I’m still working through the Affinity Photo public Beta, but so far, I’m impressed. It’s not done yet, but the team is regularly pushing updates and things seem to be moving very quickly in the right direction. If you haven’t checked it out yet - it’s worth your time. If you have, share your experiences and perspective with the rest of us. Thanks!
Isn’t this just another software tool? Why this one and not another one?
Best regards, Alex
In no particular order: designed for the Mac from the start, no legacy code, excellent development team, good UI, responsive development team, low/reasonable cost, good and growing feature set, supports my Plugins, good on-line community. Oh, and mesh with Affinity Designer (vector graphics - same file format.
Hammer6
Could not agree more Hammer6. I am trying it along with Lightroom so I can migrate from Aperture. I think it may be a winner for Mac users.
You never have enough gear!
I think that its a very good approach to compare with LR as this is probably the most used competitor to Photos (besides maybe C1). This is anyway the impression that I have when reading in this forum. And there is nothing wrong with this. What we said for a few years already is that Aperture has fallen far back behind LR or C1. What is your impression today when you compare Aperture with Photos and then with LR? Would you do a ranking? What would be the main points in this ranking?
Best regards, Alex
First, let’s sort something out. Aperture and Lightroom are similar solutions that focus on managing a photo library (meta data, rating, organizing, etc.). One of their core strengths is non-destructive editing of images. Photoshop, on the other hand, is a sophisticated raster (pixel)-based image/graphics creation and editing tool. So is Affinity Photo. They should be considered partner apps to the likes of Aperture and Lightroom. You’ll want something like Aperture or Lightroom as your photo management and non-destructive editing platform, and Photo or Photoshop (or Acorn or Pixelmator…) as your raster imaging tool for more sophisticated tasks/effects. Are we all in agreement?
Hammer6
FWIW,
I posted this elsewhere in this forum but I think it is worth repeating. I’m in the same boat as everyone else here - what to do after Aperture. I downloaded 30d trial copies of both CO and LR. I have compared about a dozen shots taken with 3 nikon lens on a D810 and several shots with a 23mm prime Fuji lens on the X-T1. I compared these SOOC photos (no adjustments) in CO, LR, and Aperture. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that CO has the best RAW converter. LR and Aperture were similar but did not have the sharpness, dynamic range or pleasing noise that the CO converter exhibited. Obviously there are a number of other factors that have to be included in ones decision but the quality of the raw converter, for me, is a major one.
CO?
Hammer6
Capture One
Based on a short time messing with Affinity Photo beta (AP), I’m sold on it, although I’m going to check out the Corel product since I used CorelDraw for many years. Current plan is to migrate my images to Photo from Aperture when it’s released and use it for image management and do editing in AP instead of Photoshop (stuck at CS4; will not subscribe). I found that I can drag and drop thumbnail images from both iPhoto and Aperture into AP. Couldn’t be easier. I’m an artist so photos are a step in my process not the end result, therefore my feature and metadata requirements are not as stringent as for all you real photographers. But I still need good reliable results to enter images of my paintings in juried shows, which I why I’ve stayed with CS4.
Reynard
I’m musing over whether to do the same. Really enjoyed Affinity though its export wasn’t working for me. Problem is long term, I can’t seen Photos app being suitable for really large libraries and its asset management leaves so much to be desired compared to Aperture..
DavidC
I have been using affinity photo and participating in their forums. They have been very upfront and doing a great job of using suggestions from users and improving their product. Here is one quote from Andy one of the Devs about DAM. Maybe something to look forward to when Aperture is obsolete.
“Hi,
DAM is a complex business, as I’m sure you all know - if we do it, it will be a separate and different product (which would, of course, integrate perfectly with Photo).
This is something which I have (half) a plan for - but it will not even begin until Photo is “out of the door”. It does have my interest though, in no uncertain terms..
Thanks,
Andy.”
DAM?
You never have enough gear!
I’m just Joe Public - years of Nikon, Mac ownership so Aperture whilst dabbling with Elements & LR5. Now I have gone MFT (Micro Four Thirds) with Olympus M5 MkII and I am spending more time juggling files than taking photo’s. I must be old. I don’t have the time for all this. Now I have a camera with RAW files that are not yet supported by ANY software (except Affinity) & its a beta, my library in Aperture is redundant, I have a plethora of programs that are either in development or do not do what was so easy in the past. What a mess!
You know I started driving cars when you could identify everything under the hood (bonnet) and nowadays its a complete mystery what’s in there. But heh! I still sit & drive. Thats what cars are for.
Please, why can’t the photo industry stick to what works & incrementally improve. The business is taking pictures, right? I call it the Apple syndrome - ditch everything every year, now you are ‘hooked’ , and you now need to buy everything from scratch.
Sorry for the rant but I am so frustrated with what I see.
You never have enough gear!
DAM= Digital Asset Management.
Basically its the data base that manages your digital photos. Its what Aperture is with out the editing.
just picked up Affinity Photo the other day and am interested in any more comments on using this editor along with Lightroom. I know on their site it does not appear AP will be delving into DAM any time soon so I’m looking at going in to LR full tilt… standalone version only though. I also picked up On1’s Perfect Photo Suite which has also been fun to use but the engine in AP seems to be getting some pretty good reviews for speed and functionality. Any more comments on AP and/or the AP/LR combo?
If you don't have a solution you don't have a problem!
I never progressed beyond PSE over many iterations as I couldn’t get my head around their logic so didn’t bother with PS proper.
I switched from Aperture to Lightroom 5 / 6 a while back and have to say that I really like it.
I’ve been using Affinity (1.3.4) for about a week and got more out of it than 10 years of half-hearted efforts with PSE.
It round trips pretty well with LR simply setting it up as a second editor (PS products grab the first slot)
Do your work in Affinity then Export it back into LR using LR Hot Folder.
You can also use Affinity work directly on the RAW file from your LR Masters and then export back into LR.
Affinity looks good and designed around OS X and (especially) for a first release it is superb.
There are a good number of excellent tuition videos on their website and the Help file is more than adequate.
At a one-off $50 it’s unbeatable ….. bye-bye Adobe.
Affinity Photo is great for design and composing. It’s great but you have learn all the weirdness.
Here’s some examples:
if add a selection, you need to start your selection outside of existing selection or you’ll move existing selection. but if you really need to add a selection from inside a existing selection, you need to hold down the Control key.
To get Polygon lasso, you need to hold shift with the regular lasso tool.
More on the polygon lasso, if you need to pan while you use the polygon lasso, you keep holding down the shift key, you have also hold down space to pan but make you don’t release the shift when your done panning.
The shortcut for the fill tool or the gradiant tool is G. you have to press G twice to toggle between the 2 tools.
You need to scale layer by percentage instead pixels? for example you need to shrink layer image by 53%. well, you need to go the pixel size add *0.53 after the pixel entry.
Those are just some of the example off the top of my head.
Many terminology is different. for example, Photoshop Special Object Filter is a Live Filter in Affinity Photo. A Photoshop Clipping layer is a nested layer in Affinity.
Overall, i love it. Goodbye Photoshop!!!!
Robert Ke
twitter: rke21
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I’ve bought the program as well and like it so far. I do not use PS often enough to justify a monthly rental, and CS5 doesn’t want to run for me anymore with the latest Flash (why does Photoshop use Flash????). I like it so far but I’ve yet to do anything too hard core. For masking I usually use OnOne’s tool, but how will it handle complex text, complex collages and compositions, etc. I think the biggest hurdle it has is how to learn it – you can google nearly anything about Photoshop you need, not so much about this tool. But I’m not going to go back. :)
Bill Jurasz
Austin Texas