although it is a miss for Affinity, for sure.
I actually disagree on both whether this is truly vendor lock-in and on whether this is fair to bring up, but honestly, it wouldn't change anything regardless. The reality is that solving people's problems is what wins you customers, not pleading for fairness. As unfair as it might be, that's the reality of the situation. If we want Adobe's hold on the market to be released, we (and they) need to deal with the reality of the situation.
Is Adobe only 10x more expensive? Adobe is subscription-only so it seems to be only 10x for the first 5 years and then it’s indefinitely more expensive.
Adobe’s customer support is also extremely poor. They ask you for detailed OS info when not only does Creative Cloud scrape that but so does their ad network.
I use Designer almost daily and I’m stunned by how good it is. I have zero interest in ever going back to Illustrator. I’m sure there’s pro requirements that only Illustrator has but I’ve not encountered them. For the price it’s simply amazing.
In some areas affinity photo exeed PS. It's native support for EXRs is incredible. In PS, EXRs are opened once, following which they are vanilla PS files. In AP, the ability to access the full dynamic range of an EXR is preserved to a degree that PS cannot match.
It is also possible to stack and combine masks, an idea which is pure science fiction for a PS user. color selection masks can also update if the colors of the rgb component is changed.
More than a decade ago, Quarxpress got killed by Adobe InDesign because Quark treated their users like garbage and overpriced their software. Adobe should have learned that lesson.
Does affinity have anything resembling Lightroom? I really want to jump ship from adobe
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.
I am in same place. I keep Mac laptop for graphics because of this.
I know the win version now works pretty well on linux with wine. But the process to set this up is not yet automated (like 20min) and is being worked on. So i was too lazy to properly try it.
> I know the win version now works pretty well on linux with wine. But the process to set this up is not yet automated (like 20min) and is being worked on
Where did you get the information about it being worked on?
Neither does Adobe
Can’t emulate it?
> 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.
A free option for tracing is:
https://www.visioncortex.org/vtracer/
I just use Inkscape for tracing and then export to SVG. I can't use Inkscape for anything else but it does provide that function.
Lack of scripting automation and a blend tool are my only real disappointments with the product. These aren't enough to make me switch back to Adobe mind you, but they're relatively glaring omissions I think.
Seconded, there are many ways in which Designer and Publisher are actually superior as well (beyond actually feeling respected as a customer).
Agreed people talk about features Affinity dont have but there are also many things that Adobe doesnt have or does so much worse.
Hige part of Adobe dominance (with pros especially) is the inertia to switch because of the workflows baked into muscle memory. Often the wierd quirks and inconsistencies became the standard. And adobe has many because all three softwares were developed by different companies.
I did not know about Affinity. I just signed up and was downloading files in less than a minute. In two minutes I was sitting in front of Photo 2, ready to work.
I just wish the Affinity apps weren’t so slow. Ever action lags and waits for the app to catch up, not to mention how long it takes for the app to start up.
Does Affinity suite include generative AI at all?
Not that I'm aware of. I hope that their new relationship with Canva gives them the resources to add AI for some features. that might be a 3.0 version.
It has content-aware fill, which IIRC is an early form of gen-AI.
I confirm, best soft ever!
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 they go for a higher-pressure pricing model.
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.
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.
Which, I would argue, is why perpetual licenses are not all fun and games... They didn't revoke any of those licenses
The concern is here is clearly not the revocation of licenses.
The cost of not just learning but becoming a professional user of a specific set of tools is very high. Then later as time goes by being forced to either abandon these tools or to accept a different pricing model is - to many people - unfair and unethical.
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.
I know some people who bought the last time they had a 50% off sale recently.
$100 or so for the full suite. Great for the few times a year you need to use a tool. Even though I'm more on the tech side, I spent enough time in photoshop/etc around web development at one point that it's handy to have.
This would cost more in a month or two on a subscription.
I don't anticipate the current version licensing being revoked.
Future versions might add a subscription, but my feeling is if the TAM for them is all of Adobe's subscription clients, there's probably a lot more customers they can absorb.
They've had some sort of free trial period as long as I've followed them.
I loved the Affinity Suite, but it’s such a shame that Linux isn’t supported or that it isn’t provided in a Wine-friendly distributable (a regular installer executable rather than a Windows App Store package).
Does anyone have insight on how this compares these days to Adobe's suite? Seems pretty competitive, but I'm not sure if you're getting 80% of the features for 30% of the cost or 50% of features for 50% of the cost.
It truly depends what you do and need.
IMHO, as someone who professionally uses the Adobe products and has licenses to all the Affinity suite, none of the apps compare favorably to the Adobe equivalents other than price and a superior iPad version.
They’re all great apps though but they definitely exist in the tier below adobe’s offerings. Which may be fine for most folks but hasn’t been for me, because I literally cannot complete projects in them and I certainly have tried.
Affinity Designer lacks many utilities from illustrator like advanced gradient handling, perspective alignment and repetition automation. Inkscape isn’t that far off from Designer imho.
Affinity Photo is fine as a photo editing tool but it falls apart for more advanced edits where you need to use brushes and advanced masking tools. Again, perspective tools and more granular referencing tools are just missing or broken. It is a significant step up from Gimp though but I would personally push people to Krita instead.
Affinity Publisher is the weakest of the trio. But then again, so is InDesign. These two aren’t too far off but InDesign has better tools around multi page layout and quickly updating templates references. I don’t know of a good OSS equivalent.
Again, I think these tools are great for people who value the price over the feature set. Most people don’t need more than they offer. But if you’re a professional, the Adobe products are yet unmatched.
Coming from the world of audio software I've always wondered why it seemed like Adobe has such a stranglehold on visual work and nothing really catches up to photoshop or illustrator. In audio there are several big DAWs (digital audio workstations) that I would classify as popular and competent enough for serious work, each of which has artists or producers that have built successful careers around. Yes there are endless wars about what is better but more or less can do the same things and most experienced people say, choose one, learn it, decide what works for you. I feel like with photoshop it's always like "oh it's missing critical feature x, y, and z compared to photoshop so it's a dealbreaker". The closest analogy I could think of is pro-tools being a popular "de-facto" standard in many pro recording studios, but most hobbyists don't use pro-tools and agree that it's popular in pro studios mostly due to tradition.
I'm surprised there aren't at least a handful of adobe competitors that carved a niche and are significantly popular because they made some key workflows faster, more intuitive, or more powerful.
Maybe this difference is because of ubiquitous plugin formats like VST that translate across different DAWs?
Audio has a few things going for it.
1. It's significantly more standardized and straightforward for data interpretation. MIDI is standard (and OSC sort of fizzled), and audio clips (wav, aiff, whatever) are also very standard. You don't have the issues of color science, and you have a much smaller range of transformations that can be done to an audio clip.
2. A lot of infrastructure is standardized. From hardware interaction, to key mapping, but also things like plugins (Audio Units, VSTs, RTAS/AAX). It's so much simpler to go between apps.
3. A lot of audio workflows are treated as procedural and non-destructive.
Compare this to images:
1. Color science is horrific. Even Adobe often get it wrong (Krita was actually the best for a long time). D
2. Plugins are very application specific. So biggest marketshare often wins.
3. The range of transformations people want to do is massive. Each of them need very bespoke workflows, and due to the lack of standardized plugins, they're rarely shared.
4. A lot of image workflows are destructive by nature. A lot of image plugins as well are destructive.
5. Document interchange still sucks. For raster, you'll be plagued by color science issues. For vector, you'll be plagued by nobody implementing SVG the same.
6. Hardware APIs also vary wildly. For a long time, you had to target every vendor of pen you wanted to support for example.
I think a large part of it is due to the industries behind it. Video and Audio need to scale massively within a single project, across a lot of hardware devices, and production houses. The data is massive in comparison. Issues cost a lot.
Images are smaller in scale. An issue can be fixed very cheaply.
The Video and Audio industries fixed this by putting effort into standardization, education and interoperability. Images never had that attention.
This is a great summarize, I'd emphasize that as a result of the items mentioned here, both input (through external MIDI controllers) and output (through VST instruments) are actually cross-DAW, that consistency makes switching DAWs far easier, and makes what any one DAW is best at much narrower.
Its a but funny that you say Indesign is the weakest of the three considering that in professional setting its Indesign (and After Effects) that keeps people with Adobe. Its the most complex one and the only irreplaceable one. Everything that ever gets printed is done with Indesign. Every book, poster, cover, billboard, business card…
Adobe Publisher is close though and in many important ways its way better than Indesign (speed, stability, editing of photos/vectors directly inside publisher) but it lacks one main feature and thats scripts api/third party plugins. Until they release that then professional shops simply cant switch because of automation and super specific workflows they need.
I'll be pedantic and say it really depends on which "professional setting" as to which programs keep people with Adobe. But I assume you mean in the print world.
Personally though, InDesign is (to me) simultaneously both the strongest product in its category, but also the weakest in terms of feature/development compared to the other headlining Adobe product.
Yeah because Adobe doesnt care since they know print industry has no other choice. Indesign has been basically only getting worse since CS6/the subscription. The only useful feature in last 15 years has been pdf comments/corrections.
Whats worst is that each version makes it more unstable and crashes with indesign can be costly. I know several design studios that keep old macs to do work in CS6 because of that.
At the same time its more often than not their fault. 80% dont need scripting or advanced indesign features but they are lazy/old to learn anything new. Unfortunately this will drag Indesign probably forever since you need to collaborate.
> Affinity Photo is fine as a photo editing tool but it falls apart for more advanced edits where you need to use brushes and advanced masking tools. Again, perspective tools and more granular referencing tools are just missing or broken. It is a significant step up from Gimp though but I would personally push people to Krita instead.
I want to switch but the total lack of any automated export functionality is a complete deal-breaker. That's like 15 minutes of work per piece foisted back onto me, and like, I just cannot fathom a reason to even have the Layer States feature if you aren't going to use it for this.
Also the lack of a plugin sdk, scriptable actions: hope basic automation comes soon. Discussing using AI was taboo, some vocal users misunderstood and missed that AI is a powerful tool for automatic masking, image segmentation, etc (and that can be ran locally), so all the smart stuff only lives in Adobe.
In our last game I had to dig pretty deep into Kritas scripting. I was making automated changes and exporting thousands of frames of animation.
It's a little janky but got the job done.
Keep an eye out for Wild Bastards on Steam. Every frame of the character animation was run through Krita.
Yeah there are so many walls like that which I hit. I always go to their forum, find that it's been asked a lot and with no resolution. Which is fine, I get it that they are newer and don't have the resources.
But in the amount of time I've now wasted trying to do the thing, I just paid for my Adobe license for the month for the relevant app.
Do you know of Scribus, or do you not consider it a good OSS equivalent for InDesign? Last time I've worked with InDesign was around 2011, and it was meh. Scribus is also really realy meh, but gets the job done. I've got an Affinity license and have been using Designer for a bunch of projects - to me it's a toss between that and Scribus for what I do. They are totally different, but I have more experience with Scribus and therefore am much quicker in using that.
Scribus is unfortunately pretty bad and also almost dead. Its maybe interesting if you want to layout embeded LaTeX but the ux will make you hate yourself.
My wife has been using it for years. Hates it. She upgraded a while back in the hope that the latest version was better, but it sucked. First, it did a one way upgrade in the file format, and every doc she printed from 1.6 looked like trash on her printer (no other settings changed). After messing with various settings for hours she downgraded to 1.5.x, restored her old configuration and and files from backups. Old version prints as expected. It also does totally weird and broken stuff, like the other day she was creating an A4 sheet with 6 cards on it. 5 were copy/pastes of the first one, with minor changes. When she printed it, only 3 of them actually printed even though they're visible onscreen. She printed to a PDF... Same thing. She created a new doc and copy/pasted all 6 into it and printed... they all printed fine. Like WTF is even going on there?
Long time ago ive tried to help the project but really its just too complex of a problem for the few people that maintain it. At same time its dense C++ codebase that only experienced programmers will be able to contribite to. And those programmers often dont value UX/Design much so it becomes huge rift between bunch of designers unable to do anything themselves and few annoyed programmers.
Some features are “missing” or don’t work in a similar way. For example, Affinity Designer doesn’t have shape replication tools like Illustrator, manual copy paste is required. You also can’t trace an image to turn it into vector outlines. Just two things off the top of my head that I noticed because I used them extensively in Adobe Illustrator. So if you’re only using a subset of features you’re probably fine, but without testing Affinity’s products for yourself it might be hard to tell if they’re a like for like replacement for you.
It's been a while now but I got Inkscape (free but clunky Illustrator alternative) to do shape replication across a path for me once, and then I copied the result into Affinity Designer. Obviously if you need to do that frequently, it's not gonna work well but I've only had to do that a few times since ditching Adobe.
I've also used Inkscape to do the image tracing and export to SVG. I don't like Inkscape for other purposes but it is useful for that.
I am thinking I have seen tutorials on tracing to vector, like maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=480dGcU6ce4&pp=ygUVYWZmaW5pd...
Or perhaps you are describing something else I am unfamiliar with the terminology.
I've been going back to several tutorials on youtube for doing things affinity - as it seems to have the capabilities I am used to with the old photoimpact, it's just finding where / how is not the same.
I think they are talking about the Image Trace feature, which mostly traces automatically (but requires some hand holding).
I'm a hobbyist who has used PS for 20 something years now. My issue with Affinity Photo is that you can use 85% of your PS knowledge and workflow, everything is the same but that last 15% is awfully, unlogically different and will drive you mad. That last 15% feels like it was made by people who do not understand why PS does things the way it does. Meanwhile my statement cannot be true, because Affinity nailed the firat 85%, but just cannot comprehend why they couldn't copy the last 15%.
That's the true cost of Photoshop. It's not the subscription. It's the time you spent learning how to do everything.
That's why I support Krita, If I'm going to pay that cost, I want to invest it in software that is by the people, for the people.
The keyboard actions alone are maddening. Trying to switch tools, exit a text editing mode, change tool properties, all can be very frustrating to do with the keyboard.
This is my experience too. After buying Affinity licenses, I don't want to pay Adobe their monthly rake too, but I do.
I've replaced Adobe with Affinity and am mostly satisfied, although in the latest versions I've been experiencing bugs with the renderer (eg artifact lines or the canvas being cut off by one pixel) which introduces some difficulties.
The best way is to install it and try using it side by side for your use case.
For general stuff, it's very serviceable and comparable to Adobe.
If there's something very specific it might require confirming if the equivalent features exist in both, and if the procedure is different, what that is. New muscle memory like learning vim, but I know several people who are very happy with it and stick with it. They can always hop on Adobe if they need it here or there.
Hoping that somebody takes on Sketchup, Autocad etc with a similar approach to licensing. Subscriptions suck for tools you use occasionally.
(Sketchup used to be like that until it was purchased by Tre-something).
I know the workflow is quiet different but Rhino is popular, for example, with architecture crowd and their licenses are perpetual.
True, albeit the associated cost is firmly not in the “occasional use hobbyist” category.
E.g. my wife using youtube tutorials to teach herself digital drafting to plan our kitchen remodel (with actual dimensions).
Yes, I would love to have a 3D CAD problem for modeling a new deck or a raise garden bed but most of the tools are just way out of budget for that.
Official release: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/press/newsroom/try-affinity...
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40906031)
They did a similar trial during covid which was what got me to try them out. Love their tools, except some of the magic tools aren't available in Designer and require Photo, which can be annoying for people who prefer just one.
Some excellent official tutorials, too:
https://youtu.be/6wfeMGwcF0c
If you buy the pack of all three then through publisher you can instantly switch between them basically making it one software. That alone is so much ahead of Adobe.
True, though one of the strengths of Affinity is that their files work in both Photo and Designer. You can open in each app and use a tool and then switch back.
I 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.
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.
Unrelated but have any of you web software folks tried the latest dreamweaver? I'm old af and I used to love DW in the 90s and actually it's part of why I even know how to code(ish), I used it to teach myself (god bless you kevin lynch)...! anyway, I saw they still update it so I downloaded it just to see what it's like..Seems like they've really developed it well into a front end focused IDE, I can't say if it's good or not, but just from clicking around it felt pretty good... Thought I'd mention it. :)
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?
Affinity's suite isn't as "complete" as Adobe's. Much smaller company with much smaller product suite. They don't have cataloguing or photo management equivalent. But as for ND RAW editing.... yeah. I've been using Affinity for a while, and they have it, but it's not very obvious.
FWIW they have a non-destructive editor function via the Develop Persona toolkit, it's not something that opens up by default. There are docs available on their site how to use it properly. I do think it's a miss to not bring that more forward, when opening a RAW, hopefully they'll see this feedback.
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?
It is definitely more like Photoshop than Lightroom. You'll need to look elsewhere if you need file management.
Curious.
Likelihood of them fixing bugs that have been outstanding for 6 years during a 6 month trial? Zero.
That's to say that if you try it and don't encounter any of the bugs—great. But if you try it and do encounter the bugs—they're generally unlikely to ever be fixed. In my experience as a user from day one.
Not a heavy graphic design user so would never consider an Adobe subscription, switched to Affinity for its low cost perpetual pricing which has been a great substitute for my needs, though still use Paint .NET for small edits.
Most of the functionality is there but it does a few things differently to Photoshop, fortunately there's a lot of resources in their docs, forums and YouTube videos to learn how it's done in Affinity.
Does Affinity Photo have photo library management support like Lightroom? e.g. pick/reject, tagging, rating etc.
No, afaic it does not.
Coming from Adobe Lightroom, I found Affinity Photo to be unusable. But I eventually switched from shooting RAW to shooting JPG, and now I just use files straight out of my Fuji cameras. As a busy parent I can't be bothered to edit anymore. I just shoot and post or shoot and print.
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.
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.
I have never gone to their website (singular) before and I figured all this out by simply looking at the page for a few seconds. These objections seem ridiculous to me.
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.
This is just for the Photo, Designer, and Publisher apps.
When will some organization agree to support Gimp, Inkscape, and Libreoffice Writer in the same capacity?
I would already prefer the free apps.
While I'd love to use free tools, these really don't compare to the paid tools like the Affinity suite or Figma for example.
Especially in a professional setting as a designer, the tools I use are chosen to make my life easier and enable me to work more efficient, and these really don't yet. From what I see, they aren't build for this setting in mind and cannot keep up with paid tools that have significantly more of a financial backing.
The one open-source outlier for me is PenPot, but even they aren't there yet in my opinion, at least not for my needs (and preferences).
At least for inkscape, I do see it in the RHEL appstream repo.
A RHEL workstation license will provide basic OS support for it; if you crash it, they might wrangle with the project for you.
> This discount, alongside the six-month free trial, is potentially geared at soothing concerns that Affinity would change its pricing model after being acquired by Canva earlier this year.
This doesn't sooth my concerns. Why should it, when it's literally them switching to a subscription model. Nothing in the article says otherwise. Do we believe they'll build the infrastructure to support a SaaS, then turn it all off after this 6-month trial? It's not just for fun, they're clearly going to make it the primary way of paying for their products.
I bought all the Affinity apps (multiple versions) because I was specifically trying to escape Adobe Creative Cloud. Their software may not be as good as Adobe's, but Affinity's business model provided enough value on its own. I'm making some assumptions here, but come on, we know how this story usually plays out. Unless I'm wrong, I think this is probably a bad idea for users like me.
They have actually committed not to switch to a subscription model. Why do you think this is them doing that?
> Do we believe they'll build the infrastructure to support a SaaS, then turn it all off after this 6-month trial?
It's not a SaaS? It's a series of apps with trial keys that expire. Just like the normal 15 day trial or the pandemic-era three-month trial. Once the key expires, the trial expires.
> They have actually committed not to switch to a subscription mode
So did Adobe, with Lightroom.
Only after the fact though.
Affinity are saying they won't switch everyone to subscriptions, that perpetual licensing will always be an option, and they don't yet have a subscription model.
I really hope not. Its also the reason why I purchased their software.
For what it’s worth, the current version and version one were both designed in a way that they could be switched to a subscription model.
When you make purchases from their store they’re available within the app based on your account, if you sign out you’ll lose access to them.
I know with V1 you could manually download your assets, I’m not sure what the status is for V2 on that.
I share your scepticism since the Canva acquisition.
Are you referring to some sort of asset marketplace with in-app purchases, or something like that? If so, I've never used it. I can say that you don't need to be logged in to use Affinity Photo, Designer, or Publisher: I don't even have an Affinity account, let alone do I need to log in to use the software. My recollection of buying their products is: you pay them over the web, they send an email with an activation code, you paste the code into the app, and that's it.
If you go to My Account within an Affinity app, yes you can see the store there.
It says underneath "You do not need to remain online or signed in to use your purchases", referring to in-app store purchases.
And you’re on version 2?
Maybe I’m wrong, my upgrade path was I just signed into my account through the app and it validated my version and downloaded all my assets (from the asset store).
Yeah, 2.5.something. I'm currently signed out, and can use the app (Publisher is the one I just tested) just fine. If I go to my Account page, it tells me I'm signed out, and it has a little message noting that I don't need to be logged in in order to use my purchases. I've never bought anything through their store, so I have never encountered any login gate.
Anyway, they're currently very lenient, but my guess is that that'll go away before long.
Paranoid imaginings are not facts.
First time I've realised that affinity is made by the same people who did serif photoplus.
How does affinity compare to lightroom?
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 format between all of their apps, but it does lack anything like library support.
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 RAW file. Before you can use any of the common editing tools, you need to leave that persona by committing your changes. You need to make a choice to bake these RAW adjustments into a "RAW layer (embedded)", "RAW layer (linked)" or a "Pixel layer". It's not very obvious what these are and how they work.
Most of the common editing tools then work destructively. Once you use them, you can't go back and change any of the RAW adjustments. There are some very limited tools available that can work non-destructively, but again, it's not very obvious which ones those are. And use of the wrong tool can immediately turn a "RAW layer" into a "Pixel layer" without warning.
It's all very confusing, to be honest. It may be a case of the RTFM, but I did so when I tried this a couple months ago, and came to the conclusion that AP simply isn't capable of a non-destructive editing workflow yet, except for a few very basic cases.
But the bundle price was worth it for me for Designer and Publisher alone. So I hope in due time they'll launch a fourth product to compete with Lightroom, on photo cataloging, culling and a non-destructive workflow.
The current commercial alternatives for Lightroom unfortunately are still lacking, last time I looked at them (Capture One, DxO Photo Lab). And the open source ones (darktable, digiKam) are ... not good. I'm keeping my eye on "Ansel" though (darktable fork by an ex-dev, anger-driven development), the author's rants sum up very wrong what's wrong with darktable, and why its community is so dysfunctional.
> The current commercial alternatives for Lightroom unfortunately are still lacking, last time I looked at them (Capture One, DxO Photo Lab)
Genuine question, how do you find DxO PhotoLab lacking when compared to LR?
I'm an old-time LR user and due to Adobe's licensing shenanigans exploring alternatives. I am having a pretty good time with trial version of DxO PhotoLab7. So far I haven't come across something that I could do in LR (as a hobbyist) that I can't achieve in PhotoLab7. And, I'm loving the built-in DeNoising algorithm in PL7.
> Genuine question, how do you find DxO PhotoLab lacking when compared to LR?
It's mostly their "no catalog" approach that irks me. From what I understand they use a model that doesn't use a catalog, and requires you to import photos, but instead allow you to point it at any filesystem location, and work on those photos.
Fair enough, but for me the question then immediately becomes how and where the data that I generate in PL7 is stored and managed - and I was struggling to find any comprehensive information on this.
If it doesn't have a catalog, where does it store edits I make to my photos? Does it actually modify and write down some information in RAW files (that would be a non-starter for me)? Does it litter the filesystem with XMP sidecar files next to the originals? How does it keep (and repair) associations between original RAWs and their edits/metadata if they get moved on the file system outside of PL7?
It allows to search/filter photos by metadata attributes "across your whole computer" (according to their tutorial video on organization). So it must keep some index somewhere, otherwise that would be dog slow. So how and when does that index get updated? Do I get any control over when that happens, any UI feedback when its happening and I'm potentially working with outdated metadata, etc..?
LR's catalog approach has some drawbacks, but from an engineering standpoint, it seems to me that's the much simpler and robust approach to implement this. The LR catalog is a simple SQLite DB, and backup is trivial: Backup my originals and the catalog, done. Follow the simple rule "Don't modify originals behind LR's back" and you'll be good. (Or be prepared to do it in a very systematic way, and fix references in LR afterwards).
The catalog approach definitely has its limitations and issues, but I find it very easy to reason about. No surprises. PL7's approach seems to require much more magic behind the scenes, which makes me quite uncomfortable.
In terms of denoising, I have to agree - the DxO stuff is miles ahead in terms of quality for some algorithms, and denoising is one of them. I use NikCollection (as a PS plugin) for those 1 out of a 1000 photos that deserve some serious editing.
Thanks, you articulated that much better than I would have.
The manuals for Affinity products are pretty good, and I agree on the price being worth it for the quality and usefulness of the software.
For me Publisher fits a good niche. Since V2 I use Designer for planning woodworking projects and it’s quite competent for that task (they’re simpler 2D plans and diagrams to track my cutting sheets).
One more Lightroom alternative for you to consider would be RawPower, which actually does a great job handling different raw formats. I know the devs have a new app but I haven’t tried it.
Thank you for the recommendation! RAW Power is one that I actually didn't have on my radar, and it certainly looks very interesting.
Maybe not as feature-rich as some of the heavy hitters, but it looks to be very focused in both its feature set and its UI. And it seems to hit that sweet spot where it does both cataloging and RAW processing competently.
This is the most promising alternative I've seen so far for what I'm yearning for, so thanks again!
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.
Affinity 2.4 supposedly added more support for RAW including some Fuji cameras.
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.
Thanks, I'll look into RAWTherapee and aftershot. I tried darktable before and the fact the default raw images don't look "out of camera" like they do in lightroom put me off (and the fact they developers claim it's "a feature not a bug")
> How does affinity compare to lightroom
It doesn't. They have Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign alternatives.
Didnt know about this, and I have started to loathe Adobe due to their licensing model. I will check Photo out!
I bought Affinity and have tried to use it but really don’t find it anything like equivalent to the Adobe products unfortunately.
For color correction of photographs, PhotoPea does a much better job than Affinity I feel.
After wasting 15 or 30 minutes trying to get Affinity to work for a photo touchup and color correction, I give up and use PhotoPea.
Affinity has really sophisticated colour editing controls.
For example you can apply adjustment layers and then use a blend curve (not just blend ranges) to moderate it. So if you want warmer shadows, it's as easy as using a colour temperature adjustment to warm up your image and then adjusting the curve so that it doesn't apply where you don't want it.
And you have cross-model curves: you can apply Lab curves to RGB model images without converting.
It has a Capture-One-style HSL wheel. It supports LUTs (and LUT inference!)
I can think of some things Photoshop does that Affinity Photo does not, but I've been using it nine years now for my photography and web work (along with Designer). I think for almost every normal Photoshop user[0] there's no reason not to use Affinity Photo instead.
[0] Unless you're particularly wedded to Lightroom, for which there is no Affinity alternative.
How is the plugin compatibility? Can I use CS6 or CC plugins in Affinity?
Yes, mostly. That is, if a Photoshop plugin is well-behaved and doesn't make use of undocumented aspects, it's pretty much going to work.
https://peterthenaturephotographer.com/process/affinity-phot...
https://affinity.help/photo/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=page...
If you mean Photoshop>Photo plugins. Affinity doesnt otherwise have any third party plugins or scripting. Unfortunately.
"It depends." Some work, some do not. Just try.
I would buy it just because it’s not Adobe.
Is Affinity draw better than Krita???
That's a clever move, kudos!
I really like Affinity, especially their buy it once pricing model, and I use Affinity Photo for all my photo editing. However, I was very disappointed to learn they were recently acquired by Canva, a company that is blatantly following the VC growth playbook. So I fear that sooner or later Affinity will fall victim to enshittification. It will either become exactly like Adobe is today or it will be sacrificed on the altar of ROI.
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