Affinity Photo

[angelize]

A question for Gary: Affinity photo macros are they comparable to PS Actions?

[Gare]

I personally believe the AP beta was rushed through to hit the Christmas season. It needed another beta release or two. The upside is Serif is good about releasing bug fixes--quicker than they ever did with the Plus range but time will tell if that schedule remains as the products mature.
Mike

Oh, I'd assume they want to hit the Christmas market. I was surprised that the beta went to Gold as fast as it did.

Aside from I/O issues. which franky I did not try, I think it's a stunning competitor in the bitmap editing arena, and will wait patiently as it grows in future releases.

Trivia: Photoshop 2.5 was the first release for Windows, showed real potential when there were no real competitors on the market (except Aldus PhotoStyler), but the selections and brushes, the heart of P'shop were there, and it sold for $135 US and came on four 3½"s.

My Best and Happy Holidays,

[Gare]

A question for Gary: Affinity photo macros are they comparable to PS Actions?

I imagine so. I'm by no measure an expert with the program. I just gave it a browsing and liked what I saw. For Windows users, it's only as old as the beta, which started about 6 weeks ago, I think.

Guessing? I'd imagine so.

[dutchim]

Angelize here is their tutorial video on macros:

https://vimeo.com/192599545

Hope this helps

[angelize]

I watched the macro videos, and a few more videos and read through some threads on their forum. I decided that Affinity Photo will make a useful addition to my toolbox after all.

[Gare]

I watched the macro videos, and a few more videos and read through some threads on their forum. I decided that Affinity Photo will make a useful addition to my toolbox after all.

Their forum is not a "happening place" like TG is, and the members are either verey experienced or hobbyists who often bitch about a promised feature or price, or whatever.

The care that they did porting the product to Windows? I have heard programmers say that porting for Mac to Windows is harder than Win to Mac. The care and some of the intuitive properties demonstrate an eagerness for Win users to accept this as an almost full-featured bitmap editor. Not quite Photoshop but leagues better than...well, I'm not going to be offensive here to users of other programs.

Forty bucks for something that will remove backgrounds and port to Xara as a PNG? Something that has a better Mesh warp than Photoshop? Exactly the same special shapes in Photo as Design?



It's just fun for me at the moment and I use Xara as the final phase of a composition.

It works out well!

My Best,

[mwenz]

... I have heard programmers say that porting for Mac to Windows is harder than Win to Mac.

I've heard the same thing. They did the Mac version for a couple reasons. One reason is that the Mac had less competition and another is that the lead programmers for Affinity all use Macs.

An interesting tidbit for me is the use of custom written controls instead of a library and non-standard creation of the icons. This little thing is what slowed down the creation of a lighter interface option (which will be in version 1.6). With Serif's track record of having stuff custom written going awry later on, I would have thought they learned their lesson...

[handrawn]

I bought it within the hour of getting the notification email - I bought it for the brushes and warp tool in particular, and as a replacement [see below]

the liquid persona is interestring; it has a different 'feel' to xdpx's liquid colour deformation filter and so far it commits changes faster, but on first impressions at least I still prefer the xdpx

must be two years ago or so that I started doing new lineart work in raster, because the brushes are more suited; the AF ones are indeed good - colouring is starting to go that way as I have grown to prefer airbrush high/low lighting to vector; the xara brushes are too 'coarse' in the way they build colour in comparision, and using transparency shapes takes too long

I can now ditch PSE8, which I never really liked; use CS2 less and not worry about it being dated

I'll still use xdpx for native filters, for page makeups, several plugins and for maintaining old stuff; but faced with this level of competition it's difficult to see how xara can compete on the raster side

fortunately the AF export and UI issuers are unlikley to cause me any worries, at least for now...

[Gare]

I was going to document Photoshop Elements because it seemed like the cheapest game in town for the highest quality tools.

Affinity has undercut them both in some features and price.

I couldn't be happier to spend my money from hard-working, earnest people who don't have a Money Machine as a business model, as Adobe appears to have.



(One of the Dry Paint Brushes)

[handrawn]

Affinity photo layer effects: gaussian blur

that means everything you draw on the layer will automatically have the set level of blur as you draw it

ditto layer opacity

in combination, using a [for example] scatter brush, is then a 'good as it gets' means of applying very subtle highlights and shadows to a clipped layer

perfect...

[well, as near as you can reasonably hope to get]