Glevum Owl

Firstly, Serif has extensive experience of writing video software having spent almost a decade on its Windows-only MoviePlus software. Secondly, and more importantly, domink is spot on with his comment. As I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, a DAM requires an entirely different programming paradigm to any of the current Affinity products. Serif would practically need to start from scratch building a product centred around a database. That takes time and lot of very careful planning to get right first time. I'm itching for a fully-integrated, non-Adobe workflow environment as much as the next user but decades of working in IT has taught me that what appears easy on the surface usually isn't.

AFAIK Parallels for Silicon M1 is only in a technical preview stage currently. Everything on one piece of hardware is too many eggs in one basket. The i3 is ready to go as a hot standby for our home business PC so doubles as my fall back for indispensable Windows apps e.g. FastStone ImageViewer, which I love. A clunky but reliable way to sift photos and do a bit of organising before importing into LR. Runs efficiently on our low spec HP laptop too. In fact, a while back I even considered using it and DxO instead of Adobe stuff but I rely too much on LR for geotagging and finding photos based on metadata. And I moved to Apple.

You're not alone there. I have a few friends who make a living from producing art / designs and all have tried Serif's Affinity range yet returned to Adobe not merely due to familiarity but mainly for functionality. Serif's achievement is to have produced an affordable Adobe alternative for those of us who merely dabble, Photo especially. Your points on quality are well made; I have a OneNote folder purely for Affinity tips, tricks, workarounds and gotchas. I'm in two minds about an Affinity DAM: I'd love to completely jump ship from Adobe but am tied to Lightroom which has little to no competition for the way I work. Conversely, Affinity Designer is, for me, not as easy to use as the old Windows-only DrawPlus 8 to which I find myself reverting more often these days. (I recently switched to Apple but keep an old, reliable i3 Win 10 PC to hand for software I can't live without like DP8.) My hope is that version 2 of the Affinity programs will bring stability and maturity more than functionality. And perhaps a 'good' DAM will appear somewhere down the line.

Serif currently have to develop and support three major programs on two platforms though they largely follow the same model: create or load a single document or a small number of documents, edit same, save. Whereas Designer, Photo and Publisher share this common model, a DAM is a whole different paradigm involving large numbers of files and some kind of database. Therefore I don’t hold out much hope of seeing Affinity DAM until 2022 at the earliest.

Today I renewed my annual Adobe Photo Plan subscription, not entirely by choice but mainly out of necessity: there's nothing out there to rival LR's capabilities. Yet. Maybe next year there'll be a Serif alternative. Mind you, I was saying that last year. 😂

I never understood Apple's decision to drop Aperture. So many of my photographer friends used it and a few moved from Windows PCs to Apple iMacs because of it. Staying with Adobe and Windows meant I became the odd one out in our group. LR lumbers on with bugs and annoyances and no one at Adobe listening presumably due to their dominant position. My hopes are still that Serif will provide an LR alternative though I suspect it will be a couple of more years yet before it makes an appearance. In the meantime, for any Windows users out there, FastStone Image Viewer provides some basic organisational functionality including sorting on import. The interface is a bit clunky but it's easy to use, fast in operation and free (but if you find it useful send the author a donation).

Sadly not. I've been waiting for a couple of years for Affinity DAM. I suspect it would pull a lot of people from Adobe and other third party programs. I guess they're occupied with developing and supporting three major products on two platforms. And, of course, dealing with working in the current Covid 19 situation.

Thanks for the replies. Looks like I'll be running DrawPlus alongside Affinity for a while then. Sorry I didn't respond earlier. I hadn't set up my forum notifications.

Hi, I'm looking for the Affinity equivalent of DrawPlus' Autotrace function that converts bitmaps into editable vectors. Can't seem to find it. Is it there?