pixelstuff

I think the biggest change that makes modern A.I. different from early attempts is that the A.I. can learn on it's own. Instead of the programmers trying to hard code "fuzzy logic" into binary decisions we can now give the A.I. information that humans would also recognize and the A.I. builds it's own method for understanding things. I doubt this modern jump in A.I. capability will ever go away like a fad, but it will probably become a non-highlighted feature at some point. Like how spell check used to be a touted feature in word processors that had to be intentionally activated, but now it runs automatically and is included in almost everything including Windows Notepad.

Object selection is pretty new. Before, selection tools were looking for shading differences. Now the AI recognizes a face or a full human body and can select across shading differences.

I don't think we can really expect Affinity products to move exclusively to subscription since they said they wouldn't do that. I'm fine with having both as an option though.

Are you abbreviating guys doing all of those comments on your phones or something? How hard it is to type out the full words for Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher, or even just Photo and Publisher if there's no brand ambiguity.

If we look at the Blender download numbers last year it seems about 750,000 downloads were made for the Linux operating system. That might be mostly Hollywood, who knows. But, if just 5% of those Linux Blender users are interested in more generalized graphics work on their Linux system it might represent 37,500 copies of the Affinity suite sold. For contrast Blender for Windows was downloaded 15 million times and Blender for Mac almost 2 million times.

Who knows what specs it adhered to at the time. It had keywording, albums, and basic editing features, but not the more advanced features that something like Lightroom has today. The interface for browsing and finding photos was nice and clean though.

Picasa wasn't cloud based at the beginning. Here is some guy reviewing the Windows app on Youtube.

Did you ever get a chance to use the Picasa Windows or Mac app?

I say try to create a Google Picasa photo organizer clone and from there add more features. I still think that was one of the best photo organizers I've ever used. In hindsight it is too bad Google bought up the original company and then eventually canceled the app.

I'd be interested to know how other projects are handling multi-platform releases. Are they maintaining three or more parallel code bases or is it a single code base with a compiler that knows how to translate for each platform? GIMP, Blender, Krita, and Inkscape all release on Windows, Mac, and Linux simultaneously for example. Alternatively take an application like Plex Media Server. Those guys push out an update for 19 different platforms every couple of weeks.

Publisher is still around, but not for long. Microsoft announced earlier this year that Publisher would reach end of life in October 2026. Afterward existing versions won't receive new updates and it won't be included in the Microsoft 365 subscription service. They've hinted at making some of the Publisher features available in Word, PowerPoint, and Designer.

I'm not sure you applied that analogy correctly. Those examples were all the industry standards and thought they slack off without taking damage. Excel and InDesign didn't target a minor platform when they picked up the slack.

I tried Ubuntu recently and it seems like they are actively trying to make apps harder to install if they aren't released in the Ubuntu Snap store. Linux Mint on the other hand still supports double clicking on a *.deb file and installing. Linux Mint does seem to be a closer Windows like experience than Ubuntu.

It would be interesting to know if Davinci Resolve has a similar ratio on Linux.

DNG can include a jpeg image for preview. So that could be what the thumbnails are seeing without being about to decode the RAW data.