KC Honie

I wore many hats in my past and one of those was M&A professional (investment banker). As I like to say "any trained monkey can do a transaction the real magic is in the integration of the two businesses to achieve the synergies that were used to make the financials work to justify the transaction". I would love to see the pitch deck to see how they justified creating value with two wildly different customer bases. Maybe Canva acquired Serif at such a discount that the justification is trivial. I suspect that there are a lot of bullet points saying something similar to: Sharing of code Sharing of AI Reduce the number of coders Reduce admin staff Both platforms will benefit from shared customers Affinity V3 will transition to subscription (seeing how well it worked for Adobe) [I hope we see] Rapid release of Lightroom clone and DAM Importation of LR and Capture one Catalogs Migration of LR and Capture One Catalogs Partner with camera manufactures Add Fast Raw Viewer to the portfolio Add CYME to the portfolio I suspect however that we are going to see two separate software portfolios languish and neither get the attention that they deserve and more customers move back to Adobe (I did months ago). I still have Affinity loaded because I still have some assets that were created in one of the Affinity apps (and Capture One Pro), but moving forward it is Adobe only...

Yikes, sorry I missed that part...

@Chills I get that, but life is too short to put up with his kind of condescention... Anyway, you might go out and look at NeoFinders spec list. It looks like a nice alternative to iView.

@Chills I did block him...

@Chills Yes it is quiet, I don't expect Serif to add any guidance, they have been silent for years. For DPM or a LR alternative a starting point might be (this is off the top of my head): Image importing/exporting/tethered capture Fast Raw Viewer type features for fast image culling Keywording Numerical and color ratings Descriptions image organization (viewing, sorting and grouping) Finder/Explorer capabilities or integration Application of image development Referenced file locations Unlimited catalogs GPS location (Maybe Maps) Exif editing capabilities Scripting I will keep adding to the list... I am going to leave it to other to add DAM requirements for multi file type assets... Those of Adobe bridge would be a good starting point. The challenge with a DAM is it should support multiple file types, no just Affinity files... Another good starting point is neofinder's capabilities... Here is a link to Neofinders capabilities. https://www.cdfinder.de/

Hahahahaha, yes it certainly does. We are certainly in different places with regards to many things, I personally try not to virtue signal. You have no clue about my photography other than what subjects that I like to shoot. You have no idea about my gear, my level of expertise and competence, or my technical background. You have simply made assumption because I don't subscribe to your OPINIONS about Capture One Pro. If you were as advanced as you would have us believe you would not be using and posting on the Serif Affinity forums. But I do have a clue about your technical understanding of raw developers, apparently camera sensors, and your over sized ego, so let's leave it at that. Ps. At this point it may be time to block you...

@Chills You will get no argument from me 😃

I use DAM and DPM interchangeably and probably shouldn’t. Like many others contributing to this thread, I have way north of a million images, plus huge numbers of other digital assets. It would nice to seamlessly manage these assets among the various Affinity apps. As primarily a photographer I make extensive use of the catalog functionality in Lightroom. All we have been asking for (for years) is to add that cataloging functionality to AP. Clearly that is not going to happen, so moving on was the only option.

@Bit Disappointed I personally see very little difference in COP’s and LR’s raw developers. I still have both apps on my mac but I have nearly completely transitioned from COP to LR (camera raw) and I can make images from both systems look identical. I can tell you that when I have completed the transition from Capture One Pro, I WILL NEVER USE ONE OF THEIR PRODUCTS EVER AGAIN!!! I can get close with AP but there is still a marked difference (libraw in its current iteration is just not up to the task). I shoot wildlife, landscapes, people in nature, motorsports, macro, astro, etc. You will not catch me in a studio with people, and there is no amount of money that you could pay me to shoot a wedding. I do find your comments about studio photographers and camera raw, being good enough for them but not good enough for other photographers, to be completely off base. For the most part, it is how well you use the tools at your disposal…

Yes, I was using Capture One Pro and Affinity Photo... Capture One dramatically changed their licensing model. So I switch back to Lightroom and Photoshop. I stopped using AP other than to manipulate an existing AP file. I was frankly shocked at how good both LR and PS were and was a little pissed at Serif for not providing a competing product to LR and upping the game on AP (particularly the raw developer). Both Lightroom and Capture One have vastly superior raw developers as compared to most of the competitors.

@Marshalleq Serif talked about a forthcoming DAM years ago and back tracked on it. I think it is fairly clear that they are not going to provide a DAM or LR alternative. The lack of a Serif LR alternative and the Capture One fiasco are the primary reasons that I moved on, plus Photos raw developer is terrible.

Yeah, their perpetual model only has minor release updates, e.g., you would not get an update 16.2 to 16.3 but would get 16.2.0 to 16.2.1…

@Bit Disappointed I don’t disagree on COP, their raw developer is top notch as is Adobe’s Camera Raw. But I ditched them for many reasons: the botched de facto subscription model, the unstable catalog, abandoned features and still having to purchase LR/PS to get Photoshop… Among other reasons…

@Bit Disappointed I agree whole heartedly about Affinity's use of LibRaw... There are much better raw developers out there.

Not even close to apple photos, but believe that if you want. I demo'd it and it is very capable, much more than apple photos. But I already have 3 raw developer/photo editors so I don't need another. I was simply pointing out that nearly every photo app developer recognizes the need for a DAM. I have used Pixelmator in the past but no longer, although it is also fully featured...

@Chills I seriously doubt that Serif is even a blip on Adobe's radar screen. Serif is absolutely no threat to Adobe. Adobe's top line per day is about $US55million, so Adobe generates more revenue in one day than Serif does in a year. (Adobe achieved record revenue of $19.41 billion in fiscal year 2023, which represents 10 percent year-over-year growth or 13 percent in constant currency. Diluted earnings per share was $11.82 on a GAAP basis and $16.07 on a non-GAAP basis. GAAP operating income was $6.65 billion and non-GAAP operating income was $8.92 billion. GAAP net income was $5.43 billion and non-GAAP net income was $7.38 billion.) We know that Capture One's top line is somewhere in the $US35M to $US40M range with a little over 50% from subscription plans. We have an indication that Serif's top line is also in the $US35M to $US40M range with only perpetual licensing. Neither company is a threat to Adobe in any way, they are rounding errors in Adobe's top line, so it only makes sense to keep customers apprised of what is going one. I do understand that you have to be careful of the Osborne effect, but that can be managed. If Adobe sees something that they like in one of the other apps they can quickly implement their version on their own.

@Chills I hadn't really considered that V3 might indeed include a DAM or a LR-esque new app. It would have been nice to have a road map. But I went through the very painful process of switching from Capture One Pro to LR and am not going to do it again, so I am in essence a former customer...

If you look at the forum section "Feedback for the Affinity V2 Suite of Products" Other than the scripting discussion, this thread "Why won't Serif listen to customer needs and create a Lightroom alternative for us?" has by and far the most replies and views. Serif knows... for whatever reason they chose not to address the big white elephant in the room.

As photographers we are a small minority of Serif's customer base. Aperture was by and far my favorite raw developer but alas... As stated above I am back to LR and PS...

That is where I am as well, the shocking part is how much better PS is than AP. Camera Raw really is way ahead of AP's raw converter. Capture One is still the best IMHO, but their switch to a very expensive de facto subscription model drove me back to Adobe and away from Affinity.

Pixelmator listened to their customers... Pixelmator has released a significant update to Photomator, its award-winning photo editing app for Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro. Photomator 3.3 includes a powerful new file browser built on native macOS functionality, promising a fast and convenient photo browsing and editing experience, no matter where photographers keep their files. Plus it is non-destructive...

I am now all in with creative cloud. I will check back on occasion to see what is going on but for now the Affinity apps are gone from my system. Had there been a reasonable LR alternative I would have stayed but that is not going to happen...

At this point it is too little too late, switching raw developers is about as painful as switching camera platforms...

The short answer is no... Serif uses LibRaw as the core raw handler then wraps its own develop algorithms around that. AP is certainly not as good as LR, C1P, or DxO...

That was the challenge (and still is) with Capture One Pro. Their catalog system is similar to Adobe's but it is unreliable. So, many of us (current and former C1P users) simply use sessions or have a large number of catalogs (both defeat the purpose of an image DAM)...