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Anto: Not tried that - but it appears as I learn more that perhaps the hyphenation dictionary is separate to the spelling dictionary, so the one would not help me with the other. I have a thousand or so words in a hyphenation dictionary I'd like to use though. I see now that in the manual (which is exellent) there is an indication that it is not possible to add hyphenation rules at all. As background, I am a photographer and publisher, until recently publishing a magazine with a very tight layout and sometimes narrow columns (now I work more on books). Given the often specialist words in use and that Indesign often broke these incorrectly, the ability to add hyphenation rules using tildes was and remains incredibly important, or else I will spend too much time correcting the same word again and again. This is an important failing in Publisher, which so far has really otherwise impressed me. I hadn't expected to find something so mature vs Indesign (my sole reason for stopping using it is the lack of a perpetual license plus Adobe now turning off activation options for CS6 and Lightroom). MikeTO - thank you for your reply and your manual (many thanks indeed). No, not a Mac, but Windows 11. New computer, clean install therefore. Though a search of my C drive does not reveal any en_GB associated with Affinity, that folder is empty. Perhaps that is where some problem lies, in that I don't find the hyphenation works well at all. Aside: I have added a lot of words to the dictionary using Learn; at least I thought I was. I am using English GB with that selected, and following a suggestion in the manual set the same for hyphenation rather than auto. Hre's the oddity. The words are indeed added to the dictionary, because they are not flagged as incorrect later on. But, seemingly at random (but frequently), I click on a Learn word and the dictionary changes to English US and the hyphenation to auto. I put them back, click on a word, they change again. That shouldn't happen. I've tried selecting all text (CTRL-A) and then choosing the GB dictionary and hyphenation options, saving, then continuing to use Learn. Makes no difference. Could this be linked to a lack of GB dictionary in that folder? Yet, other times the word is added and things work correctly. But the Affinity team, my opinion, really needs to look at adding a user interface for hyphenation control. As a publisher, this is a severe lack that might even force me back to Indesign, much as I hate Adobe's stance.

My guess would be that Canva is wanting to compete more directly with Adobe to some degree, but they didn't want to start from scratch. So they may be planning to beef up the current Affinity apps with connections into their cloud system, like cloud storge or seamless import of Canva templates into the Affinity apps. They may expand the professional apps beyond the three currently in production, like Lightroom or Dreamweaver clones (no telling if they want to get into video). They might even go the Microsoft path of creating desktop apps and a stripped down web based app that looks similar. Basically they are probably hoping to save time from building a professional suite from scratch and the main reason for wanting a professional suite is to go after some of Adobe's monopoly market share.

They have a HUGE number of amateur users, of whom many are probably still using Adobe CS1-6 on "borrowed" licences. If Canva could convert these people to the "inexpensive" legal Affinity licences, it could double the Affinity user base and give Canva a lot of income. This would help take the Affinity users to a substantial number and with resources added to construct V3 a serious challenger to Adobe CC. for me the only missing app is a Lightroom-Bridge DAM that links the Photo, Illustrator and Publisher. For the time being the boat has sailed for any video app. Especially with the Free/$300 Resolve out there and challenging Adobe.

Hmm, on my 5 year old Notebook (Windows) opening a 37MB RAW file takes 5 sec. Developing takes a fraction of a second and exporting ~4-5 sec. I can not compare with CaptureOne, only Lightroom, which takes about the same amount of time. Main difference is that in Lightroom Pictures are loaded into its library, which might also take several minutes. But AFPhoto has no such library. Not sure about CaptureOne. Maybe you give some more hardware specs about your Surface-Laptop. And not sure, why you load all images at once. Maybe because you think you have to load all files at once?

I, too, have several older MACs running CS6 (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Lightroom) on a perpetual licence. These days I only use Dreamweaver and Lightroom. My LR is also on Windows, which it where I normally use it. They all run fine (tempting fate) on the Mac. The LR on Windows occasionally gets a dialogue asking if I would still recommend it to others. The answer is a firm NO unless they fix the maps (even as a paid upgrade). I had a very unhelpful face to face meeting with Adobe a few weeks ago, and I would not use anything (new) from Adobe again. I will keep what I have on perpetual licences until the computers die because they are there. As discussed elsewhere, an Affinity Lightroom-Bridge app is needed to tie the three apps together. Hopefully the Canva resources can help provide an Affinity desktop based perpetual licence, "Light-Bridge". Not just a Lightroom app that the photographers need but a general DAM that the designers and publishers need (publishers also need the photo catalogue as well)

Serif, you are clearly an Adobe competitor. So why won't you listen to your customers and release a Lightroom alternative? With AI now one of your biggest requests you have a golden opportunity to create a photo management/storage/database/photo development app with AI features that will bring a ton of customers to your platform. Offer this with a discount to V2 bundle customers and you can make enough money to fund the development of that single app. I want local processing speed, and I want local management but with the smarts being offered by Google Photos search. GPhotos has super powerful search, I can type "fruits" and will bring results with photos that contain fruit. Could be paintings of fruits in a bowl, a street market stall, or a fruit tree. If I say "fruit trees" it is smart enough to narrow it for me. That would be incredible in a photo management app. To have auto-tagging, geolocation from merely analyzing the picture, I think this is called reverse geocoding. You are missing a massive chance here.

I have both the latest versions of Illustrator and CorelDRAW, and I don't hate either of them, but I find it disheartening that the interface for a large part of both programs remains stuck in the past. That's how it goes when you have a hundred million users who have decades of routines ingrained in muscle memory and from courses. Illustrator becomes better and more aesthetic, while Corel's interface gets uglier. And Corel as sellers are untrustworthy in a mail-order catalog kind of way. I don't like the company. I don't think Adobe themselves are thrilled about being so tied to the past. It seems like Lightroom has been more open to improvements, and Photoshop here and there too. But Corel... I really don't know what they want. That's probably where Serif has gained the most headwind, aside from the price, in their desktop versions, where the basic functions of the interface are much more pleasant to work with. Unfortunately, not in the iPad versions, which I can barely bring myself to use. And as for usability beyond the basic functions, it's not going well in the desktop versions either. Serif got some fundamental design right in 2014, but from there, the magic disappeared. On the other hand, in Illustrator and CorelDRAW, I've rarely hit a wall or had to use as many workarounds as in Affinity Designer, and output-wise, I also have far fewer problems. When Vectorstyler is developed and maintained by a real company, and when Inkscape is coded from scratch with a genuinely usable interface, then their potential will be realized. Only then. The most important thing for me is that the journey from start to finish is as short as possible, that the output is state of the art, and I don't have correction tasks after delivery. With that approach, it's the tasks that define which product I should choose, not my opinions.

The problem is in a weird stereotype that android tablets are bad, that's why software development companies neglect them, in fact, they're bad because they're neglected, the system itself is very polished and the hardware can be close to Windows devices. I understand that there are tablets assembled in China in someone's basement 😁 But what stops you limiting the availability to Qualcomm processors, large screens and big RAMs? Oh, and if you didn't know, there is already a good set of professional apps available for Android, like infinite painter, nomad sculpt, Lightroom, capcut pro. Now that affinity is acquired by Canva, we expect their apps released for Android as Canva already has a quite polished app for that platform.

I agree re Adobe, CS->CC and Lightroom. There were a lot of assurances for LR, but they reneged on them. They stopped all LR (Perpetual) support just a couple of weeks before Google changed their maps API so LR (perpetual) V6.14 maps section no longer works. A lot of LR users stayed on V6.14 or went looking for other options. Adobe were less than helpful in a face to face meeting a coupe of week ago. Perhaps Canva can help Affinity do a DAM "Light-Bridge" a Lightroom/Bridge type app. Photographers want a Lightroom but designers and Publishers need to manage other assets as well.

What was said by Ash yesterday was, "There are genuinely no plans for us to remove the availability of our apps to purchase as a perpetual licence. I will say it is possible in the future there may be an optional way to have them via a Canva subscription plan (which could also include other integrations with Canva / cloud services which you would not get with the perpetual version). But it’s very early days and there isn't a firm plan on that." So whilst those assurances by Ash yesterday and today (presumably after Canva cleared them in Australia) are what he believes today.... next month it may all be different. The Worry for me is the suggestion of a two tier system, subscription with more features and integrations (with Canva) and the perpetual with fewer features. Will the perpetual loose the integration with the Stock libraries. The [Canva] Pixababy and Pexel? This does remind me of the Adobe pledges to keep Lightroom standalone. Which technically they did. V6.14 perpetual licences still work. But they stopped all support for it a couple of weeks before google changed the Maps API and LR V6.14 maps stopped working. The Fix was in the LR CC versions before it happened. You can still move LR V6.14 from computer to computer, but if you hit the limit, it can take you all day to find someone at Adobe to talk to someone who will reset the installation count. However, for all intents, the stand alone Lightroom is dead. Adobe would not even discuss it in a face to face meeting a couple of weeks ago. So whilst the intent is there, I think that for many of us who have been burned by the likes of Adobe and are getting déjà vu, we are going to be somewhat sceptical until we see what actually happens. The Good News is that for the foreseeable future by V2 Affinity apps will continue to work just as they did last week. PS if that Affinity-Canva post means what it says about taking Affinity forward.... We do need a Lightroom replacement/DAM for Affinity. On perpetual licence to match the other apps.

If so, this would indicate you are not opening a RAW format file, or at least not one that Affinity recognizes as such. I hope my Sony camera's RAW file is recognized. Anyway, moving from Photo Persona to Develop Persona is not a major concern for me. My PC is also about 5 years old, but your PC seems to be faster. I was user of Lightroom until about 6 years ago when I switched to Capture One. Thanks all of you for help and sharing your own experiences with me. I believe my best option is to continue as before … using Capture One for my normal photo editing needs and using Affinity Photo for special needs involving stack and merge with multiple images. The only disadvantage for me is to keep track of terminology/menu differences for the two very capable and complex software at the same time! FYI… here is my photo editing workflow for a typical day of photo shoot for me (I expect workflow need will vary for different users): Load about 200 images. Capture One loads all images in parallel without any load time impact for me. I have opted in Capture One Library to store only the edit changes in its library, and not the RAW images. My Raw Images remain in my PC folder only. Then I view each of the 200 images in Capture One (no editing at this stage). I tag them as keep/reject. (typically, I end up with about 40 images to keep and remaining to reject). Then, I select only images tagged Keep to be visible in Capture One. I change the initial sequence of images is by Date/Time to Manual Sequence in Capture One. Then, I drag the images to the sequence I want. I do photo edit adjustments to each of the selected 40 plus images. (I find Capture One and Affinity Photo to be equally good for this step). I select the export/output option to create .JPG files. Capture One creates all the 40 plus edited images in one step, in my PC Folder for Edited Images, and assigning a prefix sequence number (example “03 A7R01597.jpg”). As a last step, I select images marked “Rejects” in Capture One, and request these images be deleted in Library as well as in my PC Folder of RAW images. Occasionally, when I need some special tasks such as Timelapse, Merge, or other stacked edit functions, I use exclusively Affinity Photo 2 (as Capture One does not perform such multi-image processes. I create a final image in .JPG and move the image file to my edited photos folder. Thanks again,

From my point of view, now the dust has settled, is that V2 will do what we need. Primarily Publisher, then some designer and very occasionally Photo. Assuming that Affinity do what they have said, in a few years we will move to V3 perpetual licences. For me, that is enough. I will not have to worry (if I am still breathing). The team I work with producing a magazine can do all we need (at the moment) in V2.4 so if they get as far as V3 perpetual that will be all they need. At this point, we are talking 10 years on from here before they have to change if Affinity goes to hell in a hand basket and or only subscription etc. As I point out to some of my lot, I am still using Lightroom 6.14 (dated 2007) that is 7 years old and does what I need. It runs on Win11 As we are using Windows which, at the moment, does not work like OSX, and we can use old SW on the latest PC's if we need to. Apple has a far more aggressive approach to stopping old SW working on new versions of the OS which is a pity. My old Intel MAC HW will take one newer version of OSX, but AFAICS CS6 is not stable on that. So unlike our PC's we have our MACs frozen in time. Though, as Apple has only just gone to their ARM based CPUs (their 4th CPU in the life of the MACs) they would be on this for a decade or so. Therefore, for me there is no panic. The perpetual licences have, as many have said here, removed much of the short-medium term risk. Time to get back to work until we see what the next updates bring.

Does not changed for me : Open files with Lightroom in order to convert the file. Works great close Lightroom. Then open Afinnity: no files anymore, have to restart the iPad. That’s really time consuming.

The scripting thread has 600 odd replies and was started nearly 6 years ago. The Lightroom thread has over 100 replies and was started only 5 months ago. That gives you some idea that now it has been raised it is probably the most popular thing on the forum in the last 12 months. As a photographer. I live in Lightroom and rarely used PS or use APhoto. though I mainly do Journalism, so you don't do much/any photo editing As a Magazine Editor and someone who lays out books I live in APublisher however I also have Lightroom open as I need to sort and select photos for the Magazine and books. Much as I did when I used InDesign. Hopefully for Affinity V3 there will be a DAM. Most graphics people used Adobe Bridge and claimed Lightroom, being a specialized bridge, was redundant. But I would suggest that more people use Lightroom than use Bridge Hopefully for Affinity V3 there will be a DAM that will be closer to Lightroom than Bridge. If Affinity do a photo DAM that will talk to google maps, then I would think the huge number of people still on the standalone perpetual licence Lightroom V6.14 would jump to the Affinity DAM. Never mind those looking for any excuse to come of the Adobe CC.

@Niki Park There really is no "full" equivalent. I guess it depends on what features you want and need. I also was a full time Adobe user for over 20 years. I used Bridge and LightRoom a lot. Affinity Apps have various options when you choose File > New, one of which is a Recents option (see attached screenshot). You can also use Open and navigate to a folder and display your all images in the folder as columns, lists, icons, etc. I used Mac Finder and XnViewMP (free download) for viewing images. I often drag and drop files into Affinity (RAW, TIFF, JPG, etc) from my viewer.. XnView displays a lot of metadata and other file attributes and has a lot of nice features, especially for a free download. None of these offer raw development settings, like ACR/LR. For that, you'd need a 3rd party digital asset manager (some paid, some free). I don't use one and have gotten used to a new workflow. Not sure if this answers your question. If you are more specific, we can provide more guidance.

I too would love a lightroom alternative.... and glad I purchased lightroom standalone when you still could!

Lightroom as a far better cataloguing system of groups, smart groups, temporary groups. I can create a group on several terms, including contains exact match. Partial matches and "not including" sets all in the same search. The catalogue(s) are a virtual layer on top of the physical file system, and has a "light table" type look though the selections. DXO now has the ability to have the IPTC info and keywords, which is essential. Basically, Lightroom is a database system. Lightroom doesn't do (much) editing and uses the Adobe RAW convertor. BTW in some respects this is better than the DXO which doesn't fully support DNG or NEF files. Light room is a DAM/Cataloguing program. Many of us took to Lightroom instantly, whilst many photographers didn't understand why Adobe had made Lightroom as there was Bridge and Photoshop. I needed a DAM and for photographers that was it. Actually, If Serif are listening a combined Bridge and Lightroom program would be good. (I am a magazine editor as well as a photographer)

Can they really be compared in their aspect of saving new data incrementally only? When Affinity is saving incrementally only there could/would be more "history" options, not only if manually activated before "Save". In my impression database files are (or may be) kind of 'folders' (rather than single files), adding new data in additional, separate files (e.g. Email apps). On the other hand, incremental saving does not necessarily cause the well known issues of Affinity files. For instance 'Lightroom' library files: they are a lot larger on my disk than Affinity files (while both work with linked images) but I don't experience corrupted Lightroom files, neither when saving/closing nor opening. Lightroom doesn't offer a "Save" command, it saves automatically / permanently to its library file, including a visible "history" for each document (which may get deleted manually). Additionally it offers an option to check its data structure when/during opening a Lightroom library file. Also some macOS apps seem to save incrementally this way: every executed task triggers auto-save on disk while the apps don't have a "Save" command. Another difference to Affinity: these apps store a (invisible) 'history' automatically and offer a restore command for each file even for previous sessions. So the question remains: What causes the issues for incremental saves in Affinity … which does not happen in other apps? It appears the communication between the Affinity .autosave files and the .afpub/.afdesign/.afphoto documents does not work well: My frequent issues resulting in corrupted documents hardly never happened while working but only after choosing "Save" (or, less frequent, "Open") and on local, built-in drives / volumes / partitions only.

Ich werde niemals noch einmal Adobe Geld in den Rachen werfen, Ich meine mich zu erinnern, dass die Grundlagen für Lightroom von einer Firma aus Dänemark gelegt wurden, In einer Zeit da Adobe alles was gut war auf dem Weltmarkt zusammen gekauft hat und vieles eingestellt hat, da hatte ich mich auch zu Lightroom überreden lassen, aber die Preispolitik von dieser Firma haben mich zu Affinity kommen lassen, ich bin mit Affinity zufrieden obwohl die RAW entwicklung nich optimal ist. Ich höffe immer noch dass ein RAW Programm kommt. Ach übrigens es kann sein dass ich micht bei der Entwicklung von Lightroom täusche aber mir fällt auf dass Adobe die Geschichte immer wieder versucht zu verfälschen. Google Übersetzer I will never throw money down Adobe's throat again. I seem to remember that the foundations for Lightroom were laid by a company from Denmark, at a time when Adobe was buying up everything that was good on the world market and discontinuing a lot of things , I was persuaded to go to Lightroom, but this company's pricing policy made me choose Affinity. I'm happy with Affinity even though the RAW development isn't optimal. I'm still hoping that a RAW program will come along. Oh, by the way, it could be that I'm wrong about the development of Lightroom, but I notice that Adobe keeps trying to falsify the story. Westerwälder

I have same issue. I plug my SSD then I can work on a couple of files and after a while, the SSD or any other files or not accessible anymore. The … does not help as the file app on iPad is blocked. Files are gone from the Files app and from the Files dialog within Photo 2.4 It happens only with Affinity. If I work with Lightroom and switch to Affinity, this is straight forward, the app block and cannot do anything, have to try to restart the iPad. I write « try » because each time it rally block all the system. I work with Lightroom for years on the same iPad and never had this issue. As soon I download Affinity I have this bug. Please correct. Thanks

I wore many hats in my past and one of those was M&A professional (investment banker). As I like to say "any trained monkey can do a transaction the real magic is in the integration of the two businesses to achieve the synergies that were used to make the financials work to justify the transaction". I would love to see the pitch deck to see how they justified creating value with two wildly different customer bases. Maybe Canva acquired Serif at such a discount that the justification is trivial. I suspect that there are a lot of bullet points saying something similar to: Sharing of code Sharing of AI Reduce the number of coders Reduce admin staff Both platforms will benefit from shared customers Affinity V3 will transition to subscription (seeing how well it worked for Adobe) [I hope we see] Rapid release of Lightroom clone and DAM Importation of LR and Capture one Catalogs Migration of LR and Capture One Catalogs Partner with camera manufactures Add Fast Raw Viewer to the portfolio Add CYME to the portfolio I suspect however that we are going to see two separate software portfolios languish and neither get the attention that they deserve and more customers move back to Adobe (I did months ago). I still have Affinity loaded because I still have some assets that were created in one of the Affinity apps (and Capture One Pro), but moving forward it is Adobe only...

Hello, because now Affinitys RAW developing is really good, I hope you make file organize / handling software like lightroom & bridge or xnview, what is free and quite good, but no raw image prosessing / handling. Something like af. integrated Stock images, so that you can drag n drop and handle your files and images e.g. at AfPub. Only thing what keeps me still with adobe, even I use Affinitys, is LR & Bride. So why not? Just do it better, like you do if you look Activity Monitor in your mac, even there is zero Adobe's SW open there might be at bacground prosessing tens of adobe's "whatever sync daemon" BTW they might change that daemon, because it sounds like demon, I wrote to them about that, "Adobe demons are eating my mac resourses". Adobes photoshop, bride. LR...resousces, utilities etc. eats about 40GB space of my mac. Funny thing at my iPad was 9 image, but LightRoom eat its all space. I had to delete it and install agian to get my space back. At android you can open via "Android file transfer" adobes folder and delete those LR colledted files, what just take space, even you dot use or see those. (sorry my english, I'm not native)

There is a lot of this sort of thing that goes on. Microsoft was legendary for doing it. Apple were better when Jobs was at the helm but since then..... 😞 I am certain that MS Outlook was not a Microsoft development, Email, calendar, tasks and a contact database all in one. My most used app over the last 30 years. I nearly went to Apple Aperture but at the last minute didn't press the "buy" and went Lightroom. I think it was because Aperture wasn't on PC Also I knew that the Intel Macs were on the way and updates would only be on the Intel macs not the PPC ones. Indeed Apple did an OS upgrade that didn't support Aperture before stopping support Then again with Lightroom Adobe stopped support for the standalone V 6.14 Lightroom weeks before google changed the interface to the maps rendering the Maps section of the V6.14 inoperative. Adobe would have known the change was coming so they could update the CC version in time. I think this was in an effort to force people to the Creative Cloud Subscription system. As the Adobe support page for this says "To continue using the Map service, it is recommended that you update to the latest Lightroom Classic version." I didn't jump. However a decent DAM like Lightroom +Bridge from Serrif would be great. I would pay for it.

I bought the Affinity suite back in December, and I love it. I use Photo all the time, and the other two every once in a while. I think this suite is far better than the Adobe products it competes against, especially Photoshop, which is a dinosaur that they keep slapping things on top of. I haven't paid for the Adobe Cloud subscription in years, although I use it often in my work laptop. And I definitely don't want to go back to pay for it. But while the Affinity suite does an excellent job replacing Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, the thing I'm having trouble finding a good replacement for is Lightroom Classic. Slow as it is, it's great for managing large amounts of photos, and to easily change settings for large batches. I hope Serif comes up with a good replacement in the near future, which I'm sure will be better than Lightroom, but in the meantime I wanted to get a feeling for what the rest of the Affinity community is using. I bought On1 Photo a couple of days ago. It's not bad, but it's kind of slow at times (on a Mac Studio Ultra, so nothing should be slow), and some menus look like all the commands are piled up with little space between them. On the other hand, it's only $100, while others are more expensive. The good thing is that you can return it within 30 days if you don't like it. So what are most people here using as far as a Lightroom alternative for large amounts of photos?

Hi folks, 3 years ago I started using Affinity Photo because I think Adobe's license model is just plain nasty and outrageous, especially if you only really need a few of the programs. Since then I am very happy with Davinci resolve and the Affinity suit, and miss only a few features of the Adobe CC programs, besides the fast and very intuitive motiongraphics in Aftereffects I only miss the Ligthroom presets, in the beginning it didn't really bother me, but the more I specialize in photography and the more my colleagues throw Ligthroom presets around permanently, the more I miss using an intuitive batch editor that can read the LR XMPs, achieve similar results quickly, and generally integrate a few Quality of life things adobe users may just gotten used to. if I'm fundamentally in the wrong place, let me know, but I'd love a Serif alternative for the few features that still justify ligthroom.