MISSING Affinity Suite Product : AFFINITY PRINT

[JacobThePhotographer]

Hi Affiniados,
I use all 3 Affinity Products:
Affinity Photo - since quite a few years , PERFECT - LOVE IT !
Affinity Design - since a bout 2 years , Love it as well but not perfect.
Affinity Publisher - sine very recent - seems very good.

MISSING:
Affinity Print !!
Instead I use the very expensive Mirage Print app by Dinax in Germany.
The Print results of Mirage are as good as it can be, but the user interface is quite possibly as bad as they come.
Zero logic , button operation take you all across the screen for a single print and easy enough one prints print copies again that are printed already.
It also has a useless bloated color correction section - totally pointless for professional print creators, all color correction is done in the image editor , then the file is sent to the printer / via Mirage.

THAT CAN BE BETTER :
Via Affinity Print , in it one can set the paper / color profile / printer selection but most important the layout on the Sheet or Roll of Paper.
Say we want to print a complete wedding album series - in Mirage it is very complicated to collect all images , set the size per image , then the Mirage software creates a PERFECT layout sequence on a roll of paper. Including borders etc. It just works perfect. But as said the user interface is rubbish. The Mirage user interface is rubbish but the output is perfect.

As far I can see Mirage is a shell for the Epson Driver, it is NOT a RIP and not another driver. And that is just a perfect idea since the Epson Driver is already very good .

With more than 45 years professional photography up my sleeves and 20+ years of digital printing I am 100% confident that AFFINITY PRINT will take the world by storm , so many newbie photographers and old farts like me are / were struggling when it comes to perfect printing. I finally mastered a flawless work flow only a few years ago -  I can print without making a test - knowing that what I see on screen will always be what I see in  a print even on plain paper. Much of the credit goes to Mirage because in its core it is very good , again - the whole Mirage user interface and ridiculous high price with attache USB encoding dongle / HASP makes it very unattractive. But their customer support simply rocks.

YOU CAN DESIGN AN AFFORDABLE  AND PERFECT AFFINITY PRINT APP
Go for it and make another couple of Millions  - Just make me  happy with a nice bonus 🙂

Attached a Mirage interface Screenshot with a Land Rover painting by my partner (Since you are in the UK I thought you will love my long gone Landy in the Australian bush - painting is 120 x 90 cm in size)

Best of Luck - Regards:
Jacob in Australia !

[Fritz_H]

I guess the main question is:
does the target audience of Serif print themselves on their own printer?
or
do they rather send Files to the Client, to the Print-Service-Provider with a large scale Inkjet-Printers or directly to the Printer (Company: Digital, Offset..)

Fritz

[JacobThePhotographer]

10 hours ago, Fritz_H said:

I guess the main question is:
does the target audience of Serif print themselves on their own printer?
or
do they rather send Files to the Client, to the Print-Service-Provider with a large scale Inkjet-Printers or directly to the Printer (Company: Digital, Offset..)

Fritz

Is that a relevant Question ?
Its like wondering if a car manufacturer targets future owners of their vehicles based on where he / she fills up the tank:  in his/her hometown or at a supermarket in a big city.
Answer -  Totally irrelevant as the same owner can do both or none.

I for instance print all my small commercial work myself but outsource all jobs lager as A3+ .
There will be Affinity users who can not print small formats - but  have a large format printer and others with no printer at all.

As you see the question self printing or not has NOTHING to do with the image editor.
Unless you want to implicate Affinity is only suitable for amateurs who go for their print work to the corner store ?
I don't think so  ...... ?!

Jacob

 

[Fritz_H]

Quote

Is that a relevant Question ?

It is, since I guess that most people have their stuff printed externally, by print-Service-providers.
What software they use? who cares? EFI Fiery-RIPs very likely.
https://www.efi.com/products/inkjet-printing-and-proofing/fiery-for-inkjet/

If you want to print yourself and want to do this in very high quality: just spend the necessary amount of money.
If you have it printed externally: who cares what they use?
If you just send the file/s to the Client: no worries about printing.

I guess, I just do not see the need for such a product.

Fritz

[Granddaddy]

20 hours ago, Fritz_H said:

I guess the main question is:
does the target audience of Serif print themselves on their own printer?
or
do they rather send Files to the Client, to the Print-Service-Provider with a large scale Inkjet-Printers or directly to the Printer (Company: Digital, Offset..)

I often wonder what Serif sees as its target audience. Often they seem concerned only with desktop publishing professionals on Macs. Photo editing seems largely neglected given that we have had only 2 minor decimal point updates to AFPhoto since 2017. Competing products have since launched various AI features like automatic colorization of B&W photos. 

As for a Print program, Serif seems overextended enough with the three products it has on three different operating systems. Serif would have a long way to go to rival the capabilities of Qimage Ultimate that I have been using for some 15 years or more. The main target audience for Qimage seems to be professionals who do their own printing, and that is reflected in various forums where Qimage is discussed. But it is well-suited for use by enthusiasts like myself.
http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/

 A recent, less feature-rich implementation runs on both Windows and Mac under the name Qimage One. It is focused solely on high-quality printing.
https://www.binartem.com/qimageone/

There is a robust market for quality printing software, but I hope Serif will concentrate on the products it has rather than further overextend itself in yet another market dominated by vigorous competitors. Just as they are not able to produce a DAM to compete with established commercial and open-source competitors, I doubt they have the resources to produce a print program.

 

Edited March 2, 2020 by Granddaddy
Because a 2nd save is required by the forum to make the URLs active links

[Granddaddy]

20 hours ago, Fritz_H said:

I guess the main question is:
does the target audience of Serif print themselves on their own printer?
or
do they rather send Files to the Client, to the Print-Service-Provider with a large scale Inkjet-Printers or directly to the Printer (Company: Digital, Offset..)

I often wonder what Serif sees as its target audience. Often they seem concerned only with desktop publishing professionals on Macs. Photo editing seems largely neglected given that we have had only 2 minor decimal point updates to AFPhoto since 2017. Competing products have since launched various AI features like automatic colorization of B&W photos. 

As for a Print program, Serif seems overextended enough with the three products it has on three different operating systems. Serif would have a long way to go to rival the capabilities of Qimage Ultimate that I have been using for some 15 years or more. The main target audience for Qimage seems to be professionals who do their own printing, and that is reflected in various forums where Qimage is discussed. But it is well-suited for use by enthusiasts like myself.
http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/

 A recent, less feature-rich implementation runs on both Windows and Mac under the name Qimage One. It is focused solely on high-quality printing.
https://www.binartem.com/qimageone/

There is a robust market for quality printing software, but I hope Serif will concentrate on the products it has rather than further overextend itself in yet another market dominated by vigorous competitors. Just as they are not able to produce a DAM to compete with established commercial and open-source competitors, I doubt they have the resources to produce a print program.

 

[Granddaddy]

Interesting that the forum has retained my original post after accepting my edited post.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Granddaddy said:

Interesting that the forum has retained my original post after accepting my edited post.

Perhaps you had a duplicate to begin with?

In any case, if you look at the bottom of one of your posts, you should see an Options pulldown next to the Quote link. If you click on the Options, you should find one to Hide the post.

[Granddaddy]

Hi @walt.farrell: I don't see how I could have submitted it twice as a duplicate. Wouldn't I have had to key the message twice and post it twice for that to happen? Wouldn't I have had to key and submit my original post, then edit and save that post, and then start all over by keying the entire text of the original post and submitting it as a new post? I assure you there was only one original post in the thread when I began to edit it.

I wrote the post, clicked Submit Reply. After it was accepted and displayed in the thread I saw that the URLs were not active links. That happens pretty much any time  I type in a URL that references anything outside the forums. So I clicked the Edit option on the post, changed nothing in the text but added the reason for the edit, and Saved. Then the edited post appeared as a new post in the thread with the URLs as active links. Strangely, the edited post appeared before the text of my original post. I think I'll leave both visible as I've found it useful to have at hand examples of things that happen. 

[JacobThePhotographer]

13 hours ago, Granddaddy said:

I often wonder what Serif sees as its target audience. Often they seem concerned only with desktop publishing professionals on Macs. Photo editing seems largely neglected given that we have had only 2 minor decimal point updates to AFPhoto since 2017. Competing products have since launched various AI features like automatic colorization of B&W photos. 

As for a Print program, Serif seems overextended enough with the three products it has on three different operating systems. Serif would have a long way to go to rival the capabilities of Qimage Ultimate that I have been using for some 15 years or more. The main target audience for Qimage seems to be professionals who do their own printing, and that is reflected in various forums where Qimage is discussed. But it is well-suited for use by enthusiasts like myself.
http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/

 A recent, less feature-rich implementation runs on both Windows and Mac under the name Qimage One. It is focused solely on high-quality printing.
https://www.binartem.com/qimageone/

There is a robust market for quality printing software, but I hope Serif will concentrate on the products it has rather than further overextend itself in yet another market dominated by vigorous competitors. Just as they are not able to produce a DAM to compete with established commercial and open-source competitors, I doubt they have the resources to produce a print program.

 

Thanks for your detailed reply and the links.
Quite honestly I foresee the same issues with Serif as you do , but at the same time hope that they can add a Affinity Print to their suite. Who knows ?
As it stands the interaction between their apps is flawless. But indeed Affinity Photo could do with some improvements. One of the most annoying to me is the setting of any brush size - why not make it like in Lightroom with the mouse at the brush-point instead of a silly slider.

I will trial Qimage - costing about 10% of the Mirage app. ....

[dominik]

6 hours ago, JacobThePhotographer said:

One of the most annoying to me is the setting of any brush size - why not make it like in Lightroom with the mouse at the brush-point instead of a silly slider.

You know that you can do this?

Press and hold (on Windows) ALT + left mouse button + right mouse button and drag left/right or up/down to scale the brush and its transparency.
I'm not sure what the modifier on Mac OS is. Others might chime in.

d.

[Move Along People]

-

[JacobThePhotographer]

22 hours ago, JacobThePhotographer said:

Thanks for your detailed reply and the links.
Quite honestly I foresee the same issues with Serif as you do , but at the same time hope that they can add a Affinity Print to their suite. Who knows ?
As it stands the interaction between their apps is flawless. But indeed Affinity Photo could do with some improvements. One of the most annoying to me is the setting of any brush size - why not make it like in Lightroom with the mouse at the brush-point instead of a silly slider.

I will trial Qimage - costing about 10% of the Mirage app. ....

Tried Qimage - after 15 minutes deleted it.
Not even close to the  professional capabilities of Mirage.
A buggy user interface - some drop-down box fields stayed black with black text - the color settings are amateurish only allowing the printer to set the color or no color profile used.
Very slow loading of preview - most likely uses the full image to create its own preview instead of the 'baked in'  preview in a tiff file.
Strange workflow .
The ONLY correct workflow is this:
Create an image with  only an Adobe1998 or sRGB profile connected (never ever connect a printer or paper profile to the image) >> Send that image to the Print Software >> tell the PS what printer to use & tell the PS what paper to use with the correct Color profile for that printer / paper combination attached from within the PS >> PS instructs the printer to use a Color sync workflow >> PS sends the image file wait attached color profile to the printer >> Printer prints.
The operator should be able to have full control over every step. I do not see that clearly in Qimage.
Mirage can do all that and more - but unfortunately has an all over the place user interface , very prone to for instance accidental print numbers or printing old prints that were done already.

[JacobThePhotographer]

16 hours ago, dominik said:

You know that you can do this?

Press and hold (on Windows) ALT + left mouse button + right mouse button and drag left/right or up/down to scale the brush and its transparency.
I'm not sure what the modifier on Mac OS is. Others might chime in.

d.

Tried that in my MAC - no luck. The [ ] keys work though.
Thanks !

 

[dominik]

5 hours ago, JacobThePhotographer said:

Tried that in my MAC - no luck. The [ ] keys work though.
Thanks !

 

As I said on the Mac it is a different combination of keys. See here:

 

Try Control + Alt + mouse button.

d.

[Granddaddy]

On 3/3/2020 at 8:17 PM, JacobThePhotographer said:

Tried Qimage - after 15 minutes deleted it.

Sorry it didn't work out for you. As an amateur I don't have the advanced requirements that professionals look for in a print program.

Perhaps my favorite feature is cropping at print time rather than during image editing. I might have one photo image to print at 8x10 and 5x7 and 4x6 and wallet size with different border widths either inside or outside the image area and different positioning of the image within the print dimensions. With Qimage I can make all these prints in the same print job and each print can be adjusted separately in many ways. Cropping at print time just seems like the right way to do it. More than 15 years ago the print program that came with my printer worked that way.

The color management workflow you describe sounds exactly as Qimage seems to work. See for instance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmjT6npl7b4

and the many other instructional videos available at
https://www.youtube.com/user/mikeyutoob/videos