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Dear Serif. Please, can I give you money?


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Dear Serif

I first bought Affinity Photo as version 1.5 in 2017. I can't remember how much money I gave you, but it didn't seem much. I'd been using Photoshop (hereinafter called 'the former product') but then Adobe introduced a taxation system (ach, ptui!) so I started looking around and found you. James Ritson's 200-odd videos got me to a new level and I was off to the races. It's probably a common story.

Since then, you've made all kinds of improvements to the product, often through listening to the requests of bods like me wittering on in the (very fine) forum. As a keen photographer and old techie, APh is now a permanent partner in my artistic endeavours.

But I'm worried.

I want and need you folks to both survive and thrive. I started my InAffinity channel on YouTube as much to spread the word as to learn and build a beer fund. Other good people have done likewise. But I don't know if this is enough.

During expansion, when Serif products are finding new customers, market penetration pricing can work to keep you going. However, a time comes when you may need to rethink your price policy. I'm not suggesting going to an Adobe model, nor the Luminar smoke and mirrors. In fact I'm not suggesting any magic formula, because magic is an illusion that can get you into trouble. But I am asking and hoping that you have a financing strategy that your customers will buy and which keeps you at the leading edge for the forseeable future and beyond.

And I, for one, would be ok with paying a bit more.

Yours sincerely

Dave

Dave Straker

Cameras: Sony A7R2, RX100V

Computers: Win10: Chillblast i9 Custom + Philips 40in 4K & Benq 23in; Surface Pro 4 i5; iPad Pro 11"

Favourite word: Aha. For me and for others.

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  • Staff

We're good thanks Dave, perhaps next year. Buy some of the New Content coming on Black Friday if you like :) 

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Frankly, Dave, I think Serif should be sending you money. You've done more than most through your InAffinity tutorials to promote APhoto and make it usable by amateurs like myself.

I've stuck with APhoto because I loved the emphasis on non-destructive editing. I don't remember ever seeing that emphasis in the several other editors I had used for the previous 15 years. It was a revelation and the way editing ought to be. Your commitment to APhoto, and the commitments of both Affinity Revolution and Olivio Sarikas, serve as testimonies to APhoto.

However, I would need a compelling reason to purchase an upgrade to APhoto. I have seen little improvement in photo editing with APhoto during the last four years. The updates have been mostly bug fixes. My greatest disappointment was the enormous increase in the size of .afphoto files, not to improve photo editing, but to accommodate features in APub

One compelling reason to pay for an upgrade would be an improved user interface (which gets more difficult for me to use as I get even older than dirt). Another would be default exporting to the folder containing the original image file. These forums contain numerous requests for these simple features through the four years and 17 updates I've been using APhoto. Still we wait for a reply from Serif. They won't even tell us whether such improvements are in their plans. We have no idea where the software is going. My sense is that any new money charged for APhoto would be dedicated to fixing APub on the Mac, not improving APhoto.

During my initial exuberance on discovering APhoto in 2017, I recommended it to many friends. I stopped doing that a couple of years ago as I realized that most hobbyists and amateurs are not nearly so interested in technical details nor software ideology as am I. It's an old lesson I had learned several times during my career. Neither are people my age happy with minuscule text and tiny icons in the UI.

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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You can buy as many Licenses as you like, I think... and yes, some of us would love to see you around for a long time, dear Serif employees, doing well and with a growing and happy community.

Best regards!

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