Why are there three Affinity apps?

[lineweight]

Forgive me if this is something that is asked/discussed frequently.

Sporadic user of both Photo and Designer here (haven't really tried Publisher yet).

It's taken me a while to realise that the functionality of the apps overlaps quite a bit, and that you can shuffle files between them.

I also kind of get the concept of "personas" - different workspaces that are focused on doing different things to the same basic file, which you can switch between.

So each app is composed of a group of personas, and yet each app is in itself a kind of persona, because again they seem to really be different workspaces focused on doing different things to the same basic filetype.

This makes things more confusing than they need to be, I think. Certainly to new or occasional users. For example is the 'pixel' persona in Designer sort of the same as the 'photo' persona in Photo? If I want to start out on making a drawing I have to try and decide if I'm going to do so in Designer or Photo. Does the decision at this stage determine what I can do later? I'm never quite sure but I don't think it does.

Why not just have one big application, with multiple personas? So if I want to do RAW photo stuff, there's a persona for that. If I want to do pixel based drawing, there's a persona for that (saving me trying to work out which app is best to use). And so on.

Maybe this is to do with the history of the way the software has been developed?

I think the software would be more attractive to new users (and also people like me who don't use it every day, and have to remind themselves of how things work in between sessions of using it)  if there was just one application - Affinity Something - that did everything. If splitting into three is to do with pricing, then give people the option to purchase different packages of personas.

[- S -]

I've toyed with this concept in my head before.  The base Affinity application could be an Adobe Bridge type application – a gateway application – which is given away for free (and the cost absorbed by the other applications).  This would also allow anyone to view proprietary Affinity files even if they don't have Designer/Photo/Publisher.  Then, personas could be purchased and added to the base Affinity application either individually, or the whole suite could be purchased in one go.

I can't remember any other software companies doing this before though, so I'm guessing there must be reasons why separate dedicated applications are preferred.

 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, lineweight said:

Why not just have one big application, with multiple personas?

Just guessing but possibly because it would be a big, considerably more expensive app with seven (or possibly more) personas to manage.

[lineweight]

36 minutes ago, - S - said:

 

I can't remember any other software companies doing this before though, so I'm guessing there must be reasons why separate dedicated applications are preferred.

 

The CAD software I use is one application with variants which have different feature sets - each of them tailored to different disciplines (architecture, lighting design, landscape design). You can buy a basic version, one specific to your type of work, or one that does everything. Each at different price points but they all have the same core functionality and work with the same filetype.

[thomaso]

3 hours ago, lineweight said:

This makes things more confusing than they need to be, I think. (...)

Why not just have one big application, with multiple personas? So if I want to do RAW photo stuff, there's a persona for that. If I want to do pixel based drawing, there's a persona for that (saving me trying to work out which app is best to use). And so on.

Because such a big Apple huge application would make things more confusing, too, and would not reduce confusion. Imagine all Affinity tools, menus, option dialogs, context menus and bars, available with 1 click, simultaneously. Me at least would loose overview and concentration caused by overload.

Actually this is how nature is organised: in bits and pieces. There are just a few, ca. 100 elements on earth which everything is made of – but there are many thousands of various plants (tree, bush, flower ... vegetable, fruit, nut ...) to deliver food, and various kinds of animals to deliver more food (eggs, meat) and material (leather, hair). Although it seems to be a natural goal to increase efficiency again and again, the development yearned by humans appears special, impatient.

I am sure Affinity is one of the seldom applications which fulfills your desire quite a lot already, and this way it is close to the future, different to many other software. Compare smartphones, where even one single task can get its own application. Ridiculous? Why isn't Affinity playing my music?

Why don't we have creatures which deliver all necessary nutrients in one object? (I guess it currently becomes developed)
Why do we have feet, bicycles, cars, buses, airplanes, ships – instead of 1 transport instrument? (ah, in the 1950ths there have been cars which could drive + swim)
Why do we have thoughts, feelings, dreams, believes and knowledges – instead of 1 clear something?

Natural question. Not new. Answered differently by every generation. Permanently working on it.

[thomaso]

51 minutes ago, lineweight said:

The CAD software I use is one application with variants which have different feature sets - each of them tailored to different disciplines (architecture, lighting design, landscape design).

All features and functions in 1 app is more a (reasonible) matter of marketing than an advantage for the user. There is no need to have all in one because the work is done in a specific order or devided in devisions, e.g. drawing/construction of objects (geometry), painting/imaging of surfaces (texture mapping), defining light, setting cameras and camera paths (animating), rendering. ... In large projects it is more common and more useful (oeconomically efficient) to separate all the tasks to different specialised people or teams than to get all steps done by 1 person. It is rather a complex industry than a 1-designer job. So none of them needs access to all tools. Like in a factory.

[ashf]

I guess because not everyone need all features in three apps.
Some need only Photo or Designer.

[ashf]

I used to like LightWave 3D which has similar concept to Studio Link called Hub.
LW3D works flawlessly even on budget machine because of that. light weight and efficient.

[lineweight]

8 hours ago, thomaso said:

Because such a big Apple huge application would make things more confusing, too, and would not reduce confusion. Imagine all Affinity tools, menus, option dialogs, context menus and bars, available with 1 click, simultaneously. Me at least would loose overview and concentration caused by overload.

 

This is not what I am suggesting, though. I'm suggesting one application with a number of personas. Not all of the tools available simultaneously.

Then when I want to do a particular task, I just need to understand which persona is the best one. At the moment I need to make a two-level choice; first which application, then which persona in that application. This means I might be choosing between two personas whose functions overlap significantly with one another. To me this is more confusing, and unnecessary.

[lineweight]

8 hours ago, thomaso said:

All features and functions in 1 app is more a (reasonible) matter of marketing than an advantage for the user. There is no need to have all in one because the work is done in a specific order or devided in devisions, e.g. drawing/construction of objects (geometry), painting/imaging of surfaces (texture mapping), defining light, setting cameras and camera paths (animating), rendering. ... In large projects it is more common and more useful (oeconomically efficient) to separate all the tasks to different specialised people or teams than to get all steps done by 1 person. It is rather a complex industry than a 1-designer job. So none of them needs access to all tools. Like in a factory.

That's not always the case. It depends. For example, as far as my CAD software is concerned, I do a number of different tasks. I do the construction of objects, I define the lighting, I do the rendering. If I can do all this in one app, it reduces the number of different bits of software I have to learn and keep up to date with. It means that I don't have to keep saving versions of files to transfer them between applications.

Of course there's an argument that for some industries, or types of companies, where tasks are more divided up, that specialised applications for each stage makes more sense. In that case each application has a concept and workspace that is designed to be most useful for that particular task.

But as far as Affinity is concerned, the different applications are already very similar. There are not fundamental differences in the way they work (as far as I can see). They use the same filetype. In terms of the appearance and layout of the workspace that you have to become familiar with, it differs more between personas than it does between the applications. That's why I don't see the benefit of dividing up the functionality on two levels (persona level and app level) rather than just one (persona level).

[lineweight]

To be specific:

At the moment I have Photo and Designer open. I can move a file between them quite easily.

Photo has 5 personas: photo, liquify, develop, tone mapping, export.

Designer has 3 personas: designer, pixel, export.

That's 8 personas to choose from. It's not immediately obvious to me how the two export personas differ, or exactly how the Photo>photo persona differs from the Designer>pixel persona.

In my imagined, merged application there would simply be 6 personas: Pixel, Vector, Develop, Tone mapping, Export.

If I want to export, I just go to export.

If I want to do raster stuff, I use Pixel persona.

If I want to do vector stuff, I use Vector persona.

Straightforward to understand, no need to switch between apps, and no loss of functionality.

[Move Along People]

-
 

[lineweight]

39 minutes ago, haakoo said:

I'm using studiolink through publisher and have most tools available to be used.
When specific issues have another need, I'll use the "edit in feature".
But your suggestion implies, I should buy personas and only when needed, this would seem logical from your point of view as you are used to it from your cad program.
But I wouldn't do that as it would restrict the workflow to buy a small part and have the money present for just a simple task that is not currently present.

 

Ok, I'm not familiar with Publisher yet, and just watched a video explaining what Studiolink is.

So, it seems to sort of do what I'm talking about, which is to access the features of Photo or Designer without switching between programmes. The question then is: why use Photo or Designer when you can do the stuff from within Publisher.

As for what you should buy - under my suggestion you'd buy all the personas, if you want all the functions. Just like now, if you want all the features you have to buy all three apps. Nothing really changes.

[Move Along People]

-
 

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, lineweight said:

The question then is: why use Photo or Designer when you can do the stuff from within Publisher.

Because you can't do everything from within Publisher that can be done in Photo or Designer. For example, Publisher's Photo Persona is mostly equivalent to Photo's Photo Persona, except that it does not provide support for Photoshop plugins. Also, Photo actually has more than 5 personas, although ones like Panorama & Batch jobs are presented as options in Photo's File menu.

[Sofa Gas Rue]

11 hours ago, - S - said:

I can't remember any other software companies doing this before though, so I'm guessing there must be reasons why separate dedicated applications are preferred.

Black Magic's Davinci Resolve is a good example of multiple softwares being rolled into one. Both Fusion and Fairlight were seperate applications before. Autodesk Maya also have a few applications absorbed into it, but over time it became so integrated that you would not recognize the original apps.

Personally I would be sorry to see one being bundle and I can't see any advantages in doing so.

[R C-R]

9 minutes ago, Sofa Gas Rue said:

Black Magic's Davinci Resolve is a good example of multiple softwares being rolled into one.

And a (very!) bad example is Apple's iTunes, which grew from a nice little music player into a confusing monstrosity.

[markw]

47 minutes ago, R C-R said:

And a (very!) bad example is Apple's iTunes, which grew from a nice little music player into a confusing monstrosity.

And now, as of Catalina, Apple broke it up again into four apps;  Music, TV, Podcasts and Books.

[lineweight]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Because you can't do everything from within Publisher that can be done in Photo or Designer. For example, Publisher's Photo Persona is mostly equivalent to Photo's Photo Persona, except that it does not provide support for Photoshop plugins. Also, Photo actually has more than 5 personas, although ones like Panorama & Batch jobs are presented as options in Photo's File menu.

So... why not make this functionality accessible from within Publisher?

[thomaso]

4 hours ago, R C-R said:

4 hours ago, Sofa Gas Rue said:

Black Magic's Davinci Resolve is a good example of multiple softwares being rolled into one.

And a (very!) bad example is Apple's iTunes, which grew from a nice little music player into a confusing monstrosity.

... while Apple got aware of that feeling and turned iTunes with its current macOS back to 5 separated apps, 1 for music, 1 for video, 1 for podcasts, ...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210200

 

5 hours ago, lineweight said:

In my imagined, merged application there would simply be 6 personas: Pixel, Vector, Develop, Tone mapping, Export.

The persona concept in general can also be seen as a compromise already (with advantages AND disadvantages) to make as many features as possible available at once (even 6 personas can be confusing) without overloading the UI at a time.

With StudioLink the buttons to different apps (= features, tasks) are moved from the computers dock into the Affinity UI, whereas for the workflow it doesn't make a  difference, where on your screen you click an app icon to get access to additional functions (≈ launch apps).

Instead using StudioLink you can simply have launched all three apps at the same time, with the advantage that different files may be open in each individual app – whereas if you switch via StudioLink you will be reduced to your current document. For example, you might prefer to work in different apps when you are working in Publisher on a magazine, in which images only play a role in addition to text and page layout, while you can immediately access a large number of opened image files when you switch to the Photo app and various opened illustrations when switching to Designer.

In case you prefer the 3 app workflow towards personas you might feel handicapped by the fact that each of the apps contains functions of the others to enable StudioLink and therefore demands resources of your computers RAM, GPU and CPU possibly without using the features at all. Complaints about running out of memory when working in 1 Affinity app are reported already quite a few times. StudioLink might be part of this unwanted affect even though virtual memory management is quite developed in the OS.

It will hardly be possible to satisfy all different workflows simultaneously in 1 app without increasing its complexity and possible confusion. In German there is the ironical term "eierlegende Wollmilchsau", a creature which can and does everything a user wants, but not more and not less at a time, with its 100% flexibilty + 0% complexity. In English the "Swiss Knife" might touch the idea a little but in a positive way only, without expressing the disadvantage of such an "all-in-one".

[lineweight]

In English we say "jack of all trades, master of none".

But I don't see that a merged Affinity app would need to become this. It seems that the "Studiolink" concept already proves that what I am suggesting can work.

I understand that there will be workflows where you want three files open at the same time. But they don't need to each be in a different app. You can open 3 (or more) files at once in Publisher. One of them can have the "Publisher" persona active, one can have the "Photo" persona active, and so on.

It's not true that the app buttons are simply moved from the dock to the Publisher UI. If they are in the dock, selecting the app has a different effect. It doesn't open the file you are working on, in that app. It opens that app with whatever file you have open in it at the time.

[thomaso]

8 minutes ago, lineweight said:

It seems that the "Studiolink" concept already proves that what I am suggesting can work.

Yes, but with advantages AND disadvantages. In macOS you can see the current use of RAM and the currently sleeping apps, called "App Nap". This feature of the OS helps a lot to simultaneously have various apps launched even if you don't have RAM for all of the apps and their opened files. With your idea of all-in-one the OS wouldn't be able to manage virtual memory in the same efficient way.

In the follwing situation Designer sleeps already but Photo still uses 5 GB which I might miss for my work in Publisher instead. Now, when I continue working in Publisher only, probably Photo will fall asleep as well and frees more RAM for Publisher. But I still can switch to Designer or Photo any time and experience it awake immediately.

 

21 minutes ago, lineweight said:

It's not true that the app buttons are simply moved from the dock to the Publisher UI. If they are in the dock, selecting the app has a different effect. It doesn't open the file you are working on, in that app. It opens that app with whatever file you have open in it at the time.

It *is* true for the way you launch additional features. And also, yes, there is an advantage with StudioLink to get faster access in Photo to a current resource file from Publisher without the need of an additional open-action (which, by the way, alternatively can easily be done via Publisher's Resource Manager "app"). But also it can become a disadvantage to have all images from your Photo.app opened in Publisher instead (see above: memory and app nap) + accessing them via StudioLink (complexity)

I do not want at all to convince you from the 3 app concept – I just try to make clear, that both concepts have advantages AND disadvantages. So a desire for an all-in-one Affinity app is rather a matter of individual taste (the preferred workflow, like a favored color or food) than an optimal solution for every one or every situation. Note that the Affinity apps are closer already to your desire than many other apps, not only with their Affinity StudioLink but with various customizable preferences, e.g. your individually default object style(s), your custom window arrangement, its adjustable UI complexity and color(s), the app vs. text languages, etc. – However, I wouldn't wonder if Serif works already on an adjustable app preference to enable/disable StudioLink by the user and thereby give even more choice about UI and memory management.

[- S -]

3 hours ago, Sofa Gas Rue said:

Black Magic's Davinci Resolve is a good example of multiple softwares being rolled into one. Both Fusion and Fairlight were seperate applications before. Autodesk Maya also have a few applications absorbed into it, but over time it became so integrated that you would not recognize the original apps.

Personally I would be sorry to see one being bundle and I can't see any advantages in doing so.

Most of my work is in Affinity Photo.  One example is that it's not possible to stroke a path with a brush like you can in Adobe Photoshop, which means I would need to use the Pencil tool or Vector Brush tool and for that I would need to use Affinity Designer.  The problem is that I then need to maintain another completely separate application, just to use two tools.

If I modify swatches in Affinity Designer, the changes don't reflect in Affinity Photo and vice versa. The brushes I create in Affinity Photo, don't appear in the Affinity Designer.  The new document presets/templates that I already have setup in Affinity Photo, don't appear in Affinity Designer.  The Assets I use in Affinity Photo don't appear in Affinity Designer.  Etc. Etc. — you get the point.  It's not the cost that's the issue, it's that the experience is too jarring.

By having one base/core Affinity application with different personas, it wouldn't be necessary to set things up multiple times for each application and then try and keep them all in sync.  The common items would all be shared between personas.  In the above scenario, I would just switch to the Vector persona from a 'Persona' drop-down menu and then use the Pencil tool or Vector Brush tool.  The document stays exactly how it was and the interface just changes around it.  All my swatches/brushes/assets/settings would already be how I had them set up and be in sync between personas.  Brushes could also be in sync across all personas, there's no reason why Photo brushes couldn't be vector brushes too – like they are in Clip Studio Paint.  File sizes would also be reduced as it wouldn't be necessary for example to include common parts such as the Export persona in each application, it would be part of the base application and activated when a Photo or Designer persona is added to it.

Different people have different workflows and ideas, so obviously people will push back against this idea – it's to be expected; however for me personally, one application with different personas would work better for how I use it, as I would be in the Photo personas 90% of the time anyway.

[walt.farrell]

37 minutes ago, - S - said:

The new document presets/templates that I already have setup in Affinity Photo, don't appear in Affinity Designer.

One comment on that: The Presets won't show up in the other application. But if you configure Photo and Designer to use the same Template folders, your templates should automatically show up in both.

[MattyWS]

StudioLink is pretty great, but I've also found the workflow "File>Edit in..." to be a great one. I switch between photo and designer quite a bit. If you have both applications open it's really fast to switch between.

I would really love a shortcut key for this as well... for example if I'm in Photo and press  I dunno... F9 and it switches to designer and in designer F9 to switch to Photo. It'd save me going to "File>Edit in" every time