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Reggie1958

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Posts posted by Reggie1958

  1. On 11/17/2022 at 8:42 AM, pcam said:

    I would like to brake a lance for Serif. This rather small company has done a great job. I am a retired software QM (aerospace), but without knowing the Serif team I would say "Brothers in Arms".

    I have been following the discussion about V2 since spring but have not commented. It was commented on by others only to comment, but hardly take a position on the matter itself.

    V2 still has some flaws, but also some highlights. The tutorials also appeared with the release, great work.

    There are people who complain about the price of V2, but buy an IPhone only to look into their bank account and see how badly it is overdrawn.

    The price is ok and I buy V2, as support and appreciation of their work, although V1 is sufficient for me.

    From my point of view the new installer is ok. But people like to stay in their easy chairs and avoid any changes. These people will hopefully be appeased with the announcement that msi is coming.

    However, it would be great to have all the work arounds (bat-file, icons on desktop, etc.) in one place. I don't want to dig into Windows anymore to solve the problems myself, for example to launch Photo from another application. I could, but prefer taking photos and making photo books (my easy chair).😊

    Norbert

     

    I agree with Norbert;

    As it happens I too am a retired Software Engineer having worked in Aerospace and then Medical technology industries for over three decades and I know the level of work and dedication  involved in delivering a major project, given the small team I think the Affinity have done exceptionally well.

    I don't really need V2 having had V1 (photo) since 2015 and I picked up the other two apps as they came out. In all that time I have enjoyed free upgrades and a very open development team. I value the team, what they are about and their dedication, knowing the complexities of the kind of development involved first hand I'm impressed and want them to succeed. So when V2 arrived I got the universal license out of support for serif.

    Of course there are bugs and issues for such a major re-write of the code base and I'm okay with that; I know they will do what is required. As for paid updates I can name a few software companies that will charge for updates every 6 months, I get pestering emails asking me to buy apparently the next shiny thing having purchased a version just a few months previous, so Serif get a massive thumbs up from me.

    By all means report bugs and ask for features and timelines for fixes but for goodness sake peeps take it easy on the entitlement; kindness doesn't cost anything. 

     

    Reggie

     

  2. On 1/9/2021 at 5:18 AM, George H said:

    I have used Adobe for years but last year I had to get rid of it because I upgraded my OS and CS5 would no longer run on my system. I did not want to pay the $$$$$ subscription fee for newer versions so after looking around I settled on Affinity as my best alternative. Good features and excellent price. One area where it lacks is that I am unable to import large batches of raw files. The application becomes memory bound and slows to a crawl.  So what to do? I have used Adobe bridge for years to do sort my raw images and do some preliminary adjustments before sending the picture to Photoshop. 

    After a lot of searching, and many trial and errors, I found "Raw Power" to be an excellent Adobe Bridge alternative that I am able to tie into Affinity. It is $29 at the MAC app store. I would prefer free but the coast is reasonable when you consider that once you buy it you can install it on all of your Macs. There is also a cheaper IOS version. It is fast, able to view large numbers of raw files, ties into Apple Photos if you are into that, or you can simply point it to a folder. The export settings will open the file in the photo editor of your choice, which in my case the choice is Affinity.

    There is a trial version that allows you to play with it but it will insert an ugly watermark when you export. You have to download the trial version from their website which is:
     
    https://gentlemencoders.com/

    I suggest that you give it a try. 

    BTW: I am in no way affiliated with Gentleman Coders, I am just a guy who wants to share a solution,

    Thanks for the lead George I’ll have look :) 

  3. 5 hours ago, Tony M. said:

    Hi Reggie.... I found this the other day and when I opened it my first post was in there so I believe I have posted in the right place from the beginning.

    Well I hope I have anyway. 

    Hi Tony,

    Yes, it looks you have posted in the right place to me too 👍🏻😎

    cheers 

    Reggie 

  4. 11 hours ago, StephenBooth_uk said:

    Embedded is different, you're generally much closer to the metal.

    You say you're getting into C#.  The same C# source code can, so long as you're not using any custom, platform specific libraries (e.g. you're expecting to run under Sharepoint and so call Sharepoint services),  be compiled for Windows, Linux and (if memory serves) Mac.  You don't need rewrite the code for each platform, which some here have been claiming, just use the appropriate compiler.  On Windows you're code will probably use .Net and on Linux and Mac it will be Mono, but you don't need to care, all that is handled for you and the code will run the same on each platform and (window manager on Linux allowing) look pretty much the same except for minor details like on Windows the Minimise/Maximise/Close buttons are on the top right of each window and on Mac they are top left (Linux it depends on your window manager).

    This is the only application I've thus far found where you need to buy a separate licence to run on Windows and Mac.  Some of the enterprise vertical apps we support at work have different license models for different platforms but that's due to being licensed per core and not all cores are created equal.  Even those will generally let you port from one platform for another and only pay the difference.

    Hi Stephen,

    Very true Stephen, I grant you the embedded world of software development is very different; the metal is very close at hand and true in my day job I am nearly as busy with the concerns of the hardware as much as software design, implementation and testing. I have no wish to argue one business model is better than another on the strength of my personal knowledge and experience or in fact if there is a best, correct or better way of doing business at all. The commercial choices of a business are the just that, their choice.  From a customers' perspective we too have choice, well at least realistically the choices that are presented to us including the walking away choice.

    It is a very good point that many subscription services, just for an example Microsoft Office 365, allow the use of their software on different platforms for the same licence. However the Adobe's and Microsoft's of this world do have a massive advantage and that is sheer size of financial power and number of employees.

    I suppose it comes down to what customers want in the end, this customer is personally happy with the Affinity software licensing scheme, however I do concede licensing is a tricky balance in the world of software.

    I just see that the hardware platform, especially for high work load specifications for example working with lots of large RAW files and even larger Tiff files, can be very expensive and the relative cost of Affinity software is small in comparison. If Affinity software was in the multiple hundreds of pounds/dollars I might possibly feel entitled to a more open licensing regime.

    Regards

    Reggie

  5. 25 minutes ago, Brad Brighton said:

    <eyeroll> If we're going to down the silly analogy road, Serif's position is more like "You bought this to read on Kindle, if you want to read it on Apple Books you need to buy it again," than it is about the different Kindle devices.

    I can appreciate that some people may get surprised by the "license per platform model" and may even hate (intentionally strong word chosen) such a model but even in a perfect development world, it takes different resources to create and maintain a substantial part of the application on each platform. All the math in the world that may be in common code everywhere the Affinity apps reside doesn't make it appear magically through a user interface. It doesn't make it magically compatible (and accurate) with different versions of Windows, macOS, and iPadOS (nee iOS).

    A for-profit entity has a choice of spreading those development costs across all platforms (making each one more expensive to subsidize the others) or to allow (for some part) each platform to earn its own keep. Both approaches have pros and cons and when there's an uproar over having to deal with separate licenses at a cumulative cost that still is less than that of the competition, that uproar can arguably be likened to whining more than constructive market and user feedback.

    If you don't want to support Serif's business model, make your voice heard to them then go spend a greater amount money on the competition, if that's what you need to. Serif's value proposition is not misleading nor is it out of place in the market.

    A good balanced reply Brad methinks. Like others on here I am also a software engineer (mostly embedded for 30 years but lately snuck into C# XAML UI .. old dogs and new tricks hey) and yes you are right just because a code base as a common design for different operating system the implementation for different OS and the corresponding UI doesn't happen by magic and there then is maintaining said different platforms not to mention the heaps of testing in development etc. I have both Affinity Photo and Designer for Mac but I would be happy to purchase a licence for an iPad if I had one ... saving pennies ... I rather fancy using an Apple pencil too, I think given the price of the hardware Affinity licences are good value. 

  6. Nice work JMWellborn and so true, I have a number of (well thousands actually) of such forlorn 35mm film slides from far far ago, which I scanned a while ago now. I find getting the tone between new sky and old photo a task to match, I need to study the videos yet again :) 

    Recently I did a sky replacement on a scan of a very faded photograph of my father in law with his beloved springer spaniel with them sat on a hill, the sky was around the top of both dog and person which was very painstaking to select for the mask. 

    I won't share it as he died recently and it seems disrespectful to share it here, the final picture was used at his committal and his thanks giving. However the point here is always keep old stuff, even if it seems too battered to be of any use .. one day it might be the only visual connection to a beloved past place, event, person or pet and Affinity Photo can bring it back to life ... being old has to have some plus points :D 

     

  7. 21 hours ago, Awtd said:

    Thanks Awtd, that's a great steer, yes I'm impressed with Fast Raw Viewer .. I gave It a test drive and it mostly works great .... it has crashed on me a couple of times which is a bit worrying. However it's not over expensive so maybe it might be worth buying and hope it gets more stable. I will test it further. I have found Photo Mechanic now but it's $150 hmm I might need to think about Photo Mechanic which is also a photo manager too ...

     

    21 hours ago, Awtd said:

     

     

  8. 22 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

    You don't say what OS you're using.

    For Windows you might consider FastStone Image Viewer.

    For Windows or Mac you might consider XnViewMP.

    Hi Walt, thanks for your reply :) Sorry I wasn't clear:

    I'm using MacOS I've tried the XnViewMP application and it doesn't really cut it for RAW files, yes it'll display them but painfully slow on my MacBook-Pro ... it's a decent spec (the best at the time of purchase) I got the hardware with high end photography in mind so even the graphics card was the highest spec at the time of purchase,  .. I say this so I know it's not the hardware that's slow :-/

     

    Update  Awdt has come up with a good alternative Fast Raw Viewer :) it is very very quick and not too expensive.

     

    Thanks

    Reggie

  9. As a photographer (amateur) I have tens of thousands of RAW files and in my work flow one of the first things I do is review my photographs so that I can choose what to discard or mark as worthy to develop further.

    One of the most frustrating things I find and I know I'm not alone in this this is there are almost no file browsers / viewers / managers that are capable of displaying RAW files in a timely fashion.

    Most file browsers are woefully inadequate in this area, they either can't manage RAW files or are so painfully slow as to render a work flow unusable.

    Please, please, please, I don't want this file browser / viewer / manager to have editing capabilities or fancy gimmicks, just the ability to take a mass of very large RAW  and affinity files and display them in number of formats, i.e. in grid form, film strip, etc etc very vey fast.

    The manager / viewer / browser needs to able to show histograms as well exif data etc. The ability to search and display files on a range of file parameters super quickly.

     

     

     

  10. Hi Fraser,

    I have made such a collage ... no expert mind I was asked by a friend to crate a collage of photos she took with alphabetical letters as her insperation  .. that's the English alphabet, be interesting trying to get the letters Ö Ä Ü in photographic form .. now there's a project.

    Anyway..... I had a bunch of RAW files from her and used Affinity photo to create the collage; I found working in 32bit (HDR) colour format for each file made for a truely massive .afphoto best to export to 8 bit JPEG highest quality .. still big files .. or 16 bit Tiff files if you have the computer to handle the massive files.

    I worked in the highest resolution my computer could handle with the converted RAW filies into 16bit Tiff files then I created my collage .... we are talking a simply huge .afphoto file .. then when done I exported the final document as an 8bit jpeg file best quality.

    Thus the workflow was to maintian the highest resolution until the end export for printing .. that's another story ..

    Hope that helps and if there are any experts out there who want to give thier wisdom I'd be grateful :-D

    Reg.

  11. Just to recap and to be pedantic ..

    if you open a jpeg file -> use the develop / photo persona to change things -> and hit save, yes the orignal jpeg file is overwritten with a new jpeg file with the changes you did in the develop / photo persona .. no warning it just does it.

    if you open a jpeg file -> use the develop photo persona -> and hit save as you can only save as .afphoto file type

    Other means of saving are available ... i.e. export persona; however if you try to overwrite your jpeg in export persona with the same filename you do at least get a warning and request for action.

    I'm sure there are other combinations I haven't come across yet, perhaps we need a matrix of the combos to make it clear for folks .. addition to the manual perhaps ... or have I missed it?

    Cheers

    Reg,

     

     

     

     

     

     

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