Affinity Photo and Designer 1.7 released
Jun 07, 2019 by CGPress Staff
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Serif has released a new version of Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. Version 1.7 is a significant update with GPU compute acceleration, HDR monitor support and a new memory management features plus much more. See the full list on Serif’s pages for Photo and Designer.
Great Softwar nearly as advanced as Adobe… But.. Without subscription..
People, i had to learn it, and a asure you, you won´t regret and you won´t get back to the pirats company, called Adobe..
Why no Linux version. 🙁
I mean, it’s a great piece of software, Linux is really missing a good Photoshop like bitmap editing software. GIMP is cool and all but it’s usability too different for the average Photoshop user. I would love to see a Linux version in the future.
-Robert
Unfortunately they denied request on a possible Linux version multiple times already in their forums. Would be really nice though!
Yup. But I understood reason: low marketshare in advanced graphics artists and linux will have this low marketshare if there is no professional software for their platform. But Krita is great and DaVinci Resolve <3 These have multi-platform support and great tools.
You should try Krita if you want PS-like experience on Linux.
Lots of potentials but there’s no magic trick: it is a 50 bucks software and you get what you pay for.
In theory, there’s a lot that Affinity brings to the table, but unfortunately, it falls short. It can be heavy on the CPU (not clear which configuration works best), the 32 bit, which was great news for 3D users working with PS, it’s buggy. In the RAW department, sure you can edit RAW but forget the sidecar. I went with Darktable for that kind of work. Multiple selections across different layers are simply not possible. Live filters are cool but limit their use to one per session or your machine will feel much pain (and I’m using a fast machine). Mac is still their priority (GPU still not available on PC “but only because it’s easier to get GPU on the Mac, yadda, yadda, yadda…)
They added Publisher, some feared it would slow down the development considered the already limited resources, but “no, it won’t”. Guess what? It did. And their forum is dominated by fanboys, hard to get a mature conversation going.
And so on so forth.
I loved Affinity, I really, really wanted to be the promised land and forget about Adobe. It’s simply-not-possible-period
I guess it really depends on your workflow and for what you are using. For really power users, for $10 Photoshop is still a steal. 🙂
But for me, for example, that uses every now and again, doing some CC, quick 3D render comps, etc, Affinity is more than fine.
What are your specs on your computer because i’ve never run into what your saying. Im not a fanboy whats so ever but i’ve never had any issues with the software since i was in the beta.
The specs seem to be confusing territory. Even the devs have no idea what triggers the CPU overload and the fact that fans start hitting.
I tried Affinity on Intel and AMD, both same bad results.
On AMD I’m using it with a 1950x, 64GB ram and EVO 860 512gb, plus two 1080ti but we know GPU is irrelevant. Intel was a great machine too, but no luck either.
It’s funny seeing people downvoting my comment, must be fanboys from their forums. See? You can only say good things about Affinity, otherwise, you get this kind of reaction.
Never had a cpu overload on intel. I do know with 1950x you have to make sure you windows drivers are up date. Another thing is the 1950x is very picky with memory and its timings. Here’s a video explaining 1950x on how the memory is used. Remember 1950x is two cpu dies that are more or less synced together so the memory has to be on par with that. As for the rest i would do some research on the rest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vQwGGbW1AE
Jayson,
I appreciate your insights, but I assure you the PC is working perfectly. It’s fine-tuned to produce the best performance (it’s an Alienware). I use it with no issues with everything else: C4D, x-Particles, Redshift, Adobe, Blackmagic Fusion. Literally, I can throw anything at it and it never fails me. The moment I launch Affinity Photo the CPU is stressed and fans kick in. I went through this on the Affinity forum already several times to no avail. There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s just that Affinity it’s still young. And I understand that. I understand that also Serif is not Adobe, their resources are limited and so their team. And I understand that for some people it works just fine for a serious of reason. What people don’t want to hear is that is not close to be a PS alternative, and I’d really, really like to ditch Adobe (that’s why I’m learning Fusion). But Affinity is just not there, not to mention the lack of features and issues their software has. The thing is, considered their priorities and resources, it will take years to get there, assumed they are interested in getting there at all.
Marco, that Affinity has a bug that affects your computer does not mean that it’s young, it means that an specific bug related to something installed in your systems (probably some piece of software that you have in both computers) affects you, it just does means that it does not work well for you, do not extrapolate to others or to a general conclussion about the apps.
For us Affinity has been the perfect alternative to Adobe (in our case several systems, TR2990WX, i7-5960X, i7-5820k and i7-6700k), we still have one adobe subs because we still use After Effects and inDesign, we are also shifting towards Fusion, the only downside is that for Fusion there is way less stock material, and that’s the only reason why for some projects we have to stay with After Effects.
Regarding Photo or Designer, well maybe for you is not enough for some specific feature, that could be great to be mentioned here so we can check it, maybe we don’t use or know those features, but for the time being it has been an amazing piece of software that replaced Photoshop enitrely for us.
Now regarding Designer, OH MY GOD! I’m sure some people will find some features that are not present, and for that reason it won’t be enough for some graphic designers or illustrators, but for us, OMG! The BEST Illustrator replacement, what a great UI/UX, nothing like the absurd illustrator world, working with it is a pleasure.
So in the end, don’t make a general conclussion because you have a big bug related to your systems, try in a completely empty windows, just drivers and nothing more, and if you don’t get the problem, then you have some software incompatibility, but that’s a bug that affects you (and maybe other users) and it’s a bug that has to be catched and solved, but it’s not a “software is young” thing, it’s a “software has a bug” thing, we’ve been in that situation with Adobe software before and no one sais “the software is young” hehehe
If there are more people suffering from that problem in the affinity forums try to compare your hardware/software installed, if all of you have something in commmong, that’s the culprit.
Cheers!
Juang3d,
Do you think I haven’t gone through all this already?
I’ve been using Affinity for more than 2 years now. I’ve seen other users reporting other types of bugs, and feature requests. One could say they have been ignored. I simply say Serif does all they can with their resources. That’s why I said, for 50 bucks you get what you pay for. It’s just a matter of numbers. People get this statement almost personally. For some reason, when it comes to software, there’s always this sort of religious attachment to it. I personally don’t care. I use what works best for me. If it’s cheap even better. But, as surprised as I was when I first heard of a cheap PS alternative, the fact is if it’s cheap there must be a reason. That said, again, if it works for you I’m happy for you. And I’m not sure why you say “US” by the way: are you writing on behalf of a group? Why is it the US for you and in my case it’s only me? In fact, on the Affinity forum, there’s been plenty of people over the years who lamented several issues with the software. These people have been cut off and slowly they gave up and disappeared. And I don’t “extrapolate to others”, I’m expressing what Affinity is not for other users. Instead, it seems to me that your conclusion that Affinity doesn’t work for me alone, whereas it works great for the rest of the world.
It is not a bug affecting my computer, especially if you consider what I said before: I run a lot of software, way more demanding in terms of resources than Affinity and everything run smooth. To simply put it, Adobe it’s been around for much longer and they went through many cycles of bug fixes hence their programs work better — not that they are bug free, but specifically coming to bitmap editing, PS works great on any machine I have tried it at any company I’ve worked for in many years. And I hope this is not going to degenerate into another, useless war Adobe vs Affinity. I repeat: I don’t care about A vs B, I only care about what works best.
Also, have you ever tried to work in 32bit in Affinity Photo dealing with multipass EXR? Well, give it a try and if you don’t encounter one single bug, you are the first one I hear saying that AP works flawlessly in such cases.
There are other annoying things, one could probably live with, but then when you start dealing with those things in a production environment and you need to be fast, they end up slowing you down. Ever found switching from adding to subtracting a selection boresome? I do. I have to remember to interrupt the flow and click on the buttons rather than using the keyboard. Have you ever tried to combine, subtract or intersect selections across multiple layers? Well, it is simply not possible. If you deal with many layers and you need that sort of operations, you’ll find yourself saving many selections before even start doing operations with them. Tiresome, overcomplicated process. I get it, for some users, these are not problems. For other users, these are obstacles to their workflow. For my work, I need to finish several frames in one day. Often times I’m comping from 3d passes. I might be part of a niche (although not really, the motion graphics industry is big). But these are facts. I can’t simply rely on software that slows me down even if I really wanted to use it. And I tried, and tried and tried on their forum. I hit the wall.
So, my comment here was simply meant to remember people who might be interested in Affinity to just take into account that Affinity it is not 100% the Adobe replacement. It might work, it might not, it depends of each own needs and circumnstances.
The statement I like is when people say Affinity Photo is a PS replacement or is even better. For the simple reason that, if it works great for many, it is also true that it doesn’t work for others. Therefore, it would be simply fair to be mutually respectful of what works and in what regards and avoid sensationalistic statements.
I’m not saying that Affinity don’t have bugs (as Adobe have bugs, when working with Photoshop or AE I get crashes from time to time, and hangs up from the app much more than in Affinity) and don’t tell me that workign with 32 bit EXR in Photoshop is better because it’s the worst and limited thing that Photoshop has.
For us it’s a replacement, maybe not for you, it will be a replacement for many people, and won’t be for others.
What I say is that I, and others, don’t have that problem, so it’s a problem related to your (and probably other users) software/driver mix, not related to the software being younger or older, so don’t make that a generic fact.
Juang: “don’t tell me that working with 32-bit EXR in Photoshop is better”
Hi Juang,
there is something even more disturbing in Affinity when we talk about 32bit.
As you may know, we are application developer for vfx studios, specialized in among other things, in OpenEXR (you can find Exr-IO photoshop plugin, a kind of spin-off from our commercial applications, somewhere here in CGP)
We have been intensively researching this stuff for five years and Affinity was also a software for analysis. Let us put aside the fact that for 50$ you get more then one could expect, therefore it is not critiquing. Alone the ability of Affinity to load layered Exr partially correct is for that money a miracle. Affinity feels like driving a Fiat car, it is not Lexus, but it brings 90% to the destination. It is the best alternative.
Affinity has the same illness Photoshop have when it comes to 32 bit.
It can not work correctly with color profiles and gamma when it comes to 32bit colorspace. Wenn you open 32bit raw, linear space image in PhotoShop, it has the correct linear space and (if you use Exr-IO) the correct color-profile coming from the original 3d file. So far so good. Once you convert it into 16bit, Photoshop applies gamma and for some unexplained, crazy reason, it applies a new color profile. In this way, it destroys the image (you become different colors, you can’t work anymore with linear-add, multiply, etc like in 32bit, you have lost the precision, etc). Yes, you can trick around with 16-bit gamma corrected profile and smart objects, but this is junk-workflow and sooner or later it falls apart.
Ok, this is clear and easy to understand. I do not even need to prove it, everybody has/can try it to see how the conversion fails. There is no serious workaround for this problem.
What is most disturbing – although Affinity has full control of their code and although they COULD have implemented the linear space in a correct way (like we work in Fusion, Nuke, etc) – they did the EXACTLY SAME misinterpretation! The same wrong color space conversion, we desperately try to avoid in PS, Affinity has blue-printed the same COPY-PASTE bullshit from Photoshop! In the same manner wrong, it produces exactly the same trash PS do. I am amazed to see the level of reproducing errors that even linear-add, multiply, etc create in Affinity exactly the same results as in PS.
It makes the software for 32bit/16bit compositing completely useless.
I do not get it – what were they thinking while programming? That it shold be like this? Were there no professional assistant, working in gfx, vfx, postproduction studio to tell them how diffult, heck impossible will be later to do matte-paitning of film material with RED or Exr images coming out 3d?
It is depressing; they were so close 🙁
And what about doing 32bit in a software like Photoline?
At least Photoline has decent PS plugin compatibility and the developer listens to feedback and tries to fix bugs on the beta forum, unlike Affinity that they ignore and move on and bugs still exist after years.
I even got BS from Affinity PR on twitter years ago, for questioning their caring about the users by not implementing good the PS plugins and how they dont have native anything and I am sure they didn’t want to work with Allegorithmic (by that time) or Zbrush or any other company to integrate and do something about it.
Of course I got the answer “then use PS because Affinity is not meant to be a replacement” and “you dont know if the team cares” by the PR.
Well, apparently I got negative views about Affinity and their software from the beginning. Of course some people just look at the UI and think how wnice and modern it looks and rapidly judge softwares like Photoline saying how terrible it looks. But looking at how Serif has done things in the past, and how Affinity has just ignore and move on from bugs and added few features and call it a day, pretending that bugs will somehow stop existing only because it costs $50-$39 and say “well it’s not meant to be a replacement”.
So I am wondering if Photoline was part of your researching to say if it is better or just the same as the others. It is cheap, but of course people don’t seem to look at it and tutorials are non-existant, which doesn’t help. At least the developer seems to work hard even if it has really few users.
Hey Igor, I’m not sure if anyone else or yourself will see this reply but I found this article and comments I believe through a reference on blenderartists.org
I thought I would reply anyway to see if I could get some clarification and also help users understand the way colour management is integrated into Affinity Photo.
It can, you just have to understand the distinction between its default display-referred colour management, viewing the unmanaged linear values and the OpenColorIO integration. What you want is the 32-bit preview panel, accessed from View>Studio.
This enables you to switch between ICC Display Transform (document-to-screen profile management), Unmanaged (linear light) and OCIO Display Transform (accessible with a valid OpenColorIO configuration). If you have an OpenColorIO configuration set up, Affinity Photo will always default to OCIO Display Transform when you open an EXR or HDR document.
With 32-bit documents, Affinity Photo always converts to scene linear when you import EXR/HDR documents. You can specify the colour space by appending it to the file name—for example, if you had an EXR with ACES primaries, you can name the file “document aces.exr”. You would then get a toast (notification) telling you the colour space has been converted from ACES to scene linear.
This applies on export, too—when you export back to EXR or HDR, simply append the colour space to the export file name, and Photo will convert from scene linear to that colour space.
It’s all explained in the help which nobody ever reads 😉
ICC Display Transform is for the majority of 32-bit use cases: users merging bracketed exposures to produce an HDR document, tone mapping it, then exporting to a non-linear gamma-encoded format like JPEG or TIFF. In this respect, the result you see in 32-bit must look consistent when it is converted and exported to 8-bit or 16-bit in non-linear space. This is why 32-bit documents have an arbitrary colour profile (the default is sRGB)—the colour primaries are bounded when using ICC Display Transform so you don’t get unexpected results when you export to a bounded non-linear format. The colour profile has no effect when using Unmanaged or OCIO Display Transform.
Just to clarify as well, all operations in 32-bit are performed in linear space—blend modes, filters, adjustments, tools.
Yes, because 16-bit and 8-bit in Photoshop and Photo are treated as display-referred formats. They are non-linear and use a mandated document colour profile for accurate document-to-screen colour management. If you’re working in 32-bit linear and convert to 16-bit or 8-bit without flattening or merging, adjustments and filters are going to render differently because you’re going from linear to non-linear compositing.
If you really need 16-bit half-float (as opposed to 32-bit full float) linear compositing within your document layer stack I’m not sure what to say, as Photo doesn’t offer this—why do you need this instead of just compositing in 32-bit? You can export to half-float (16-bit) linear no problem: just use File>Export and choose EXR, then use an existing preset or click More and you can set the encoding bit depth for pixel, spatial and other layer types. The TIFF exporter also offers a linear unbounded 32-bit option.
You mentioned RED plates—not too familiar with the workflows but are we essentially talking about RAW files here? In Photo, you can process RAW files directly to linear unbounded 32-bit (it’s an option on the Develop Assistant Manager), so you bypass any kind of bounded non-linear conversion.
Basically, within Affinity Photo it’s entirely possible to retain a non-destructive, unbounded linear colour space workflow—you just have to work in 32-bit and use the 32-bit preview panel to configure your view transform appropriately. Do you only need to see the linear unmanaged values? Choose Unmanaged. Do you need to transform colour values non-destructively into a colour space for preview, and interchange with other software? Use OCIO and take advantage of EXR as an interchange format (or linear TIFF which can also save the entire layer stack). Do you need to export your final render out of Photo into a non-linear format for viewing? Use ICC Display Transform.
P.S. with a valid OCIO configuration, you can also use the OCIO adjustment layer. This enables you to transform between different colour spaces—e.g. scene linear to ACES CG—for compositing purposes. You can also bake the colour space primaries into an exported EXR document if required.
This sounds fine for 3D and VFX workflows, but think of all the other workflows that would be affected. Lots of image editors in other industries use 16-bit precision workflows and know nothing about linear colour spaces or HDR interchange formats. They expect to work in 16-bit and have their results look exactly the same when they export to 8-bit JPEG or TIFF for their delivery.
Thanks for your time and hope the above is helpful!
All the best,
James
Thanks a lot for this golden information!
I’m not sure if you are part of Affinity, but if you are, you should make a blog post about this somewhere, it’s important that people knows all this 🙂
I agree about avoiding sesationalistic statements, that’s why I asnwered you, because you said a sensationalistic statement:
Are you actually reading what I’m writing?
I never said it’s buggy for everyone.
And I’m not only saying it’s buggy for me and other users, but I’m also saying it’s also limited for the people who work in my industry.
You DO understand that if it works for you and it’s buggy for others it’s pure luck/coincidence on your end?
This is turning into another flame same as on the Affinity forum where people don’t like hearing what DOESN’T work and react as if who’s reporting issue or LIMITS of the software is doing it for fun. I HAVE USED AFFINITY FOR TWO YEARS, despite the issues and the workaround I had to come up with. That means REALLY trying. Also, funny how all the people who are happy with it make basic, limited use of it. On the Affinity forum when someone asks for something a little more demanding, the so-called happy users don’t know what to do and always respond: use this other software, or that utility.
And for your info, in PS you can now use Exr-IO.
This conversation is becoming sterile and I can see how there’s no intention to listen but only to attack. I’m out.
havin alienware dosen’t mean your bios/uefi is up to date and drivers. Some time your bios/uefi is important to update. I had few issues with few softwares long time ago because my bios/uefi was outdated (needed update). There is also microcode updates to intel’s and amd’s processors which are important. What i have read affinity forum’s i have noticed they are really doing their best and fixed many issuses and listed many issuses which are still under work in porgress but there is lots of hardware variations which cause bugs / crashes / overheating / overloading and there might be some background services open in your computer which might create issues and these are huge work to solve just like adobe – adobe has many bugs and some times they make same mistakes/bugs again or atleast very similar bugs. Especially After effects and Premiere… DaVinci Resolve is fantastic piece of software it use just like Affinity Photo which easily processed 300stacking images when photoshop crashed everytime because it used too much memory – affinity is about 300mb when photoshop is 1100mb about? if i remember this right.. and photoshop also took very much overload to processor and gpu and it crashed, when affinity did job fast and nicely. I have tried to figure out is it background service or driver updates but no luck… it is really some times luck – so many softwares/background services and so many hardware variations. But luckyly there is few software and even Photoshop fails many times – with same tasks what i can do in affinity so i am lucky that there is good alternative called affinty and these days i use it most because it is more relaible in my taks and with my experience and i am not funboy i have krita, paint shop pro, gimp for different tasks because always some software has some bug, no one is 100% stable. But sure it might be that you have problem with affinity :/ and there are many things to find out before problems are solved 🙁 And its same thing with adobe its not easy thing to fix these complex systems these days with so many api’s and hardware solutions and drivers and mac / win platforms. DaVinci has also linux, mac and win.. very hard job for their but they do very good job at blackmagic <3
@jama
The bios is updated. Also, Alienware come with Dell’s system utilities that periodically check the system and inform if there’s a new update about anything (drivers, bios and so on). Honestly, I think nowadays it’s actually got much better when it comes to this sort of things drivers and system related.
That said, it can be hard to track down the issue, I’m not blaming the devs. But as I said, bugs are not the only issue. It’s also a matter of workflow. Again, I’m glad it works for some, but it doesn’t work for everyone. For instance, I can’t still understand how people can build a solid RAW workflow environment when the sidecar, the most basic feature is missing.
Anyway, people reacting badly to my comments is beyond any logic. I’m not bashing Affinity/Serif, I’ve been a dedicated user and worked on many workarounds before I gave up. It’s probably the tendency nowadays on the Internet where people lack the principle of polite dialogue. It’s sad and quite disgusting, honestly. Not being able to have a normal conversation. Only because you don’t agree with someone. Too much Social Media, I guess.
The idea behind my contribute on the Affinity forum, as well as the participation of other users, was to make the software better, to improve it, to add new features and help to create something together that could be on par or even better than Adobe. Their community has poor reviews and it is not a coincidence. When you have to deal with software limitation or issues and also being attacked by users who act like fanatics, it gets simply unmanageable. Too bad, but that’s how it is nowadays.
Best
Are you sure you are talking about latest versions of Affinity Photo for EXR work???
Because right now I can easily open a multi layer exr, it opens each channel separatedly as different layers, I can work with curves, levels and many other different adjustments (that cannot be used in 32 bit with Phothoshop) and I have no trouble with it.
I tried the same today in Photoshop and basically Photoshop showed me the middle finger so…
Spekaing about performance, no trouble, and regarding color, you have the OCIO adjustment layer.
Things can always be better, and I don’t disagree with you in that your experience was not good, or in that it may not be enough for you, but for us it’s a pleasure!
We don’t have your CPU problem in any of our systems, we don’t find many bugs at all, and while more features will always be welcome, we are happy with what Affinity Photo delivers and it has become a great alterntive to Photoshop.
Affinity Photo is a great alternative to PS, but I agree it is terribly slow at times, regardless of the rendering mode you choose. The code needs optimization. I like it’s painting toolset but this is the reason I went back to PS CS 3 (the golden one) for painting.
Archviz artist here. I have all of their tools. Works beautifully. More than enough for most work.
Just a Question about affinity ( never tried it )
can you do linear workflow comping? ( almost impossible in photoshop , too hard to set up the good color space)
No. I wrote above a long text about linear wf in ps and affinity, but no one reads here anything.
In your explanation you convert from 32 bit to 16 bit, why do you do that?
In Photoshop you just do it to be able to do practically anything, but in Affinity you have more freedom and tools at your hand.
Why would I do that? Because I need it. This is a simple answer.
When our matte-painters or customers ask me how to convert their plates from RED or Renderman for the next Avengers, in order to shift the retouches from PS to Nuke and back in correct 32 and 16-bit color profiles, I do not ask them why do they need it, it would be is a silly question.
Weirdos asked if linear workflow works in Affinity (and PS), the answer is no. Use Fusion or Nuke.
agree. affinity is mainly for 8bit beginners and is often used by the blender type people
I don’t think you even deserve an ellaborte answer to the “used by blender type people”, but I will answer it.
It’s amazing how some people can disparage other packages users and projects just because they use those other packages…
Do a bit of research about those “blender type people”, you may be forced to work on Blender at some point in your career, are you a “Blender type people”?
Was I a “Blender type people” when during more than 15 years I’ve been using Autodesk software? or was I ok because I was max/maya user?
Is an animator that worked in Pets, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 or other movies that kind of “Blender type people”.?
Or are max users that write in forums that they still render their animation in AVI that “Blender type people”?
Or those students/beginners that save everything in JPG?
Or those who don’t understand or know what a compositor software is because their course only covers 3dsmax/maya?
Are all of those “Blender type people”?
Really, those of you who ride the “white steed” called “Autodesk” AND look at others over their shoulders (not everyone is that way), please come back down to earth and respect others.
Amazing.
Some posts above some of you said that Affinity have the same problem as Photoshop for Linear workflow, and now suddenly it works!
I don’t care about Affinity, use whatever you want, you can even use Paint if you want, I don’t care hahaha, but when something works it works and when something don’t works, it does not work, Photoshop cannot be flawled with the same problem as Affinity and suddenly begin to work, that’s more “weird” than any other thing.
So… what’s the thing? Does Photoshop has the same Affinity problems or does not?
The point here is: Affinity is a great alternative for many users, not just “Blender type people”, LOL and maybe you could ask your matte artists to try a different software for your matte painting, like Krita, to work in 32bit full float, or does Krita have the same 32bit linear workflow problems as Photoshop/Affinity?
And maybe if it does not work, you can get one of you super-avengers-movie-tools-programmer and make it work, can´t you?
“And maybe if it does not work, you can get one of you super-avengers-movie-tools-programmer and make it work, can´t you?”
Wow, Juang – herewith you overstep the limits of any semi-polite discussion. Instead of discussing the problems of the mentioned subject, you are attacking personally the people and their achievements. Programmers who did great work and offer it for free. Your rubbish comment about them was very low. This is the moment where even I must turn my back on you.
First of all, sorry if I offended you, but it was not my objective with that phrase.
I said it without acritude, no hars feelings, when you are in such a big production, don’t you have super-tools programmers?
You took to the table the movie production industry, and it’s a fact that in that industry you have a good amount of programmers at your disposal, and that was related to Krita, not to affinity, of course you cannot modify Affinity, but you can modify Krita.
If Affinity Photo has such big problems, and it was said that it has the same problems that Phosothop, why don’t use Krita? and in case Krita still has problems you can fix those problems, no need to wait to Adobe or Sheriff to fix them.
Film industry may have big quality standards, but it also have big amount of development power and money.
Regarding discussing the problems, we can discuss the problems or not, but you have to keep in mind one important thing, movie production is not the biggest 3d industry out there, even when it moves tons of money, in that industry the workflow is very defined and static, one can say that linear workflow is not a matter of opinion, and I agree, but when I asked why do you have to convert from 32 bit to 16 bit is because we don’t need too, you may need that for the matte painters, but not everyone uses PS or AFP in the same way for the same tasks.
And that is why I always said that it’s not a matter of if it’s good or not, but if it serves your purpose, I’m not saying that Avengers matte painters should change over to Affinity, but for many other workflows it perfectly fine and photoshop is worse than affinity, it all depends on your needs, it’s not black and white.
Igor people do read comments here, and I read that one as well, and found it informative. Affinity team did their best to replicate Adobe in the broken color space respect, it seems.
terrible software…ill never try it again!
slow on massive multilayer EXRS from 3d software and is just really sluggish on range of systems
dont try it until they can get some proper developers in to look at the issues.
Try again with 1.7, maybe it improved for you, I’m not sure what kind of massive EXR files you use, in our case around 10 render passes at 4960×3508.
it my case Designer 1.7 is slow in just selecting a multilayered vector file.. forget manipulating them.. it is really slow..
8K plus with around 8 passes normally, sluggish on i7 and sluggish on 32 core threadripper, using RTX 2080Ti. I may revisit 1.7….mainly due to wanting to ditch adobe but not at the expense of performanmce
Ok been playing with this one for a shorte time, can’t really see much of a performance improvement, especially when it comes to painting….
Then tell them in the forums and post a video showing the slowness because it always depends on the kind of project we did, so having a video showing them the actual problem will help a lot, I’m sure 🙂
For us Designer has improved a bit, even a bit faster than Illustrator with the same drawing, for Photo, I’ve never been in your situation and I’ve never had problems in that regards.
On the other hand, for painting, have you tried Krita?
I find it hilarious that nobody can’t have a different experience or opinion, because if not you will spam the thread with your comments.
Do you not see a problem there? only because you are a fanboy, it doesn’t make it true or valid or relevant at all. it is your experience, and this is happening on every thread, if it is about Autodesk you spam, if it is about Blender you spam and now you do the same about Affinity?
When you are going to start being happy and really use and learn the softwares you seem to love, instead of writing 3000 comments about them?
Affinity sucks in the big picture, only because you dont want to see it doesn’t make it true.
Then you tell people to go to Affinity Forums like if that worked most of the time, there are clear bugs that have existed and are known for years. Joining Curves still same bug, booleans same bugs, even things like the PS plugins in Photo don’t even work most of the time, and many more examples you can browse on the forums that haven’t fixed in years. And they always say “we are aware” but never fix the issues.
Also, the affinity software added acceleration and stuff for MacOS only, not Windows that shows they don’t care as long as they can release it fast. Just like happens with Luminar, where the company would rush the software, release it with many issues and not with feature parity.
$50 is still okay for each Affinity software, but you should not lecture everyone only because you somehow have had a decent experience or you dont want to see the issues.
I mean, you can’t even export TGA which is essential for many people! are you going to tell us that they dont know about it? But Affinity haven’t done anything about it.
Again, if you are happy. good for you. but spamming your opinion to anyone because they don’t comply with your policing like if you owned the comment section or the softwares you love it’s just another thing. You are not helping the community by thinking the world goes around you.
I am sorry if my comment is just not nice enough for you, but it seems you should learn manners.
“Affinity Forums like if that worked most of the time, there are clear bugs that have existed and are known for years.”
^that^
I stopped using their forum. On the one hand, I understand their limits. Their team is small and so is the budget. But on the other hand, there are situations that go beyond resources and I could never figure out what’s the secret behind it. They say they take into account every user request, but only some things end up being eventually included (like the Light UI). Obviously, they can’t make everyone happy, but why the most advanced request (either feature or bug fixed) end up forgotten or ignored? I still remember the request by Ruimac from 2016 to make it possible to dodge and burn on a mask. River of words for the same conclusion: if that’s possible in PS doesn’t mean it has to be possible in Affinity. Fine, then I’m sticking to PS as I have no other choice.
From time to time the funny ones are from some dev: “this bug has already been flagged but they (the devs) might have forgotten”
I, as a PC user, had to deal with situations (mostly at the beginning, right after Affinity became available on PC) where insisting on getting some attention on performance and bugs ended up on reactions at times even harsh from ” aficionados” who would tell me “if it doesn’t work for you doesn’t mean it doesn’t work for everybody”. That’s what you had to deal with. At some point a dev told me clearly they had to follow their agenda, there wasn’t much they could do. Which translated means: we can’t take care of your problem right now, nor we know if and when we will.
So, yes, good luck on their forums.
And I’ll repeat this ad nauseam: I’m glad other users are happy with it. But I think it’s just fair to let potential buyers know what they are going to deal with. Not because of the money they’ll invest, but their time.
From what I read over the years Affinity works for UI/UX designers, some painters, illustrators. It gets tricky to say the least for heavy compositors, 3D artists, VFX people.
I understand that you may be tired about their forums, as Ena big or small company you may suffer from people going against you or what you explain, hobbyist or pros, no matter, may be pros in a different industry so they may not understand what you are asking.
Of course it’s fair to let users your experience and opinion, and I don’t think the Igor or Darren experiences are invalid, what they say makes sense and for some makes Affinity useless, for other experiences may be valid, maybe you don’t fully shift from Photoshop to Affinity, but maybe you can reduce the amount of Adobe subs in a studio.
All experiences here are valid, they are different, from different industries and different persons, for some is good, for other don’t, I don’t think there is an absolute fact here about it’s validity, and it’s what I try to defend, not trying to invalidate anyone opinions.
So I agree, is good to let potential users know what they may find in the software, good and bad.
“[…] is good to let potential users know what they may find in the software, good and bad.”
It seems we reached a common ground at last.
That was my point since the very beginning.
And actually, the GPU update in this new release should be posted with a big caveat: the update doesn’t apply to PC, is Mac only. But that’s not CGpress’s editor misunderstanding, it’s due to the way Serif itself communicate. They like to let the user discover how things works to his/her own expense.
Heck, not even on the official announcement they clarify this GPU thing:
https://affinityspotlight.com/article/affinity-photo-17-beta-available-now/
“We’ve also put a lot of effort into taking advantage of the powerful discrete GPUs in modern Mac hardware and are seeing huge performance improvements. 1.7 also now supports external GPUs on mac too! We’d love to know what you think!”
Read carefully: they never say it doesn’t work on PC. So, you go to their forum, you spend your time posting your question, and then finally you learn that it is not ready for PC yet.
And if you complain, they’ll tell you “we never said it was ready for PC”. See now how they play this game? Sure, I spent 50 bucks, but their communication is not fair. It sucks! There, I said it.
Lastly, I wish I had the time and the patience to go through all the hassles I had with Affinity and compare each issue with you to see how it works on your end, or how many of the laggy/buggy feature I had to deal with would affect your workflow too. Because, like I said before, the impression is that when it works it’s because it’s being used for basic tasks. In which case, would undermine the whole assumption of their marketing “powerful, performance and power”, and so on. But I have given Affinity enough time already.
And with this I totally agree, their communication is bad, and they are in a mistake if they think they can use this type of communication on purpose, I hope they just made a mistake, time will see if they repeat this.
I agree with you here.
What did I say? It will work for some, and won’t work for others… since you seems to read my posts like I would be saying “I say it’s better and it’s better! Shut up you ignorants!”, you probably just ignore what I write.
Of course there will be different opinions and experiences, and it’s what I’m saying in this thread.
The point is that it will be great for some and their workflows and it will be not good for others and their workflows.
And I defend that it will be good for some and not good for others, but you do what you accuse me of doing:
It’s clear that you want your opinion to be the only valid one, not me.
I reported issues to their forum many times, I even suggested they increase the price and boost development, since it is really slow… The main problem here as far as performance is related is that it seems to me Affinity products are really poor at hardware resources usage – it does not matter how fast your machine is, the performance is capped by your CPU. I like AP for what it is – use it regularly to create UI assets and manipulate many files; sometimes for color grade my stills. But the problem is, this software is slow, and the performance drops quickly with the number of layers. Krita – I am considering it, but so far I really like my CS3.