iOS Photo review, critique, analysis

[bizbeblu]

iPad Photo (current version) review.

Warning. This is a long and not particularly favorable review. It has been written and re-written a number of times over the last 2 months.

This analysis comes after 4 months of extensive use, largely brush/paint/sketch. I use it at least 5x weekly for as many as 3 hours at a time. I'm still amazed at how many tools I haven't figured out how to use. (I'm not going to comment on the "help" pages.)

Grade: C-

iPad Air (3rd generation) running iOS 13.7. Will not move to v 14.x anytime soon.

Bonafides

Owned one of the first 50K Macintosh. It was my 3rd "micro-computer." Extensive work across multiple OS. Most recently as a professional photographer, I have used Ps since v 1.0. I like Affinity. Have purchased every program they've produced. Use Design some, Publish extensively. Such an improvement over Illustrator and InDesign. Can't give up Ps or Lr. The first because I'm trapped in a long "abusive" relationship. The second because there are no alternatives. Believe me. I am not a fan of Adobe's products, prices, capabilities, interfaces, nor their utter arrogance.

All developers have two responsibilities to their clients.

• One: Do no harm. Protecting data is absolutely the first task. Failure to do so renders a program worthless.

• Second: Value to the client. Must be useful, predictable, repeatable. It always works the same.

Data protection:

Regularly lose work when leaving Photo. Many times (most) have switched to another program, came back to my Photo work, and last session's changes are gone. I didn't close the program, simply switched away. And it's unpredictable.  Photo loses/deletes/forgets - whatever - work done often. Literally and regularly, I'll be working on a piece, stop to say check a text, return, and the entire session is gone. I have left Photo in its current state, not closed, just in the background, while doing something else on the Pad. Switch back? Poof. I've learned to manually save before I leave the program. And while we're at it, why is there no save, save as choice in the menu system? I guess export = save? Awkward and export ≠ save.

This is not acceptable. I'm now going to the catalog and manually saving. Also, repeated utter failures: flash, colors - gone 4x+ times. No other program on htis Pad has any problem. Then there's the wildly varying activities of Photo program when I recall it. Occasionally the work pops right up. More often it labors long trying to remember what, who, where it is.

Usability:

Bluntly, an abject failure. Palm rejection fails. Always but unpredictably. No matter the settings, I can't fix this. I run almost exclusively in no side bars mode. I always use a pencil except for undo. I know for a fact that Apple has greatly improved the pencil/palm routines. Why haven't they been implemented? (Multiple settings experimented with. Nada.)

Unpredictable. Brush settings are never saved. Photo's totally unpredictable. When returning the previous state/setting of any tool and the whole environment is a crap shoot. Another big one. Slide out menus for Brush, Color, etc., are never the same. When you select one, the menu is different on return. One has no idea what classes are available. Worse you can't see all the choices. Every menu/option/choice must ALWAYS be the same. There is absolutely no excuse for this failure. If you want more in the window - make it bigger or collapse categories.

Affinity has failed to implement a critical but simple and fundamental algorithm. When the user selects anything, that choice must be read and written to that tool/state register. When the tool is re selected it should, without fail, come up with previous setting no matter if program has exited. This is a trivial thing to do, though it does require re-programming every tool/state call.

Whenever a tool, e.g., brush is selected, it comes up at maximum size and opacity. Always. The tool should return in the prior state. No exception. This is, bluntly, lazy programming.  Example: If the same brush - say a masking brush, small, hard - is used in three different ways, e.g., paint, erase, brush erase, the program doesn't save the brush state/choice for each separate tool. It returns the state of last brush size/use regardless of tool switched to. I regularly employ all three brushes at the same time. Each has different properties (Color, size, opacity, etc.) So, what I get is in the middle of intensive use when switching to a different tool with the same brush, the settings are wrong. Infuriating. Additionally, if one selects a new color and then selects the brush, color reverts either to the prior one or to default black/white. Are you kidding me? These but a few of the crazy things in this program.

Random thoughts: Can’t do clone select with Apple pencil. This has been a criticism repeated in this forum. Too many steps to use basic tools e.g., copy, paste. Example. Copy/paste. Tap Selection persona. Chose select tool (with unpredictable differences in actions.)  Select options from menu. Select (again key parts of select don't work as I think they would.) Then back to Photo persona. Choose from Photo tools copy/paste two layers down. Paste. Then return to Select Persona to release selection. What?

Summation: inconsistent, unpredictable, unrepeatable, data is not safe. Please fix. We don't need more "features." We need the existing tool/interface to always work the same.

Will keep using, but recommending? Your competitors are improving fast and I do not suggest Photo to non-sophisticated users.

Thank you for listening. Any/all discussion suggesting information, correction, insight, or even pointing out my own idiocy are greatly appreciated, indeed requested. I've never had so much problem grokking a graphic tool.

Robert Sorrels

 

 

[RobLW]

On 10/24/2020 at 6:46 PM, bizbeblu said:

 

Data protection:

 

Regularly lose work when leaving Photo. Many times (most) have switched to another program, came back to my Photo work, and last session's changes are gone. I didn't close the program, simply switched away. And it's unpredictable.  Photo loses/deletes/forgets - whatever - work done often. Literally and regularly, I'll be working on a piece, stop to say check a text, return, and the entire session is gone. I have left Photo in its current state, not closed, just in the background, while doing something else on the Pad. Switch back? Poof. I've learned to manually save before I leave the program. And while we're at it, why is there no save, save as choice in the menu system? I guess export = save? Awkward and export ≠ save.

 

This is not acceptable. I'm now going to the catalog and manually saving. Also, repeated utter failures: flash, colors - gone 4x+ times. No other program on htis Pad has any problem. Then there's the wildly varying activities of Photo program when I recall it. Occasionally the work pops right up. More often it labors long trying to remember what, who, where it is.

Robert Sorrels

 

 

 

 

 

You may think it's unacceptable but it's entirely your own fault. Understand that your device has small memory. When you switch to other apps, iPadOS deals with what apps get to sit in memory and which need to be dropped to allow more space for the most recent app(s) you've been opening.

It is therefore up to you to understand the limitations of your own device, and adjust the settings for how regularly Affinity Photo saves your work. 

 

Go into the settings icon, under General, change the autosave Interval to something lower.