KC Honie

I want to start by saying that my comments are my just my own opinion and my own viewpoint, albeit coming from the experience of of 30+ year creative profession in the commercial art industry, and as a fine artist.
I recently reached out to the Affinity team in the hopes that I could purchase the universal suite but with a credit of what I had spent previously on the iPad versions alone. This request was denied and I understood and accepted that as fair. The suite was then put on the current sale and I was tempted to jump in to purchase it, but ultimately decided instead to wait for Black Friday or Cyber Monday in case there would be a better sale. My goal was to begin to move away from the Adobe Suite and begin to use Affinity as my main suite of creative tools. As I am no longer working in the field and not necessarily tied to the hold that Adobe has on the industry, I felt Affinity had a fantastic innovative approach to workflows that I wanted to explore without the stress of needing specific (Adobe) formats - either importing or exporting.
This, however, was replaced with a deep feeling of being let down when it was announced that Canva purchased Affinity. Canva, in my humble opinion, not being a professional tool, was well suited for the hobbiest who would want to explore, or by entrepreneurs who needed quick, cheap and easy creative solutions to their business models. Mostly what I saw it used for was by people making invitations, paper crafts, or social media posts. At least that's how it started. I dipped my toe into it in its beginning, and even subscribed to their higher tier for the expanded options. Finding that it didn't yield me the more expansive space I needed for my creative projects, I dropped it and always considered it a good alternative to non-professionals who wanted/needed tools for their own needs but who didn't need the expensive suite of tools that Adobe offered. I've followed its growth since then, but still didn't find it to my needs and the needs of my colleagues.
Affinity, however, was a different story. It burst on the scene with an exciting and robust suite of tools marketed towards professional designers and illustrators and pushed a narrative of being an alternative to the very expensive Adobe stronghold - which lacked the amazingly innovative and integrated ecosystem that Affinity had to offer. So much so that as I mentioned, I was ready to leave Adobe (that I had been a client of since Photoshop v1) to replace Affinity as my one and only go-to for my professional needs.
I now feel very let down that a product so heavily marketed to professionals was bought out by a company that was more suitable for the hobbiest, entrepreneur or student. It would be as if Windsor and Newton were bought out by RoseArt. This is not an elitist rant - the fact is that there are artist grade tools and there are student grade tools in every medium. However, when the student grade buys out the professional grade it only devalues the latter to make the opposite version seem more valuable. That may look great for Canva users (which is used quite a bit by POD creators and others who want to make a quick buck on Etsy - don't believe me? Look on youtube to see how many "easy ways to make 100 gazillion dollars a month using Canva and Etsy by making mugs and t-shirts" videos there are), but it's degrading to those professionals who really looked towards Affinity as a valid and strong professional set of creative tools. 
In a world where art is already looked upon as a luxury service for many budget minded companies (and usually the first department on the chopping block), scoffed at as unnecessary and not "true" professions, heavily criticized (as all art is subjected to opinion), facing unfair comparison by AI-generated slop come to life by mere word "prompts", and has already suffered the loss of many talented people due to the easy-to-use digital tools used by untrained "creators". Hand-created art has already been losing its value over the years as it is (except for in countries like Japan where artists are highly regarded and valued for their talent). Losing a suite as valuable as Affinity to the lure of Canva and it's truck-load of cash was, again, highly disappointing to this professional who looked forward to breaking free of Adobe's hold of the profession.
I'm now very glad I didn't make the purchase of your suite. For me, Affinity's future will lie now in the hands of a company who's objective has been to make it easy for anyone to crank out mass produced garbage to flood social media sites and shopping platforms like Etsy - who by the way, also turned their backs on artisans to allow said mass-produced garbage to be sold on their site.
Adobe is losing their way too, I am aware of this. They have been slowly integrating AI tools into their own ecosystem too. I'm not oblivious to that. But at least it still remains focused on professional creative needs and the artists who make their careers in the industry. I'm very disheartened to see that for me, Affinity will ultimately be reduced to nothing more than tools to make quick social media posts, facebook reels, and other uninspired marketing tripe. What a bright future that will be indeed.
 

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...

Looks interesting but I would still prefer Affinity Light-Bridge that Wil let me load a Lightroom catalogue (or convert one to Light-Bridge) and load all the Lightroom keyowrds.. my current set is over 14,000 in an IPTC hierarchical format.

As a point of principal, being a journalist, I won't block people, including @Bit Disappointed  no matter what I think of him.

So, for the record, yesterday I contacted Chris the developer – who has also been active on the Affinity forum some time ago – with a few ideas and feature requests. He replied within an hour. Then we've chatted via email some more, exploring a few more ideas, and earlier today he wrote that "all of those updates are ready to submit to [the] Apple [Store] […]" except for one slightly more complex feature request of mine, and a bugfix which we've discovered while chatting and which will need more investigation.
Did I already mention that the license also includes the iPad and iOS versions?  

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 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...

Yes I must admit I have also been using DAM and DPM interchangeably to some extent.   Adding a decent Cataloguing system to APhoto would be good. But as @loukash says A-Publisher and A-Illustrator users need a DAM for things other than images.  Though Publisher and Illustrator manage fonts there are many other non photo things we need to collect and collate. Usually on a per-project basis.
So I think a Lightroom-Bridge type tool.  If it were a standalone program,  It would be a good idea as it could tie the three Affinity apps together. I am not expecting a lot of new functionality for free.
Perhaps the Affinity V3 suite? (if it's any later than V5 I won't be around to buy it 🙂
 

Yes, but I see a big difference, so that's probably the difference between you and me.apture One Pro's processing engine was originally designed primarily for Phase One's medium format cameras, which are typically in the high-end price range. Adobe has built their engine much more generically and according to a very different recipe for almost all types of sensors. I see it to a great extent when comparing it with the output from expensive and esteemed cameras, how much their engine doesn't actually do exceptionally, but rather well. A lot of soul and beautiful look is lost.
You might think so, but deep down, you know that's not what I wrote, right? Many photos are taken in studios that aim for a fairly standard look and stand out based on certain types of parameters, while other photographers have different needs and must distinguish themselves based on a different set of parameters. This is where the RAW developer becomes a choice, and there's a reason why Capture One is expensive and developed for cameras many levels more expensive than those most people discussing software use.
Again, I have the programs and actively use them, but I usually choose the look that comes from Capture One or DxO, simply because they get closer to the look I'm known for, and to the look of the camera manufacturers' JPGs, which are very much a part of their brand.
Yes, this is one of the world's most misunderstood sentences, and the world isn't that simple. Firstly, the look one gets from a beautiful organic rendering of RAW data is crucial for a focused and fast processing of an image. Having to turn the supertanker and compensate for the tool's shortcomings is boring and time-consuming, who spends their short life on that. In this light, Capture One is not expensive at all. That's also one of the things you discover when you buy an exotic and expensive camera with a good aesthetic reputation. You suddenly get pictures out of it that you wouldn't have thought possible, and what one doesn't know, one cannot edit towards either, right?
I can easily take good pictures with my iPhone or point'n'shoot, edit them in cheap programs, and draw beautifully with a charcoal pencil, but that's not what I do on a daily basis, and I simply set the bar higher because I've spent years of my life learning more and more. And then it will never happen that I choose worse tools than my skills. And professionally, it's not princely sums that make the difference.
By the way, I've taken pictures for baptisms, weddings, and funerals, without being that type of photographer, because people specifically asked for my type of pictures, a special 'look'. Part of it is due to composition and my eye for special moments, but my experience is that the very special look the pictures get, which sets them apart decisively, is to utilize tricks, especially with Capture One's help. The really nice thing is that it all takes so much less time in Capture One.
Our exchange here reeks of us being in different places in the photography cosmos, so let's leave it at that.

It does indeed.
Talking to a friend who does digital imaging: your comments re the Phase One and the Adobe RAW converters are complete bollox.
Also, the DXO converter is superior to both.
The aesthetics you are talking about is editing, and that is something different.

BTW The friend I was talking to this afternoon uses far more expensive cameras than you will ever see, let alone use.

 

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.
 

Certainly we also need images. 
But managing "assets" means we're actually managing design projects. Projects also include logos, texts, drafts, fonts, notes, even audio and video files. A plethora of non-image formats.
An "asset manager" is then sort of a "meta Finder": You can keep the assets wherever you want, even on remote media, but you can manage them in a catalog, put sets together in different contexts.
Of course, you can always manage only your photos if you want.
That's what iView/Expression Media was good at (with limits owed to its age and origin, but still).
Until… 
… those greedy [insert your favorite expletive] from Phase One killed it.  

I agree with your points and would also have said, "there is no amount of money that you could pay me to shoot a wedding. " Though if the money were enough to immigrate to somewhere nice with no extradition and live comfortable for life, with cash upfront, I might consider it. Once. Otherwise, like you, weddings are a firm NO!!!

I regard weddings as more dangerous than conflict photography (excluding Israel when they target journalists).
 

@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… 

It is certainly not the cheapest option - a perpetual license is still available though.
By the way, it's worth knowing that some camera brands have some of the market's best natural renderings of RAW data (others render more sterile and 'digital'), especially Fuji and Olympus, and with their accompanying software, you can develop your images into TIFF or JPG individually or in batches. The software is often dreadful and slow, but the rendering and colors are exactly the same as in the camera. Here you can adjust details, lighting, highlights, noise reduction much better. I even think that both or at least one of them with the more expensive camera models supports the camera's image processer for development (via USB), but it's a bit cumbersome. However, it's also free, so if you're not satisfied with Photos or LibRAW's rendering but don't have money for the expensive programs, then it's definitely a way to go, for free. So the beautifully developed image largely depends on the camera manufacturer's algorithms or the software's special algorithms, which are part of the companies' brand and definitely not random.
All this special quality and aesthetics can be bypassed by choosing software that relies solely on LibRAW, it's like basing all your bread on a dull generic bread mix. Whichever bread you choose, it's not really... special.

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.

@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...

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.

The scripting thread has 600 odd replies and was started nearly 6 years ago.
The Lightroom thread has over 100 replies and was started only 5 months ago.
That gives you some idea that now it has been raised it is probably the most popular thing on the forum in the last 12 months.

As a photographer. I live in Lightroom and rarely used PS or use APhoto. though I mainly do Journalism, so you don't do much/any photo editing
As a Magazine Editor and someone who lays out books I live in APublisher however I also have Lightroom open as I need to sort and select photos for the Magazine and books.   Much as I did when I used InDesign. 
Hopefully for Affinity V3 there will be a DAM.  
Most graphics people used Adobe Bridge and claimed Lightroom, being a specialized bridge, was redundant. But I would suggest that more people use Lightroom than use Bridge
Hopefully for Affinity V3 there will be a DAM that will be closer to Lightroom than Bridge. If Affinity do a photo DAM that will talk to google maps, then I would think the huge number of people still on the standalone perpetual licence Lightroom V6.14 would jump to the Affinity DAM.  Never mind those looking for any excuse to come of the Adobe CC. 

There is a lot of this sort of thing that goes on. Microsoft was legendary for doing it.  Apple were better when Jobs was at the helm but since then..... 😞
I am certain that MS Outlook was not a Microsoft development, Email, calendar, tasks and a contact database all in one.  My most used app over the last 30 years.
I nearly went to Apple Aperture but at the last minute didn't press the "buy" and went Lightroom.  I think it was because Aperture wasn't on PC Also I knew that the Intel Macs were on the way and updates would only be on the Intel macs not the PPC ones.  Indeed Apple did an OS upgrade that didn't support Aperture before stopping support  
Then again with Lightroom Adobe stopped support for the standalone V 6.14 Lightroom weeks before google changed the interface to the maps rendering the Maps section of the V6.14 inoperative. Adobe would have known the change was coming so they could update the CC version in time. I think this was in an effort to force people to the Creative Cloud Subscription system.  As the Adobe support page for this says "To continue using the Map service, it is recommended that you update to the latest Lightroom Classic version."    I didn't jump. 

However a decent DAM like Lightroom +Bridge from Serrif would be great. I would pay for it.
 

Yeah, I think a lot of people don't understand what a photo management application is and why it's so valuable.  Even my cousin in the industry just uses bridge and he keeps telling me to teach him Lightroom one day - and he owns it!  But I guess the key someone mentioned here (and adobe clearly realises with their photographer bundle), is a photo editor is not enough on its own.  You need some way of managing the photos and organising them, rating them and then you know what?  Add some basic adjustment capability and for the rest of it, integration for a full blown editor.  I don't know why this concept is so hard to grasp.  If you're going to have a photo editor for photos, those people are going to have lots of photos and they need something to manage them with.
 
I've bought all of Serifs products, both v1 and v2 including for iPad - though I never use the iPad stuff.  Mostly I use the photo editor - I'm not an artist.  And I combine the photo editor mostly with Exposure, though I've been trying out digikam again lately, it's pretty good.  Serif would make such an awesome and more polished version and I think looking at their pricing model would quickly become the defect standard, perhaps even becoming the catalyst for the photographer crowd to move away from Adobe.  One things for sure, they won't do it if there's no photo manager, cause it's so crucial.

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.

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