Topic: Affinity

[Jáchym]

So finally it looks like Adobe has some serious competition...

The pricing model of Adobe in the recent years is really ridiculous. I mean 60 euros monthly fee for single Photoshop license?!

The major problem is that SW such as GIMP, ZonerPhoto etc. are nowhere near what PS or Illustrator can do. Well, looks like finally someone has come up with a similar product and for a fraction of the price.

The Affinity company is already selling a Mac version and now also Windows version is available (still in Beta, which also means you can use it and download it completely for free).

The final price will be 50USD - one time payment. This btw. is basically 14 days of using Photoshop.

I downloaded the demo yesterday on my office PC. I should point out that my big hobby when I was younger was digital macrophotography and so I have been using Photoshop for over 10 years now and I have a legal copy on my office PC.

When I opened Affinity Photo, I saw a very familiar environment and within 10-15 minutes I was able to do almost everything I wanted to. The design is very modern, features are very similar to Photoshop - layers, history, filters, levels, adjustments etc etc.

So for those of you who want to try some very good and I dare to say SW equivalent to Photoshop, for free (!), have a look and try it out. The Beta version is basically ready for release and I did not encounter any problems at all. I also compared some of its functions and the results side by side with Photoshop and usually it was very similar, and sometimes one or the other was better, but overall there was no clear winner.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/windows/

Reading the discussion forums, many photographs are saying this is the end of their Adobe subscription. Affinity also has another SW for vector graphics, which is similar to Illustrator. Unless Adobe now changes their pricing model, this is going to be a serious problem for them.

And just as a side note - this sort of reminds me of Davis... also no competition -> and therefore no real motiviation to improve or develop anything new. Let´s hope some new manufacturer also enters the market with equivalent product, which would help to drive the R&D and bring the prices down.

[tbrasel]

Thank you, Jáchym for sharing.

[ValentineWeather]

Sweet! Thanks

[Jáchym]

Sorry, the previous link was for the illustrator equivalent, the Photo editor is here:

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/

[corwyyn]

I've got a copy of CS5.1 that I purchased a few years back and it will be the last PS product I purchase.  Right now I can do everything I need with 5.1 and I don't see that changing for the foreseeable future, but if it does I know there are options.  Lately I've been concentrating more on my astro-imaging and for that I use a more dedicated processing software called PixInsight.  It's a bit of a steeper learning curve than PS (in fact I'm still learning all the subtle things it can do) but the results I and others get make it worth the time invested. 

[Jáchym]

Yes, thats exactly what most people do, our company also has the CS4 and not the CC cloud version. However, the problem is that you can do this for a few years, but after some time it really becomes obsolete and you have no choice other than upgrading.

In general, this is related for example to the fact that new HW might become incompatible with the old version, or for example in this particular case, imagine in 5 years, new cameras might be using different codecs or even file formats, and you will have no choice other than upgrading. You can only keep on using older version for a certain time.

I know many people for example hated the new Ribbon feature in Office 2007. Many stayed with 2003 for quite some time, but today using 2003 would be a serious problem. It only works on 32bit and it is not optimized for today´s processors, and you would run into more and more problems.

[Intheswamp]

Sorry, the previous link was for the illustrator equivalent, the Photo editor is here:

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/

J, thanks for the heads'up on this.  You might be right in that this might give Adobe a bit of a headache.  I wouldn't be surprised, though, to find this software suddenly disappear...as in Adobe gobbling them up with $$$...hopefully not, though.

Did you edit/correct the first link?  I started the download with the first link and it is for "affinity-photo-pub.exe".  The second link pulls up a link to buy the Mac version.

Thanks for sharing this!!!!
Ed

[Jáchym]

Hi,
best thing to do would probably be to go to their main website and find the links there, they have several programs. The Mac versions are already on sale, Windows is still Beta (but ready for release) and so free to download.

Each SW will cost 49.99USD as a one-off payment.

Photoshop is 60 euros per month....

[Jáchym]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/embed/rlWdvjqGlik[/youtube]

[DaleReid]

Wow, this looks fantastic, and worth trying the PC Windows version when I get the link.  I am MAC ignorant and barren for anything to even load it on.

I agree with the assessment of Adobe's approach.  Quality costs money, no doubt.  My first use of their products to print out fancy fonts.  We purchased a single font, sort of a variation of Times Roman, for about $150 in late 1990's dollars.

Way over priced for what one got, especially when oodles of free fonts began to become available shortly thereafter.

The same way with their PhotoShop product.  It does a lot, but the learning curve is so steep that despite attending various workshops and reading books saying they will teach you how to use it, I've never been able to even get it to work, say nothing of mastering it.

The balance point of charging $1000 for a product and selling two vs. charging $100 and selling hundreds because people who want to play with it will finally be legally able to have access.

[DaleReid]

There was an industry giant for engineering, was it AutoCAD or something that was not only very expensive, but for awhile required a dongle on a port as verification you had a legal copy, then they went to having it only available with internet access.  So what do you do with your engineers when the net is down or they are using a laptop with no access. 

I haven't heard of them lately, so I'm not sure if they have priced themselves into a niche market, or have disappeared altogether.  So friends who used to dabble in that a decade or more ago found lower priced, very adequate, alternatives and used it quite a bit.

[Jáchym]

Wow, this looks fantastic, and worth trying the PC Windows version when I get the link.  I am MAC ignorant and barren for anything to even load it on.

I agree with the assessment of Adobe's approach.  Quality costs money, no doubt.  My first use of their products to print out fancy fonts.  We purchased a single font, sort of a variation of Times Roman, for about $150 in late 1990's dollars.

Way over priced for what one got, especially when oodles of free fonts began to become available shortly thereafter.

The same way with their PhotoShop product.  It does a lot, but the learning curve is so steep that despite attending various workshops and reading books saying they will teach you how to use it, I've never been able to even get it to work, say nothing of mastering it.

The balance point of charging $1000 for a product and selling two vs. charging $100 and selling hundreds because people who want to play with it will finally be legally able to have access.

Quality costs money - 100% agreed, but... It does look a bit absurd when you see a "student license" for JUST Photoshop for 240 dollars a year.... I wonder where the guys from Adobe studied and how much they were making while studying

And yes it has a very steep learning curve. I dare to say Im pretty confident working with it, but it also took me years to learn how to use layers, masks and all the more advanced stuff.

however, Photoshop is also quite good at things like retouching, deleting backgrounds etc etc and in that perspective it is so intelligent that it is basically a matter of pressing a button, which is why it is also used by not just professionals, but normal users.

I tried some of it yesterday in Affinity and the results were amazing, sometimes even better than PS, just that the calculation took slightly longer. But I have not seen any other SW to get this close to PS ever.

[Intheswamp]

Sheese, I don't think Affinity is going to work out on my feeble little computer.  Looked nice, but sloooowwwwww...

Dual core 3GHz and 4gigs of ram.... 

Ed

[Jáchym]

LOL

Yes... and I have to admit I havent tried on my 1GB Lubuntu computer either But at work it worked fine, I have i3 with 8GB RAM

But that of course is no disadvantage compared to PS, that would probably be even worse

[Jáchym]

OK, so the final Win version has just been released today, no longer Beta (which surprisingly still works...).

If you are thinking about purchasing it, then now is your chance. First week there is now a promotion where you can get it for just 39.99. Then after next week it will be 49.99.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/