Steps

To repeat: Affinity did not lost a match against Luminar. This is nonsense.

Honestly, no. Why do they want me to do the hassle with running a setup exe and backup the app data in my user space separately?

Consider using something like JPEGMini if you want to achieve the smallest possible file size.

You forgot to mention that PSP is also incredible slow and low performant in direct comparison to Photoshop Elements and Affinity Photo. What "integration bugs" do you mean?

In this case you can make different partitions on the same SSD. Long years I had a 50 GB system/boot partition and used the rest of the drive for a data partition. Works also pretty good. On Windows Affinity is installed into C:/Program Files/Affinity with subdirs "Common", "Photo", "Publisher". I zipped this folder and unzipped it on another PC with a fresh installation. It does start up. Other programs complain about missing DLLs or registry Entries or are otherwise broken. And some good designed programs like Affinity allow that. So the only thing missing is an option to have a profile dir local to the installation. All apps do that normally. Writing to user space is the standard for good reasons that already got mentioned a few times by now. They should not change that. This is a complete misunderstanding. I suggest that they offer a way to have a portable version in addition. Different apps solve that in different ways. Some provide a start argument like "-portable" to enable the behaviour and others provide beside the EXE installer just a zip file as alternative installation routine. The version installed by unzipping is portable then. Take a look at the "more install options" on this page for example. --- On a side note I have to admit that I can understand that as a mac user you have trouble to really get this. Macs do it better here because you have this DMG file and you install your app just by copy it into your Applications folder. This enables you to install all apps you need on a fresh system just by copy in all of them at once. Windows and Linux unfortunately do not work this way. But on linux you can use linked apps that solve this in a way you can do it similar. Same is true for windows portable apps. But yes, the native way to install something is best under MacOs. Best if you consider isolation and backup. I think Android got it's inspiration for the APK files there.

I don't know where you got that "external" from. I have multiple normal internal SSDs. You focus too much to the portable usb stick use case. That's just one scenario. I use the portable apps and Steam on seperate INTERNAL drives because with every fresh install I wipe out my main SSD. I like not having to reinstall those apps. I would recommend everybody choosing portable apps over the others. Most are pretty small in size and you can backup and restore the app with all user data as a single zip archive. I do this to my NAS automaticly. Tommorow my PC does not start anymore? No problem... It's a real benefit. Try it. I don't see why not. They can still tie my license key to the hardware it's activated on. Maybe they already do that. I just want to have a option that it does not put data in my Windows profile and instead choose a location I select which can be a relative path. This would help a lot. If they go onto Steam they would need that anyway. That's the benefit I see for a Steam version. I love a lot about Photoshop Elements as it's great software but this license code entering at installation and signing in with an Adobe account after that or I else I can it use it only for 7 days even if I paid for it... this is the real bullshit going on there. And PSE 12 seems to rely heavily on registry and other things as a copy of the app folder to a fresh system gives only a broken app. Affinity seems to work without installation. So far so goof. But it writes into the user profile. That's not so nice. Yes, that's the second reason. The first I mentioned is also true and important. The programs runnung with non-admin rights. They can't alter anything there for security reasons. It's read only. Installs and updates requires admin rights. Otherwise viruses or users could all to easy modify the files. In enterprises users are no admins on their machines. They can't change anything outside their profile / home dir. And that's good and necessary for controlled environments.

"Setup failed" is indeed a pretty bad feedback for the user. Something like "No write permission" or something that gives the user should be considered. Even an error code would help users to google their problem.

@R C-R Yes, this tool makes apps not originally designed for that portable. But some other apps lile FreeFileSync, MailStore, Bitwarden and a bunch of others come in a install-less fashion where the setup process is basicly unzippig a archive. These apps then write all data into a local directory called "Data" (or sometimes "Profile") instead of the user profile. It's just like this. I copied the Affinity folder to a fresh Windows vmware and it starts up. So it does not rely on Windows registry which is a good thing. If they just would provide something like a startup parameter to write into a local folder inside the installation directory the job is done. Apps normally write to the user directory as there a many cases that the directory rights at installation part are read only. For the reason to have control that no malware changes files (think of viruses) and to provide different users of the system their own profile files. You mentioned that before. My second drive for that is indeed also a SSD just like the original drive. Same is true for the extra Steam drive. There is now downside regarding performance. It's just all about isolation. And of course a user wanting to use a portable app has to guarantee write permissions. The most common case for portable apps is having them on the Desktop where users have write permissions anyway. So they come handy if users are no admins also. Google Chrome for example installs on Windows to AppData as portable app. So no user needs to ask a admin before installing. Google did that on purpose. Admins in enterprises of course hate that. Just to note that on a side note. Steam games are portable because all game data are written also to a directory inside the Steam installation. The Windows Profile is untouched. (This is the regular case. Exceptions exist.) So if it's not too hard Serif may think of letting users choose a Profile location via parameter or something the like. Dfinetly doable. Don't you think?

@R C-R Take a look at this: https://portableapps.com Firefox Portable is a excellent example here. This is what I like and want for everything. It's designed to work on a usb stick you carry with you but I use it on a seperate disk.

It did not mean cleaning up because of problems. It's just a fresh install to get rid of old stuff like Windows update files, Registry entries by old software, logs in AppData... As a installation gets older there is just enough stuff I like to wipe out at a certain point for having a clean and slick system. The regular Windows 10 updates are a opportunity to freshly install Windows. It takes about 15 minutes on my system and gives a clean system. Nearly all my apps are portable - so Profiles included. And Steam is there for games. I would like a Affinity Portable app where I can install it on a sperate disk with it's Profile directory included (like all portable apps). It's nowhere necessary. It just gives the feeling of having a new PC if you think of that. And it's not due to Windows. If I was a mac user I would do the same procedure. Not doing the upgrades and always perform a fresh install. Leaving no trace of old stuff. Feels better.

I don't exactly need to, but I want. Sometimes I feel that I've to much shit on it after trialing and testing several apps for example. A fresh install takes less time than cleaning up and also gives a better overall feeling. I want my OS in a state where I can kick it at any time because it contains nothing I need. All user data are saved on sepearate disk and NAS anyway.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_Photo Wikipedia has a version history covering the biggest features. Affinity Photo started in version 1.3.1... so we had three upgrades until now with number four as 1.7 currently in beta.

Ok, by that definition it's not portable. But you got what I meant. Affiity Portable would be great, but I can see how the Steam version solves somw problems too.

I have Steam on it's own disk. You can start Steam without any installation after a fresh Windows install. This is portable and self contained. All games you have installed in your library can be started from Steam without a installation routine. They are portable. The only thing some games need on a fresh Windows is that Steam installs Windows Features they may require like a missing .Net Runtime or a new DirectX. So having Steam with it's library on it's own disk or partition makes is fully portable. My Steam install survived many fresh Windows installations. What do you think I miss here?

I just saw a review video on YouTube. Luminar 3 doesn't look to me like a real competitor to anything. I can't to see how @axoloth thinks Affinity lost a match. DxO Photolab is more advanced. But for a DAM Affinity will have to match digiKam.

Affinity apps are not portable! In my view the main advantage Steam brought into my life is that I can have it installed on a seperate drive with all games there that run out of the box even with a fresh installed Windows. For the other apps I need I use Portable apps like Firefox portable. So with a few exceptions I can run my apps and games everywhere without hassle of installing and entering key codes. In the case of Steam I take all of the disavantages for this one big advantage. Maybe someday there will be Affinity Portable. I hope for it. But if it comes to Steam they will have to solve this.

I don't think they will provide a Java/Groovy API just for me. To bad. Ruby is ja nice language, too. Or do it in Brainfuck.

GIMP is not even close to being a excelent product. It lacks acceptance because due to it's pretty bad usability it's no fun to use it. I think one reason might be that there are many volunteer devs to code the tool but less or no UX eperts to get it right. I hope one day a rich man will make a generous donation to help the project coming closer to something like Affinity. I believe open source is important and I'm thsnkful these projects exist but sadly GIMP, Inkscape and Scribus fall really short compared to their commetcial competitors and that's mostly because they are hard to use and tooling is cumbersome.

You have could hide the double post first.

Yes, I agree. And I'm certrain that's why DrawPlus also had such a library of frames.

Yes, I see how this would be important. Unfortunately with digiKam I have to resign from organizing my PSDs today. Hopefully the Affinity DAM will handle APhoto file tagging as you wish. After what you wrote I kind of expect that now. I took a quick look at the Luminar Trial to get an idea what we are talking about. It kind of reminds me of DxO Optics Pro. It's one of the rate tools that have a good crop tool usability. I find most tools lacking here. Affinity Photo is also very basic on this matter and unfortunately the roadmap contains no mention at improving the crop tool. Other than the well done crop tool I see no benefit in Luminar. The photo retouching functions are a joke compared to competitors like DxO PhotoLab. With Instagram you can have all it does for free and they want 70€. This makes no sense to me, sorry. Disclaimer: I'm a bit confused that the trial I downloaded says it's "Luminar 2018" but the buy button offers me "Luminar 3". So the DAM part is missing here. Maybe they still do not have a trial for Luminar 3 ready. Don't know. Confusing... will delete.

Yes, that came clear. I did not think of that use case before. I mainly organize my JPGs with digiKam. Has using Lightroom the benefit of tagging and organizing the PSD files, too?

Thanks for giving that hint. I wasn't aware of it's existence and just trialed the Photo Manager / DAM part of it. Sadly this Photo Manager is really lacking in functionality. You can't give stars (only mark favourites) and assigned tags do not show up in the thumbnail overview. I don't know who stole from whom here, but it really looks nearly identical to the "Photos" app integrated in Windows 10. So this is barely a DAM. Also Windows 10 has face detection and tagging (which is useless because it does not write into the metadata, but just wanted to mention). The Photo Editor is both very basic in functionality and usability. For some strange reason it's enough to look at a tools cropping & straighten capability to get an idea how andvanced it is. There are too many open source or otherwise free tools to compete with it (including Windows 10 Photo App) for the 50€ they want.

Can you rephrase that? I'm not sure if I got that right. I have thousands of RAWs and JPGs with tags that I organize. I don't organize in the same way my PSD or APhoto files as they are basicly a "sidecar" file to the more important RAW. What do you mean here?

My feeling is that it's years away. And I guess Serif will not tell you more details.