WMax70

No, I don't fear AI as competition. It’s not replacing creativity—it’s just another tool where you have to guide your creativity with the right wording and hope the database has the right image elements to create it. Plus, I’m a photographer, not a graphic designer. AI actually helps me a lot, especially in planning my shoots. But everything still starts with a well-composed photo, proper lighting, and capturing the right moment. AI can enhance environments or remove distractions, but you can’t replace a bride, groom, or product with it. You also can’t make precise, subtle lighting adjustments like a photographer can. Creating consistent packshots across different products? That’s still the photographer’s job. So no, I don’t see AI as a threat. It’s more like an assistant that speeds up my workflow and adds real value.

As a professional photographer, I don’t mind paying for a software license if it means getting access to powerful AI tools. Ideally, it should be an optional paid feature so that users can choose whether or not they want to include it in their workflow. For me, the absence of solid AI capabilities in Affinity Photo has led me back to Photoshop, which I honestly don’t love using—but it’s still the best option available for editing photos with AI included. I’ve tried plenty of alternatives. While many programs can generate stunning images, editing specific parts of an existing photo is a completely different challenge. Adobe reigns supreme in this area at this moment. In my work, I’m not often just editing one or two images. Whether I’m covering weddings or business shoots, I often have to post-process a large batch of photos. Sometimes there are unexpected or unwanted elements in those images I could not avoid, and AI has been a game-changer in speeding up that process to get those out. It saves me an incredible amount of time when it comes to removing or adjusting those elements—things that weren’t as easily achievable before. With AI, tasks that used to take me hours are done in seconds, especially when content-aware features fall short for more complex edits. Plus, AI helps me quickly find matching images and parts, streamlining my workflow even further. That being said, if a company like Canva is going to offer AI, it needs to be truly powerful and really competitieve to Adobe. There’s no room for half-baked features that don't deliver useful results.

With all missing pro features in Affimity I started to learn Photoshop again... The intuïtieve interface of Affinity is heaven compared to Photoshop, but photoshop works perfect. Also in combination with Capture One What I use: - For AI images Adobe FireFly and Photoshop - For AI text TextCortex - Image editing: Capture onbe + Photoshop and still by while Affinity - Video : Resolve Studio - DTP: Affinity Publiher - Vector editing : Affinity Designer

Although Affinity has merged with Canva and might plans to incorporate AI to gether with Canva, they still have a long way to go to match Adobe's progress. Adobe has eg FireFly AI, (https://www.adobe.com/nl/products/firefly.html) which allows users to alter parts of images and integrate with Photoshop. Most impressively, Firefly is continually improving through generated images and text input. Currently, for me it performs better than both Midjourney and Dall-E, making Adobe the dominant frontrunner again in the image creation market. Personally, I am now using Photoshop again since a year and started with Capture One a couple of years ago after Affinty keeps ignoring good color correction options and good raw import. I started to use Photoshop again more intensive while using Affinity less due to its lack of professional progress and strong features like quality raw conversion, precise color correction, options to calibrate with colour corrections cards, good visual masking and AI. Although I really appreciate Affinity's speed and inutitive setup, it fails to compensate for necessary essential features. For me it's not about free from licenses, but speed and essential pro features to enable pro workflows.

It's indeed weird. The lack of optimized performance isn't only present in Affinity. Ever since software developers started optimizing programs for Apple M cores, I've the feeling that those programs suddenly started to run slower on PCs. I'm not entirely sure why this is happening, but my feeling is that programs ran faster and smoother on PCs before. I fully agree that there's much more potential for the porgrams using the full PC performance, but it's not being utilized to its fullest extent yet, and that's a shame. They should go for the beste performance on any hardware. Hope the Cava teams better understands how to get that realized.

The settings that in proved my speed: I changed: the PCIE16 slot to Gen3 (instead of auto) th PCIe solt to Gen 3 Disabled ASPM mode and 3DMark01 After those, the perfomance improved. If you already have Gen4 slots, you even can set them to Gen4. Take care that all cards used, support Gen4! I guess that if I update the motherboard addtitional perfomance will be reached. Memory transfer speeds and bigger bus transport will serious improve the perfomance.

I had the same thought. But take care, the license model of Canva is different. It's about 110 Euro per year. Not sure what this will mean for Affinity over time. Nevertheless, I think both can learn from eachother. Canva, is powerfull, but a bit chaotic, Affinity is powerfull, really Intuitive (except the ipad app) but lacking the video and AI options like canva. I think it's can be a very positive development. Let's see what it brings.

I will share some Bios settings later this week, no problem. No, I did not use PBO. It's all on normal speed, no overclocking.

Short update of the benchmarks - improved performance on same hardware Windows 11, Gigabyte AB0350N -Wifi (rev 1), default settings, not tuned Ryzen 9 5950x (16 core 32 Thread, 3,4Ghz) 32GB Ram Inno03D, NVidea, Geforce RTX 4060 Changed some bios settings that better matched my GPU config. Result was improved performance: Vector, multi CPU to 3885 (+128) Raster (Single GPU) to 12844 (+178) Combined (Multi CPU) to 961 (+14) Combined (Single CPU) to 4789 (+230)

Windows 11, Gigabyte AB0350N -Wifi (rev 1), default settings, not tuned Ryzen 9 5950x (16 core 32 Thread, 3,4Ghz) 32GB Ram Inno03D, NVidea, Geforce RTX 4060

I also have PS and worked with Adobe LR. I dropped LR, because it was a hassle program, slow and bad noise canceling. I shoot al lot with high ISO (2500-4000) in chuches for ceremonies and shoot on industial locations, using remote tethering. Since a very short period Adobe added great Noice canceling, but that's very slow. Imo not usefull for large amounts of photo's. Within C1, this goos very fast. No issue. PS added AI, that is the reason I started the licence again. The power inhere is that it can add AI renders in small parts of a picture, taking out unwanted parts and intelligent content replacements works excelent. But when it comes to handling of images, just simple things like a rotated image in PS, and getting it back straight is a hell of a job. Affinity remembers the original position and you can bring it back far more eassy. And such are many in Affinity. Just creating a combined layer -> Stamp in PS; Only available with shortcuts and a hassle, but super easy use in Affinty and no issue with combine or selected layers to do. Also objects moving in a group, no issues in Affinity, either the grou or the object, but no hassle . Easy warps in Affinity, also no issues with bigger files.. in Photoshop PSD and PSD, PDD, PSDT, all different files for different file sizes. Access to FX, tumbnails view content instead of PS icons etc etc . Affinity is a clear winner when it goes about speed and intutive handling at a high quality. But Raw import is real a pain here. Despite teh fact LR and C1 look te same at the first sight, C1 is again much faster, noice canceling, color handling, intelligent AI image adjustments, much more files can be handled in less time, much more easy to manage files, tethring works awesome and stable, camera support is superb. Working with layers and adding adjustments to layers is amazing. Yes, you can buy a PS LR package and it is cheaper, but when it comes to speed and processing, C1 + Affinity are way faster. The C1 package comes with Ipad sw and now even iphone SW. For me, fast and accurate handling counts, working less hours and getting things ready in days in stead of a week really makes the difference. For me and my customers.

No, the request for this to Affinity is open (also at my side) for many years already. And to be honest, raw import - color handling - is pretty bad in Affinity, so I would strongly advice to use other tools when it comes to raw color imput handling. Affinity It belongs in my opinion to the worst programs when it comes to raw import, therefore add eg DXO pure raw in front of it. I used Affinity for raw at the start already, tested it by time, but it is really comes with aweful results with raw color import. Therefore I never used Affinty that way anymore . How I use Affinity: My advice is to always combine it with a decent raw convertor like DXO pure Raw, of Capture one, or Nikon NX studio or such or just use compressed tiff's and move those forward to Affinity, than it will work fine. That way you also get around non supported cameras like Nikon Z9 and Z8. I do all color handling in Capture one. (c1) That works perfect and you can acht on very specific colors, even colors separated on high-, mid-, or low-lights, you can combine this with (intellgent) (red layered) masking on images parts, skin colors etc and it can read the color card and ajust to it. There are video's availble on YT how this works, but the colors are in 98% more nice using the color management of C1 itself. C1 is an awesome tool when it comes to color management. The adjustment tools in c1 are superb, and for this C1 also became recognized into the promarket. It is seen as a high quality color management tool, if not the best. It's color correct and razor fast Forget color management like X-rite (or calibrite, today) in affinity. Color card implementations are not implemented even after years of requests , so I don't expect it anymore. You better can have a look to add DXO pure raw than waiting for Affinity it will disappoint you. But once yo have added those, affinity is an awesome tool to work with. https://calibrite.com/?noredirect=en-GB https://www.dxo.com/dxo-pureraw/ https://www.captureone.com/en Succes

90% of what you wrote I agree with. However, about the ship service engineer looking at the vessel you also said: "It looks exactly like quickly slapped person from another photo with little to none effort to match lighting..." Let's analyse the light source in this image. It's mainly the sun, shining from the rear towards us. So it should light the front of the person, not the rear. I would even suggest the persons back might even be more dark than in originally image, but for sure no more lighted like you did. The sun light can touch the right schoulder cause it is reflective material but not the back of the person. Therefore I disagree with your changes. Now it does not match anymore with the light source. Imo, you inserted false or at least a non natural light source to lighten the back of the person. However, this might go of topic.

I really feel sorry I started the question; I never meant to disparage Affinity. I have worked with Affinity since the beginning and have found many workarounds for many features that were not initially implemented. I understand that Affinity is not as big as Adobe, and despite of that, Affinity created some awesome tools already. I also worked with tools like Midjourney and added AI layers or parts of it in my images within Affinity. Yes it is working, but takes a lof or time which is now solved in Adobe. Affinity should be aware that The better they are are, the more users they get, and consequently, the more questions and wished they receive. In my humble opinion, this only shows the real potential that Affinity has and the demand, or even desperation from many to keep the great alternative like Affinity alive. Regardless of what comes next, AI is not something to ignore. A clear directiomn has to be set. Not every program and edit needs AI, but I'm searching for increased competitive advantages where speed of editing is one of them based on my original image. Adobe now takes leadership and Affinity has to do some work here I guess. But like iphne today, not always the newest tehnology, but if they implement, it is more usefull, faster, better and more reliable than others. And n, I do not have concerns about my images being uploaded to Adobe servers. If I had concerns, I would also have it when editing and syncing images with any cloud-based server for sharing. I'm on version 2 already and have added my Photoshop subscription. Thx Affinity for the great tool you made so far and the fast and effective editing I could do. Now looking forward to your upgrades. 😉

Here we are at the same page. That’s why I like the PS approach much more than midjourney, etc today.