Affinity Photo

[Gare]

There was a release yesterday of Affinity Photo, the bitmap counterpart of Affinity Designer.

The special deal was $40. Which is less than the price for a plug-in.

Who is it for? Artists and designers who want Photoshop-level image editing without the price or the subscription excrement.

I'm fairly handy with Photoshop, but stopped buying when the damned thing went Cloud. It's interesting, and quite a treat to work with 2016 bitmap tools, Photoshop compatibility, compatibility between the Mac and Windows versions, and a tad of a learning curve.

I think it's worth it. My criteria for buying new software is:

• Is it intuitive?

• Can I get a product I could sell commercially using it, within an hour without reading a manual?

The brushes are spectacular, by the way, more like Corel Painter than Photoshop.




Just sayin',

Gary

[gwpriester]

Good review!

[angelize]

is that a mesh warp tool I see in that screenshot?

[stygg2003]

As anyone tried Affinity Designer for Windows? if so, would like your opinion on the software and learning curve difficulty. Gare rates Affinity Photo as a good buy, decisions, decisions!

Stygg

[iamtheblues]

As anyone tried Affinity Designer for Windows? if so, would like your opinion on the software and learning curve difficulty.

Stygg

If you have never used any of Serif's products before, there will naturally be a learning curve as with any new software, but in terms of ease of use I'd place it somewhere close to CorelDraw, or to put it another way, about halfway between the ease of use of Xara and the difficulty of use of Illustrator.
It's a simpler program (fewer features than Illustrator, so it's not particularly daunting to learn from scratch).
If you have used Serif's Draw Plus, then it's pretty similar to that. Of course, others may disagree, so downloading a free trial is probably the best way to find out.
Bob.

[Rik]

I have Illustrator, but, for me to get proficient at it, I would need one-to-one coaching.

But, if you've used Illustrator, then, in my opinion, Affinity Designer will be a breeze.
And the price makes it a fantastic product.

What sets Xara apart from all the other products I've tried (including Affinity Designer) are three things:
1. The ease of use of the tools.
2. The TalkGraphics forum.
3. THE TALKGRAPHICS FORUM.

Please allow me to make two points:
1. I've learned everything I know, from the members of this forum. There's no way I would have created the things I have, without the help of the members.
2. Just recently, I happened to ask a question on the Affinity forum.
Got no reply. Had to make another post, saying that it was sad that no-one could answer my question.
Then, one member did answer, and put at the end of the answer, that I should read the help file 'cover-to-cover'.

Please stick your hands up, if you've read any help file 'cover-to-cover'???

Maybe it was my mistake, to expect that forum to be like TalkGraphics.

Well, that's been my experience.

But, there's no denying that the Affinity products are very good.

EDIT: Apologies, Gary. If I've gone off-topic, a bit.

[angelize]

I agree with Bob that downloading a free trial and seeing if the software is right for you is the best way to go. In my personal experience with Affinity Designer for Windows there are a few features that Xara doesn't have that made it worthwhile to me to have a copy, but on Affinity photo I'm not sure yet as I have another program that I use for photos that already fills most of my needs. Affinity photo has a few features that would be nice to have, but I have yet to decide if I really need them.