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Adobe Photoshop 2021 beta.....bloody hell!!!


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7 hours ago, Mark Oehlschlager said:

@AlejandroJ

The problem for Serif and their customers, however, is that they are confronting the unique problem of the network effect, a problem that mostly tyrannizes the computer software industry.

The fact that your neighbor chooses to buy a Ferrari puts no real pressure on you to also buy a Ferrari, or to prevent you from selling your Ferrari and switching to another model of car. BUT, consider the problem of Facebook, or Twitter, for example. One could elect to avoid or drop Facebook, or Twitter, but 90% of the rest of the world including one's friends and family members are using those channels to communicate and share. The large network of captured users reinforces the dominance and monopoly-like position of Facebook and Twitter.

Adobe benefits from a similar network effect insofar as other professional creatives and corporate clients expect and demand the exchange of native Adobe files, not just for final deliverables, but also for collaborative work in development.

That's a bloody tough nut to crack.

Mark, you have a point.
I think that Pdf files might be an example of what you are saying. They are a standard. When I was working (I have retired this year) I used to submit my reports in pdf format. But I made them using Serif PagePlus, and I made my draft drawings using Serif DrawPlus, for technical drawing I used TurboCad instead of AutoCad, and I used Corel Write (from Corel Office) instead of Microsoft Word, and PhotoPlus instead of Photoshop. I never had a problem and if I needed to share what I had done in its raw format, I would either submit a pdf or a dwg file (if being just a thecnical drawing) that anybody would be able to open and edit.

Nevertheless, not everybody needs to submit their work to others with the inclusion of how it was developed. For example, I would imagine that most photographers end up submitting a tiff file or a jpg file or a print to their clients, not a psd file. I don’t know, I could be wrong.

Perhaps, referring to a Ferrari was not the best way of making a point. And perhaps, referring to Facebook or Twitter isn’t either. They are both for free (well, one has to cope with publicity in Facebook). I wonder if most people would keep using them if they had to pay  every month for being allowed to do so, in which case I would bet they might be tempted to move to other platforms.

Anyway, I think there is enough people in the world, enough variety of needs and/or tastes, enough different ways of dealing with even the same kind of jobs, so as to allow more than one program of the kind to coexist. It would be terrible if Adobe’s programs where the only ones of the kind around and if they had no competition. It would be terrible if any company (Adobe or whichever) had no competition. What has been said in this thread might be an example of how good it is when there is competition, as it has been implied that Adobe has felt the need to improve their program to be able to compete with Affinity 🙂

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I've been using affinity for couple months now, even though I still have an Adobe subscription because I use after effects, premier and animate a lot. What I can say is that affinity does the job, there are few missing features that I would like them to have. Adobe has lots of feature that I as a professional designer never use. One example is illustrator and photoshop 3D features, what a bunch of crap, it is very hard to use and the final result is just horrible. If I want work with 3D I go with Cinema 4D so I can achieve something that I will be happy with. Other example is the healing brush tool, it works when it is a easy fix otherwise it destroys the image. There are lots of features in adobe that are just not needed. 

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On 10/27/2020 at 8:52 PM, BofG said:

But then Affinity is Fiat money and Adobe is Ferrari money.

Well, if you use the software for living, it's a crap argument. If you're a carpenter, you will also buy a premium hammer instead of a cheap one, it will last longer, will do better job for you. The quality of the tools simply speaks for itself. Actually - one single job you do with the Adobe Suite will easily pay the whole year of subscription (if you know how to sell your work and pick a proper project that will bright you profit, this is a major difference between professionals and amateurs,) and the rest of the year you're in positive numbers.
Also - when you go to the holidays etc., you can always pause/cancel your subscription and pay when you get back to work. You don't have to pay when you don't use the software. Also, constant upgrades (feature and bugfix wise) are so fast and common it's not stopping you from doing your work without constant necessity to use of dozens of workarounds to get even a simple job done...

 

On 10/28/2020 at 10:58 AM, Raymondo said:

Yes that’s very true but if I cast my mind back to 2014 when Serif launched AP and AD, the software was aimed fairly and squarely at the “Professional market”. That said, the software was launched into an already established professional market which is always a hard task. Because of this fact, in order to attract professionals in creative agencies/creative design houses away from their favoured workplace structure, you have to offer something which will equal or better what they are using to entice them away. At the moment, AP after 6 years still hasn’t progressed enough to catch up with Photoshop. 

I have always said Serif set their price structure too low and I think this has had a unintended negative effect in attracting professionals. If something is too cheap to be true etc etc is something that has possibly retarded uptake of the software by the professional market. At least that is how it looks to me as I don’t know many agencies/design houses or printers that have adopted AP. If I’m completely wrong I would be happy to eat humble pie. If sales are increasing healthily then so should the workforce in order to cope with development which I’m not convinced is the case. Maybe there is a shortage of talented developers, I don’t know.

I’m not saying no professionals are switching, that would be untrue but I think it will be a harder task with Adobe having forged ahead by a big margin. This all sounds so negative but that’s because I genuinely want Serif to do well in the professional marketplace but it’s a bit like standing in a football ground watching your team being out played..very frustrating.

+

On 10/28/2020 at 11:28 AM, Raymondo said:

Chris26, in the professional market time is money. I’m not sure I would totally agree that the same quality would be achieved in both AP and Photoshop which has a more creative arsenal at it’s disposal and depends on what you are trying to achieve. As a creative designer and compositor of images for a good many years, there are effects and options etc in Photoshop which AP simply cannot match at the moment. Weather both could achieve the same result would entirely depend on what you are trying to achieve as an end product. 

I think if I said to clients or agencies when I’m freelancing, “I don’t care how long it will take me to give you your artwork”, I’ll finish when I finish, I think I would be shown the door as most artwork commissions I’ve ever worked on has had a deadline. Anyway, I’m sure we could disagree all day but there it is.

Indeed, indeed...

 

On 10/28/2020 at 4:59 PM, Mark Oehlschlager said:

The Affinity Suite is astonishingly good for a 1.8 version, and does most of what the Adobe trio (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign) does for graphic designers.

Thus far, the opportunity that Serif have been able to exploit is the distasteful subscription policy imposed by Adobe, and the fact that Adobe is rather late in coming to iPad (though Adobe now has versions of Photoshop and Illustrator for iPad).

If it weren't for the subscription only business model from Adobe, Serif wouldn't be in business. The Adobe Suite is more polished and mature, and is more extensive. It also has the advantage of being an "industry standard" and benefiting from a kind of network effect.

Serif need to maintain feature parity with AI, PSD, and INDD, or (even better) exceed the features of AI, PSD, and INDD, and maintain an attractive one-time perpetual license fee.

If either Adobe were to offer their suite for a fixed fee, or Serif were to convert to a subscription model, Adobe would win hands down.

Still rooting for Serif and the Affinity Suite, but they are really facing an uphill battle.

 

Sadly, the fact is that Serif sells thousands of copies of software that only few percents of buyers actually use. That is the sad truth, I'm speaking from experience here.
It's so cheap they can give up/sacrifice the amount and forget all about the purchase. They might even be waiting for the update that will addres their issues, silently, since not everyone wants to be vocal or part of the forums/community.

 

On 10/28/2020 at 10:55 PM, Granddaddy said:

I'm an amateur/enthusiast/hobbyist who has used APhoto exclusively for the past 3 years. Previously I used Photoshop Elements through several versions since the early 1990s. I restore old photos for family and friends, make collages and other photo gifts, make large format prints for fun. APhoto has been a great learning experience. I chose APhoto because I liked its emphasis on non-destructive editing. That being said, I have the following observations:

1.) When catching up to a superior competitor, you must innovate twice as rapidly as that competitor just to stay the same distance behind. That's what some of this discussion is about. The competition was not standing still while Serif was playing catch up and claiming it is the future of photo editing.

2.) APhoto today is no better than it was three years ago, worse actually since .aphoto files are now 4 to 10 times larger than three years ago with no benefit to photo editors such as myself.

3.) APhoto seems to be positioned as a utility to supplement Serif's main focus, which is desktop publishing on the Mac platform. APhoto is not catering to photography enthusiasts. Indeed, I think many of us photography enthusiasts feel neglected by Serif.

4.) APhoto should be judged against Photoshop Elements, which is sold outright rather than as a subscription. Photoshop Elements includes many of the artificial intelligence features in Photoshop, features that are appearing also in other competitors to APhoto. Look at the Photoshop Elements 2021 web pages and you also might say WTBH.

5.) Given that a Photoshop subscription costs no more than a couple of pizzas per month, I do not understand why professionals in a production environment would consider this an inordinate expense. I agree subscription software is annoying in principle, just as copy protected software was annoying in the 1980s. I didn't use copy protected software then (Lotus 123, e.g.), and I don't use subscription software today. Certainly a Photoshop subscription is prohibitive for someone such as myself who may go for weeks without editing a photo. But for a business professional, so what?

Truth. Sadly, Affinity doesn't develop much. At least we're getting basic features like Select by... for Designer, a feature that should have been in version 1.0.
Or PDF passthrough. What professional can work or be without it? And now that we have it, it still doesn't display correctly, so it's not WYSIWYG at all. Wicked!
You will love the new neural filters of Photoshop if you try to use them, especially if you're into old photo restorations, colorization and so on.

 

On 10/29/2020 at 1:43 AM, Mark Oehlschlager said:

@Frozen Death Knight

...

The single most powerful aspect of the Affinity Suite value proposition is the availability of professional alternatives to AI, PSD, and INDD for a fixed, perpetual license fee. That's augmented by the availability of those tools on the iPad as well.

...

 

This is sadly not truth. Affinity isn't aimed to creative professionals, despite its aspiration. You sadly cannot rely on it, you have to constantly check every output multiple times, on each export, since there are weird glitches. Also, to this day, we don't have usable Boolean operations. After 6 years... Stuff like default greyscale swatches being actually RGB and dozens of other quirks... Ie, the batch conversion to this day doesn't support drag and drop. You have to select files manually from an system open dialog. Time is money, you know.
The only advantage is its ability to work with CMYK natively. However, you cannot disable colour profiles, so the colours get converted anyway. Wicked.
No support for 1bit images in Photo. Screen printing is a profession. Serif ignores this niche of graphic design completely.
Global layers - an industry standard. Even Corel Draw supports them. Affinity decide to rename Objects to layers for its own convenience, and honestly, layer/object management in Affinity is pure hell thanks to this omission. You have to micro-manage the whole design work you're up to, instead of focusing on the design itself. After few hours of designing, you find yourself managing layers because it's nearly impossible to find stuff in the object/layer hierarchy.
And don't let me started on layers vs. Layers (yes, Affinnity does have 2 types of layers, one without and one with capitalized L). Confusing? They say it's by design...
Vector brushes? They're pure bitmaps. Why are they confusingly named Vector Brushes? Crazy...
Designer - why we still can't see the content of the bleed area when using multiple artboarts? It's part of the design and omitting it from display is just an ignorant approach.

 

On 10/28/2020 at 11:34 AM, Chris26 said:

Adobe = 37 years  Huge stocks and shares and multinational links.

Affinity = 6 years  An office smewhere in Engand

Adobe partnered with the big players of the day, Aldus steve Jobs, and others to become huge multi billion euro business.

Affinity = Congratulations to them for offering almost the same technology and functions at a great price to those who can not afford hundreds of euros and many specs that loads of do not ever need anyway.  I still have the complete adobe CS3 on my mac, but find myself using Affinity more and more on windows.   I can do the same photography and the same publishing work on affinity as I do on Adobe CS3, When I was a student I wished affinity was around then, even my student price for the adobe package was a steep one.  You can not compare the two companies, ever.  They fill different needs.

Affinity = 6 years, indeed. But Serif = nearly 30 years in the market. They should have some sort of insight already about what features are necessary, what can be omitted and how to build the roadmap.
The only difference is that Affinity was conceived as a Mac product, and addition of Windows support (obviously due to the marketing dept. that seems to have major role in what we're discussing here is the main deciding factor in Serif offices, not designer or coders). This is what started to slow the development down. Next hit was the iOS versions. It must be hell to maintain all this, and I'm not even talking about adding new features. Programmers must in my opinion be quite demotivated over there.

Even a single-man operation can make a good progress when there is a will and power to change things. Look at VectorStyler. They haven't released v 1.0 but they do have my money guaranteed already.

 

On 10/29/2020 at 12:12 PM, awado said:

 All new features of Photoshop 2021 are not needed in the professional segment, because the professional is not paid for the movement of sliders. They are paid for precise work. All these new features for junior designer... Many professionals are still working in Photoshop CS6 2014
 

P.S. Algorithms work terrible, I never used them because after them you still need to fix everything

This is nonsense. Every professional uses tools that make their lives easier, whenever they can. Otherwise we would still be doing our work the old way, we wouldn't use CTP, but be stuck with CTF. Hell, we would be using old Printing Presses, Manual Typesetting etc. Setting up a single book would take years. Or we would maybe be Scribers, manually rewriting copies of the books...

 

On 10/29/2020 at 8:34 PM, awado said:

Even the funniest thing is, the people who are promoting Photoshop 2021 and the new algorithmic functionality. You will notice that they do everything on a white background to hide all the shortcomings of these very algorithms, it looks ridiculous, trying to sell shit. In the market either professionals this raw shit will not use.
The most important thing is that Serif adds functions that will really be useful and not raw.
I'm hoping for Serif

Maybe for presentation purposes, however the tools are usable however one wants. Replace Sky ie., Neural Colorization... What features are you talking about, could you explain, please?

Overall, it's a pain working with Affinity. Faulty UX, weird UI (try to use keyboard to switch the input fields ie.), weird glitches all over the whole suite, often faulty output, weird crashes and lack of basic functionality makes it hard for any professional to use Affinity.

On the other hand: I'm loving Photo's inpainting tool. It's way better than Adobe's implementation and it's the last and single reason why I'm still using Affinity for some light retouching. Some filters are also quite nice. I'm not hating Affinity. I'm sad and disappointed how it didn't evolve after the years.

Bought Designer back in 2014/2015 from the App Store, later bought each single app for both platforms when the apps got released, just to support Serif reaching their goal. I'm using Adobe Suite again since I can't afford to test the software and pull my hair off all the time. Every new version introduces new bugs, plenty of bugs remain unfixed for years, version after version.

I'm losing hope, that's all.

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13 minutes ago, CLC said:

Well, if you use the software for living, it's a crap argument

I do use it for a living, and I'm currently about £900 better off due to switching to Affinity, and as evey month passes that increases.

Sure, some people's needs aren't met by this software, but for me it works so I don't see why I'd want to give away my hard earned cash to a billion dollar corporate who have leveraged their near monopoly to be able to extract as much cash from their customers as possible.

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4 minutes ago, BofG said:

I do use it for a living, and I'm currently about £900 better off due to switching to Affinity, and as evey month passes that increases.

Sure, some people's needs aren't met by this software, but for me it works so I don't see why I'd want to give away my hard earned cash to a billion dollar corporate who have leveraged their near monopoly to be able to extract as much cash from their customers as possible.

Well, if you really use it, you know it's quite simple to get a discount from Adobe. I've got over 50 per cent discount for next year subscription just few days back. All I had to do was to ask.

If you're a punk who fights his fight, OK. But we should be discussing features here, not our motivation that's behind our personal fight, don't you think? And to stay on topic, right? ;)

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Well considering Fiat owns quite a chunk of Ferrari the comparison limps a tad. 

But that aside, talking from a professional standpoint, (disclaimer: I am the guy your local service calls when they give up.) I can´t find anything in Adobe´s finest that I can´t do in Affinty. Having said that I would place the Photo at the level Photoshop was before they went CC, designer is where Freehand would have been a few versions down the line if it hadn´t been taken out behind the bins and shot by Adobe´s cooperate hit men. Havn´t had too much exposure to Publisher as I use Quark for my own stuff and of course InDesign in a customer environment. But from what I gather I would place it in and around Quark2016.
In printing the application programs are just a small cog in the machinery, despite the designer feeling that he is the god of graphic, because after the designer has handed in his thumbdrive the most time consuming part of the whole printprocess is done by the prepress guy having to work high magic to print-ready-fix the crap the designer has produced. How long a Prepress guy takes to fix files is a measure on how good the application software is and I can´t say that Affinty files are worse than those coming from Adobe´s finest.

The guys and galls in the printing and creative industry are notoriously bone-headed when it comes to change and for that reason Adobe will rule the roost for a long time to come.

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23 hours ago, awado said:

All new features of Photoshop 2021 are not needed in the professional segment, because the professional is not paid for the movement of sliders. They are paid for precise work.

Thanks @awado, that was what I was thinking, too when I read the changelog for Photoshop 2021. Most of the new features don‘t seem to be targeted to Adobe‘s core audience. For example, who, among professionals, needs a dedicated sky replacement tool given that there are established techniques for this kind of work? And while the new algorithmic face manipulation effects sure are fun to play with, I agree that they need a lot of manual finishing work. Just look at what these tools do to people with glasses for example. And wouldn‘t professionals make sure that models get their face expressions right in the first place? And yes, at least some of the new features do seem like a confession that Serif got some things quite right that Adobe did not so far, like the new interactive shapes.

BTW, this is not supposed to be a Photoshop rant. I use Affinity Photo as well as Adobe Photoshop and both applications have their strengths. It’s just that I really wondered where the widespread acclaim for Photoshop‘s new 2021 features comes from since I wouldn‘t rate most of them a real productivity boost for professional work.

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On 10/29/2020 at 9:50 AM, PaulEC said:

Does how they number the versions really matter?

Yes, if someone makes statements like "The Affinity Suite is astonishingly good for a 1.8 version". In this case, one tries to make the development dependant on the currently low number not on its age. But Affinity's version numbers do NOT reflect the time an app usually is on the market with a 1.x number.

»A designer's job is to improve the general quality of life. In fact, it's the only reason for our existence.«
Paul Rand (1914-1996)

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On 10/28/2020 at 8:10 AM, Sam Neil said:

I am getting more done with the "Fiat 500" than the crappy Adobe Ferrari !!! So Well done to Affinity for producing something that average users can pickup and use!!! Something Adobe will NEVER master...

I second that. I used CC on a brand new Windows machine at a former workplace a year ago and Adobe is crash-prone. Everything in the machine was up to snuff, plenty of memory, latest OS, etc., and the biggest culprit was Illustrator. Photoshop and InDesign were slightly better but updates were all about the waiting game (sometimes months until an issue was addressed/fixed). Affinity is light years ahead of Adobe on many fronts and at this stage in their software versions, they beat Adobe hands down. They don't have to "catch up" anything. I dare you to show me a designer or artist who uses every facet of Photoshop (or any of the other Adobe programs). I can achieve everything that I was doing in CC with the Affinity programs, and thanks to their integration, much quicker with less headaches. I freelance, and time is money but I don't "speed" through projects and that's never been a factor. I've never missed a deadline so I'm not sure where these "seconds and minutes" of speed are some sort of alluring feature. I remember the days of having to walk away from the computer while Photoshop took forever and a day to render. I do think Affinity kicked Adobe in the ass to finally make their software more efficient (would they have done that had competition not reared it's head?). I also keep an old version of Adobe CS 5.5 around for one main reason: Everything I did using InDesign is part of my archive. I can convert those files to IDML and open them in Publisher. I bridged from InDesign to QuarkXpress to Publisher. Call me what you will and argue until you're blue in the face about the bonuses of paying one monthly fee for "oodles" of programs, but I don't (any many others don't) need 90% of the CC programs, many of which are lackluster. 

To be clear, if Affinity had one-time fees for major upgrades, I'd still stay with them over Adobe. Adobe is ingrained much the same way as Microsoft in many corporations and universities. Retraining entire staffs and integrating new software on such a large scale is something most administrators and IT departments do NOT want to face. Thus, the cycle continues. That doesn't make Adobe better. In fact, many balk at the cost of subscriptions (Think thousands of licenses for Acrobat and the monthly cash haul Adobe makes from that alone). Think also of having the same essential features and functionality with Affinity programs at a fraction of the cost, and how attractive that is to the accounting departments.

Finally, as an example of how much Adobe cares about it's customers, go read the EOL forum on Adobe's site (if they left it up), and how it CRUSHED thousands of web designers and their businesses. Eliminating a program with no direct replacement and no way of salvaging YEARS of work is arrogance, pure and simple.

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2 hours ago, Slammer said:

Well considering Fiat owns quite a chunk of Ferrari the comparison limps a tad. 

But that aside, talking from a professional standpoint, (disclaimer: I am the guy your local service calls when they give up.) I can´t find anything in Adobe´s finest that I can´t do in Affinty. Having said that I would place the Photo at the level Photoshop was before they went CC, designer is where Freehand would have been a few versions down the line if it hadn´t been taken out behind the bins and shot by Adobe´s cooperate hit men. Havn´t had too much exposure to Publisher as I use Quark for my own stuff and of course InDesign in a customer environment. But from what I gather I would place it in and around Quark2016.
In printing the application programs are just a small cog in the machinery, despite the designer feeling that he is the god of graphic, because after the designer has handed in his thumbdrive the most time consuming part of the whole printprocess is done by the prepress guy having to work high magic to print-ready-fix the crap the designer has produced. How long a Prepress guy takes to fix files is a measure on how good the application software is and I can´t say that Affinty files are worse than those coming from Adobe´s finest.

The guys and galls in the printing and creative industry are notoriously bone-headed when it comes to change and for that reason Adobe will rule the roost for a long time to come.

Indeed, having worked at several print houses, prepress is a BIG revealer of shortcomings and mistakes. I'm not sure if there are ANY shops taking native files. PDF is king. There are either people who design a file and create an incorrect PDF or there are designers who don't know the working end of a shovel but should know better (failure to include bleed, color profile, correct dpi of images in original document, embedding fonts, difference between Black and Rich Black, etc.). I have posted twice in these forums about a magazine I Design and Art Direct, both being created in Publisher. I send finished PDFs to the printer. 1st Issue there were a number of issues during pre-press check (some my fault directly, others were bits I hadn't realized). 2nd issue the pre-press checking time was a tenth of the previous issue. Might add that the first issue was the first time the printer had seen PDFs created in Publisher. 

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On 10/28/2020 at 10:54 AM, Chris26 said:

Simply because I am so familiar with photoshop and have not been able to muster the resilience and the resistence to this impatient nature of mine of having to re-learn a piece of photographic software  after having used Photoshop for over 13 years.  I fear my own stress levels at wanting to do something I am so familiar with on Adobe.  HOWEVER, I am actually tired of having to edit in adobe on my mac, take it to windows, see a change, take it back into apple, re-save and re-do, take it back into windows, etc.  So yes, I am very close to getting the full suite of affinity but need a push., lots of coffee,  a soft sponge brick to throw at affinity photo for the first two weeks (an apology will always follow), and a room with sound proofing so that my wife doesn't hear the naughty words ..........😀

The transition is easier than you think. You'll get in a groove in no time. Obviously there will be features you'll miss but I'll bet you can achieve at least 98% of your work using Photo. As to the 2%, I'm sure you can find work-arounds, either online or through grit and determination with a touch of curiosity.

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Comparing Serif to Adobe is like comparing David to Goliath. David's sling proved more powerful than Goliath's arms and armor.

The forum thread from May-June 2019 is relevant to this discussion. See it at
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/86147-how-big-is-the-affinity-team/

In that thread there are links to Serif on Google Maps and a few screen shots of their headquarters.

You can view Adobe's San Jose headquarters on Google Maps streetview at
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3299571,-121.8944997,3a,75y,14.01h,105.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s07oZzcPwOJ1w8M8TaLBUqQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

We know what kinds of cars the Serif team drives. Adobe employees hide their cars underground.

And, of course, Adobe has many other offices in many countries.
https://www.adobe.com/about-adobe/contact/offices.html

 

Affinity Photo 2.4.1 (MSI) and 1.10.6; Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 (MSI) and 1.10.6. Windows 10 Home x64 version 22H2.
Dell XPS 8940, 16 GB Ram, Intel Core i7-11700K @ 3.60 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

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5 hours ago, CLC said:

Well, if you really use it, you know it's quite simple to get a discount from Adobe. I've got over 50 per cent discount for next year subscription just few days back. All I had to do was to ask.

 

And why, might we ask, is Adobe -- the hotshot best thing on the planet -- offering a 50% discount for next year?  Because they are scared silly about the competition from Affinity, perhaps?   If 1,000,000 former Adobe captives move to Affinity, that represents approx. $240 million loss of revenue.  Hardly chump change.  My bet is that the Adobe corporate types see trouble ahead and are grasping madly at any way to keep the captives on the plantation.  And as more and more people work from home, they may possibly find the monthly rental a bit much.   Meanwhile, it would seem that there is room for both on this Earth.  If people like Adobe best, fine. No need to try to disparage the other half's preferred apps, as some in this thread (and others that pop up from time to time) do.

Vive la différence!! 


24" iMAC Apple M1 chip, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 16 GB unified memory, 1 TB SSD storage, Ventura 13.6.  Photo, Publisher, Designer 1.10.5, and 2.3.
MacBook Pro 13" 2020, Apple M1 chip, 16GB unified memory, 256GB  SSD storage
,  Ventura 13.6.   Publisher, Photo, Designer 1.10.5, and 2.1.1.  
 iPad Pro 12.9 2020 (4th Gen. IOS 16.6.1); Apple pencil.  
Wired and bluetooth mice and keyboards.9_9

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46 minutes ago, jmwellborn said:

And why, might we ask, is Adobe -- the hotshot best thing on the planet -- offering a 50% discount for next year?  Because they are scared silly about the competition from Affinity, perhaps?   If 1,000,000 former Adobe captives move to Affinity, that represents approx. $240 million loss of revenue.  Hardly chump change.  My bet is that the Adobe corporate types see trouble ahead and are grasping madly at any way to keep the captives on the plantation.  And as more and more people work from home, they may possibly find the monthly rental a bit much.   Meanwhile, it would seem that there is room for both on this Earth.  If people like Adobe best, fine. No need to try to disparage the other half's preferred apps, as some in this thread (and others that pop up from time to time) do.

Vive la différence!! 

You are forgetting one little detail, Adobe´s CEO´s don´t earn their Ferraris with the CC suite, if Photoshop and illustrator and Indesign did a burn today (little Startrek discovery meme) Adobe would not break out in a sweat. They earn the big bucks with licensing the PDF tech along with the Adobe print engine and the acrobat workflow with all it´s bells and whistles, either directly or to third parties
In fact the Adobe suite was originally designed to be as open as possible and if designers and printers hadn´t been such dickheads and created a market for cracked PS and Illus and Indesign, then Adobe would not have gone down the subscription road, they took a lesson from QuarkXPress´s almost total demise from being the benchmark for all layout programs world wide to something that only us old folks know. I doubt Adobe will let that happen to them.

By the way, I still use Quark in it´s 2016 reincarnation. Again, it´s a great layout program and could wipe the floor with indesign with a little effort but it would seem that they have not learnt from their 1990ties Napalm-ing from Adobe and are again set to piss off their remaining acolytes.

 

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8 hours ago, CLC said:

Affinity = 6 years, indeed. But Serif = nearly 30 years in the market. They should have some sort of insight already about what features are necessary, what can be omitted and how to build the roadmap.
The only difference is that Affinity was conceived as a Mac product, and addition of Windows support (obviously due to the marketing dept. that seems to have major role in what we're discussing here is the main deciding factor in Serif offices, not designer or coders). This is what started to slow the development down. Next hit was the iOS versions. It must be hell to maintain all this, and I'm not even talking about adding new features. Programmers must in my opinion be quite demotivated over there.

Serif have made it quite clear that although they initially targeted Mac users it was always their intention to release the Affinity apps on other platforms, which is why the core functions are ‘platform agnostic’ and the UI is the main area which is specific to the target platform. Add in the fact that the common file format allows us to open the files in any Affinity app on any supported platform, and we can appreciate that what Serif have achieved is quite remarkable.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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2 hours ago, dannyg9 said:

I also keep an old version of Adobe CS 5.5 around for one main reason: Everything I did using InDesign is part of my archive. I can convert those files to IDML and open them in Publisher.

@dannyg9

This reminds me of yet another issue that has driven interest in the Affinity Suite.

On the Mac, after High Sierra 10.13.6, Apple's Mac OS, has gone entirely to a 64 bit architecture. Older 32 bit applications are no longer compatible with the latest OS. This has forced Mac users who've been clinging on to their perpetual license versions of Adobe CS6 to desperately seek out 64 bit alternatives to the subscription only Adobe CC. I gather that you are on Windows, but I assume the same issues are threatening to make older versions of Adobe CS obsolete.

I'm still running Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.6 precisely because I don't want to break my licensed copies of Adobe CS6. In the meantime, I've acquired the Affinity Suite and have become familiar with the tools as part of a larger strategy for surviving the transition to the 64 bit only OS environment.

Ultimately, sooner rather than later, I will be forced to replace my workstations and accept the forced migration to all 64 bit app architecture. At that point I will probably be forced to subscribe to Adobe CC simply because of the demands and pressures of the network effect that enforce the exchange of native Adobe files among clients and colleagues. But I'm happy to have the Affinity Suite and its fixed perpetual license fee as an alternative.

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7 hours ago, CLC said:

Otherwise we would still be doing our work the old way, we wouldn't use CTP, but be stuck with CTF. Hell, we would be using old Printing Presses, Manual Typesetting etc. Setting up a single book would take years. Or we would maybe be Scribers, manually rewriting copies of the books...

Ah I wish those days were here.....then we would appreciate more, quality would be superb...there would be no pointless magazines of gossip and garbage, no irrelevant news, advertising would be out since we would only look for what we actually needed.....and people might be busier with reality more than being seduced by fantasy.  But since I can not go back in time I say if your business Needs it and you have the money then Adobe, if not then support the Little guy because in 10 years he might be the big guy😉

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

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2 hours ago, jmwellborn said:

And why, might we ask, is Adobe -- the hotshot best thing on the planet -- offering a 50% discount for next year?  Because they are scared silly about the competition from Affinity, perhaps?   If 1,000,000 former Adobe captives move to Affinity, that represents approx. $240 million loss of revenue.  Hardly chump change.  My bet is that the Adobe corporate types see trouble ahead and are grasping madly at any way to keep the captives on the plantation.  And as more and more people work from home, they may possibly find the monthly rental a bit much.   Meanwhile, it would seem that there is room for both on this Earth.  If people like Adobe best, fine. No need to try to disparage the other half's preferred apps, as some in this thread (and others that pop up from time to time) do.

Vive la différence!! 

It's, and this was stated by their salesperson, I'm a good customer, always paying the whole year upfront, have a long history (9 years) of yearly purchases and there's the covid issue going on thorough the world.
I've just asked if they can offer me a discount, waited for a few minutes and this discount was offered to me.

I've never stated that Adobe is "the hotshot best thing on the planet", that's only your projection.

Using your tone: Why is Serif offering their product so cheap? Why don't they attempt to acquire money to recruit possible good coders offering reasonable wage? It was just rhetorical, sarcastic question, I hope you understand I'm not waiting for an answer 😉

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On 10/30/2020 at 6:52 PM, Chris26 said:

Ah I wish those days were here.....then we would appreciate more, quality would be superb...there would be no pointless magazines of gossip and garbage, no irrelevant news, advertising would be out since we would only look for what we actually needed.....and people might be busier with reality more than being seduced by fantasy.

This is where I'm coming from.

Started on an old Heidelberg letterpress machine, doing manual typesetting and printing. Later switched to CTF, and 2-color printing press, later printed on 4-colour and even hexachromes, followed by CTP two decades later. Now doing small stuff on digital Xerox machine and offloading all the printing press stuff to a local printing office. They're good and love their jobs.

I still do own the Heidelberg letterpress machine, along with multiple full type sets (raging from Baskerville, Venezia, Neue Haas Grotesk...)

Once a while I still print some greeting cards, business cards and bibliographies for my friends, in limited amount, clearly, since it's so much work and I have so little time... It's so calming you can't imagine 😄

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DN48iMUZ38

 

On 10/30/2020 at 6:52 PM, Chris26 said:

if your business Needs it and you have the money then Adobe, if not then support the Little guy because in 10 years he might be the big guy😉

I'm supporting both, and even other, independent ones. But I have to state that I'm utterly frustrated about all things Affinity.

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5 minutes ago, CLC said:

This is where I'm coming from.

Started on an old Heidelberg letterpress machine, doing manual typesetting and printing. Later switched to CTF, and 2-color printing press, later printed on 4-colour and even hexachromes, followed by CTP two decades later. Now doing small stuff on digital Xerox machine and offloading all the printing press stuff to a local printing office. They're good and love their jobs.

I still do own the Heidelberg letterpress machine, along with multiple full type sets (raging from Baskerville, Venezia, Neue Haas Grotesk...)

Once a while I still print some greeting cards, business cards and bibliographies for my friends, in limited amount, clearly, since it's so much work and I have so little time... It's so calming you can't imagine 😄

 

Wow, I started as a typesetter on a Compographic Powerview 10,  along with a Diatype and a Diacomp and at school it was lead, handsetting in heavy, grey lead.

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1 hour ago, Slammer said:

Wow, I started as a typesetter on a Compographic Powerview 10,  along with a Diatype and a Diacomp and at school it was lead, handsetting in heavy, grey lead.

Nice one! I thought I'd be the only Dinosaur one here with experience on such vintage stuff. As I child, I experienced my dad creating our advertising paper (family business) with handsetting/lead (and I helped every once in a while, sorting the letters). I started my own career later on an AM Varityper. I could rescue one of its phototypesetting discs, CS 2004B (fonts: Bauhaus Lt/Bauhaus Bd/Ultra Bodoni/Ultra Bodoni B.). It's hanging at the wall of my studio. Still.

26 minutes ago, CLC said:

Started on an old Heidelberg letterpress machine, doing manual typesetting and printing

We still used our old "Heidelberger" even late in the 2000s for embossing jobs and creating folds on heavy papers. 
 

»A designer's job is to improve the general quality of life. In fact, it's the only reason for our existence.«
Paul Rand (1914-1996)

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On 10/30/2020 at 1:46 PM, dannyg9 said:

I second that. I used CC on a brand new Windows machine at a former workplace a year ago and Adobe is crash-prone. Everything in the machine was up to snuff, plenty of memory, latest OS, etc., and the biggest culprit was Illustrator. Photoshop and InDesign were slightly better but updates were all about the waiting game (sometimes months until an issue was addressed/fixed). Affinity is light years ahead of Adobe on many fronts and at this stage in their software versions, they beat Adobe hands down. They don't have to "catch up" anything. I dare you to show me a designer or artist who uses every facet of Photoshop (or any of the other Adobe programs). I can achieve everything that I was doing in CC with the Affinity programs, and thanks to their integration, much quicker with less headaches. I freelance, and time is money but I don't "speed" through projects and that's never been a factor. I've never missed a deadline so I'm not sure where these "seconds and minutes" of speed are some sort of alluring feature. I remember the days of having to walk away from the computer while Photoshop took forever and a day to render. I do think Affinity kicked Adobe in the ass to finally make their software more efficient (would they have done that had competition not reared it's head?). I also keep an old version of Adobe CS 5.5 around for one main reason: Everything I did using InDesign is part of my archive. I can convert those files to IDML and open them in Publisher. I bridged from InDesign to QuarkXpress to Publisher. Call me what you will and argue until you're blue in the face about the bonuses of paying one monthly fee for "oodles" of programs, but I don't (any many others don't) need 90% of the CC programs, many of which are lackluster. 

To be clear, if Affinity had one-time fees for major upgrades, I'd still stay with them over Adobe. Adobe is ingrained much the same way as Microsoft in many corporations and universities. Retraining entire staffs and integrating new software on such a large scale is something most administrators and IT departments do NOT want to face. Thus, the cycle continues. That doesn't make Adobe better. In fact, many balk at the cost of subscriptions (Think thousands of licenses for Acrobat and the monthly cash haul Adobe makes from that alone). Think also of having the same essential features and functionality with Affinity programs at a fraction of the cost, and how attractive that is to the accounting departments.

Finally, as an example of how much Adobe cares about it's customers, go read the EOL forum on Adobe's site (if they left it up), and how it CRUSHED thousands of web designers and their businesses. Eliminating a program with no direct replacement and no way of salvaging YEARS of work is arrogance, pure and simple.

Adobe on many fronts and at this stage in their software versions, they beat Adobe hands down.

And yet Affinity Designer still doesn't allow images to be traced like Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator do 😏
  They'd instantly take business from Corel if this was implemented but my echo chamber remains unanswered lol 


 

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1 hour ago, Andy05 said:

 

Nice one! I thought I'd be the only Dinosaur one here with experience on such vintage stuff. As I child, I experienced my dad creating our advertising paper (family business) with handsetting/lead (and I helped every once in a while, sorting the letters). I started my own career later on an AM Varityper. I could rescue one of its phototypesetting discs, CS 2004B (fonts: Bauhaus Lt/Bauhaus Bd/Ultra Bodoni/Ultra Bodoni B.). It's hanging at the wall of my studio. Still.

We still used our old "Heidelberger" even late in the 2000s for embossing jobs and creating folds on heavy papers. 
 

Nope, you are not alone, as a leftover from that era I can still "draw" the run of my layout in pencil, one cicero type on an english leading with a columbian exchange header and woe betide you forgot an undercut or caused a widow or an orphan.

The past is a different planet we do things differently there.

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